I rarely have any ideas, let alone good ones, in the kitchen, which is why I defer to my wife  most often.

However, we were looking to liven up what was likely to be a fairly lonely, humdrum Thanksgiving in 2020. I persuaded my wife to try out a New York Times recipe for a pork shoulder variation on a Thanksgiving turkey that my colleague, Jeanette, had tantalizingly described. I scoured several Asian grocery stores that were still open for the ingredients we lacked, and my wife spent hours preparing the sauces, roasting the pork shoulder, and putting together a feast for the two of us.

While my wife vowed to never try it again due to its difficulty, we discovered that the New York City restaurant that was the original source of the dish charges $280 for the item on its menu. And so we toasted our health and a brighter future over an exquisite meal without the flight to  NYC.