Weekends in the Kitchen and Beyond
Several years ago, I made a few attempts at making a sour dough starter. Each attempt failed miserably. Mold would grow on the starter and that was the end of that. After reading several articles on the health benefits of natural yeast and sour dough bread, I grew more determined to master this very basic […]
One of the oldest cookies is the jumbal. It’s a crunchy cookie that can be shaped like a ring or a pretzel, or any other which way you like. Here is Mary Randolph’s version of it from her 1838 cookbook, “The Virginia Housewife.” This cookie does not seemed to have made into my cookbooks covering […]
Pouring a thin coating of shiny chocolate over a cake adds a certain elegance that a regular buttercream frosting just can’t pull off. It could be that I’m partial to chocolate. Or, it could be that I’m getting old. I can’t believe that I am saying this, but I’ve come to a point in my […]
The cafeteria at my college dorm had a killer dessert counter. Even for ice cream sundae day, they had mounds of my favorite candy bar of all time–Goldenberg Peanut Chews–as a topping choice along with true blue hot fudge and a whole host of other unhealthy but tasty goodies. One “everything but the kitchen sink” […]
All-in-one pot dishes bring back not-so-lovely memories from my childhood of picking at stringy, dry meat slathered in a piquant sauce. Yes, meat can be dry and nearly inedible even if swimming in sauce–or at least that is how I looked at it when my three-foot-high-self was forced to deal with eating some sort of […]