The Real World Catalog

Sign in Subscribe

life

A collection of 15 issues

How to Make Egg Noodles

First, you’re going to need two cups of flour and three eggs. Semolina flour is better; if the flour you use is too coarse, your pasta dough will be noticeably textured, and not a in a good way; there will be shame in every bite. So use a fine-ground

Bittersweet

Someone once told me that the opposite of heartbreak is gratitude. I think they meant that you can lessen a burden of sadness by remembering the good things in your life, which is true. The thing they actually said isn’t. In my post for last Thanksgiving, I attacked a

Even a Crush is Something

There is something noble in the most pathetic forms of love. For it’s very pathetic to love someone you don’t know—to really love them, hook, line and sinker—to be ready to throw up everything, for someone whose middle name you don’t even know. We’ll

Simmering Anxieties

Being able to cook—wow—that caries high social status. So my thoughts must have been whispering to me all throughout childhood, because that’s the idea I grew up with, although no adult ever tried to drill it into me. My mom watched cooking shows sometimes. Perhaps it came

Plomp, Plomp, Plomp

There's a cricket on the sidewalk. And there's a toad. Plomp—the weigh of the toad slaps the sidewalk; a dreadful boggy sound that must rattle the exoskeleton of the cricket. It twitches an antenna. Plomp, goes the toad, and the bug is in real danger.

The Beast in the Bed

A Real-Life Tale of Home-Invasion

Keeping Christmas

The time for Christmas is now!

Subway Talk

Trapped in a subway with the king of hot takes

Gratitude

Missing

You and I go back a long ways, back to kitchen counter conversations and air-conditioned afternoons. I paced the tile floors and sucked a spoon of peanut butter, you pounded water and leaned against the cabinets. We were young in those days, sure of ourselves. We had everything in the