Easiest Ever Ice Cream Pie

I still say that my ice cream maker is the best small kitchen appliance I've ever purchased.  I remember the first summer after my daughter was diagnosed with a peanut allergy.  She was still very little and was sitting in the basket at the grocery store as I gazed through the glass doors in the freezer section at an entire aisle full of ice cream choices, each and every carton bearing the same words: "May contain traces of peanuts and tree nuts."

I'd never really thought about ice cream before that, and for a brief moment my heart sank.  What would a childhood without ice cream be like?  I say "brief" because it only took a matter of minutes to leave the store, walk to the kitchenwares shop across the street and buy an ice cream maker.  All the while reliving childhood memories of summers spent swatting mosquitos while endlessly cranking my parents' antique machine, taking turns with my brother until it got too hard for either of us to churn and my dad would take over to finish it off.  How hard could making ice cream be these days?  As soon as I got to the car, I pulled out the recipe book that came with the instructions and walked right back into the grocery store to buy the ingredients.  And I've never looked back.   It turns out it's not hard at all.  Actually, with a good ice cream maker, it's one of the easiest desserts to make.

Strawberry Sorbet Champagne Floats

On the 4th of July we have root beer floats; on the 14th of July we have champagne floats!  I made these with a simple, homemade organic strawberry & vanilla sorbet that I whipped together last night.  You could buy sorbet but I prefer to make it at home with organic berries and whole vanilla beans.  This is, of course, so I can control the quality of ingredients and assure it's safe for my daughter with food allergies.  (In other words, I have an allergy-mom's natural distrust when it comes to ingredient labels. That, and I'm a little neurotic about how the fruit in conventional sorbets and sherbets is handled.  Have you ever wondered if it's even cleaned before it's used?  I like to scrub the heck out of mine! )  Besides, sorbet is one of the the easiest desserts to make with an ice cream maker, so why not?  Make a simple sugar syrup, stir in the puréed fruit and churn in an ice cream maker, et voilà!

I garnished these with a skewer of fresh blueberries in honour of Bastille Day - bleu, blanc et rouge!  The kids had theirs sans champagne, naturally, with all the blueberries they could eat.

Luckily these blue, white and red floats happen to work just as well for Independence Day, too.  You know... if you need a reason to have champagne floats twice in two weeks. Cheers!

Potato-Green Bean Salad

I think I've made this potato salad at least five times in the last month.  Each time I start with the intent to switch it up a bit, but in the end the only thing I ever change is the onion - shallots one time, spring onions the next, even a little red onion here and there, depending on what I have in the kitchen - they all work perfectly.  Otherwise the recipe stays exactly the same time after time, and that's just how I like it!  I serve it cold, straight from the fridge, but it's just as good at room temperature, or even slightly warm.  And the leftovers are better the next day.

Whenever I make a vinaigrette with minced raw shallots, onion or garlic, I always let them soak in the vinegar for a few minutes or so before whisking in the remaining ingredients.  This mellows the garlic or onions and takes a bit of the bite out.  Then just whisk the remaining ingredients together using that same vinegar.

10 Nut-Free Desserts to Make Summer a Little Sweeter

This summer my wine of choice is a Spanish Rosé (I haven't met one I didn't like).  My outfit of choice is an airy summer sundress.  And my motto of choice is "keep it simple."  Meals are lighter and freer.  Ingredients are fresher, preparation is simpler.   I flutter around the kitchen, barefoot, like a robin building a nest, gathering a bit of this and a bite of that and weaving all the pieces together into something that resembles a meal.  Then everything goes outside to the table in the shade, a refuge from the heat of the kitchen.  I don't know if it's the breeze that blows down off the mountains in the evening or the heat that radiates from the patio stones beneath my bare toes, but everything tastes a little sweeter out there under the trees.  I love to sit long into the evening, sipping a last glass of wine while the kids run around the yard or hop the fence to play with the neighbors.  When twilight falls we cover the table with candles and sit a little longer.  Summer is the season for savoring!

Here are 10 of my family's favorite summertime dessert recipes.  These are the ones I come back to summer after summer, year after year.  They're a snapshot of everything I love about summer, and of course, they're all peanut and tree nut free.

A Case of Botched Banana Bread

I love a good mystery...but not when it comes to baking.

