Not Another Food Blog

Last October I volunteered to make mini-cupcakes for my son’s first-grade class Halloween party. (My son’s allergic to eggs, so if I make the cupcakes, he gets to have some, too.) I had just completed cake decorating classes, so I confidently came up with two designs and spent hours piping dozens of

As I have mentioned in some of my earlier posts, I am a sort of a hapless gardener. I’ve been at it for about a year and a half, and in the beginning I even killed squash. I thought anybody could grow squash. Now I’m kind of hit or miss, but I have found that peppers seem [...]

I made my great-grandmother’s strawberry pie for Father’s Day, so I thought I’d share this, which appeared in my “Across the Table” column in The Daytona Beach News-Journal on April 8, 2009. During my last couple of trips to the farmers market, I’ve been confronted with an undeniable fact: It is tim

I made it through a crowded grocery store with a 6-year-old in tow and was finally at the finish line — the checkout lane – with all the ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner when the cashier picked up my bag of fresh cranberries and asked me, “Did you know these are buy-one-get-one-free?” I did not k

“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans.” If this Woody Allen quote is true, then God has been having a jolly old time for the last six years watching me trying to raise a child whose diet in any way resembles the healthy way his father and I eat. Things have not gone [...]

Over the weekend I took advantage of a sunny and unscheduled Saturday afternoon and did what I should do every week, which is go to a nearby farmers market to stock up on fresh vegetables. I went without a list, hoping I would find something there to inspire meals for the next few days. This is [...

There was a time when Halloween was a holiday that occurred somewhere in a vast span of time that ticked slowly away between summer and Christmas (the two official seasons of the year). It was time to watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” yet again, devise a homemade costume or don a store-b

This month I’m spending a couple of hours each week in a cake decorating class learning how to make flowers out of buttercream frosting, gum paste and fondant. This is my second cake-decorating class; I spent eight hours in August earning a certificate in The Wilton Method Decorating Basics. This ma

It’s one of the most dreaded phrases in the English language: “Check engine.”  However, I didn’t know I’d been struck by “Check engine” as I pulled out of my driveway on my way to pick up my son from school recently. When the car stalled in front of my house, a little red light I’d never [...]

After a week of road/restaurant food, I am relieved and happy to be back home with a kitchen stocked with fresh ingredients for a few days’ worth of healthy meals. Last week’s disastrous camping trip (camping food followed by consolation calories) was almost immediately followed by a road trip acros