With a reprieve from the summer heat, I welcome the fall season with open arms. It's apple picking season! For some reason, I never get tired of walking through the apple orchards with my kids, finding trees chock-full apples is like looking for the next clue in a scavenger hunt. Once you get there, ...
Kitchen Chronicles
Vintage Canning Cone Sieve Colander Strainer Wood Masher Rolling Pin Pestle
Sometimes something from the past deserves a reinvention for a new time. Take this vintage cone sieve with wood masher which finishes your tomato sauce better than any sieve with a hand crank. I used it this afternoon to get the most puree out of the remaining seeds and skins which were leftover ...
Blueberry Cake with Lemon Glaze
This blueberry cake recipe is for Debbie and of course all of you! During our massive cooking date last week, the grease was splattering, pots of water boiling and the mixer was whirling as Debbie and I made Maryland crab cakes (the real stuff), blueberry cake (with Jersey berries) and a large vat ...
Farm Fresh Tomato Sauce
It's that time of year when I've always got a pot of sauce simmering on the stove. This past week, I made farm fresh tomato sauce three times. One batch for a bunch of hungry teens, another to break in my friend Debbie's new kitchen and another batch for the freezer. I've got the process down to ...
Creamy Corn Empanadas
Another fabulous freezer friendly (say that three times!) use for sweet summer corn, these crispy Corn Empanadas are filled with a blend of flavors which place corn on the pedestal it deserves. I love to stuff ingredients into some kind of wrapper -- dumplings, spring rolls and empanadas are my ...
Notes from Vacation: Fabulous Figs
Wild, verdant, growing through sand and wind swept hills, perched on rugged cliff ledges and gathered in fields; all bearing bell shaped fruit, plump and ripening amidst a saturating sun. Mature trees, with caterpillar green leaves larger than a grown man's hands, offering fruit to a cloudless azure ...
Best Ever Butternut Squash Soup
I promise you, this will be your new favorite squash soup. Even if you say you don't like butternut squash, you'll surely love this soup. Trust me. I was one of those people who shrugged at butternut squash soup until I tasted my friend Emilie's. Like most foods, this soup has a bit of a story to ...
2017 Food Trends
With each passing year, some foods tend to lose favor and it's not that they lose flavor. We're quite picky and demand new ingredients and products to meet our finicky needs. And so, with the close of 2016, many of us will subtly push some of last year's favorites like kale aside and seek something ...
Shaved Fennel Salad
Rainy days in the middle of winter are both a relief and a disappointment for me. Snow is certainly more beautiful, but with all the shoveling required and wet clothes my kids bring into the house, it is more of a hassle. On this rainy late January day, I invited my friend Suzy over for an impromptu ...
New Year Recipes
A happiest new year to all of you. My apologies having disappeared since Thanksgiving, but life has been busier than ever. But I'm back and ready to roll for 2017 and find that cooking with my friends is really the only time I get to see my friends. Teaching at two universities, working on marketing ...