Fig jam seems so elegant to me. Luxurious spread on toast, or on crostini served with cheddar, blue, or Parmesan cheese, or a slice of apple, or spread on brie before you enclose it in pastry to bake as an appetizer. Pretty pricey if you buy it in specialty food shops. And wouldn’t it be […]
Yesterday, Tuesday, the 27th of November, was National French Toast Day. Don’t ask me how these days are designated; how come it wasn’t National Turkey Soup Day? Well, there you go. I dearly love French toast and treat myself to it maybe once a month. I usually make the simplest form of it: eggs, milk, […]
Thanks to the power of search engines on the internet, it is now possible to learn, whether you care or not, just what is “trending,” that is, what everyone else is looking for, reading about, exploring. And, it being Thanksgiving week, sure enough, someone at the New York Times published the most sought-after holiday recipes […]
A long time ago, Christine Hessert of Bangor sent a recipe that she uses every Thanksgiving when her large family gathers for a meal. She brings the quick breads, as many as five or six and she shared one for a variation on an old favorite date nut quick bread. She sounds like a busy […]
Lots of us were without electricity this week which some of us need it to bake. Fortunately for me, Ruth Thurston in Machias had sent along a couple of good pumpkin recipes in response to my request and one was for a steamed pudding which when cooked, turned out, frosted and sliced looks for all […]
Last week’s recipe used a product of my compost pile, one of seven pumpkins which sprang up uninvited but very welcome which I used in a spice and pumpkin cake. Many of you observed that the cake recipe was missing flour and leaven. This turned out to be a bad-news/good news situation. The good news […]
This year the compost pile sprouted a couple of pumpkin vines. One yielded pumpkins big enough for jack-o’lanterns, the other produced seven pie pumpkins. A lucky thing because the two hills of pumpkins I planted on purpose produced only two, still green, struggling to ripen before frost. The compost pile pumpkins, glowing a deep orange, […]
We haven’t had a frost yet, but it won’t be long, and the basil, what is left of it, is looking pretty patchy these days. It is time to use it up before it succumbs to the cold. I’ve had this recipe kicking around for a while, and thought I’d give it a try because […]
This is no ordinary spaghetti sauce, though it has tomato sauce in it, goes on pasta and has parmigiana sprinkled on top. The flavor in this ragu is deep, lovely, and makes pasta taste like something very special indeed. I’ve learned a lot about Italian food this summer from Cris Lerose, a WWOOF (World Wide […]
Despite the fact that early on in the season some of us weary of summer squash—zucchini, yellow squashes, patty pans—some of us keep looking for a new and different way to prepare them, and even figure out ways to keep them for winter use. Leslie Lavender in Stockton Springs wrote this week asking, “Any suggestions […]
