[M]y friend Petrie and I get along pretty well, for the most part. We have our moments of contention.At times, he seems to be sluggish and distantly separate when I have forgotten him for awhile…he likes to be stirred up, and only I can do that. He spat at me […]
[G]rowing up, we ate lots of homemade soups. All very basic, simple, homey and quite delicious: rich beef stew, flavored with lots of vegetables, including chopped cabbage that cooked to a clear tenderness holding all the rich juices of the chunks of chuck roast; pots of beans that, depending on […]
[I] love to make ice cream. But when I bought my first ice cream maker, just several years ago, I had dueling ideas about where things might go from there — would I be making all sorts of the ice creams, gelato and sorbets of my dreams, or would the […]
[T]hroughout the year, I mark (via Post-it, bookmark or scrap of torn envelope) interesting recipes in my cookbooks that I think I might want to try at some point. Sometimes, this really yields treasure, particularly, if one of my books has been neglected. I’m not sure where or when I […]
[C]learly — as one could see from the name of this blog — I am a scone fan. I’ve written of my love and admiration of scones here before, but I don’t have a problem making a new scone recipe to remind me of everything good — and great — […]
[I]’ve never made a marshmallow. It seemed like one of those impossible kitchen possibilities, like spinning your own cotton candy or pulling taffy. But I have EATEN a homemade marshmallow, made by my confectionary/culinary/baking-maven friend, Elaine, and it was a heavenly thing, a world apart from the store-bought versions. It […]
[I] have made countless loaves of banana bread over the years, always hoping for THE one…the one that will end my search for the perfect version. Then, I can just stop trying and always have MY go-to method at the ready. I’ve made banana breads that have ended up too […]
[I] almost opted out of the Black Forest Chocolate Cookies on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule. I had a number of deadlines and other cooking projects on my docket, and thought I might be too busy. Then, I thought: Too busy to bake cookies? That doesn’t even make sense! Looking […]
[I]’m glad to see long-overlooked vegetables having their day. But…cauliflower — wow! All of a sudden, cauliflower — the albino broccoli, that veggie that for decades was relegated to be the pale, raw dip delivery device on the crudité tray, the roughage round-out in the bag of steamer veggies or […]
[I] love my first paging through a cookbook, particularly one as visually and deliciously stunning as “Baked: New Frontiers in Baking†by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito (2008). Usually, this initial “walkthrough†establishes my “must-make†list. Without question, the Butterscotch Pudding Tarts in the book has always been number one. […]