Everyone has their favourite banana bread recipe, it seems.  I'm no exception.  This is the one recipe to which I turn whenever there's a bunch of bananas turning brown on the counter.  But that wasn't always the case.  Baking in the mountains of Colorado is so different from baking at sea level.  When we first moved back here from the Florida coast I had a mystery on my hands.  If I were writing a book, I might call it, "The Curious Case of the Botched Banana Bread"...

I approached the ingredients in my favourite recipe as if they were the cast of characters in the novel:  Ms. Butter and Colonel Flour were discovered in the kitchen with a failed loaf of banana bread and a whisk.  An old banana peel was found on the floor between them.  Who caused the bread to sink?  Who sabotaged the crispy crust?

Three Traditions

As I'm writing this, I'm looking out the window at a cold white sky above fragile tree branches, soft with baby-green leaves, bending low to the ground under the weight of the heavy blanket of snow which continues to float from the clouds -  and I'm wondering, exactly where did spring go?  The electricity went out at 3:30 this morning - a tree that fell on the lines, they say - and it only came on briefly about an hour ago, but long enough to make a pot of coffee.  Fingers crossed that my laptop battery will hold out until it comes back on again!

I'm feeling a little nostalgic, I guess, as I watch the winter scene unfold (in April!) and here's why.  I always wanted a spring baby.  There's something so special about being born during the season of renewal and rebirth.  When I became pregnant with Eva I was elated and began thinking of Spring-inspired names and perusing the pages of the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue in search of the perfect "gardenesque" nursery set, and when we found out she was due on Easter Sunday my mind happily wandered to lilac Easter sundresses and sunny straw hats.  She ended up coming a few days before Easter and I remember that first Easter Sunday was very much like today - snowy, wet, cloudy and cold.  So much for the dreams of dresses and sun hats, but I had something better to occupy my thoughts.

Rum Apple Tart

As a child we used to take frequent trips to the country where my extended family lived.  My aunt and uncle owned an apple orchard, and as soon as the car pulled into their long dirt driveway my brother and I would run out into the trees, without even so much as a "Hello!" to my aunt who was waiting at the front door.  I use to love to skip between the rows of trees, imagining I was Dorothy on the yellow brick road - and there was always a dog around to play the part of Toto.

In the spring, when the branches were covered in blossoms and the orchard smelled fresh and new, we'd forage for the tender, wild asparagus that grew in the shade.  In summer, when the trees baked in the hot sun and the grass turned golden and crunched beneath our feet, we'd pick up fallen apples from off the ground and toss them at one another, pretending the sneaky trees had come to life and were throwing them at us like they did in the movie.

We'd imagine the trees had faces, tracing our fingers over eyes and noses hidden in the bark.  This one is friendly, we declared, he's smiling.  This one not so much.  Look at that scowl!  Children can find faces in almost anything.

Blood Orange & Vanilla Whisky Sour

Some weeks are vodka weeks - straightforward & easy.  For some, complex but comfortable gin is more fitting.  And then there are those formidable weeks, packed with obscurities and paradoxes.  Those are best capped off with a good, old-fashioned whiskey cocktail.  And this week was definitely a "whiskey week."  It wasn't a bad week, just complicated, filled with interruptions, with contractors flooding the house, insurance adjustors descending on the roof, an enormous work project that filled every available nook and cranny and a kid home sick with the flu all week.   Luckily this "whiskey week" happened to fall during blood orange season.  That makes things less complicated.

Vanilla & Rum Biscotti

Is it just me, or does it seem like the whole northern hemisphere is buried under a blanket of snow this week?  This would be just fine with me except that instead of going back to school on Thursday like they were supposed to, the kids have had two consecutive snow days, officially making this the longest Christmas Vacation ever  - or at least it feels that way to me.  I've been working from home and spending countless hours on and off over the last two days with the snow shovel in hand, trying to kick this cabin fever, while the kids make artificial sledding hills out of the mountains of snow I'm dumping into our very flat yard.  I've discovered that it's through mundane activities like snow shoveling that my mind becomes its most creative and that's especially useful when you're snowed-in & haven't been to the market in almost a week.  I should have been coming up with creative ideas for what to make for dinner but instead I was daydreaming about what sweet treat I could whip together for a little afternoon snack - going through the contents of the (very bare) pantry in my head as the shovel scraped back & forth, up and down the driveway.

