Sugar And Salt Quotes

that is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years.   -

a wise woman puts a grain of sugar in everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Neither a person entirely broken nor one entirely whole can speak. In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.

Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to "season" people.

Imagine that it's sugar," Korbyn said. 'You're riding across candy.' "Salt can never be sugar," Fennik said. "We should talk about the definition of the word 'imagine'.

i hope you can find it in your heart to be proud of the woman i have become in spite of you.   - still hoping for sugar instead of salt.  

Children should have a balanced diet. They should only consume sugar, salt, and fat in equal quantities.

And a mother without children is not a mother at all, and if I am not a mother, than I am nothing. Nothing. I am like sugar dissolved in a glass of water. Or, I am like salt, which disappears when you cook with it. I am salt. Without my children, I cease to exist.

It’s funny how the good things are all tied up with the bad. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. But either way, you end up taking your sugar with your salt and your kicks with your kisses.

The pair of us are like salt and sugar: such different flavors, but so close in every other way you could never sort us apart once we're together.

there were no more words, as tears streamed down their faces and mixed on their lips, the sugar and salt of love.

Some of the largest companies are now using brain scans to study how we react neurologically to certain foods, especially to sugar. They've discovered that the brain lights up for sugar the same way it does for cocaine.

That is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years.

Sugar and salt and kicks and kisses.

By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across—each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip—is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.

The Kitchen           Half a papaya and a palmful of sesame oil; lately, your husband’s mind has been elsewhere.   Honeyed dates, goat’s milk; you want to quiet the bloating of salt.   Coconut and ghee butter; he kisses the back of your neck at the stove.   Cayenne and roasted pine nuts; you offer him the hollow of your throat.   Saffron and rosemary; you don’t ask him her name.   Vine leaves and olives; you let him lift you by the waist.   Cinnamon and tamarind; lay you down on the kitchen counter.   Almonds soaked in rose water; your husband is hungry.   Sweet mangoes and sugared lemon; he had forgotten the way you taste. Sour dough and cumin; but she cannot make him eat, like you.

There the beloved red sweater, bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber. Each confirming: I chose these, I. But habit is different: it chooses. And we, it's good horse, opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit.

i could not contain myself any longer i ran to the ocean in the middle of the night and confessed my love for you to the water as i finished telling her the salt in her body became sugar

it has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of my life. i learned everything is temporary. moments. feelings. people. flowers. i learned love is about giving. everything. and letting it hurt. i learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft. i learned all things come in twos. life and death. pain and joy. salt and sugar. me and you. it is the balance of the universe. it has been the year of hurting so bad but living so good. making friends out of strangers. making strangers out of friends. learning mint chocolate chip ice cream will fix just about everything. and for the pains it can’t there will always be my mother’s arms. we must learn to focus on warm energy. always. soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the world. for if we can’t learn to be kind to each other how will we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of ourselves.

She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it.

I love you, and I always will. I need you, and I keep you with me. The good and the bad, the sugar and the salt, the kicks and the kisses—what's come before and what will come after, you and me— We are all mixed up in this together, under one warm piecrust. Everything about me remembers everything about you.

don’t mistake salt for sugar if he wants to be with you he will it’s that simple

They may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices. After all, we decide what to buy. We decide how much to eat.

As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty, we become our choices.

And then we're at that moment when you both go and get what you want or you both go back. The moment when you say, Stuff being scared; what's on the other side is better. That moment when you inch closer to each other little by little, till your skin starts and ends in the same place. Till your faces get so close your lips start and end in the same place, too. Till you taste milk shake and salt and sugar days and the world spins and the stars sound like harmonicas.

Images are deceiving. Salt and sugar look exactly the same but taste very different.

that is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years.

Road trips required a couple of things: a well-balanced diet of caffeine, salt and sugar and an excellent selection of tunes—oh, and directions.

Don’t be a slave of 3 S’s: Salt, Sugar and Sex.

my mother smiled as she offered a cube of sugar in her upturned palm. greedily, i accepted. i reached inside my mouth, delicately placing one (just one) on the center of my tongue, & i clamped down. salt. this is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years. - you may be gone, but i still have a stomachache.

Gingerbread I knew I had to get out of there before the icing cracked and they discovered that I'm burnt around the edges, doughy in the center, that what they thought was sugar is salt. If I was a good girl, if I could satisfy their cravings, if every dream in my misshapen head didn't bite, I might have stayed at the table. Wouldn't you run, too, from such voracious love?

Lastly, tea--unless one is drinking it in the Russian style--should be drunk WITHOUT SUGAR. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Each year, food companies use an amount of salt that is every bit as staggering as it sounds: 5 billion pounds.

Jules hated it when I used "delicious" to describe anything but food, but that day he was nothing if not a sugar cone of melting sea salt and caramel gelato.

The good and the bad, the sugar and the salt, the kicks and the kisses—what’s come before and what will come after, you and me—

If the devil decided to run for President, do you think he/she would put on their horns and wicked grin, or a suit with an angelic smile? If the wicked witch stayed green and ugly, would she have been able to give Snow White a poisoned apple? And if the Big Bad Wolf had not disguised himself as an old granny, would he have been able to lure Little Red Riding Hood into the house to eat her? And if a drug dealer wanted to seduce some school kids to get on his drugs, would he act like a greedy businessman — or a caring friend? Salt and sugar look exactly the same but taste very different. We live in a world of illusions, one filled with Luciferians acting like righteous men, and righteous men condemned as criminals.

The good things are all tied up with the bad. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which. But either way, you end up taking your sugar with your salt and your kicks with your kisses.

The media have become masters at packaging stimuli in ways that our brains find irresistible, just as food engineers have become expert in creating “hyperpalatable” foods by manipulating levels of sugar, fat, and salt.11 Distractibility might be regarded as the mental equivalent of obesity.

If sugar is the methamphetamine of processed food ingredients, with its high-speed, blunt assault on our brains, then fat is the opiate, a smooth operator whose effects are less obvious but no less powerful. A

You work with what you are given, the red clay of grief, the black clay of stubbornness going on after.

The work of existence devours its own unfolding. What dissolves will dissolve-- you, reader, and I, and all our quick angers and longings.

You end up taking your sugar with your salt and your kicks with your kisses.

Gregory observed that our Saviour had not styled us the sugar but the salt of the earth,

Many of the Prego sauces—whether cheesy, chunky, or light—have one feature in common: The largest ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar. A mere half cup of Prego Traditional, for instance, has more than two teaspoons of sugar, as much as two-plus Oreo cookies, a tube of Go-Gurt, or some of the Pepperidge Farm Apple Turnovers that Campbell also makes.

