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.  "Kate was in the kitchen making banana cranberry bread, which she had learned to make from her own grandfather in his long ago kitchen that always smelled of coffee and baked goods.” Lunch in the Park, New Year's Eve Kate's grandfather taught her to make the bread as she stood on a kitchen step stool pushed up to the counter so that even as a small child of three or four she could help measure and mix. This recipe does actually come from a grandfather , ...

When the weather starts to turn in Autumn, I like things that are warm, and warming. I love making soup. Normally, when I say I'm making soup I mean a specific vegetable soup that requires a full afternoon of puttering around the house and occasionally tending the soup. There isn't always time for that. So I make other soups. This one has the virtue of being simple and fairly quick, assuming you have average knife skills and you know vaguely where things are in your kitchen. (I just barely meet those qualifications.) And what says Fall better than pumpkin? It's also smooth and creamy and comforting. The smooth does require blending. I use an immersion blender, which you really should put on your wish list if you don't have one, but you can use whatever soup blending technology you have available. A note on spice mixes: People Who Are Very Into Food will tell you that pre-made spice mixes are evil and you should toast and grind your own spices. And they...