My friend Matthew Wendel is a very talented chef who worked for President George W. Bush and Laura Bush at their ranch in Crawford, Texas, as well as at Camp David, serving up delicious food to kings, queens, and heads of state. When I heard from him the other day, just as I was ruminating over what would be a transcendent Cinco de Mayo recipe for America’s Table, I knew my quest was over. His Tex-Mex food is incredible (really, […]

I haven’t made cookies in a long time, and when I started to think about what I would most like to have at elevensies with a cup of tea, the salted oat cookie from Teaism immediately came to mind. The R Street Teaism (there are four in the Washington area) is a short walk from home, and a good place for a hearty breakfast or lunch, not to mention a pot of exotic tea. It’s uber-casual: you order your food, […]

This recipe will be a blast from the past for some. If you grew up in the seventies going to Bob’s Big Boy, or any of the variations on that restaurant: Shoney’s, Manner’s, or Frisch’s, you know this pie. It’s an American classic of the late 20th century, and I was curious to see if it was as good as I had remembered it – and it is. I adapted my mom’s version of the recipe, from a cookbook she […]

Do you remember a children’s book called “The Enchanted Egg,” about an elf who finds a sugar egg with a beautiful diorama inside? I’ve always been entranced by the idea of an exquisite secret world inside a lavishly-decorated sugar egg. Sugar eggs were always a big hit in our Easter baskets, and they lasted for years – or at least we kept them for years. My friend Roxanne (you may remember her from the fabulous Halloween cupcakes,) has kindly agreed […]

I have potent childhood memories of wide swaths of daffodils growing down the length of my grandmother’s land, and into and beneath great canes of forsythia bushes. The forsythia bushes were a natural habitat for rabbits and little girls, and in the spring, before they put out their leaves, I used to burrow into the forsythia and squat there quietly, occasionally rewarded by the appearance of a wild rabbit peaking out among the daffodils and wriggling his nose at me. […]