Honey and spice are two ingredients that are meant to be together, like medieval star-crossed lovers. Arthur and Guinevere, or Tristan and Isolde – a legendary romance, yet the combination never quite works in reality. Honey is a sweet but subtle flavor that is easily overwhelmed by spicy ingredients like ginger, cloves, and nutmeg. That’s why the honey is not mixed into the cake, but drizzled on top of it, to give the perfect spicy-sweet marriage in a fragrant loaf […]
This is not so much a recipe as it is a set of assembly instructions. One of my friends has been on a serious and successful diet. When we got together for lunch, I wanted to make her favorite dessert – a banana split – but I didn’t want to sabotage her weight loss achievement. My daughter told me about an ice cream treat called Halotop that has only 240 calories in a pint (or what I like to think […]
I promised not long ago that I would be sharing my all-time favorite ginger cookie recipe, and here it is! This isn’t a ginger snap – it’s a soft, chewy, moist, molasses ginger confection that is just right. I first had this cookie at Mountain Sky Guest Ranch in Emigrant, Montana many years ago, and on a recent visit was so happy to find they were still serving them. The margarine keeps these cookies soft, and the baking soda makes […]
Isn’t it a marvel the way you can taste, or smell, or hear something long forgotten and have it brought back to life in an instant, a powerful memory you didn’t even know was still there? For me, the smell of Concord grapes is like being thrust back in time to my five-year-old self, perched on the fender of a tractor as my uncles stacked wooden boxes of grapes to go to market. Another thing that brings back happy childhood […]
We’ve been in the process of moving, and it’s wreaking havoc on my neat lists of recipes to make and post. There was going to be a peach pie, but then the pie pans were packed and nowhere to be found. Pantry staples are sketchy; the bread knife is MIA. Despite the disruption, there were enough interesting ingredients to make a decadent granola bar – peanut butter, chocolate, and some healthy stuff too, to assuage my guilt. Moving is more […]
