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The Apple of My Pie

It is often said that cooking is art and baking is science.  Cooking was so natural to a right-brained, artistic type like myself.  I viewed a recipe as the canvas on which I would create my masterpiece.   A blank space to which I would add my own color with a pinch of this, or […]

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Squash Squashed

I hate squash.  Or did for the first 35 years of my life, anyway.  In fact, squash is the primary reason that I developed such a passion for the culinary arts.  I know that makes about as much sense as a fur coat in Tahiti, but it’s true. Growing up, my only exposure to squash […]

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Pie Are Square, And Other Reasons I Hated Math

I was never good at math.  Like most girls, I excelled in verbal acrobatics and science, but math and history were, well, Greek to me.  Not surprising, I guess, since so much of what we know of math was first contemplated, theorized, solved, and proved thousands of years ago in ancient Greece.  Of course, there […]

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Hey, Cupcake!

Boys, don’t run off yet.  We will mention bar food, beer and other booze in this article.  I also mention hockey, but don’t get too excited about that. For as many times as I have baked cupcakes, eaten cupcakes, and written about cupcakes, I realize that I have not actually included any recipes for cupcakes.  I […]

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Hoe Cakes Are Not What “Working Girls” Eat For Breakfast

Hoe Cakes, also called Johnny Cakes, are an old southern recipe, originating like so many great southern recipes did—from meager ingredients and improvisation born of the hardscrabble life of a slave.  The first recipes were most likely very basic—ground dried corn, maybe a bit of honey or molasses, and lard or fat drippings, cooked on […]

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It’s Chilly, Chili, Chile

The weather has turned chilly. In central Texas, we get all excited when the temperature drops below 70 degrees, and we start acting crazy. Like white-tailed bucks during the rut. For the uninitiated, the rut is that one time of year when white tail deer mate. During this period the bucks seem to lose any […]

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Making Whoopie!

Pies…..Whoopie Pies.  But since I got your attention, you may as well read a little further, right?  Since you are here and all. In the Northeast, they are called Whoopie Pies.  The theory is that Amish cooks would spoon the dollops of leftover cake batter into little globs, and bake them to test the temperature […]

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Pumpkins, Punkins, and The Root Beer House

Definitions: Pumpkins–a member of the squash family; carved into Jack-O-Lanterns during Halloween, and baked into pies at Thanksgiving.  May be made into other delicious dishes, as below… Punkins–term of endearment, usually reserved for my kids, or anyone else’s kids, and sometimes people’s dogs.  Babies may be called punkin seeds, naturally. I don’t know why, but […]

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Meditations On New Mexico, And Other Reasons To Eat Posole

There are some places that just exude a certain character.  A vibe that is unique to the locale. Austin, for example is weird.  And Austinites are very proud of the collective weirdness that is their city.  Kind of like what would happen if Seattle,WA and Berkley,CA got together and had a baby.  It is very much […]

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Do Almonds Have Teats? And What of Spaghetti Squash?

Do almonds have teats?  Of course, I know they don’t….But I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the thought of it when I first became aware of almond milk at my local grocery store.  The teeny little udders they must possess. The extremely fine tuned manual dexterity it must take to milk them.  Nevertheless, […]

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