I was born and raised in New York City and moved to Italy when I was 24 years old. For a little over twelve years, Italy has been my home, and I’ve built a life here. I have two children, an 8-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son. Both of them have spent their entire lives
At our first dinner on Hurtigruten’s MS Trollfjord, my parents and I spent most of the meal imagining what my 3-year-old son would have thought. Aksel would have picked at the bread, asked how many courses of “real food” were left before dessert, and probably driven his Hot Wheels through the butter. Instead, he stayed
My grandmother got ovarian cancer in her 70s. The initial sign came on New Year’s Eve, when Gram, who often said overeating was one of her greatest flaws, thought she had simply done that. She had eaten too much Chinese food, and that was why she threw up. Or so my grandmother reasoned. Next came
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Masashi Nakamura, 29, who is running Nakamura Farm, a small Wagyu farm in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. His words have been edited for length and clarity. I was working at a meat processing facility in Tasmania when my interest in Wagyu began. It was 2024, and I
