In the 7th grade, my home-ec teacher, Mrs. Payne — and yeah, we had a lot of fun with that — made me rip apart and redo my felt frog hand puppet three times, because it was so sloppy. I came from a family of accomplished seamstresses and was embarrassed by my failure to craft…
At last, it’s May and the garden is getting into gear. We don’t have much good ground for planting, so we do most of our gardening in big containers — custom-built planter boxes and half-wine barrels. Today we spent many hours preparing both things. After two-and-a-half months in the kitchen, my tomatoes and peppers will…
This recipe won Best of Show at the 2010 Marin County Fair Last month I made some clementine confits, which yielded a whole lot of luscious, leftover syrup. I sent a dose of both across the country to snowbound Julia, with a question: What should we do with this delightful, golden elixir? Her first experiment was…
I posted a version of this recipe a few weeks ago, when I was making myself crazy trying to get it right. Since then, I’ve worked it over both in my head and on the stove — and I think I’ve finally got it down. This time around, the set is divine, and I can…
A few weeks ago, I promised Stewart I’d make leg of lamb for his birthday in May. I’ve got a lot of learning to do, because the only thing I know about preparing leg of lamb is that what you put on it is mint jelly. But the mint jelly part? I’m all over it….
Except for Meyer lemon marmalade, which is a year-round thing for me, marmalade season is over. Last week, I was planning a final, simple batch of clementine marmalade, using a lovely recipe nipped from Julia, who found it in Mes Confitures. But then — whether due to inspiration or exhaustion (it was late at night)…
The other day I walked into the gym and on the massage sign-up board, someone had written “You Are Beauty.” This prompted in me a huge, instinctive internal eye roll. I was cranky and, even on my best days, I’m not big on affirmations — especially when there’s a price tag attached. But then, when…
2010 Marin County Fair First Place Winner! So I was looking in the liquor cabinet, because that’s where I keep my canning supplies. (Honest.) Right up front was a bottle of Myers’s Rum. And sitting on my kitchen counter were a couple dozen Meyer lemons, of which I am blessed with a year-round supply. Myers’s…
Is it possible that someday I’ll just know where the jelling point is, like any practiced artist learns her craft? Too often, I just don’t get it, and even my candy thermometer won’t save me. A preserve will usually jell somewhere between 220F and 224F, but within those few degrees there’s an astonishing range of…
A few people asked for more information about the labels I made for last weekend’s Rhubarb, Pear, and Vanilla Jam, so here’s a quick post to show what I did. Because I’m not savvy when it comes to computer design, I needed to make something simple. It took me only two years to figure out…
I wanted to do something to soothe myself after last week’s garlic disaster. That garlic jelly was a total loss. When Stewart came home from his travels, it took me a whole day just to get him to smell it. When I held out the greenish yellow goo he looked at me like I was…
When I said onions made me nervous, I didn’t know what I was talking about. Onions are innocent. Garlic, on the other hand, assaulted me and drove me out of my own home. Maybe it was the conspiracy with chiles that turned the little cloves against me. Two full heads of garlic blended to a…