This column was first published on Feb. 16, 2022. There are a lot of things we don’t agree on these days. Yet, a steaming bowl of soup on a cold winter night is almost universally agreed upon to be ...

The best borscht I ever had was in a punk house the summer before I turned 18. At that point, I’d been on my own for nearly two years, living with whoever would take me after my mom left town, ...