When it comes to citrus, I’m a proud Californian. I don’t have anything against Florida personally, but I’ll take one of my home state’s Washington navels or juicy Valencias any day over the stuff they peddle from the panhandle. Whenever we stayed over at my grandparents’ house (the same one with all the orchards, see […]

You might say that this week’s ice cream is very exotic or very French and you’d be right. But the best way to describe it is very Meryl Streep. I don’t know precisely how long I’ve been following Streep’s career, but I do remember watching her in a TV version of Wendy Wasserstein’s first play […]

Apricots are hardly my favorite stone fruit. I’ll choose a ripe peach any time, a nectarine, a plum, a prune, a plumcot, just about anything. When it comes to dried fruit, however, apricots are the best. Absent all that water, the tartness of the fruit shines through better than any raisin, craisin, freeze-dried berry or […]

I’m going to out my mother here. You may not know this, but my mom has a long and well-deserved reputation for scratch baking. Everything she makes, from pecan tarts and coffee cloud sponge cake to divinity fudge and Winnie the Pooh birthday cakes is made from a host of raw materials that she blends […]