I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a beautiful New Year! Lets hope that the new year and the new decade brings us a greater measure of happiness, resilience, and simple...

(KD adoring the log – which she calls a “cake branch”) As promised, I am writing today about the food we chose to make for the winter solstice yesterday – the yule log. I had a very enthusiastic helper, my 5 yo daughter KD, who not only modeled eating the cake, she modeled various parts of making...

(Santa rides his yule goat source) Whether you call it: Christmas (Natalis Domini) Amaterasu Beiwe Choimus Deuorius Riuri Deygān DōngZhì Festival Tōji Festiva Goru Hogmanay Inti Raymi Junkanoo Karachun Koleda Lenæa Feast of St. Lucy Makara Sankranti Meán Geimhridh Mummer’s Day Midvinterblót Modranicht Perchta Rozhanitsa Feast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalda Sanghamitta Day Saturnalia Şeva Zistanê Sol Invictus Soyal Tekufat Tevet Wayeb Yule Zagmuk Ziemassvētki its all about the sun and the Winter Solstice. In our home, we tend to celebrate the astronomical and terran aspects of this time of year because we are far...

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope you have a happy and harmonious one. Since I never have time to blog these days and because I may likely be nuts, I thought I would try some live blogging with our turkey day. Come descend with me into the thanksgiving chaos! (let me know if you have...

Unfortunately, America is starving it’s food banks. At a time when food bank demands are shooting through the roof, donations to the food banks are disappearing. The NYT is running an article in a special section called “Giving” entitled “When the Cupboard Is Bare” by David Cay Johnson where they delve into the...

(I originally posted this back on July 11, 2006. I wanted to pull it out from under that digital dust pile and share this awesome Joan Nathan recipe for challah and also the fun we had that day. I think we need to do something like this again but with Baby Oh too) (Many more...

Jolly Gingerbread Cookies I am on the Dean & Deluca emailing list and I have to say it is both a torture and an inspiration! Everything is WAY too expensive for me but just about all of it is something I could make or have fun trying to make. Last year I had lots of fun making a...

Things were going ok and then pow, time contracted and chaos ruled the house! I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving. We had an excellent time. Today I am going to step through a few more shots. Food photography in our kitchen is tough so you will have to forgive the somewhat scary images,...

9:45 AM I am going to do a bit of semi-live blogging of our Thanksgiving. I will be mostly doing photos and some text. As you know, I had to punt the whole turkey wellington jazz and I have brined a 16 lb turkey. Its been pulled out of the fridge and is coming to...

No disrespect to Martha and those who aspire to her homemaking pinnacles I just have to be honest about this – my act doesn’t include perfect house cleanliness nor coordinated napkin rings. Our table is more likely to be set with Ball canning jars and mis-matched plastic plates (antique ones marked on the back from...