PANTRY « A Woman Sconed

Scone of the Month: Speaking of sweet potatoes

By rahoward, on November 21st, 2020

Sometimes I am a rebel. When the rally cry is pumpkin spice, I start to think about sweet potatoes.

Or should I call them garnet yams, which is what the red-skinned, orange-fleshed creatures most of us call sweet potatoes really are (the jewel sweet potato is another version of the orange-interiored…for a great . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Speaking of sweet potatoes

Cookie of the Month: Looking to THE cookie

By rahoward, on November 7th, 2020

I first learned of black and white cookies the way many Americans who don’t live in New York (where the cookie is well-known), learned about the black and white cookie — from a “Seinfeld” episode. Jerry Seinfeld, waiting with his friend Elaine on her quest for a chocolate babka at a bakery, gets . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Looking to THE cookie

Scone of the Month: ‘Souling’ a simple cake

By rahoward, on October 30th, 2020

Somewhere between light and dark, summer and autumn, the living and the dead, lies a season long honored and celebrated. As the veil between this world and the next thins, the days shorten into a period of long hours of darkness.

Somewhere between a cookie and scone, lies something called a “soul cake,” . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: ‘Souling’ a simple cake

Taking the cake(s)

By rahoward, on October 26th, 2020

Summer crawled along this year, dimmed by our lengthy pandemic status and an early wildfire season. By the time my birthday — as well as that of my blog’s — rolled around, celebrating — as it has felt for much of the last year — seemed a bit ridiculous.

The year has been . . . → Read More: Taking the cake(s)

Cookie of the Month: Flaking the familiar

By rahoward, on October 13th, 2020

I miss a lot of things about the gym. I used to go a few times a week, and now, not only are we unable to go to gyms because of the pandemic, the very gym I spent a number of years sweating in filed for bankruptcy. It wasn’t much, this no-frills gym, . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Flaking the familiar

Scone of the Month: Befriending figs and pistachios

By rahoward, on October 4th, 2020

Amid the dominating voices (and recipes) screaming “PUMPKIN SPICE!” and “APPLES!” this fall are the softer whispers of two other seasonal flavors: figs and pistachios. I’m seeing a lot of fresh fig recipes as figs come into their full ripening, and pistachios, too, are an early fall crop. The two are found all . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Befriending figs and pistachios

Easing into a peach pie

By rahoward, on September 29th, 2020

One of the many things I miss about my mom is her knack for picking good recipes. She didn’t enter into this lightly. Not one to squander either her Ingredients or her time, she would consider new recipe possibilities at length and intently and would usually back a winner.

Sometimes, surprisingly, her intended . . . → Read More: Easing into a peach pie

Produce-ing out of the box

By rahoward, on September 13th, 2020

Even reclusive people — homebound due to a pandemic — can go stir-crazy.

I’ll admit, as a recluse, I was likely not as opposed (though still as discombobulated, mentally) by the imposed exile to which we had surrendered in March. I’m fortunate I can work from home (and am rarely bored here), and . . . → Read More: Produce-ing out of the box

Scone of the Month: Sweetening with fresh corn

By rahoward, on August 22nd, 2020

Come August, I almost always get a bout of “cornostalgia.” Never heard of it? I hadn’t either, since I just came up with the term that has me dreaming of rusty tassels, rustling long green leaves, shimmering gleams of blonde cornsilk covering kernels in shades of cream to gold.

I wanna make things . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Sweetening with fresh corn

Cookie of the Month: Marveling at madeleines

By rahoward, on August 21st, 2020

My first bite of madeleine, a yummy little shell-shaped pound cake/cookie, did not release a flood of remembrances, as it did Marcel Proust in his writing about the bakery treat in “In Search of Lost Time” (1913):

“…my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Marveling at madeleines

“People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.”
--M.F.K. Fisher

"It was in a yellow limestone church in Stockdale, Kansas, a crossroads town, that I sat dreaming during summer Sunday sermons, not of heaven or hell, but of the good dinner to come."
--Clementine Paddleford