HOPE CAKES 2 tablespoons butter 8 ounces cream cheese 3 bananas 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups white sugar 2 eggs, refrigerated 3 cups flour ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt Topping 1 tablespoon flour ⅔ cup brown sugar 1 cup butter ½ cup nuts Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a big baking pan with butter. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, cream cheese, bananas, vanilla, and white sugar. Add the eggs. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, mixing all the while. Pour the batter into the pan. To make the topping, in a medium bowl combine flour and brown sugar, then mix in the butter and the nuts. Using a fork, gently lay the topping on the batter. Bake in oven for 40 minutes, or until an impossible thing comes true. Whichever comes first. AUTHORS’ NOTES JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN

And the sad fact is that the church, both now and at far too many times in its history, has found it easier to act as if it were selling the sugar of moral and spiritual achievement rather than the salt ofJesus' passion and death.

Well, I am going on 83 now but not about to quit. There are too many things I know about where I want to see what happens. You, my dear, being one of them, and this new century starting. Do what you can to make it good. And remember, as we used to say, that life is like a pudding: it takes both the salt and the sugar to make a really good one.

BRISTOL HOTEL CUCUMBER SALAD Peel and seed halved cucumbers and slice thinly. Finely chop red onion and one chili pepper. Mix in bowl with white cider vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, dill weed, and a drop of sesame oil. Serve chilled.

Sugar and salt are the two greatest food additives in terms of driving appetite, which is why they are nearly universal in UPF, whether it’s beans or pizza. So, high sugar content is one of the properties of UPF that drives weight gain.

I'm staying right here," grumbled the rat. "I haven't the slightest interest in fairs." "That's because you've never been to one," remarked the old sheep . "A fair is a rat's paradise. Everybody spills food at a fair. A rat can creep out late at night and have a feast. In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles,partially gnawed ice cream cones,and the wooden sticks of lollypops. Everywhere is loot for a rat--in tents, in booths, in hay lofts--why, a fair has enough disgusting leftover food to satisfy a whole army of rats." Templeton's eyes were blazing. " Is this true?" he asked. "Is this appetizing yarn of yours true? I like high living, and what you say tempts me." "It is true," said the old sheep. "Go to the Fair Templeton. You will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams. Buckets with sour mash sticking to them, tin cans containing particles of tuna fish, greasy bags stuffed with rotten..." "That's enough!" cried Templeton. "Don't tell me anymore I'm going!

In a key--but commonly overlooked--aspect of obesity, weight gain can be caused by the slightest increases in consumption, if it continues day in and day out.

the sweeter the industry made its food, the sweeter kids liked their food to be.

soft. i learned all things come in twos. life and death. pain and joy. salt and sugar. me and you. it is the balance of the universe.

How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes?

I love you, and I always will. I need you, and I keep you with me. The good and the bad, the sugar and the salt, the kicks and the kisses—what’s come before and what will come after, you and me.

Inevitably, the manufacturers of processed food argue that they have allowed us to become the people we want to be, fast and busy, no longer slaves to the stove. But in their hands, the salt, sugar, and fat they have used to propel this social transformation are not nutrients as much as weapons—weapons they deploy, certainly, to defeat their competitors but also to keep us coming back for more.

By the yard it's hard, but inch by inch, anything's a cinch A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step In addition, to keep your energy levels at their highest, be careful about what you eat. Start the day with a high protein, low fat and low carbohydrate breakfast. Eat saladswith fish or chicken at lunch. Avoid sugar, salt, white flour products or deserts. Avoid soft drinks and candy bars or pastries. Feed yourself as you would feed a world class athlete before a competition, because in many respects, that’s what you are before starting work each day

I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset. "Let's cook," Frannie said energetically. "We will smell so good that they'll all come running." She picked up a bowl, filled it with apples from the barrel, and immediately began to cut them up. I put water to boil, got out cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, lard, flour, sugar, salt, saleratus, vinegar, and all the other things for apple pies. We both laughed happily. How easy it is, we thought, to make a decision, to implement a remedy, to act.

She cut a small piece of the gravalax and put it on a piece of black bread, daintily spooned a bit of dill sauce onto it, and ate it like it was the last piece of food in the world. I tried to imitate her, eating so slowly, tasting the raw pink fish and the coarse, sour bread, salt and sugar around the rind, flavors and scents like colors on a palette, like the tones in music.

Thus, the sweetened breakfast was born, as was a core industry strategy that food processors would deploy forevermore...Just swap out the problem component for another that wasn't, at the moment, as high on the list of concerns.

Some stories last many centuries, others only a moment. All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass, grow distant and more beautiful with salt. Yet even today, to look at a tree and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed. There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror. Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door, ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle. Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket gives off -- the immeasurable's continuous singing, before it goes back into story and feeling. In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots. Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another. I would like to join that stilted transmigration, to feel my own skin vertical as theirs: an ant-road, a highway for beetles. I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart. To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch, and then keep walking, unimaginably further.

...In addition, there are millions of people in our world who are fortunate to have the availability of almost any food they like. I cannot find any reason for those people to continue consuming survival food (bread, sugar, meat, milk, and salt).

the inventors and company executives don’t generally partake in their own creations. Thus the heavy reliance on focus groups with the targeted consumer.

that is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years. - you may be gone, but i still have a stomachache.

Saviour had not styled us the sugar but the salt of the earth,

Here is a soul, accepting nothing.

If she [Mrs. Homemaker] didn't know how much she needed convenience, it was up to inventors like Clausi to show her the way.

She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it. I

And you’re not angry with me?” She searched his eyes for the truth. “I’ve found that anger is usually a manifestation of hurt. For me, anyway.

She loved him so much that it hurt. Maybe that was how love worked. If you could handle the pain, you’d find the sweetness.

The reason why salt and sugar are known to be sweet is that they season other things. Care to share and dare to do it every day!

When I do doze, I dream of sopapillas with thick honey drizzled over their cinnamon sugar skins.

water, with a little sugar and salt, to keep you from swooning.

They are me, these women. They are the ones who taught me to see; I taught me to see. They, we, are the ones healing the Ginen story, fighting to destroy that cancerous trade in shiploads of African bodies that ever demands to be fed more sugar, more rum, more Nubian gold.

GREEK STRAPATSADA EGGS In heated olive oil reduce peeled, chopped tomatoes, onions, sugar, salt, and pepper to a thick sauce. Add beaten eggs to the tomatoes and stir vigorously until eggs set into a small, fine curd. Serve with grilled country bread drizzled with olive oil.

In the West the word “delicious” is likely to conjure up something laced with sugar, fat and salt, whereas in Japan it signifies a flavour found in mushrooms, grilled fish and light broths.

Though we typically turn to sugar to balance out bitter flavors in a sauce or soup, it turns out that salt masks bitterness much more effectively than sugar. See for yourself with a little tonic water, Campari, or grapefruit juice, all of which are both bitter and sweet. Taste a spoonful, then add a pinch of salt and taste again. You’ll be surprised by how much bitterness subsides.

Addiction to sugar may even be more intense than addiction to other drugs of abuse. Studies have found that when rats are addicted to cocaine, if they’re given a choice between cocaine and sugar, they will opt for the sugar instead, likely because the reward from sugar surpasses that of even cocaine.

