During December, the house fills with sweets. There are cookie exchanges, neighbors showing goodwill through gifts of goodies, and of course the holiday feasts themselves and the days of irresistible leftovers. But January is the time to clear out the…
Hot cider, slippers, fire crackling in the fireplace, a blanket, and a good book. When you look up “cozy” in the dictionary, this really should be the definition. Hot cider is a Christmastime essential. Whenever I visit my parents for…
Sometimes when we are having some friends over and they have kids in tow, I will slice up an apple while they wait for me to get dinner ready. I am usually astonished at how quickly the apple vanishes, and…
Apple season at Weaver’s Orchard means the cider press is in full swing! In fact, since apples store so well during the winter months in our cold storage, we have a fresh supply of apples to keep the cider press…
At a cooking class in June 2014, I heard Phoebe Canakis of Phoebe’s Pure Food describe fillo shells as “a nice cheat.” This kind of shortcut is a sanity saver when it comes to entertaining. When you’re throwing a big…
British flapjacks are a gluten-free oat bar (much like a granola bar) traditionally made with just oats, fresh or dried fruit, butter, brown sugar and syrup (golden or maple). This recipe calls for oats, nuts, dried apples and cranberries, applesauce…
My husband often talks about one of my most spectacular kitchen failures. But he speaks of it fondly, and almost dreamily, because sometimes even the messiest kitchen mistakes are still quite edible. Here’s what happened. I was trying to make…
“There never was, and never will be, such a remedy for the tired, overworked human body as the pure, fresh air of the country,” wrote an author known as Mrs. A. Sherman Hitchcock in an article published in 1911. Picnics were nothing…
Whoa?! Where did you get that? A museum? That’s the kind of reaction I get when I pull out my cell phone. It’s a heavy black Samsung flip phone, probably designed for people who are not in their 30s like…
Some of my favorite Christmas parties have involved white elephant gift exchanges. I have usually come back with gifts I love, but perhaps this only shows my capacity to be charmed by strange, low-budget gifts. At one white elephant party…