England where my heart lies {Orange-Honey Scones}

And from the shelter of my mind,
Through the window of my eyes,
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets,
To England where my heart lies.  -Kathy's Song by Simon & Garfunkel

My heart is in England today. Perhaps it's the cold, steal grey skies. The sun, just a white orb, failing to penetrate the icy clouds with its warmth. Perhaps it's the damp air that clings to my hair and jacket when I walk out the door.  It coats my lungs with a cold film that makes me cough when I inhale, and then escapes in a burst of heavy steam.  Whatever the reason, I find myself thinking of Darjeeling tea, wool sweaters, green hills, scones with orange marmalade, Paddington Bear, and all things comforting and English.


These scones take me back to college when I spent a few weeks alone in London between semesters.  I can almost remember the smell of damp bookshops & smokey tabbaco shops.  And I most certainly can recall the smell of fresh-from-the-oven scones in a warm coffee shop with chairs upholstered in torn & faded leather, tables chipped & greasy from ages of use set in front of a picture window that looked out onto a wet, verdant green hill painted on a canvas of grey, not too unlike the one just outside my window today in Colorado. That must be why I'm craving scones.  Because, although the memories are fading like the leather on those chairs, when you leave a piece of your heart somewhere, you can return whenever you like.

Potato & Leek Soup

December blew in on an icy wind, the kind that whips down the mountainsides and cuts like a knife across the snowy valleys.  The only problem was that the snow was missing - and a cold wind that's not tempered by the softness of snow is often unbearable.  In such cases a steamy bowl of soup is absolutely necessary to take the edge off - thick and hearty soup, like my grandmother certainly would have made on a day like today.  She ate soup everyday and I could always count on there being a pot of some kind or another in her refrigerator when I visited after school.  And yes, she used to stash the entire pot in her fridge, sometimes with the wooden spoon still inside, ready to be pulled out and set on a hot burner.  I always preferred a bowl of her soup to a cookie or a slice of buttered bread as an afternoon snack.

On Tuesday, the temperature dropped as the wind arrived.  I had a few potatoes and leeks leftover from Thanksgiving, so just as soon as I got home from dropping the kids off at school that morning, I was in the kitchen peeling and chopping.  I started with Julia Child's recipe for Potage Parmentier - a classic - but as always, after stirring and tasting, I abandoned the original recipe for what I found in the kitchen.  Half an onion here, a bay leaf there, a splash of lemon juice for freshness.  I left out the cream altogether, as I try to limit the amount of dairy I eat.  The creaminess of the potatoes more than makes up for it!   As my grandmother would have done, I've had the soup in the fridge, not in the original pot, but ready for lunch everyday, nonetheless.   It only gets better as it sits.  I was almost sad to ladle the last of it into my bowl today.

Below is the recipe, but of course, its just a guideline.  Potatoes are such a versatile "blank-slate," you can add just about any vegetable or herb to this recipe.

Cinnamon Pancakes with Calvados Apple Compote

There are sheer, white curtains in my bedroom window and every November morning, when winter approaches and the sun is low enough in the sky, they defuse the sunlight so that my bedroom becomes a brilliant, pearlescent snow globe.  I get up much too early during the work week to see this everyday, but on the weekends I sleep until that ethereal light wakes me.

Why do I tell you this?  Because on those lazy Saturday mornings I love to linger in bed, propped up by a mountain of pillows with a notepad on my lap, mixing flavors on paper & concocting recipes in my mind to play with throughout the week.  This time is precious to me, almost like an extension of a dream, and I find I'm most creative there in those early hours, bathed in that beautiful light.  This moment lasts only 15 to 20 minutes before the sun moves on & shadows fall upon the white curtains again, but in that time I've come up with several different recipe ideas & a shopping list to take to the market later in the day, where I'll plan the rest of the week's menu.  Then it's finally time to throw on my robe and head upstairs to the kitchen where the late autumn sun is shining through a different set of windows and will continue that way through the rest of the day.  It's my very favorite way to spend a Saturday!

A recent player in these culinary daydreams has been Calvados.  In cocktails, of course, but also in compotes, cakes,  tarts, sauces and breads.  That rich, slightly bitter, apple flavour adds such complexity to both baked goods & savory dishes - I've already gone through two bottles this fall! Here's a simple recipe for Calvados Apple Compote - a favorite on pancakes but just as good on pork chops.  I've included the pancake recipe, too, because, more often than not, on those slow Saturdays, when I finally do make it to the kitchen, these are what I cook.  I hope you'll enjoy them as much as we do!