Placing a high value on salt, sugar, and fat is no longer advantageous to our health, but the craving persists because the brain’s reward centers have not changed for approximately fifty thousand years.

This is my heart, says the warm sugar on my lips and the salt and spice on his. This is my heart, says the warm sugar of the vanilla. This is the inside of me, murmurs the cinnamon. This is everything that hurts, confesses the bright edge of chili powder, and everything I miss and everything I hope for. This is everything I do not say but that I hold in me whispers that breath of salt at the end. This is my hidden heart of color and sugar the things you might miss if I did not show you they were there.

Despite what Ben Daisy said about her love of cakes and sugar, I did not think a woman who could drown a man in her arms lived in anything as sweet as fresh water. Her domain was brackish. She would live in salt.

You can use just about anything to make a magic circle, but salt is often the most practical. It’s a symbol of the earth and of purity, and it doesn’t draw ants. You use sugar to make a circle on the carpet only once. Let me tell you.

Using high math and computations, he engineers them, with one goal in mind: to create the biggest crave. “People say, ‘I crave chocolate,’ ” Moskowitz told me. “But why do we crave chocolate, or chips? And how do you get people to crave these and other foods?

ZERO BELLY VINAIGRETTE There’s developing research to suggest vinegar can aid weight loss by keeping our blood sugar steady. One study among pre-diabetics found the addition of 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to a high-carb meal reduced the subsequent rise in blood sugar by 34 percent. Shake up this recipe in a mason jar and you’ll have delicious, additive-free dressing for the week! Yield: 1 cup, about 16 servings ⅓ cup raw apple cider vinegar ⅔ cup extra-virgin olive oil 1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard 1½ teaspoons honey ¼ teaspoon salt

I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine. It is clear and sweet, though not in the way mountain streams are said to be clear and sweet. More in the way of Karo syrup. The urine has been desalinated by osmotic pressure. Basically it swapped molecules with a concentrated sugar solution. Urine is a salty substance (though less so than the NASA Ames chili), and if you were to drink it in an effort to rehydrate yourself, it would have the opposite effect. But once the salt is taken care of and the distasteful organic molecules have been trapped in an activated charcoal filter, urine is a restorative and surprisingly drinkable lunchtime beverage. I was about to use the word unobjectionable, but that's not accurate. People object. They object a lot.

Tee gives her the milk so dark it looks like the Mississippi flooded into the cup. I can't imagine Tee using any sort of bottled Hershey's or Nesquik, and I'm right. She makes her own syrup, whisking Dutch-process cocoa and home-brewed vanilla extract with sugar and salt and water.

When you get famous, dinner isn’t food anymore; it’s twenty ounces of protein, ten ounces of carbohydrates, salt-free, fat-free, sugar-free fuel. This is a meal every two hours, six times a day. Eating isn’t about eating anymore. It’s about protein assimilation. It’s about cellular rejuvenation cream. Washing is about exfoliation. What used to be breathing is respiration. I’d be the first to congratulate anybody if they could do a better job of faking flawless beauty and delivering vague inspiring messages: Calm down. Everyone, breathe deep. Life is good. Be just and kind. Be the love.

I placed some of the DNA on the ends of my fingers and rubbed them together. The stuff was sticky. It began to dissolve on my skin. 'It's melting -- like cotton candy.' 'Sure. That's the sugar in the DNA,' Smith said. 'Would it taste sweet?' 'No. DNA is an acid, and it's got salts in it. Actually, I've never tasted it.' Later, I got some dried calf DNA. I placed a bit of the fluff on my tongue. It melted into a gluey ooze that stuck to the roof of my mouth in a blob. The blob felt slippery on my tongue, and the taste of pure DNA appeared. It had a soft taste, unsweet, rather bland, with a touch of acid and a hint of salt. Perhaps like the earth's primordial sea. It faded away. Page 67, in Richard Preston's biographical essay on Craig Venter, "The Genome Warrior" (originally published in The New Yorker in 2000).

When the carnivorous animal finds prey, he boldly seizes the prey and greedily laps the jetting blood. On the contrary, the herbivorous animal refuses his natural food, leaving it untouched, if it is sprinkled with a little blood. In men we find they cannot bear even the sight of [animal] killings. Slaughterhouses are always recommended to be removed far from the towns. Can flesh then be considered the natural food of man, when both his eyes and his nose are so much against it, unless deceived by flavors of spices, salt and sugar?

proponent of the view that the processed food industry should be seen as a public health menace: “As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.

Salt & Sugar may look alike but they play different roles. Pay attention to detail.

Don't mistake salt for sugar if he wants to be with you he will. it's that simple

I saw the things that mattered to you. And suddenly I was terrified of losing you.

If you want to be creative, eat salt not sugar.

As hunters and foragers of the dry savannah, our earliest forebears evolved a taste for important but scarce nutrients: salt and high-energy fats and sugars.

If you mapped categories of food advertising, especially advertising to kids, against the Food Guide Pyramid, it would turn the pyramid on its head,” he

The notion that some foods behave like narcotics goes back at least twenty years in scientific circles.

that is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years.

don't mistake salt for sugar if he wants to be with you he will it's that simple

On average, we consume 71 pounds of caloric sweeteners each year. That’s 22 teaspoons of sugar, per person, per day.

Many of the Prego sauces—whether cheesy, chunky, or light—have one feature in common: The largest ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar.

If she made a cake for him, she'd use salt in place of sugar-and lots of it.

An artist must regulate his life. Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, natation, etc.) Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.9 to 9.59 pm symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am. My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuschia. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of strangling myself. I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me. My expression is very serious; when I laugh it is unintentional, and I always apologise very politely. I sleep with only one eye closed, very profoundly. My bed is round with a hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my temperature and gives me another.

Lari, I was wondering if—” he begins to say, but Pedro suddenly sticks his head between us like a giraffe. “What’s with the chitchatting in my kitchen? We got work to do!” Pedro scolds,

The day before, I crawled out from under the news, damp and fluttering; I was the woman with bees in her eyes, crying sugar tears instead of salt to fill their gaping mouths with sweetness.

...we eat not so much for pleasure as we do to ward off an awful feeling...The fear of hunger is deeply rooted, and food manufacturers know well how to push the buttons that evoke this fear.

It is not about learning to like this or that vegetable; but developing an overall attitude to eating that is more open to variety and less governed by the simple sugar-salt-fat palate of junk food.

Annie's Soda Bread 4 cps flour 3/4 cp sugar 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking powder 3 TB caraway seeds 1 cp raisins 1/4 cp butter 1 1/3 cp buttermilk 1 egg 1 tsp baking soda Sift and mix dry ingredients, minus soda. Stir in seeds and raisins. Cut in butter. Combine buttermilk,egg and soda in small bowl. Mix w. dry, turn out and knead. Put in greased pans and bake at 350' for 40 min. Makes two small loaves.

