Bread, Wine, Salt

Years ago, when I was first dating the man who would eventually be smart enough to marry me, that man had a roommate who never cooked. Instead he went home every weekend, ate his mother's cooking, and brought back enough dinners, each packed it its own tupperware, to feed him until the next weekend. My boyfriend liked to mock him for it, but I tried a more encouraging approach. I told him that if he made his own dinner, just once, I'd make him a blueberry cobbler. I don't know why I said blueberry cobbler, but I did, and it stuck. Not long after I made the promise, the roommate cooked himself his own dinner, and I was called on to make blueberry cobbler. Grab a spoon. That story has nothing to do with this recipe, except that I was thinking about it while I assembled this morning's breakfast last night. My boys were going to gymnastics camp today, which meant getting them up and fed earlier than usual, and I wanted their bellies full of food which would last the...

My Husband is the very best of husbands and I wouldn't trade him for anything. He unloads the dishwasher, after all, a task I find tedious, and he never takes it personally when I completely rearrange things he has put in the dishwasher.  I don't like to complain, so we'll say that a feature of his unloading of the dishwasher is that things sometimes go to unexpected places.  So this morning as I was searching for my little blue boxes to pack the boys' lunches I could find the lids but not the bottoms.  I looked in the drainboard, the container drawer, and the other drawer where things seem to go, but they were not in any of those places.  The lunch I wanted to pack didn't fit neatly in the Ziploc lunch containers and I was in a rush, so I shuffled things into containers for sharing and headed out the door. Ravioli and veggies (green bowls for them, glass bowl for me), blood oranges,  blueberry muffins .

I love maple syrup. Everyone else in my house loves maple syrup. But sometimes it's nice to switch things up. And if switching things up means we eat a little more fruit and a little less sugar? Well, that's nice, too. This would probably work with any berry you happened to have bouncing around in your freezer. We always have blueberries in my freezer because a certain small person likes frozen blueberries on everything. If berries are in season, you can use fresh, but you'll want to add a bit of water (maybe ¼ cup) at the beginning and mash them a bit with a spoon to encourage them to give up some juice. Blueberry Sauce for Pancakes (and whatever else you might want to make more blueberry.) 2 cups frozen blueberries ¼ cup maple syrup 1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour ¼ cup water Put blueberries and maple syrup in a small saucepan over low heat. Cook uncovered until the berries release enough juice to swim freely. Mix the flour and water together to form a ...

The frozen blueberry makes regular appearances on the four-year-old's breakfast dish. Oatmeal and plain yogurt, both breakfast staples, are almost always topped with frozen blueberries, and if breakfast isn't quite ready yet, a bowl of frozen blueberries is requested as an appetizer. Naturally, blueberry pancakes are quite popular around here. (The blueberries are on the bottom, waiting to surprise you with their juicy deliciousness.) This is a very thick batter, so the pancakes will take a bit longer to cook than you may be used to, and don't expect popping bubbles to tell you when they're ready to flip. Just keep an eye on the sides, and don't cook them too hot. By the time I get to the second round I generally have my skillet on the lowest setting. (My stove-top runs a tiny bit hot, so aim for medium-low and adjust as necessary.) Blueberry Yogurt Pancakes yields ~16 4” pancakes 1/3 cup butter 12 ounces (about 3 cups) white whole wheat flour 3 teasp...

On Saturday we made our annual pilgrimage to the nearest set of mountains to buy apples and pumpkins from people who have real orchards and real pumpkin patches and then have a picnic and walk in the woods. It was a gorgeous day and the woods were just right. The trail we always walk is quite short, chosen years ago by my father because it had the virtues of parking spaces, picnic tables, proper toilets and some history which could be learned, along with some ecology, via the self-guided tour sheet that is found in a little box at the trailhead. Frankly, I'm not sure how a single walk in the woods could better describe my father's requirements for a family trip. The guided tour has not changed since I was a little girl. And when the tour is relaying the history of the family who lived in those woods there isn't much in need of change. But the ecology of that little piece of woodlands has changed quite a bit in the quarter century that I've known them. The wo...