Bread, Wine, Salt

Lunch in the Park , a novel about love and family, is available for sale in multiple electronic formats at Smashwords , for the Kindle at Amazon.com and for the Nook at BN.com Wherever you buy it, it is DRM-free . The delicious recipes that Kate and Jeff cook up are right here on my blog. I hope you'll read Lunch in the Park , you'll love it, and you'll feel the overwhelming urge to write a review on one or more of the sites above. And of course I'd love to hear from you here on the blog, too.  Have I told you the story of the “as good as store bought” lemonade? No? Years ago we were invited to a Fourth of July Picnic. We brought food of some description, and a gallon of homemade lemonade in a jug that had a previous life as a gallon of distilled water. One of our hosts was a big lemonade fan, and after drinking a glass checked the label. When I told him it was homemade he said “It's as good as store-bought.” I lifted my chin a bit and sa...

"But", you say, "St. Paddy's day was Thursday. I won't need this recipe for another year. You have terrible timing, blogging person." To which I reply: "You only want fresh bread with dinner on St. Patrick's day?" You might also complain about the lack of raisins. Then I'd say something about not wanting raisins in my dinner bread and you'd tell me that all the soda bread in the store has raisins and do I hate Ireland or St. Patrick or what? Then I'd ask you what Ireland has to do with anything. Did I say Ireland? Did I say it was Irish Soda Bread? No, I did not. I said soda bread. I might also cast aspersions on the authenticity and quality of the "Irish" soda bread in the store. But we should really skip all of that because we'd just end up mad at each other when really all I want to do is give you a loaf of this lovely simple bread and tell you to eat it with some nice butter, preferably unsalted ...

There are a lot of changes coming for me, and while I'm not making New Year's resolutions per se, it seems appropriate that these changes come at a traditional time of starting over. And while some of these changes revolve around my health, I'm not going to go too crazy. You'll find no promises to give up carbs or fat or whatever it is all the cool people are giving up these days. I will be trying to be more aware of what I'm eating, and not eating things which aren't good. What's that you say? “Of course you shouldn't eat things that aren't good. Who does that?” Me. I do that. I eat things when I'm not really hungry and I sometimes eat things that aren't really tasty even though there's no reason. If I'm going to stuff myself full of something, I want it to be something lovely, eaten in a way that acknowledges that food is not just fuel. So unresolution number one is to make more waffles. These are good waffles. Th...

Another potluck, another dish shared and this time Husband was so pleased with it that he requested it again. (I would say that he even went to the store to pick up a missing ingredient, but he loves going to the store, so that doesn't signify.) Once you've decided to take the plunge and cook some beans, you may find yourself wondering how to turn them into to chili, and then you'll remember that the crazy woman who talked you into cooking dried beans in the first place promised you a recipe. And then you'll come looking for it, and so I figured I'd better get it up here. This is a great potluck recipe, because it comes together quickly once the beans are cooked (and if you use canned I promise not to tell, just be sure to rinse them well.) the cornbread topping makes it easy to transport without any sloshing and dribbling, and it's easy for folks to serve themselves so they don't hold up the line. The chili itself is vegan, and you could easily s...

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...

How do you go from prayer to pancakes?  By reading this blog, for starters.  I decided I was never going to be properly focused like the "generate loyal readers and convert them to ad revenue" essays think I should be.   So this blog will be about whatever I'm thinking about, be it prayer or pancakes.   Sometimes it might be about both.  Bread, wine and salt belong in religion just as much as they belong on the table. I love pancakes, so I often order them when we go out to eat, and mostly I'm disappointed.  Restaurant pancakes are almost always sad, thin floppy things with no flavor.  I am never disappointed by these pancakes, which are fluffy and hearty, with rich flavor and aren't all that bad for you.  We mostly use pure maple syrup at home, but growing up we usually had butter and molasses on our pancakes, and these pancakes can certainly hold their own against that team as well. This recipe uses flax seed meal for an extra kick of flavo...