CNN, New York, NY.

Mariah Carey is known for her five-octave voice, her slinky dresses and her many hits, including “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

Unfortunately, she is also known for her tardiness. And her behavior this week at the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in New York won’t do anything to help that reputation.

Because of her history, NBC decided to tape Carey singing her holiday classic before a live audience Tuesday night, then air it Wednesday for the network’s coverage of the 82nd annual Rockefeller Center tree lighting.

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CNN, New York, NY.

Cara Reedy says she has learned to stop internalizing her anger and to direct it outward.

From the moment I was born, people around me were saying, “Oh, God.”

The nurse exclaimed it when I finally arrived, a month late (a habit I have kept). That’s how my parents found out that I was a little person, a dwarf, of short stature. They were shocked and upset, knowing that my life would be hard. My maternal grandfather told my mother, “I don’t care how tall she is, she’s my first granddaughter, and she’s pretty. ”

They didn’t find out I had achondroplastic dwarfism until a few months later. “Achondroplasia” is a word that haunted me in my childhood. I never wanted to hear it. It wasn’t who I was. I was not different.

According to a 2009 report by Richard M. Pauli from the Midwest Regional Bone Dysplasia Clinics, achondroplasia happens 1 in every 25,000 births. It doesn’t really matter how often it happens, we happened, and we’re here.

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CNN, New York, NY.

The Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn has been home to a vibrant Caribbean and African American community since the great migration of the twentieth century. African American people moved to northern states to escape the racial segregation of Jim Crow laws, while at the same time Caribbean people moved to New York for better employment opportunities. The slow Southern charm mixed with the warmth of the Caribbean people make it a neighborhood unlike any other.

When I arrived five years ago, I was a Caribbean food novice. I soon caught up and caught on to the wonderful flavors. My favorite discovery is doubles, a Trinidadian street food that is a Bed Stuy breakfast tradition.

Despite its plural name, a double is a singular sandwich made of two pieces of fried bread (bara) filled with curried chickpea stew (channa) and then topped with tamarind chutney, kuchela (chutney made of green mangoes) and pepper (a vinegary sauce made from scotch bonnet peppers).

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CNN, New York, NY.

When I moved to New York eleven years ago, I got a lot of blank stares when I told people I was from St. Louis. Some people would say genius things like “Oh right, you have that arch,” or my favorite, “I’ve been in the airport, is there anything in the city?”

People went out of their way to tell me I spoke weirdly. Cab drivers consistently tried to take me on long rides around the city, thinking I was a tourist. I got really homesick after six months.

To cheer myself up I decided to make a St. Louis-style, crisp-crust, square-sliced pizza. I went to my local grocery store to buy supplies. They had everything I needed except the most important ingredient, Provel cheese.

Provel is a little hard to describe. It’s processed, gooey, a little smoky and when heated is takes on the qualities of molten lava. It’s really just delicious and it tastes like home.

I looked all around the store, but there was none to be found. My neighborhood market was never that well stocked, so I had the brilliant idea of going to the fancy grocery store. Their cheese selection was amazing; of course they would have it. I ran up the street knowing I was that much closer to achieving my goal.

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CNN, New York, NY.

I grew up in St. Louis, MO which is considered the Midwest, but has some clear southern leanings. Barbecue and fried chicken were always around. One of my favorite meals as a child was a one-pot meal consisting of potatoes, green beans, carrots and cabbage boiled with a ham hock. My parents served it with a fresh batch of corn bread to soak up the juices – often called pot liquor or potlikker.

I never really thought anything about this meal other than I liked it. When you’re a kid, you generally don’t analyze your food that deeply. It’s either like or can’t stand. Flash forward to adulthood, when I started doing some personal research on the African American slave diet. I suddenly realized that what my parents were serving was the original soul food.

Most people think of soul food as heavy, greasy and fattening and plenty of it is. My family reunion wouldn’t be the same without BBQ, fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.

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CNN, New York, NY.

Living in New York City has its challenges, not the least of which is apartment size. With these tiny apartments come teeny tiny kitchens – which are manageable if all the “cooking” you are going to do is make a bowl of cereal or an occasional pasta dish.

Every New York home cook has their own way of dealing with the space issue. Most kitchens are built using all the available vertical space. Mine is no exception. What seems high to most people is actually towering for me. I’m only 4’2″.

To put it into perspective, the counters in my current apartment come to my shoulders. I have always had to use a stool, but this kitchen is sort of ridiculous. The bottoms of my top cabinets are at least five feet off the ground. My average height friends have difficulty in my kitchen.

Cooking has become an acrobatic exercise. To fix one meal you might see me climbing up on counters, leaning across the kitchen from my stool, so I don’t have to climb up and down the stool every time I need to get to the sink. I use kitchen tongs to grab things off the top shelves all the while standing on a stool or kneeling on the counter. It sounds strange and it probably looks strange but at least I am burning off a few calories before I eat.

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