Last Friday I was baking cookies to take to The Occasional Coffee House, the listening room concert series my friend Heather and I do together at her church in Madison, Connecticut. Now that it is warming up, I knew I wanted to make my lemon, basil, and crystallized ginger cookies; I also knew I wanted…
Every once in a while, the onslaught of uninvited suggestions on social media offers something that is useful. I am not sure why this particular reel showed up, since I have not talked out loud about either yogurt or bagels in front of my smart phone, but it captured my attention. I then went looking…
I know the saying is that necessity is the mother of invention, but I find, when it comes to cooking, that the pantry plays a pretty big role. From time to time, I take inventory just to see what I have and what needs to be used up. What gave birth to this recipe is…
Years ago, my mother sent me a recipe that I have since seen named “cry babies” or “candied jalapeños”–basically it involved adding crushed pineapple and sugar to a jar of pickled jalapeños and cooking them till they were happy together. It’s a good recipe. I’ve made it many times. A few years later, I wondered…
I know the world is covered up in recipe posts, but this is one of our holiday favorites. Like most of my Thanksgiving recipes, this is one I learned from my mother. Unlike most of the recipes I learned from her, this is one I bake pretty much the way she taught me. I make…
The other name for Thanksgiving at our house is Pie-a-pa-looza. I love baking pies and sharing them. Starting Saturday or Sunday I’ll begin making crusts and then filling and baking them on Monday and Tuesday, before I am called to Thanksgiving Dinner duty, and then Ginger and I “Preacher’s Wife it,” as she likes to…
The best recipes tell a story. This one starts with my friend, Sid Davis, who is the Minister of Music at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Houston. He called awhile back and invited me to come to his church to do two things. One was to read a poem for All Saints Sunday (that…
I would love to tell you I remember who gave me this recipe. As you can see from the photograph, it has been around a long time and, based on the “this one” written and circled, it replaced one I had used previously. It has also erased the memory of the former recipe. For all…
I had a rare opportunity this week to a part of Project PX, an amazing program sponsored by St. Luke’s UMC in Houston. My friend Sid Davis asked me to come do a house reading and concert on Saturday and then connected me with Meredith Davis, his daughter, who runs Project PX along with Chef…
banana pudding cookies I was invited by my friend Taylor Davis to be a part of an All Saints celebration at his church. During the past year, they have experienced a season of profound grief that included the deaths of two of their pastors. Taylor asked me to come and prepare a meal to go…