Cooking/Baking

There are a million scone recipes out there in the world. I can guarantee that you don’t need another one, but…I’m going to share this anyway. These are my mom’s, more bready than crumbly and barely sweet at all. They call for a good slathering of jam or honey for breakfast or dessert although you […]

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Oh, man. I’ve never been away from the blog for so long, and it feels pretty strange. I’m not making any long-term promises, but rest assured that this blog isn’t going away any time soon. And, hey, I’ve even added a handy new blog feature in the form of an ever-evolving list of podcasts that […]

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We’re living out the tail end of an early raging ice storm in these parts. The kids went off to school yesterday, but only a couple hours later, the school called to say the power was out, and I should come pick them up. Driving through Blodgett on the way to get them was pretty […]

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As promised (better late than never), I’m going to talk a little about what I did with all those beautiful Ribes specimens from the Germplasm Repository. Last year, I cooked up a heckuva lot of jam and jelly, and though I have so far made a pretty impressive effort to eat and give away a […]

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Spring break went out with a bang. I made a big ol’ pan of lasagna (with fresh pasta, homemade tomato-pesto sauce, homegrown chard, ricotta, and mozzarella) on Saturday night, and Henry’s brother, Trevor, came over to eat with us. On Sunday morning, Trevor as well as my friend Lisa showed up for a bagel party. […]

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Bagels Revisited

March 27, 2014 · 1 comment

I bought cream cheese at the store the other day because I had vague ambitions of baking a carrot cake. I never quite got around to the cake making, so the next logical place for cream cheese was bagels. I posted my friend Ana’s bagel recipe here about a year ago, but somehow, I’d forgotten […]

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Scones are all over the map taste- and texture-wise. Sickly sweet with sugary icing, heavy with whole grains, cake-y, bread-y, crumbly, plain-jane, or studded with add-ins. I haven’t made scones very many times in my life because I always felt that scone’s close cousin, the muffin, was a little more reliable in taste and texture […]

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This time of year, full-on spring here in Western Oregon, we’re staring down piles of freshly washed chicken eggs and rows of recently dormant kale plants that have reawakened rather vigorously. Longer days and warmer temperatures have kicked everything into high gear. Daphne, daffodils, and red flowering currants are blooming. Indian plum has tender little […]

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Leaven

February 27, 2014 · 8 comments

A few weeks ago, I bought Tartine Bread, a cookbook produced by Chad Robertson of the famed Tartine Bakery in San Francisco, and this past weekend, I was pretty much immersed in it. The author/baker, lays out his unique method in extensive detail in this big, beautiful tome. It has been a good long while […]

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Homemade Hazelnut Butter

February 20, 2014 · 7 comments

Hazelnut butter. It’s a thing. A really delicious thing. Hazelnut butter is not peanut butter. I was kind of hoping it would be so that I could phase store-bought peanut butter out of our lives. But no, hazelnut butter seems to have a slightly more savory aspect to it even though it still shows some […]

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