All Carolina folk are crazy for mayonnaise, mayonnaise is as ambrosia to them, the food of their tarheeled gods. Mayonnaise comforts them, causes the vowels to slide more musically along their slow tongues, appeasing their grease-conditioned taste buds while transporting those buds to a place higher than lard could ever hope to fly. Yellow as summer sunlight, soft as young thighs, smooth as a Baptist preacher's rant, falsely innocent as a magician's handkerchief, mayonnaise will cloak a lettuce leaf, some shreds of cabbage, a few hunks of cold potato in the simplest splendor, restyling their dull character, making them lively and attractive again, granting them the capacity to delight the gullet if not the heart. Fried oysters, leftover roast, peanut butter: rare are the rations that fail to become instantly more scintillating from contact with this inanimate seductress, this goopy glory-monger, this alchemist in a jar. The mystery of mayonnaise-and others besides Dickie Goldwire have surely puzzled over this_is how egg yolks, vegetable oil, vinegar (wine's angry brother), salt, sugar (earth's primal grain-energy), lemon juice, water, and, naturally, a pinch of the ol' calcium disodium EDTA could be combined in such a way as to produce a condiment so versatile, satisfying, and outright majestic that mustard, ketchup, and their ilk must bow down before it (though, a at two bucks a jar, mayonnaise certainly doesn't put on airs)or else slink away in disgrace. Who but the French could have wrought this gastronomic miracle? Mayonnaise is France's gift to the New World's muddled palate, a boon that combines humanity's ancient instinctive craving for the cellular warmth of pure fat with the modern, romantic fondness for complex flavors: mayo (as the lazy call it) may appear mild and prosaic, but behind its creamy veil it fairly seethes with tangy disposition. Cholesterol aside, it projects the luster that we astro-orphans have identified with well-being ever since we fell from the stars.

Ox Cart Man In October of the year, he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar's portion out, and bags the rest on the cart's floor. He packs wool sheared in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from deerhide, and vinegar in a barrel hoped by hand at the forge's fire. He walks by his ox's head, ten days to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes, and the bag that carried potatoes, flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose feathers, yarn. When the cart is empty he sells the cart. When the cart is sold he sells the ox, harness and yoke, and walks home, his pockets heavy with the year's coin for salt and taxes, and at home by fire's light in November cold stitches new harness for next year's ox in the barn, and carves the yoke, and saws planks building the cart again.

=Doughnuts= 1 Egg 1 Cupful of Milk 1 and 1/3 Cupfuls of Sugar 2 Teaspoonfuls of Cream of Tartar 1 Teaspoonful of Soda Piece of Butter the Size of a Walnut 1/4 Teaspoonful of Cinnamon or Nutmeg Salt, and Flour enough to

You have a choice. You can continue eating the foods manufacturers want you to buy that are making you unhealthy. Or you can return to eating the foods God provided for you, already magnificently packaged in their own skins, rinds, pods and shells. Foods that contain all the human-appropriate vitamins and minerals you need, and the right proportion of sugar, fat, salt and calories. Will you listen to God, or will you continue listening to the marketing and advertising gurus whose agenda has nothing to do with your health?Cukierkorn, Rabbi Celso; Collins, Susan Ford (2012-10-11). The Miracle Diet: Lose Weight, Gain Health... 10 Diet Skills (p. 103).

A healthy attitude to eating I am concerned about the current victimisation of food. The apparent need to divide the contents of our plates into heroes and villains. The current villains are sugar and gluten, though it used to be fat, and before that it was salt (and before that it was carbs and . . . oh, I’ve lost track). It is worth remembering that today’s devil will probably be tomorrow’s angel and vice versa. We risk having the life sucked out of our eating by allowing ourselves to be shamed over our food choices. If this escalates, historians may look back on this generation as one in which society’s decision about what to eat was driven by guilt and shame rather than by good taste or pleasure. Well, not on my watch. Yes, I eat cake, and ice cream and meat. I eat biscuits and bread and drink alcohol too. What is more, I eat it all without a shred of guilt. And yet, I like to think my eating is mindful rather than mindless. I care deeply about where my food has come from, its long-term effect on me and the planet. That said, I eat what you might call ‘just enough’ rather than too much. My rule of thumb – just don’t eat too much of any one thing.

if you hire a high-performing chef and give her free range to cook what she wants, but you haven’t shared that your family hates salt and that any salad dressing with sugar will be rejected by all, it’s likely your household of fusspots won’t like the meal delivered to their plates. In this case, it’s not your chef’s fault. It’s yours. You hired the right person, but you didn’t provide enough context. You gave your cook freedom, but you and your chef were not aligned.

The events that lead up to a murder are as closely bound together as the atoms that make up a molecule. It is all too easy to disregard or overlook a single atom, but if you do so, the sugar that you were expecting may turn out to be salt.

When consumers tried to improve their health by shifting to skim milk, Congress set up a scheme for the powerful dairy industry through which it has quietly turned all that unwanted, surplus fat into huge sales of cheese—not cheese to be eaten before or after dinner as a delicacy, but cheese that is slipped into our food as an alluring but unnecessary extra ingredient. The toll, thirty years later: The average American now consumes as much as thirty-three pounds of cheese a year.

He kisses me, the taste of sugar on my lips, and salt and spice on his. This is my heart, says the warm sugar of the vanilla. This is the inside of me, murmurs the cinnamon. This is everything that hurts, confesses the bright edge of chili powder, and everything I miss and everything I hope for. This is everything I do not say but that I hold in me, whispers that breath of salt at the end. This is my hidden heart of color and sugar, the things you might miss if I did not show you they were there.

but here is the best peach pie we made: Put 1 ¼ cups flour, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425°. Beat 3 egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and ⅓ cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, sliced peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce the oven to 350° and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until the filling is set.

Those were the terms in which my parents, keen for me to grow up well grounded in cynicism, explained things to me. Sweets, chocolates and crisps were all very well, but to buy them by the checkout, on an impulse, was falling into a trap. Instead, I was taught the pleasure of watching other people fall into it and feeling smug. The fact that the sensation of smugness was more pleasurable to me than that of salt or sugar tells you all you need to know about the kind of monster who comes to prominence in modern Britain.

As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.

Is she pretty?” That would be a hell yes. Big soft eyes, full pink lips. Legs and tight skirts. And those damn cowboy boots. And the yoga pants and bra top she wore sailing. Long blond hair—-at least he thought it was long; she always kept it wound up and clipped in a messy bun. He’d dated white girls before, a time or two. But never someone that white, from Texas. Or that young. She was what, fifteen years younger, at least. An itty-bitty thing who could throw a grown man to the ground. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s real pretty.

Our olfactory bulbs have gathered endless sense patterns of foods high in sugar, fat and salt. These flavour memories have become part of the fabric of our sense of self and are not easily discarded, because the system, as we have seen, is designed ‘not to forget’.

