Opposing Traffic After A Day Of Baking

Real Quiche

  I have gotten so angry eating quiche in a restaurant. Sometimes its prepared as if the eater only wants a convenient way to shovel appropriate fuel into the furnace. Protein:check. Dairy;check. Carbs:check. Greens:check. All in each bite:check. All one rubbery tasteless mass: yes.
I got so accustomed to this version that I developed a taste for it. Until I went to Paris.

July 26,2010-torrential rains in Corrales, and then this

The Only Birthday Frosting

Mama always gave us our choice for birthday dinner and birthday cake. The dinner would change through the years , I wasn't fussy about the cake(as long as it was chocolate) but the frosting was always the same. I've never liked sweet fluffy frosting, never understood the point of those bakery cakes with beautiful swirls of color that promise what they can't deliver: their creators could choose substance or beauty and made the choice that I would always scrape away.

Lost and Found-The Frangipane Recipe

I have a very haphazard way of keeping recipes.  Some of my favorites are written on backs of receipts, on the side columns of address books, random pieces of paper.... I never seem to learn my lesson either. There is a chocolate orange cake recipe that I can still taste and must be in my possession but I just don't know where.  Its been years and like trying to relive an old love affair by having a new one, the recipes I try, hoping its THE one, just make me sad.
I've gone on like this with my frangipane tart recipe-trying various ones on the net, in books, etc.  Good, but not quite the toothsome, soft center and tan chewy top from my long lost favorite. Then, going through a very old cookbook, out it fluttered-

New Life

I  was out with the dogs this morning when I saw our glamorous local artist Jasmine racing up our hill."New baby!"

Lavender Drying In The Dining Room

Beets To Have With A Glass Of Wine

I want you to eat your beets! Stephanie I am with you - I love beets. It could be that many of you have just never had deliciously prepared ones. So, give this a try.

Beautiful Beets

Love and Lemons

There will be a lovely village wedding in July.  Kim and I are doing what we envision an old Tuscan style wedding by way of a Provence celebration held in Corrales would be like.  A long table in the garden, for a hundred people, bread and wines in carafes on the table, Moroccan candlelit lanterns in the trees for dancing under.  One of the dinner choices will be roasted salmon with North African spices and pickled lemons.  I've already had dinner tonight-but just thinking about that salmon makes my mouth want it!  I'm going to cook it over coals because I love the smokiness and I've already begun the pickled lemons.

Soon to Sit Upon a Tart

A Wedding

Bagpipe. Kilts. A gorgeous beaming bride.Last night's wedding was the kind that gives you goosebumps.As Kim,her daughter Erica and I snuck out of the banquet room

Candied Flowers Everywhere

This coming Friday Kim and I are doing the desserts for a wedding here in town.  My kitchen has become a field of candied white and lavender roses.  Its such slow contemplative work.  Last week Diana and I started with white roses and we might have well been two women from 200 years ago working quietly together.  Hours and hours to produce something fanciful that will be strewn on the wedding guests tables.
Diana is a former missionary with a Mona Lisa calm about her that started working with us a few months ago.

Candied Lavender Roses

J.R.'s Tart

J.R.'s Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

Two years ago I planted some rhubarb. I knew the plants take two years to really produce, so I wasn't concerned that although they had big showy leaves, the stalks were thin and green. I put some up in jars anyway and my recollection is of me at the kitchen sink, spooning mouthful after mouthful of silky sweetness. Still, this year I was looking foward to rhubarb show girls