• Food, Preserves

    Hot Plums and Black Dogs

    If you have hot plum jelly — or if you want to make hot plum jelly — might I suggest that this would be a fine thing to do with it? These are golden fried wantons, stuffed . . .

  • Preserves

    Quince-Orange-Cardamom Marmalade

    “They dined on mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand on the edge of the sand They danced by the light of the…

  • Preserves

    Preserved Roasted Red Peppers

    The Pigeons Go to Church, Barcelona, 2003 I’ve been waiting all year to try this recipe, but when the time came, I was almost too lazy to do it. The end of…

  • Travel

    Because It’s October

    Because the apples are falling and the light is fading under its own golden weight. Because a road trip scrubs the rough edges from a tired mind. I threw a bag into…

  • Low Bush Cranberry Rosehip Conserve
    Preserves

    Lingonberry Rosehip Conserve

    When sorting rosehips, bring your patience. As someone who can’t stop putting food in jars, I sometimes get my priorities confused. On one hand, I have a compulsion to forage. I don’t…

  • Preserves

    Jam and Booze Made Easier

    This isn’t what it looks like. Yes, it is a bunch of booze on a hotel bedspread. But I can explain. Today, I’m on an impromptu road trip to enjoy some fall…

  • Food

    A Postcard from BlogHer Food ’10

    I spent the last two days at BlogHer Food, a conference attended by more than 300 food bloggers in San Francisco. I don’t know what’s more strange — that I have become…

  • Preserves

    Simple Red Raspberry Jam

    It’s impossible to hold on to a sour mood when you have three pounds of beautiful raspberries in a farm box on your lap. I tried, but it didn’t work. After a…

  • Preserves

    Highbush Cranberry Apple Butter

    Highbush cranberries aren’t really cranberries. They’re a robust shrub related to honeysuckle, and they grow wild in North America from Alaska to Newfoundland, crossing into some parts of the Lower 48. There’s…

  • Preserves

    Peach Jam With Pineapple Sage

    This week, I emerged from the woods in Alaska with a pocket full of recipes for apples and cranberries, made on our two-burner propane stove. Those recipes — a butter, a sauce,…

  • Travel, Words

    Superlatives

    A Perfect Day to See Denali Do you ever get tired of using the same old words to describe something — can I say it just once — “amazing”? Consider the white-fisted…

  • Preserves

    Peaches in Vanilla Brandy

    Editor’s Note, added September 15, 2010: While this technique came straight from a published preserving book, and you can find similar methods in many obvious places (even the New York Times used…