“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 moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.” ~ from The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear…
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 October Can Jam week was rapidly approaching, and I just didn’t want to get off my butt and deal with a pile of…
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 the backseat and headed north. Ukiah, Booneville, Philo Elk, Jenner, Freestone I found fruit. I drove. I talked to myself. I drove. I…
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 know a lot of other middle-aged, middle-class women in Marin County who scale the fences of foreclosed properties or run off into the…
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 color in Northern California. Yesterday, I happened to be at BevMo, ho-humming around the aisles while Stewart chose a bottle of wine for…
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 a food blogger or that I chose to cloister myself with a crowd of people in a large, downtown hotel on a beautiful…
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 frustrating day on Wednesday, I was dragging when Stewart called to ask whether I wanted to meet him at our local farmer’s market….
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 even a rogue population in New Mexico. These berries are wonderfully glossy, almost luminescent, and their color is more rosy-orange than their namesake….
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, and a conserve — will be coming soon, but today I’m looking back to mid-summer, when my pineapple sage was in full bloom…
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 mountains that knock the breath right out of you, or the sinuous body of a glacial river that silvers along in the late-day…
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 to say this was the way to do it), there’s a chance that it is unsafe. (See the comments at the end of…
Shae took off for the Alaskan Interior and left me, Spike, the porcupine, in charge of her blog. When she asked me to do it, I thought she was joking, but then she handed over the laptop and flew off in a helicopter. Crazy. She worked so hard trying to get this recipe right before…