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

I am trying to know what it means to love anyone / Else the way I meant to love her, the way a sweet tooth / Loves salt. Sugar, I used to know this place like the back / of my hand. Now there’s just the blonde past, — Amy Woolard, from “Neck of the Woods,” Neck of the Woods (Alice James Books, 2020)

PEACH CARDAMOM ROLLS 1 cup butter 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 3/4 cups boiling water 1 tablespoon salt 2 teaspoons ground cardamom .75 ounces active dry yeast 2 large eggs 1 can of peaches, drained and diced 7 cups flour 1 teaspoon vegetable oil 1 handful slightly cracked cardamom pods 1/2 cup powdered sugar

Soba noodles with eggplant and mango This dish has become my mother’s ultimate cook-to-impress fare. And she is not the only one, as I have been informed by many readers. It is the refreshing nature of the cold buckwheat noodles the sweet sharpness of the dressing and the muskiness of mango that make it so pleasing. Serve this as a substantial starter or turn it into a light main course by adding some fried firm tofu. Serves 6 1/2 cup rice vinegar 3 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp salt 2 garlic cloves, crushed 1/2 fresh red chile, finely chopped 1 tsp toasted sesame oil grated zest and juice of 1 lime 1 cup sunflower oil 2 eggplants, cut into 3/4-inch dice 8 to 9 oz soba noodles 1 large ripe mango, cut into 3/8-inch dice or into 1/4-inch-thick strips 12/3 cup basil leaves, chopped (if you can get some use Thai basil, but much less of it) 21/2 cups cilantro leaves, chopped 1/2 red onion, very thinly sliced In a small saucepan gently warm the vinegar, sugar and salt for up to 1 minute, just until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and add the garlic, chile and sesame oil. Allow to cool, then add the lime zest and juice. Heat up the sunflower oil in a large pan and shallow-fry the eggplant in three or four batches. Once golden brown remove to a colander, sprinkle liberally with salt and leave there to drain. Cook the noodles in plenty of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally. They should take 5 to 8 minutes to become tender but still al dente. Drain and rinse well under running cold water. Shake off as much of the excess water as possible, then leave to dry on a dish towel. In a mixing bowl toss the noodles with the dressing, mango, eggplant, half of the herbs and the onion. You can now leave this aside for 1 to 2 hours. When ready to serve add the rest of the herbs and mix well, then pile on a plate or in a bowl.

Some candy bars had more protein than many cereals. [Jean] Mayer dubbed them "sugar-coated vitamin pills" and wrote, "I contend that these cereals containing over 50% sugar should be labeled imitation cereal or cereal confections, and they should be sold in the candy section rather than in the cereal section.

Have You Prayed” When the wind turns and asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed? I know three things. One: I’m never finished answering to the dead. Two: A man is four winds and three fires. And the four winds are his father’s voice, his mother’s voice . . . Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires. And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching, dreaming, thinking . . . Or is he the breath of God? When the wind turns traveler and asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed? I remember three things. One: A father’s love is milk and sugar, two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what’s left over is trimmed and leavened to make the bread the dead and the living share. And patience? That’s to endure the terrible leavening and kneading. And wisdom? That’s my father’s face in sleep. When the wind asks, Have you prayed? I know it’s only me reminding myself a flower is one station between earth’s wish and earth’s rapture, and blood was fire, salt, and breath long before it quickened any wand or branch, any limb that woke speaking. It’s just me in the gowns of the wind, or my father through me, asking, Have you found your refuge yet? asking, Are you happy? Strange. A troubled father. A happy son. The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one.

Feeling Faint Issue: I’m happy losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet, but I’m always tired, get light headed when I stand up, and if I exercise for more than 10 minutes I feel like I’m going to pass out. Response: Congratulations on your weight loss success, and with just a small adjustment to your diet, you can say goodbye to your weakness and fatigue. The solution is salt…a bit more salt to be specific. This may sound like we’re crazy when many experts argue that we should all eat less salt, however these are the same experts who tell us that eating lots of carbohydrates and sugar is OK. But what they don’t tell you is that your body functions very differently when you are keto-adapted. When you restrict carbs for a week or two, your kidneys switch from retaining salt to rapidly excreting it, along with a fair amount of stored water. This salt and water loss explains why many people experience rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks on a low carbohydrate diet. Ridding your body of this excess salt and water is a good thing, but only up to a point. After that, if you don’t replace some of the ongoing sodium excretion, the associated water loss can compromise your circulation The end result is lightheadedness when you stand up quickly or fatigue if you exercise enough to get ‘warmed up’. Other common side effects of carbohydrate restriction that go away with a pinch of added salt include headache and constipation; and over the long term it also helps the body maintain its muscles. The best solution is to include 1 or 2 cups of bouillon or broth in your daily schedule. This adds only 1-2 grams of sodium to your daily intake, and your ketoadapted metabolism insures that you pass it right on through within a matter of hours (allaying any fears you might have of salt buildup in your system). This rapid clearance also means that on days that you exercise, take one dose of broth or bouillon within the hour before you start.

Which is something to be thankful for,” says Danielle Reed, Rawson’s former colleague at Monell. Otherwise you’d be tasting things like bile and pancreatic enzymes. (Intestinal taste receptors are thought to trigger hormonal responses to molecules, such as salt and sugar, and defensive reactions—vomiting, diarrhea—to dangerous bitter items.)

Poverty certainly causes many other health problems, and malnutrition shortens life expectancy even in the richest countries on earth. In France, for example, 6 million people (about 10 per cent of the population) suffer from nutritional insecurity. They wake up in the morning not knowing whether they will have anything to eat for lunch; they often go to sleep hungry; and the nutrition they do obtain is unbalanced and unhealthy – lots of starch, sugar and salt, and not enough protein and vitamins.3 Yet nutritional insecurity isn’t famine, and France of the early twenty-first century isn’t France of 1694. Even in the worst slums around Beauvais or Paris, people don’t die because they have not eaten for weeks on end. The

FOR THE CAKE: Beat together eight soup spoons butter with one cup sugar until fluffy. Mix in two eggs and three soup spoons juice from an orange. In a small bowl, blend one and two-thirds cups flour, a teaspoon baking powder, and half a teaspoon salt. Add dry to wet mixture along with one cup buttermilk. Blend well. Stir in one cup raisins, half a cup chopped walnuts, and one soup spoon finely grated orange peel. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan and bake forty-five to fifty minutes. Cool before icing.   FOR THE ICING: Stir two soup spoons juice of orange and two cups powdered sugar together until the sugar dissolves completely and the icing is smooth. The icing should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If it is too thick, add more liquid; if too thin, add a little sugar.

This stuff is cheap but it’s very nutritious.” He picked up the can and read from it. “Listen to this: ‘beef tripe, beef hearts, beef, pork, salt, vinegar, flavoring, sugar and sodium nitrite.’ Do you know what tripe is?” “It’s the gut part.” “That’s what I thought. I suspected it was something like that.” “It’s all meat. Meat is meat. Have you ever eat any squirrel brains?” “No, how are they?” “About like calf brains. They’re not bad if you don’t think about it. The bad part is cracking them little skulls open. One thing I won’t eat is hog’s head cheese. My sister Vernell, you can turn her loose with a spoon and she’ll eat a pound of it before she gets up. Some people call it souse.” “Why do they call it that?” “I don’t know. You got to have a name for everything.” “Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. Well, they’re both good names. Tripe. Souse.

