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As anyone who has spent the holidays with friends, neighbors, or a family besides their own knows, no two celebrations look exactly alike. (One man’s Christmas tamales is another’s Friendsgiving tofurkey, as it were.) Regardless of what and how we celebrate, though, the ingredients for any meaningful holiday gathering are the same: togetherness, tradition, and, of course, food.  

But rarely is holiday food simply sustenance; more often, it carries deep significance and offers a glimpse into who we are and from where we’ve come. Whether we’re lovingly preparing old family recipes from memory, whipping up dishes that remind us of a specific place or time, or diving into time-honored seasonal delights, the way to our holiday hearts is—unsurprisingly and always—through our stomachs.  

We asked eight Dallasites—each from different cultures and backgrounds—to share with us the recipes and stories that capture the meaning and memories of the holidays.

It’s 8:30 a.m. on a Wednesday in late July, and Karen Albracht meets me in Tenison Park, a loosely treed stretch of land in East Dallas. The park is nestled between northbound and southbound Grand Avenue, the sound of traffic fading in the distance. She wears a sun hat and a smile. At her side stands co-gardener Ann Sansone, armed with a walking stick and a smile of her own.

Albracht has lived in the neighborhood for 38 years. She has always enjoyed the outdoor space, but she was appalled when the Texas Department of Transportation began using the public park to stage its large road-grading equipment in 2016. She began working with the city to section off “no-mow zones”—mowing, she explains, is the killer of all life. In 2017, with the help of volunteers, she unveiled the 1.9-acre Tenison Park Pollinator Garden, which includes a collection of over 50 native flora species that provide food and shelter to pollinators like birds, bees, and monarch butterflies. 

Six days before I meet with Albracht and Sansone, the 1,400-member strong International Union for Conservation of Nature added the migratory monarch butterfly to its Red List of Threatened Species. This move categorizes the butterfly subspecies, the official insect of Texas, as endangered¹. 

The migratory monarch population is known for its transcontinental journeys every year back and forth from Canada to Mexico. Its population has shrunk between 22 and 72 percent over the past 10 years, according to an IUCN report. Deforestation, urbanization, climate change, and pesticides and herbicides have all had detrimental impacts on the subspecies’ western and eastern populations. Monarchs that winter in California are estimated to have dwindled almost 99.9 percent since the 1980s. The eastern population, which passes through Texas to Mexico in September, dropped by 84 percent from 1996 to 2014. 

When Christine Allison, our editor-in-chief and CEO, mentioned last year that she’d like to know more about all of these East and West Coasters choosing to make their homes in North Texas, we were quick to get on board with the idea.

Last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas asked a simple question: would the pandemic change the pattern of Americans moving to Texas from big coastal cities?

The Fed used credit reports to learn that migration to the Lone Star State actually increased from 2020 to 2021, far surpassing pre-pandemic trends. After that report, Census data made it official. The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan statistical area welcomed just under 55,000 new Texans from other states, trailing only Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler in raw growth.

There are some quirks in the data; Dallas County actually lost people in 2021, while suburban counties like Denton and Collin posted some of the highest numeric growth in the country. Dallas would have slipped even further had it not been for all these newcomers.

So who are they? California, New York, and Illinois brought us more new neighbors than any other states. The Fed attributes that movement to “plentiful job opportunities, an accommodative business environment, and a relatively low cost of living.”

That’s all well and good—and very academic. We thought it would help to go inside their homes, learn what it was about North Texas that attracted them here.

So for the July issue, we sat down with five families in their spectacular homes to talk about why they chose to move to Dallas in the last year or two and confirm our own life choices. We talked with Shondaland COO Megha Tolia and her husband, former Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia; headband queen Lele Sadoughi; artist Donald Robertson; Journey of a Braid founder Danié Gómez-Ortigoza and her husband, wine exec Nicolas Guillant; and designer Sharon Lee.

You can now peek inside their homes. The story is online today.

I don’t know Dr. Norma Melamed. She’s a neurologist. She sent me an email this morning. It read:

“With the sweltering temps in Dallas, I thought you might enjoy some pics of my little secret garden oasis that is surviving & still happy with a lot of attention & loving care, multiple outdoor ‘rooms’ each with their own ambience to enhance the senses and mood, every seasonal plant planted by me to create an artistic environment within the ‘frame’ of the yard perimeter fence. ENJOY!!”

Here’s the thing: my own personal backyard in East Dallas is turning into a hellscape. So is my front yard. And my side yards. Which is why I especially dug Bethany’s LeadingOff newsletter this morning, because she gave me a tip about a yard-watering alert that the city of Dallas can send you based on your address. Here’s where to sign up. Oh, and you might want to subscribe to the daily LeadingOff newsletter because it’s awesome.

I digress. My plants and grass are withering. We put in a 15-foot red leaf maple at the start of the pandemic. I noticed this morning that some of its leaves are burned. I mean, like, as if someone had held a flame to them. Here’s what the Texas Trees Foundation says you should do to save your trees. Anyway, I’m struggling to get through this heat.

Not Dr. Norma and her little secret garden oasis. Such a smug neurologist!

