Archie News → Cripes! PLI No. 4

A mysterious side dish + fantastic four

Paige Lipari
November 25, 2025

the latest

No. 1 →

Panettone have arrived. They are of the highest order. Scroll down to see the full menu…

No. 2 →

Looking to spend some quality time with a loved one while it gets crazier and kookier out there? Join the fromagères of local cheese oracle Monger's Palate for a delicious cavort through the Pyrenees: five wines, five cheeses, you and yours.

The Basque Country was born from the collision of the Iberian Peninsula with Europe and boasts one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Grab a spot and taste this unorthodoxy!

this is going to be excellent

No. 3 →

The Agora Club (our philosophy club) is meeting in a week. For December we will read an excerpt from Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space.

From Katie: In the Introduction, Bachelard argues that the poetic image is capable of inaugurating a response outside of causality and predetermination, suggesting that it creates a reverberation in the reader that is a space of freedom and awakening. He goes on in the first chapter to discuss this more concretely, through a phenomenology of the house and other originary, sheltering spaces.

No. 4 →

We are beyond delighted to welcome back authors Michelle Marek and Camilla Wynne for a very special evening in celebration of their indispensable and mouthwatering new book All That Crumbs Allow.

Michelle is a treasure we can't wait for you to meet, and, with Camilla, if you know, you stalk. Listen to how they transfigure the humble hunk of bread into something truly epic alongside their longtime pal and fellow sorceress Natasha Pickowicz.

No. 5 →

Our next Cookbook Club, Book Book Club, and Keep Greenpoint Weird Book Club events are all ahead of us with some good lead time and on the site! Do the community thing! It is everything.

No. 6 →

If you follow us on stories, you will know that last week I, ppp, went on a bit of an early-morning rant after reading this NY Times article. Great restaurants and the good people who create them are not replaceable. Let’s mourn them, appreciate them, and not try to dupah troopah them, okie???? Respect. Grazie.

No. 7 →

We are closed on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. See you on Saturday 🙂 and have a beautiful holiday! We are thankful for you. My goodness.

our events

Shop for any book on our Bookshop.org shop. We just read this and are now reading this.

Shop for audiobooks on our Libro.fm shop. Here are our past BookBook Club picks.

Subscribe to this newsletter for $5 to $9 a month.

Come inside and discover things.

The latest food playlist.

or “Magic works when you have desire” - my friend Joel Gunz said this the other night

This is a prized and rare Andreas Gursky MoMA poster of ‘99 Cent.’ The photograph was included in Time magazine's 1999 list of the 100 most important pictures ever taken. It sold for 4 million at auction, and the same print we have here is going for $1,900 on eBay. Find it for a little less on our website here. 56 × 34.

Listen, I don’t love sweet squash. Not a big fan of sweet potatoes, either. Historically, the way to appease my palate and everyone else's at Thanksgiving has been to make a sweet potato mash with a heathy amount of chilis in adobo, creme fraiche, topping them with a coarse pecan crumble and baking it off. But I’m getting distracted. (Oh, it had a little maple syrup running through it, too. Yum.)

The balance of the sweetness, earthiness, and smokiness in the above mentioned dish is perfect and VERY straightforward.

One might say it lives within the realm of time!

It still tastes like the last Thursday in November.

The Thanksgiving sorta dish I am choosing to put below holds salt, sugar, earth, and fire in a way I find a little witchy, a little out of joint.

Another reason it is in this particular email is because so much food is made and eaten together at this time of year, so it’s apt that I share with you today a recipe inspired by something I ate at the home of a lovely, mystical friend. It has NEVER left my mind.

Christian Holstad, Watering jar (jadeite), 2021

There is so much I could say about Christian’s work. I’ve gotten to know Christian over the last decade as a successful artist, ceramicist, and pasta-making expert.

His pieces are always alive with subversive creatureness, no matter the medium.

His humble human body vessel channels further, weirder vessels to channel your vessels with, and his ability to transfigure form is how they seem to let the viewer hold the most.

(He is also extremely generous. He loves to bring me, and all his friends, presents. They are always spot on, too. Happy Christian-mas, etc, BUT this is the Thanksgiving newsletter, so I am giving thanks.)

Si, one night for dinner over at Christian’s house, I was served a savory squash housed and honored its original vessel. A stuffed squash!

I don’t think you will guess what is inside. Guess. Just guess.

what is inside me

through the mush, can you see?

I wish you could taste it so we could make it ‘a guessing game’

Interlude: Another friend of mine, Joel, said the other day ‘Magic works when you have desire.’ I love this so much; I love this idea of desire being a kind of alchemy. Making food requires desire and begets magic. Va bene va boonay. More on this one day.

Mi dispiace, to gain access to this intel, you must be a paid Cripes! Subscriber. It’s $9 a month, and we are obsessed with making this thing good—especially the recipes. Subscribe here. Thank you.

Also, if you are a subscriber or have been given a subscription, please create an account and log in on the site to view your recipes and more. Logging in also provides access to all of our past newsletters.