She treats the glorious scents of sizzling burgers and

roasting chickens like enemy combatants, using guerilla
tactics to hide jars of potpourri in places I’ll never look—
among the Russian literature, perhaps, or strategically
disguised as one of the vacation souvenir knickknacks
above her desk. As soon as I start a project in the kitchen, I
wait the familiar swisssssh-clop of the window in the living
room sliding open and the click-whir of the fan switching
on, in her desperate attempts to preemptively ventilate.
That’s why rainy days are my favorite. You can’t open
the windows during a thunderstorm, which ensures that the
awesome aroma wafting from my giant pot of chili slowly
simmering away on the stovetop saturates the curtains and
carpets. And it’s there to greet you every time you enter the
apartment for at least a few weeks. It lives on in the
bedsheets, ready to lull you to sleep like a warm glass of
milk. It lingers on the shower curtain, greeting you every
morning with its meaty, oniony aroma when you brush your
teeth. My wife says I’m passive-aggressive. I tell her she’s
paranoid as I smile and heat up another bowl of chili.
This chapter is all about those wonderful, apartment-
saturating, aromatic stews, soups, and braises—the kind of
food so good that you check the weather report just hoping
for a hurricane warning. And it all starts with stock.