With the American people facing an epidemic of obesity andnhardened arteries, the "People's Department" [USDA, United States Department of Agriculture) doesn't regulate fat as much as it grants the [food] industry's every wish. Indeed when it comes to the greatest sources of fat--meant and cheese--the Department of Agriculture has joined industry as a full partner in the most urgent mission of all: cajoling the people to eat more.

You are the salt of the earth.” Some modern teachers seem to think our Lord said, You are the sugar of the earth, meaning that gentleness and winsomeness without curativeness is the ideal of the Christian. Our Lord’s illustration of a Christian is salt, and salt is the most concentrated thing known. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. It is a disadvantage to be salt. Think of the action of salt on a wound, and you will realize this. If you get salt into a wound, it hurts, and when God’s children are amongst those who are “raw” towards God, their presence hurts. The person who is wrong with God is like an open wound, and when salt gets in it causes annoyance and distress and the person is spiteful and bitter. The disciples of Jesus in the present dispensation preserve society from corruption; the salt causes excessive irritation, which spells persecution for the saint.

I was settin’ at this restaurant When the waiter came up and said, “What do you want?” I looked at the menu—it looked so nice Till he said, “Let me give you a little advice.” He said, “Spaghetti and potatoes got too much starch, Pork chops and sausage are bad for your heart. There's hormones in chicken and beef and veal, Bowl of ravioli is a dead man’s meal. Bread's got preservatives, there's nitrites in ham, Artificial coloring in jellies and jam. Stay away from doughnuts, run away from pie, Pepperoni pizza is a sure way to die. Sugar’s gonna rot your teeth and make you put on weight, Artificial sweetener’s got cyclamates. Eggs are high cholesterol, too much fat in cheese, Coffee ruins your kidneys and so do teas. Fish got too much mercury, red meat is poison, Salt's gonna send your blood pressure risin’. Hot dogs and bologna got deadly red dyes, Vegetables and fruits are sprayed with pesticides.” So I said, “What can I eat that's gonna make me last?” He said, “A small drink of water in a sterilized glass.” And then he stopped and he thought for a minute, And said, “Never mind the water—there’s carcinogens in it.” So I got up from the table and walked out in the street, Realizin’ there was absolutely nothing I could eat. So I haven't eaten for a month and I don't feel too fine, But I know that I'll be healthy for a long, long time.

In October, she barged in while I was watching Working Girl. “This again?” she huffed and threw herself down in the armchair. “I’m fasting for Yom Kippur,” she sighed boastfully. This was not unusual. She’d been on some truly insane diets in the past. A gallon of salt water a day. Only prune juice and baking soda. “I can have as much sugar-free Jell-O as I want before eleven A.M.” Or “I’m fasting,” she’d say. “I’m fasting on weekends.” “I’m fasting every other weekday.

The distribution of salt throughout food can be explained by osmosis and diffusion, two chemical processes powered by nature’s tendency to seek equilibrium, or the balanced concentration of solutes such as minerals and sugars on either side of a semipermeable membrane (or holey cell wall). In food, the movement of water across a cell wall from the saltier side to the less salty side is called osmosis. Diffusion, on the other hand, is the often slower process of salt moving from a

Do you know what it feels like to be in a kitchen that’s just stuck, frozen in time? I’ve prepared the same dishes so many times, always the same dishes, I don’t even know whether I like them or not anymore. That’s my curse. I know it bothers you that you didn’t grow up cooking, but I envy you. You get all this freedom to just grab a recipe and prepare it for the first time, or to reinvent it, make it your own. You can do whatever you want and not feel like you’re offending anyone.

Reality is everything that exists. That sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Actually, it isn’t. There are various problems. What about dinosaurs, which once existed but exist no longer? What about stars, which are so far away that, by the time their light reaches us and we can see them, they may have fizzled out? We’ll come to dinosaurs and stars in a moment. But in any case, how do we know things exist, even in the present? Well, our five senses — sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste — do a pretty good job of convincing us that many things are real: rocks and camels, newly mown grass and freshly ground coffee, sandpaper and velvet, waterfalls and doorbells, sugar and salt. But are we only going to call something ‘real’ if we can detect it directly with one of our five senses? What about a distant galaxy, too far away to be seen with the naked eye? What about a bacterium, too small to be seen without a powerful microscope? Must we say that these do not exist because we can’t see them? No. Obviously we can enhance our senses through the use of special instruments: telescopes for the galaxy, microscopes for bacteria. Because we understand telescopes and microscopes, and how they work, we can use them to extend the reach of our senses — in this case, the sense of sight — and what they enable us to see convinces us that galaxies and bacteria exist. How about radio waves? Do they exist? Our eyes can’t detect them, nor can our ears, but again special instruments — television sets, for example — convert them into signals that we can see and hear. So, although we can’t see or hear radio waves, we know they are a part of reality. As with telescopes and microscopes, we understand how radios and televisions work. So they help our senses to build a picture of what exists: the real world — reality. Radio telescopes (and X-ray telescopes) show us stars and galaxies through what seem like different eyes: another way to expand our view of reality.

The now-famous yearly Candlebrow Conferences, like the institution itself, were subsidized out of the vast fortune of Mr. Gideon Candlebrow of Grossdale, Illinois, who had made his bundle back during the great Lard Scandal of the '80s, in which, before Congress put an end to the practice, countless adulterated tons of that comestible were exported to Great Britain, compromising further an already debased national cuisine, giving rise throughout the island, for example, to a Christmas-pudding controversy over which to this day families remain divided, often violently so. In the consequent scramble to develop more legal sources of profit, one of Mr. Candlebrow's laboratory hands happened to invent "Smegmo," an artificial substitute for everything in the edible-fat category, including margarine, which many felt wasn't that real to begin with. An eminent Rabbi of world hog capital Cincinnati, Ohio, was moved to declare the product kosher, adding that "the Hebrew people have been waiting four thousand years for this. Smegmo is the Messiah of kitchen fats." [...] Miles, locating the patriotically colored Smegmo crock among the salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, steak sauce, sugar and molasses, opened and sniffed quizzically at the contents. "Say, what is this stuff?" "Goes with everything!" advised a student at a nearby table. "Stir it in your soup, spread it on your bread, mash it into your turnips! My doormates comb their hair with it! There's a million uses for Smegmo!