I’m kidding. I actually found it therapeutic to look at Norma’s backyard. I want to go WFH in Norma’s backyard. Wonder if she’d give me her wifi password. Anyway, have a look for yourself. And stay hydrated, my friends.

My kid’s feet are bigger than his bedroom, so we decided it’s probably time to start looking for a new house to fill with our shin guards and never-used craft supplies. And the timing really couldn’t be better. Right now, everyone is paying $4 million over the asking price and the description of every house includes words like “BEST AND FINAL OFFERS ONLY.”

It’s super. 

Interest rates are going up. There’s a recession looming. And inventory of houses is still near record lows. From a recent Zillow report dated May 19: “Over the next three months, Zillow expects home values to grow 5.2 percent, down from an expectation for 5.5 percent growth in the previous month’s forecast. Zillow’s forecast for existing home sales has been lowered as well, now predicting 5.73 million sales in 2022. That would mark a 6.4 percent decrease from 2021.”

Translation: your Dallas home-buying forecast calls for 100 percent chance of bidding over asking against 110 potential buyers while the house is still marked “Coming Soon” on Zillow (no pictures available).

Even though it’s the worst time to try to buy a house and the whole process of counting your pennies to figure out what you can even afford is incredibly stressful, you get caught up in the excitement. Like, way too caught up. When you get a notification that “There’s a house in your zone!” the heart skips a beat. “In your price range!” You feel the promise of a forever-65-degrees-and-sunny future overtake you. “And zoned for your preferred elementary school!” Holy outdoor kitchen. The Wordle can wait.

You click the link, and the description starts off great: “This two-story stunner in the sought-after neighborhood of White Lake Hollowlands boasts a master suite on the first floor for ease of passing out after a long week of trying to pay off this house, and so much shiplap, it’s an actual ship now. You ship this home.” But then comes the bad news: “This isn’t a house—it’s an experience.” Oh, no. 

I grew up in northern Ohio, in a sprawling suburban development. The lush, grassy backyards were separated by wood piles stacked high with logs from the oak and ash trees felled to build the homes. My dad took four railroad ties and laid them out in the back corner over a sheet of plastic, creating an 8-by-8-foot sandbox in which we built medieval Playmobil villages with marauding pirate ships floating on hose-filled lagoons.

We played croquet and badminton and tee-ball under the shade of the remaining trees. Bratwurst, not brisket, was always on the grill, and tomatoes were bursting with fruit in a sunny bed in back.

When, as an adult, I moved to Texas in 2004, I picked my house because of the backyard. Unlike the flat, treeless Dallas suburbs, Oak Cliff was hilly and leafy. The previous owner of the 1920s bungalow was a gardener, and outside the back door she had planted a bed of native rose bushes, which she surrounded with a miniature white picket fence. A wooden bird house on a post stuck out of the middle.

Farther back, a vintage bicycle with a flower pot in the rusting basket was propped against a two-story guest house. Ivy vines grew up the trellis that covered the outside stairwell. The whole tableau reminded me of the Beltane Ranch in Sonoma, a favorite getaway, romantic and rustic.

Then it tried to kill me.

About one hour and one cocktail into an evening with Abby and David McCloskey, I am made privy to a startling secret. It is not the piece of information itself that surprises me but the very fact that I am told I may not share it.

 I set down my drink and interrupt: “Wait. Why can’t I write that?”

Of course, I entered the McCloskeys’ Lakewood home knowing that they could not share significant parts of their lives, seeing as Abby has advised three presidential hopefuls and David has worked for two of the world’s most secretive organizations, the CIA and the consulting firm McKinsey. David, for example, can’t tell me about his time in Syria other than he “lived there for a while” in the years before the disastrous civil war. He later talks about touring a nuclear reactor with a McKinsey client, then demurs when I ask where the plant was located; that might reveal the client’s identity. I honestly don’t even think to ask Abby for dirt on Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz or Rick Perry, both of whom she served as a domestic policy director. That isn’t why I am here. 

I am here to fill in a picture of the McCloskey pair. Tell me about a one-time CIA analyst and a Republican policy advisor with Fox News-blond highlights, and my mind can easily draw a caricature, but tell me that the analyst is currently writing spy thrillers from East Dallas coffee shops (his first novel, Damascus Station, was released by W.W. Norton in October with an endorsement from former CIA director David Petraeus, calling it “the best spy novel I have ever read”), and tell me that the Republican advisor is an economist who recently testified before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee from the corner of her bedroom on the subjects of childcare and paid parental leave, the latter of which she has championed for a decade—well, then, the cognitive pencil begs for more detail. 

The Texas Trees Foundation is an environmental nonprofit that supplies Texans with the resources to help with the “greening of North Texas” and to secure a future of clean air. (And also conducts first-of-their kind studies about our region’s tree canopy and has the ambitious goal of transforming one of Dallas’ most important neighborhoods, the Southwestern Medical District, into something altogether new.) 

The foundation’s NeighborWoods program helps individuals and organizations put down roots in their communities by planting trees. The initiative increases the overall tree canopy in areas where trees and vegetation are scarce, which improves air quality, absorbs rainwater runoff, beautifies public spaces, and provides shaded areas for recreational use.