Ghosts: Liquefied with a Raspberry Chaser

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. 

-Edgar Allan Poe

Do you believe in ghosts?  As a kid, I was convinced my house was haunted - but what kid isn't?  There were little things - like waking in the middle of the night to the sound of men laughing in a dark corner of my room, or coming home from school to find that the contents of my dresser had been rearranged (always in the same order), or hearing - rather "feeling" - the slightest whisper over my shoulder and turning to see my posters hanging in the air before slowly drifting to the floor, always face down.

For as long as I can remember I've loved a good ghost story, so maybe these incidences were just the fabrications of an overactive imagination.  In any case, I still love them and never more than on Halloween!

This cocktail is a delicious ghost story in its own right.  It's my twist on a classic Halloween drink, The Liquefied Ghost.  I use coconut milk & finish it with a raspberry chaser - simply a purée spiked with Chambord - right in the same glass.  I freeze the purée in the glass and even though the Chambord prevents it from freezing solid, it does become firm enough that the cocktail doesn't disrupt it as it's poured.  The frozen purée keep the cocktail cold, but what I really love is that after it's thawed the cocktail stays suspended above the raspberries, even after swirling the glass, like a ghost hovering over the world of flesh and blood.   What's more fitting than that on All Hallows Eve?

Still Summer {Berry Tart }

I'm still trying to convince myself that summer's not almost over, even as the leaves are quickly starting to blush and the nights are turning so cold that we've had to add extra blankets to the beds (instead of turning on the heat - it's too soon for that!)  It started off imperceptibly enough, with just the slightest hint of yellow in the top branches of the trees that line our street.  But just yesterday, as I drove through the neighborhood I was shocked to see that the branches are suddenly more gold than green.  When did that happen?  And then the urgency struck.  To make summer last just one weekend longer, just one day more.

This is a curious new feeling for me.  Year after year I welcome fall like an old friend.  My best friend, in fact, for it is my favorite season.  I trudge through summer with my eyes always on her, like a wanderer plods through a desert; her cool nights are the oasis that is often just out of reach.  But not this year.  No, she showed up on our doorstep unannounced at the end of August.  Or so it seems.  And I wasn't ready for her.  However, despite the chill in the air and the changing leaves, the calendar still says it's summer, and I'm holding on to that as tightly as I can, for as long as I can.  Because if the calendar still says it's summer, then it's still summer in my kitchen and as such, there's no shame in sharing one or two more summer recipes before time runs out, is there?  Like the seasons, I feel their time is slipping through my fingers, too, just as strawberries & cherries are too quickly being replaced by apples & figs (which, by the way would look just as pretty on this tart).

Chocolate Sunflower-Butter Cake

I don't often crave peanut butter any more, but when I do it's fierce, relentless and has to be satisfied in the biggest and most extravagant of ways.  Last week I woke up with the craving and couldn't get it off my mind.  Like that catchy song that's stuck in your head.  You can't get it out until you sing it at the top of your lungs.  Well, this cake is the equivalent of me singing "peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter" in my loudest voice.  Only it's completely peanut free!  And it worked!

Blueberry Swirl Ice Cream with Blueberry Syrup

To say last week was hot is like saying the ocean is wet.  "Hot" doesn't even come close!  Sizzling, scorching, sweltering are better.  The kids even began contemplating solar science experiments.  For instance, if a red and a yellow crayon are left in the cup holder in the car, what color will the resulting ooze be the next morning?  Or, if placed in the sun, how quickly would my cast iron skillet reach a temperature hot enough to cook an egg?  And once preheated, how long would it take to fry that egg using only the searing heat of the sun and a little butter?  In the end, though, it was just too hot to venture outside for that.  We decided to make ice cream instead, which we all agreed was preferable to a fried egg.

Summer in a Bowl {Zucchini Vichyssoise with Quick Sweet Corn Relish}

A culture clash or a match made in heaven - or both, as French country meets a 1950's Americana classic in this cool, garden-fresh soup?  Either way it's summer in a bowl!

Yesterday I made one of my favorite summer soups, a zucchini vichyssoise loosely based on Ina Garten's recipe from her book, Barefoot in Paris.  It's an old stand by in my kitchen during the summertime - and a great way to use up zucchini.  But as I stood at the stove and watched it simmer I realized that it just wasn't going to satisfy my craving for something cool and fresh the way it usually does, garnished with ribbons of julienned zucchini and fresh snipped chives.  No, yesterday I wanted something more.  Something zesty, vinegary, fresh and crunchy.  Corn is what I wanted; more specifically, corn relish!  The kind my grandmother would make & store in frilly little canning jars to be pulled out and put on our hot dogs while we watched the Cubs on T.V. 

