When I was longing for a bowl of creamy comfort and didn’t have either a block of imported chocolate or heavy cream in my pantry, I resorted to my favorite, pantry friendly, vanilla pudding. Here’s the recipe: … read more

Rhubarb heralds Spring in Vermont. Pink sprouts push up from the cold earth.

‘Still have snow?’
‘Is the sap running?’
‘Are the mergansers back?’

The familiar litany of questions heard around town – at the post office, the Creamery, the market, and at community dinners. And then the rhubarb appears – over night, huge green leaves pop up. The first garden harvest of Spring. Although technically a vegetable, I think of rhubarb as fruit, the primary ingredient in one of my favorite pies, as a lovely sauce eaten alone or topped with a dollop of yogurt (see post below), or starring in a chutney or relish.

Today I baked rhubarb with sugar and a bit of butter and finished it with heavy cream and fresh nutmeg. Very easy, yummy and with rhubarb from my garden and cream from the Farmer’s market,

Here’s how I did it. … read more

Even though our garden is overrun with weeds, the rhubarb is undaunted this spring. I made a rhubarb crumb cake to take to lunch with friends and it was a great success.  This cake is quick to make and can be made the day before it is served. … read more

This time of year the sun sets before I’ve finished my afternoon tea. The cold damp air mandates a roaring fire in the woodstove. This is the season between holidays. There’s lots to do and not a lot of energy to do it. It’s comfort food time. To me, comfort food is food that’s easy to prepare, flavorful with a creamy consistency – the perfect description of pudding.

As a young cook, I made pudding by combining pudding mix with milk, cooked the mixture, stirring patiently, until it had big bubbles that plopped and spattered like the boiling mud pots at Yellowstone. … read more

An unattended, spring garden in Vermont is full of surprises, mostly weedy ones. We returned from Italy and found that the comfrey, a perennial wild herb, who’s leaves are said to cure athlete’s foot when tucked between toes and taped in place, was nearly three-feet tall and about to overwhelm the peonies. Lush, tall grass had moved into what were beds of flowers. The good news is that the rhubarb was thriving.

… read more

Do you still have snow? Is the sap running? Have you seen mergansers on the river?

These familiar questions are heard at the post office, the Creamery, the market, and at community dinners in the early spring.

It was a bright morning last April, when I saw pink sprouts pushing up through the cold earth. Within a week, there were pink stems topped with dark green leaves. Rhubarb! It would be the first harvest from my garden. Along with the phoebes that nest in the rafters of the barn, it’s rhubarb that announces the arrival of spring in Vermont. … read more