morsels & sauces

There are certainly so many poems by Emily Dickinson to celebrate, but there's one that just won't get out my head: So there you go. It's winter. It's excruciating. Sometimes the light slants just the right way in winter and, well, you start to contemplate just what it is that will make us stand with the landscape and the shadows and, simply, listen. Even if what we hear or see is just for a moment. Like a held breath. Like a slant of light. And then it goes.  2016 has been that kind of year, huh? Well, this post took a turn I was not expecting. That's pretty much what we get with Emily. An opening line that draws us in and an ending line that punches us in the gut. But I do think she was a little more lighthearted than this. Or at least she was from time to time.  And her black cake suggests that girlfriend knew her way around the kitchen. And there may have even been some real joy there. Let's take a ...

This cookbook is ambitious and impressive. With recipes for wedding cake (all three tiers), apple pie, hot cross buns, sweet potato bread, red velvet cupcakes, beignets, cherry and roasted quince galette, fortune cookies, ravioli, calzones, bagels, and flourless double-chocolate brownies, Nancy Cain leaves no traditional bread product unturne d in her new cook book, Against the Grain .   Certainly gluten-free cooking is catching hold these days, and when I had the opportunity to grab this cookbook, I did. While I am not gluten-free, I have friends who are, so I want to have a reliable cookbook on hand should I be doing some cooking for them. But even further, as a culture we do have quite a reliance on wheat. While I want to support the most significant industry from the husband’s home state of Kansas, I also think it’s important to diversify one’s cooking—to not just rely on the standby, to mix it up. So even if I can and do relish eating wheat, I am not at all avers...