Yesterday Sweetie and I drove down between the tall redwoods to the Gillen home, remembering the many Christmas time mega-parties we attended there, the New Years Eve small dinners, and plenty of times on the patio and in the warmth of the living room by the fire. Bob Gillen was a pillar of the community, having served on both the Palm Drive Foundation board and on the Palm Drive Hospital board. He and his wife Heidi were active in lots of political campaigns and were very connected, so it was always fun to talk with them about politics, especially local politics. Bob was a Probation Officer ..read more

Haven't done much cooking or baking recently because I've been away in Arizona. Had a great time visiting with my older sister. One of  the places we found was in the small town of Gilbert, AZ. When the time came for them to treat their water and then recycle it, they decided to create a public park, The Riparian Reserve at Water Ranch. It's a popular place for people and people with dogs and people fishing. We saw couples using it for things like engagement photos and prom photos. On Sunday some folks arrived with large floating balloons that gave the year of the birthday adult they we ..read more

We had a friend over for Easter dinner and so I was able to use up some dough in my fridge that I had used for sweet Chelsea buns a bit ago. I didn't post about it because it was basically the same Paul Hollywood recipe that I had posted years ago as part of a Bread Baking Babes challenge. This time the buns were going with a savory dinner...ham, sweet potatoes, salad, pie...so I chose to flavor and fill them with rosemary and cheddar, respectively. This dough is easy to work with and so I kneaded in the chopped fresh rosemary, flattened the dough into a rectangle, added some soft butter ..read more

A number of years ago I posted on how to color Easter eggs the old fashioned way, using boiling water, vinegar and food coloring. It's how we did it when I was growing up and it still works well, especially if you don't have the time or money to spend on the coloring kits you buy at the store. I'm posting it again for this Easter, which will be here this Sunday!   This recipe is an easy one to do if you have food colors in your pantry. I used the liquid food colors, so I'm not sure if gel or paste or powdered ones would work for this recipe. I like the fact that you are using trad ..read more

Sweetie is getting closer to a round-number birthday, but still isn't there as he celebrated his natal day this past weekend. Along with a breakfast celebration with our younger neighbors and a brunch on Sunday that included a corned beef meal for one of the group, he has been duly birthdayed. I think there may even have been an Irish Coffee in there somewhere. He requested a lemon pie or tart, so I made him this fairly easy and very delicious one. You can create your own tart base from your favorite tart dough, but I was feeling lazy, so I just put a round of prepared pie dough from the ref ..read more

Sweetie really enjoys pies and this year on Pi Day we were also remembering our beloved black lab Pi who left us in the fall. We still miss him, a lot, as you might expect since he was the best dog we've ever had...and that's difficult because we've been blessed with a number of great dogs. Here is a photo of our Pi dog when he was young: Usually I would bake a sweet pie, but this year I went for a quiche...basically a savory cheese, veg and custard pie. We had it for dinner on March 14th and Sweetie had more today for lunch. If you use pre-made pie crust dough for this, it all comes toge ..read more

 Memory plays a role in a lot of food preferences and this chili is no different. I think I started making chili this way...or close to this way...when I first started living with Sweetie. When you are a working Mom, you find a way to plan dinner meals that can be made ahead and reheated or started in the morning in a Crock Pot or Instant Pot using the slow cooker feature. You also learn how to put something together in 30 minutes or less, but that's for another post. I prefer to make this chili on a day when I have some time, even though it goes together in about 30 minutes. That way I ..read more

 Valentine's Day is always a bit of a challenge, coming as it does the day after my birthday. This year Sweetie requested a pie or tart for Valentine's Day and I had already decided to make the Queen Mother Cake for my birthday. I bought a bag of good-sized limes, thinking that I would make a lime tart, but then we received a gift of a bag of beautiful lemons from a neighbor, so I decided to go for a lemon-lime tart for Valentine's Day. My favorite lemon tart filling is Dorie Greenspan's, so I began with that recipe and added lime zest and juice to the lemon zest and juice, with a dec ..read more

 In my world, a holiday or life event is a reason to bake. Since I'm doing less of that all the time in an effort to eliminate excess calories, having two dates back to back to bake for has been fun, exhausting, and calorie-laden, but full of joy. For my birthday I not only baked, but I also braised lamb shanks for dinner. The good news is that it can be done ahead, so I did. The lamb was uber-local...thanks AM and G!...and delicious. You can find the recipe HERE. For the birthday cake I made one of my favorite chocolate cakes, the Queen Mother Cake. Because there are only two of us ..read more

I've been baking from The Joy Of Cooking cookbook for longer than I can remember. This is one of those full compendium type cookbooks and it's from before there were photographs with recipes, although there are some line drawings here and there. Another feature is that the recipes are written as directions, with the ingredients and amounts coming as part of the recitation of oven temperatures, bowls to use, pans to bake in, etc. I prefer a recipe where the ingredients are listed first so that I can make sure at a glance that I have the stuff I need to make the item(s). Since I have a well-st ..read more