What do two racing horses, a handsome chef, and edamame salad have in common? 

Not long ago my friend Kathleen Flinn e-mailed that she was doing a book launch event in New York. Not your standard book party, though. Kathleen wanted it to be a dialogue about the power of home cooking. “A subject,” she said, “that doesn’t get talked about near enough these days.” On the eve of

Baking pumpkin bread at our house on a crisp fall weekend is as strong a tradition as shopping for Halloween candy. For years now, my young adult daughters would just as soon enjoy a slice of pumpkin bread as eat a piece of candy. Last year Maggy reminisced about fall in her post “Ode to

After thirty years of living faithfully with one another, our family friends finally decided to make it legal. My husband David would perform the ceremony. Our family would host the reception at our home.  My daughters, Maggy and Sharon, and I would cater it. Our goal: despite hosting, officiating, and catering the wedding, David, Maggy,

When serving a crowd, lasagna often springs to mind, but I often I dismiss it because I want to wow my guests and slab of lasagna isn’t all that attractive. By halving no-bake lasagna noodles lengthwise and rolling a little filling in each strip, this dish morphs from functional to fun. Serving’s easier too!

Fried Apple Hand Pies Makes 16 pies For the ambitious looking to make their own pie dough, you can find my recipe in Sharon’s Perfect Apple Crumble Pie.  If you don’t have the right size cookie cutter, there are plenty of tops around the house that are the about the same size.  The tops to

My grandmother was a good country cook. She was the one who taught me to fry chicken and make biscuits, but she had another specialty I never learned—fried pies. She made them peach in the summer and apple the rest of the year

The idea for a pig roast was born in a hot tub at my nephew’s high school graduation party. His dad (my husband’s brother, John) had recently gotten a very impressive smoker, which John quickly took to like pig to mud. Which was apparently all the two brothers needed to decide they were going to

You know what they say about eating an apple every day and this little roasting technique transforms apple eating from dutiful to pleasurable. Just a small amount of butter and brown sugar mean this apple works any time of day. Served with a dollop of low-fat Greek yogurt and a sprinkling of nuts or granola,

While my husband David and I were on a run yesterday morning he said, “Not too long until fall.” His observation made me aware. As I looked down, sure enough there was a smattering of red and yellow leaves here and there

A chef friend of mine once said, “Anybody can make a dish taste good with butter and cream.” He’s right. So in developing this corn chowder recipe I gave myself the challenge: make it creamy and flavorful…. without cream. Pureed corn not only made it possible to eliminate dairy, it also meant I didn’t need

This time of year I’m reminded of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegone tale. There’s so much late-summer zucchini in this small town that, under cover of night, people are surreptitiously leaving big paper bags of it on people’s porches. You walk out to get the paper in the morning—and you’ve been zucchini-ed. Sometimes I get the

I served the peach, apricot, and mixed berry galettes at a dinner party the other night, and there wasn’t a slice left. When I told my guests how easy they were to make, they all wanted the recipe. Well guys… here it is!

This time of year it’s way too hot to make a hot pasta and a hot sauce, but you don’t have to. While your pasta boils, mix a few flavorful ingredients. Think ricotta, Parmesan and garlic, freshly chopped tomatoes with canned tuna or white beans. It’s the best way I know to beat the heat…and