Hard cider and spiced cider jelly–as well as an education on why fresh, organic cider costs as much as it does–were some of the fruits of all the labor at our apple pressing party this fall.

For the last few years, I’ve had an occasional craving for fruit cooked in a rum sauce, but every time I’ve tried, I just get something sweet but easily forgettable (and certainly nothing that I would bother to write a recipe down for). That changed tonight.

The Aeropress is one of the best things to ever happen to coffee. This $25 device is capable of producing an espresso-like brew that rivals even the best espresso machine, and it does so in a fraction of the time and effort. When I woke up this morning in need of some coffee, I knew that it would be the perfect thing to use for my first “Tools and Gadgets” post.

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a package of King Arthur Irish Style Wholemeal Flour that had found its way to the back of one of our baking cupboards. It was a little past its expiration date, but I hate to throw stuff out that is still mostly usable, so I decided to follow the Irish Brown Bread recipe on the bag.

We’ve had a Cuisinart food processor for years, and I’ve been using the standard blade for making pie dough for quite awhile with fairly decent results (I usually make an all-butter, 50% whole wheat dough, so it just can’t compete for texture with lard/shortening all-white-flour crusts). For some reason, we never really paid much [...]

Though I love hot and spicy food, I was never much of a fan of chipotle peppers until I tasted this sauce that my friend Joe whipped up one evening while Tiger and I were over at his place for dinner. It’s a gorgeous dark red sauce, and I don’t think my photo does [...]

I figured that I would finally come out of my hive and talk about the sourdough bread I spent a week working on while I was snowed in before Christmas. As you may have inferred from other posts here, I’m basically cooking my way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which I think has to [...]