Dink, my boy, I'll be a millionaire in ten years. You know what I'm figuring out all this time? I'm going at this scientifically. I'm figuring out the number of fools there are on the top of this globe, classifying 'em, looking out what they want to be fooled on. I'm making an exact science of it." "Go on," said Dink, amused and perplexed, for he was trying to distinguish the serious and the humorous. "What's the principle of a patent medicine?—advertise first, then concoct your medicine. All the science of Foolology is: first, find something all the fools love and enjoy, tell them it's wrong, hammer it into them, give them a substitute and sit back, chuckle, and shovel away the ducats. Bread's wrong, coffee's wrong, beer's wrong. Why, Dink, in the next twenty years all the fools will be feeding on substitutes for everything they want; no salt—denatured sugar—anti-tea—oiloline—peanut butter—whale's milk—et cetera, et ceteray, and blessing the name of the fool-master who fooled them.

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead... ...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin. It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair. Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus... ...Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.

There is a visitor, Countess.” “A visitor?” Mother looks toward the rain-drenched windows. “Who would be out in this mess? Has their car given out?” “No, My Lady. The young woman says her name is Nancy Herald. She apologized for not making an appointment and provided her card. It seems to be a business proposition.” My mother makes a sweeping motion with the back of her hand. “I have no interest or time for business propositions. Send her on her way, please.” Stanhope places a business card on the table, bows, and leaves the room. Penny picks it up as she sips her drink, looks it over—and then spits her brandy all over the carpet. “Penelope!” mother yells. My sister stands up, waving the card over her head like Veruca Salt after she got her hands on the golden ticket to the chocolate factory. “Stanhope!” she screams. “Don’t let her leave! She a television producer!” Penny turns to me and in a quieter but urgent voice says, “She’s a television producer.” As if I didn’t hear her the first time. Then she sprints from the room. Or . . . tries to. Halfway to the door, her heel catches on the carpet and she falls flat on her face with an “Ooof.” “Are you all right, Pen?” She pulls herself up, waving her hands. “I’m fine! Or I will be, as long as she doesn’t leave!” The second try’s the charm, and Penelope scurries out of the room as fast as her four-inch heels will take her. My mother shakes her head at my sister’s retreating form. “Too much sugar, that one.” Then she drains her glass.

Jaclyn’s Snickerdoodle Recipe Ingredients: 1-1/2 cups sugar 1/2 cup BUTTER, softened 1 teaspoon pure vanilla 2 eggs 2-3/4 cups flour 1 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon AND a secret ingredient! 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (cookies are good without the nutmeg, but sooo good with it) Instructions: Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine first four ingredients and mix well In separate bowl combine flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda. Then mix into creamed mixture. Blend well to avoid flour clumps! Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Combine the 2 tablespoons sugar with the cinnamon and nutmeg. Roll each dough ball in the sugar mixture and place on a cookie sheet, leaving about 2 inches between cookies. Bake approximately 10 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet immediately and allow to cool. ENJOY warm or allow to cool. Serve with cold milk or hot beverage of your choice. These keep best in the refrigerator if they last more than a few minutes!!

MAKES: 2 quarts COOKING METHOD: stove COOKING TIME: 20 minutes This is an all-purpose barbecue sauce, with a distinct garlic and tomato flavor. We have used this recipe to rave reviews at the James Beard Foundation and the American Institute of Wine and Food’s “Best Ribs in America” competition. Use it as a finishing glaze or serve it on the side as a dip for any type of barbecue. 2 TABLESPOONS OLIVE OIL ¼ CUP CHOPPED ONION 1 TEASPOON FRESH MINCED GARLIC 4 CUPS KETCHUP 1⅓ CUPS DARK BROWN SUGAR 1 CUP VINEGAR 1 CUP APPLE JUICE ¼ CUP HONEY 1½ TABLESPOONS WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 1½ TABLESPOONS LIQUID SMOKE 1 TEASPOON SALT 1 TEASPOON BLACK PEPPER 1 TEASPOON CAYENNE PEPPER 1 TEASPOON CELERY SEED Heat the olive oil in a large nonreactive saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and lightly sauté. Stir in the remaining ingredients and heat until the sauce bubbles and starts to steam. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature. Transfer to a tightly covered jar or plastic container and store refrigerated for up to 2 weeks.

Mom’s Spritz Cookies 2 sticks salted butter, room temperature ½ cup granulated sugar ½ tsp. almond extract ½ tsp. vanilla 1 egg yolk 2 cups flour Preheat oven to 350°F. Cream butter and sugar together thoroughly. Add the almond and vanilla extracts, egg yolk, and flour. Mix with clean hands and roll into a log for the cookie press. You can fit about 28 cookies on an ungreased sheet. Bake for 9 to 10 minutes or until very lightly browned. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack. Enjoy!

The danger of speaking about life exclusively in terms of problem and solution is that we are thus tempted to overlook the limitations of this detective game and the very existence of the initial arbitrary rules that makes the playing of it possible. The rule is to exclude from the terms of the problem everything that the solution cannot solve. It is diverting and useful to know that, for the chemist, a man is made up of a few pennyworth of salt, sugar, iron, and what not, together with an intolerable deal of water. But we must not assert that ‘man is, in fact, nothing but’ these things, or suppose that the solution of the pennyworths in the water will produce a complete and final solution of man. . . . It was said by Kronecker, the mathematician: ‘God made the integers; all else is the work of man.’ Man can table the integers and arrange them into problems that he can solve in the terms in which they are set. But before the inscrutable mystery of the integers themselves he is helpless, unless he calls upon that tri-unity in himself that is made in the image of God, and can include and create the integers.

ESTHER’S RECIPE FOR BOYFRIEND COOKIES Ingredients: 1 cup butter, softened ¾ cup granulated sugar ¾ cup brown sugar, packed 3 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla ¼ cup whole wheat flour ¼ cup soy flour 3½ cups quick-cooking oatmeal 1½ cups salted peanuts, coarsely chopped 1 cup carob chips Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, beating until fluffy. Sift flours and add to creamed mixture. Fold in oatmeal, peanuts, and carob chips. Drop by teaspoon 2 inches apart on greased baking sheet and bake 8 to 10 minutes. Yield: 7 to 8 dozen cookies.

Genevieve’s “I Love You” Birthday Cake 2 ¾ cups sifted cake flour (unbleached) 4 tsps. baking powder ¾ tsp. salt 4 egg whites (organic) 1 ½ cups white sugar ¾ cup butter (do NOT substitute) 1 cup milk (organic) 1 tsp. PURE vanilla extract 1 tsp. almond extract Measure sifted cake flour, baking powder, and salt; sift together three times. In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add ½ cup of sugar gradually, and continue beating only until meringue will hold up in soft peaks. In a separate bowl, beat butter until smooth. Gradually add remaining 1 cup of sugar, and cream together until light and fluffy. Add sifted ingredients alternately with milk a small amount at a time, beating each addition until smooth. Mix in flavorings. Add meringue, and mix thoroughly into batter. Spread batter in a 15x10x1 inch pan which has been lined on the bottom with parchment paper. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes. Cool cake in pan 10 minutes, then remove from pan and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. You can also bake this cake in two 9 inch round pans for 30 to 35 minutes, or in three 8 inch round pans for 25 to 30 minutes.