On April 10, the NeighborWoods program is focusing on adding trees to neighborhoods near schools that lack greenery. To do so, the foundation is supplying nearby residents with free trees. Recipients must live up to one mile away from four Dallas school campuses: Anson Jones Elementary, Leila P. Cowart Elementary, Mockingbird Elementary, and Esperanza “Hope” Medrano Elementary. The trees must be planted in the right-of-way in front of the residents’ homes.  

March 11. That’s when, in the middle of a Mavericks game, the NBA announced it was putting a stop to its season. For me, that’s when the pandemic began here in the United States. The D Magazine staff began working from home two days later. It’s been a year.

You spend that much time in your house, and things change. Those little annoyances you once could escape by heading to the office turn into monsters that leap from behind doors and try to disembowel you before you can even get your first cup of coffee in the morning. Am I exaggerating for effect? No!

For me, my monster was a leaky chimney. I’d say rainwater has made its way into our chimney for four years. I had to meet every storm with three or four pots in the fireplace to keep the ship from taking on too much water. We put up with it for a while. Then we hired a guy to fix it. Then, when he failed to fix it, we returned to putting up with it.

Everyone on staff has his or her own leaky chimney. That was our inspiration for the April cover story of D Magazine: “How to Fix Everything.” It is online today and you can read it here. I raised my hand to write a blurb about fixing a leaky chimney. I got a recommendation from a friend. I talked to the chimney guy. The chimney itself was about $2,000, and there was some other stuff that needed to be done. Total bill for a 38-word item in the magazine: about $3,000.

You know what? It rained pretty good two weeks ago. You know what else? My chimney no longer leaks. A decade from now, someone will ask me, “Remember that pandemic?” I’ll respond: “How could I forget it? That’s when we finally got our chimney fixed.”

That cover story went online today. As you look it over, I want you to know that all 49 recommendations were made on the strength of experiences like mine. Shout out to the staff of D Home. They helped, too. We’ve all either used these professionals, or we have a trusted source who has. This stuff doesn’t come from Google.

We’re here to help. You can thank us by subscribing, if you don’t already.

Here’s to herd immunity and to dry fireplaces. 2021 is looking up.

Geoffroy van Raemdonck has a great name. The CEO of Neiman’s also has a great house. He and his husband, Alvise Orsini, share an Italianate-style Lakewood pad that’s on the tax rolls for almost $2.3 million. Nothing wrong with that. If the CEO of Neiman’s lived in a $250,000 ranch in Garland, then we’d have a problem. What’s wrong here is that Neiman’s is just emerging from bankruptcy. People have been laid off and taken pay cuts. In that context, it’s not wise to invite PaperCity into your house for a photo shoot, which is what van Raemdonck did. Looks great. But totally tone deaf. And the New York Post is just loving it:

One guest bathroom, adorned with a dreamscape mural and “silver and mirrored cabinets from the 1930s,” is described as “the most glamorous guest loo ever.” Outside, near the pool and pool house, is a chicken coop so elaborate, the author describes it as “more Versailles than farmhouse.”

Van Raemdonck and Orsini are shown in the glossy spread lounging atop a “custom sofa . . . upholstered in silk velvet.” Above them are two prints from Warhol’s “Reigning Queens” series.

Neiman staffers were flabbergasted.

“He either doesn’t care or he’s tone-deaf,” one employee griped to The Post. “Everyone is wondering why [he] agreed to show off the house while health care, bankruptcy and layoffs are the main topics for Neiman Marcus.”

Each year for the past 12, D’s sister publication, D Home, has crowned the 10 Most Beautiful Houses in Dallas. It’s a fun, admittedly subjective, and ultimately challenging assignment—to whittle down the list to just two handfuls of properties in a city teeming with feature-worthy homes.

Following the completion of last year’s list, we made the decision to take a break from beautiful and instead recognize the most charming houses within the city limits. We simply needed a change of pace and figured readers did, too. And while we never could have predicted what lie ahead, our choice now seems oddly prescient: Charming feels wholesome and reassuring in pandemic times when not much else does.

It felt good to be driving around looking at adorable homes in late March, as the world was falling into the grips of COVID-19. Frankly, it felt good to be out of the house doing anything. There are worse ways to spend a crisp, sunny spring day than getting lost in the winding, hilly streets of Lakewood, or cruising Kessler Park with the windows down, a safe social distance from anyone.

Every year, people ask how we find the houses we include. The answer, to people’s surprise, is the old-fashioned way: we get in our cars and drive. Putting this year’s list together was our hardest task to date, and I’m not just talking about the logistics of awkward stares from driveway happy hour attendees as we circled the block for the third time, or avoiding kids riding bikes in the midst of what should’ve been a school day.

Poring over our finalists was like choosing between children. Charming is emotional. There were heated disagreements. We finally settled on 10 honorees, though the list of also-rans is far longer. You can see our picks in the July issue of D, or it’s online today. Take a look at the finalists, and let us know what you think.