Chili Pepper Martini

Bond looked carefully at the barman.

"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, monsieur."

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice cold, then add a large, thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

"Certainly, monsieur." The barman looked pleased with the idea. 

-Casino Royale

Time {Blackberry Gin & Tonic}

"If I could save time in a bottle,
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away,
Just to spend them with you."  -Jim Croce

I've been thinking a lot about time these days.  Mostly because I never feel I have enough of it and partly because a very small voice inside of me says, "There must be a way to make more, or to at least use what you have wisely."

It seems entirely too cliché to even write about time, because lack of it is just about the most basic problem faced by humanity since...well, the beginning of Time!  It's just a little, intangible, four-letter word, right?  But it also happens to hold within itself the entirety of our lives - little or not.

And recently, whenever I say, "I don't have the time," a quote comes to mind.  It's like a meddling stranger who keeps knocking at my door.  Is he selling something...?  Time in a bottle, perhaps?  (Now, that's something I would be interested in buying.)  But  I don't answer the door.  Instead, I stand by the window, just out of view, peering through the sheer curtains, waiting for him to go away.  He just keeps knocking, and I begin to count the minutes it takes for him to finally give up and leave.  It's as if time is irrelevant to him.  Maybe he could knock for hours, I fear, or even days!  Perhaps he is Time himself, I think in horror.  Time, knocking at my door!  And he doesn't stop; it's an infernal tap, tap, tap, like the incessant ticking of a much-too-loud clock in the dark of night - ticking away the minutes - a constant reminder that time is fleeting.  Finally I can take it no longer.  I throw open the door in anger, intending to scream, "Stop it!"  But when I face him and glare into his eyes, he's emotionless (of course, Time has no feelings).  Instead, he looks at me so calmly & deeply that I fear he must be able to see my soul.  And then he speaks. "Time is a created thing." He says, slowly, with purpose, "To say 'I don't have time' is like saying 'I don't want to."

It's an ancient Lao-Tzu quote I've thought of probably a hundred times.

"But I DO want to!" I yell back with enough emotion for both of us.  And all the things I loved doing before this little thing called Time became so scarce, come flooding back to my mind.  I do want to make time for this blog, for writing, in general, for taking photos, for creating recipes and uniting them with the stories that make them so meaningful on so many different levels.  Even if I'm the only one who reads them.

"Then do it." He replies, and is gone.  And so here I am, writing at 5:30 in the morning, because it turns out there is a pocket of time just before the sun rises, that I'd been sleeping through.  Who knew?!

Nine {Blackberry Pavlova with Blackberry-Honey Syrup}

 "Little boys should never be sent to bed.  They always wake up a day older." -Peter Pan

Last night I had a thought.  One of those startling thoughts that begins innocently enough, like the faint vibrations before an earthquake that rattles you to the core.  A reality check, you could say, in the truest sense of the term, though this phrase doesn't carry the weight that I felt last night.  Perhaps an epiphany is a better way to describe it.

I was tucking Connor into bed, and though he's 9 he still likes me to lay down next to him while he's falling asleep.  We talk and talk, and if you know Connor, you know what a chatterbox he can be.  We discuss all matters of importance - from what's going on in his Minecraft world, to the bug he found & caught crawling up a tree at school (catch and release), to the science test tomorrow for which he forgot to study (but he's sure he'll do fine).   He babbles on and on, while I listen, until he finally drifts off to sleep, sometimes mid-sentence.  I treasure this time, it's part of our routine.  But don't get me wrong - there are days when I'm behind on work or have a sink-full of dishes in the kitchen and laundry to fold on the couch,  and all I can see is the minute hand ticking the time away.  Last night was one such night.  Dinner ran late, dessert even later, pushing bedtime closer and closer to midnight.  I had a 6 a.m. video conference scheduled for this morning, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed with a cup of tea and a book.

Still, the question came, soft as the blankets I tucked in around him, "Mom, can you rest with me...?"

Immediately my to-do list scrolled before me like the never-ending credits of a too long movie.  There were hundreds of reasons I could have said, "Not tonight."  But something stopped me.  Instead I said,  "For just a minute."