I am big fan of slice-and-bake cookies. Their make-ahead and make-as-you-need-them approach makes me happy in a holiday season crowded with recipes and goody-making possibilities. I’m also a big fan of shortbread, and if the shortbread comes in slice-and-bake form (as many of them do), I’m even more enamored. [I] […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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] […]
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 […]