French Toast Cupcake A vanilla cupcake with maple buttercream frosting and chopped bacon sprinkled on top. Vanilla Cupcake 1¾ cups flour 1¼ teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda ¼ teaspoon salt 1½ sticks butter, unsalted 1 cup sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 3 eggs 1½ tablespoons vegetable oil ⅔ cup milk Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put paper liners in cupcake pan. In a large bowl, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time. Add oil and milk. Slowly add the flour mixture and mix until just combined. Fill the cupcake liners about ⅔ full. Bake about 18–22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting. Maple Buttercream ½ cup shortening ½ cup butter, softened 2 tablespoons real maple syrup 4 cups powdered sugar 2 tablespoons milk Chopped bacon for garnish Cream together ½ cup shortening and ½ cup butter using an electric mixer. Add maple syrup. Gradually add powdered sugar and milk; beat until light and airy. Sprinkle with chopped bacon before frosting sets.

They have twenty-four one-hour sittings every day with only one table per sitting." Sam groaned as he closed his laptop. "I'd better grab some sandwiches on the way. It sounds like the kind of place you only get two peas and a sliver of asparagus on a piece of butter lettuce that was grown on the highest mountain peak of Nepal and watered with the tears of angels." "Not a fan of haute cuisine?" She followed him down the stairs and out into the bright sunshine. "I like food. Lots of it." He stopped at the nearest café and ordered three Reuben sandwiches, two Cobb salads, and three bottles of water. "Would you like anything?" he asked after he placed his order. Layla looked longingly as the server handed over his feast. "I don't want to ruin my appetite." She pointed to the baked-goods counter. "You forgot dessert." "I don't eat sugar." "Then the meal is wasted." She held open her handbag to reveal her secret stash. "I keep emergency desserts with me at all times- gummy bears, salted caramel chocolate, jelly beans, chocolate-glazed donuts- at least I think that's what they were, and this morning I managed to grab a small container of besan laddu and some gulab jamun.

So the dentist took a trip to his local supermarkets, brought seventy-eight brands of cereal back to his lab, and proceeded to measure the sugar content of each with damning precision. A third of the brands had sugar levels between 10 percent and 25 percent. Another third ranged up to an alarming 50 percent, and eleven climbed even higher still—with one cereal, Super Orange Crisps, packing a sugar load of 70.8 percent. When each cereal brand was cross-referenced with TV advertising records, the sweetest brands were found to be the ones most heavily marketed to kids during Saturday morning cartoons.

A primary goal of food science is to create products that are more attractive to consumers. Nearly every food in a bag, box, or jar has been enhanced in some way, if only with additional flavoring. Companies spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip or the perfect amount of fizz in a soda. Entire departments are dedicated to optimizing how a product feels in your mouth—a quality known as orosensation. French fries, for example, are a potent combination—golden brown and crunchy on the outside, light and smooth on the inside. Other processed foods enhance dynamic contrast, which refers to items with a combination of sensations, like crunchy and creamy. Imagine the gooeyness of melted cheese on top of a crispy pizza crust, or the crunch of an Oreo cookie combined with its smooth center. With natural, unprocessed foods, you tend to experience the same sensations over and over—how’s that seventeenth bite of kale taste? After a few minutes, your brain loses interest and you begin to feel full. But foods that are high in dynamic contrast keep the experience novel and interesting, encouraging you to eat more. Ultimately, such strategies enable food scientists to find the “bliss point” for each product—the precise combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites your brain and keeps you coming back for more. The result, of course, is that you overeat because hyperpalatable foods are more attractive to the human brain. As Stephan Guyenet, a neuroscientist who specializes in eating behavior and obesity, says, “We’ve gotten too good at pushing our own buttons.” The modern food industry, and the overeating habits it has spawned, is just one example of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change: Make it attractive. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.

1 cup of ordinary white flour a pinch of salt 2 eggs 2½ cups of milk and water (1½ cups of milk and 1 cup of water mixed) 1 tablespoon of either vegetable oil or melted butter (You’ll also need some granulated sugar and a couple of lemons to put on the pancakes, along with other things like jams and possibly even maple syrup because you’re American.) Put the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Crack the eggs in and whisk/fork the egg into the flour. Slowly add the milk/water mixture, stirring as you go, until there are no lumps and you have a liquid the consistency of a not-too-thick cream. Then put the mixture in the fridge overnight. Grease or butter or oil a nonstick frying pan. Heat it until it’s really hot (375 degrees according to one website, but basically, it has to be hot for the pancake to become a pancake. And these are crepes, French style, not thick American round pancakes). Stir the mixture you just took from the fridge thoroughly because the flour will all be at the bottom. Get an even consistency. Then ladle some mixture into the pan, thinly covering the bottom of the pan. When the underside of the pancake is golden, flip it (or, if you are brave, toss it). Cook another 30 seconds on the other side. For reasons I do not quite understand (although pan heat is probably the reason), the first one is always a bit disappointing. Often it’s a burnt, sludgy, weird thing, always, in my family, eaten by the cook (which was me). Just keep going, and the rest will be fine. Sprinkle sugar in the middle. And then squeeze some lemon juice on, preferably from a lemon. Then wrap it like a cigar and feed it to a child. (You can experiment with other things in the middle, like Nutella or jam or even maple syrup—but remember that these pancakes are not syrup-absorbent like American-style pancakes.) This is a very peculiar interview, Joe. Let me know how the pancakes come out.

Recipes TOM PEPPER’S HOT BREW To soothe the throat or otherwise ease a long day. 1.4 drachm (1 tsp) local raw honey 16 drachm (1 oz) scotch or bourbon ½ pint (1 cup) hot water 3 sprigs fresh thyme Stir honey and bourbon at bottom of mug. Add hot water and thyme sprigs. Steep five minutes. Sip while warm. BLACKFRIARS BALM FOR BUGS AND BOILS To subdue angry, itchy skin caused by insect bites. 1 drachm (0.75 tsp) castor oil 1 drachm (0.75 tsp) almond oil 10 drops tea tree oil 5 drops lavender oil In a 2.7 drachm (10 ml) glass rollerball vial, add the 4 oils. Fill to top with water and secure cap. Shake well before each use. Apply to itchy, uncomfortable skin. ROSEMARY BUTTER BISCUIT COOKIES A traditional shortbread. Savory yet sweet, and in no way sinister. 1 sprig fresh rosemary 1 ½ cup butter, salted 2⁄3cup white sugar 2 ¾ cup all-purpose flour Remove leaves from rosemary and finely chop (approximately 1 Tbsp or to taste). Soften butter; blend well with sugar. Add rosemary and flour; mix well until dough comes together. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Form dough into 1.25-inch balls; press gently into pans until 0.5-inch thick. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. Preheat oven to 375°F. Bake for 10–12 minutes, just until bottom edges are golden. Do not overbake. Cool at least 10 minutes. Makes 45 cookies.

But despite this work, it seems that very few people in the seventeenth century had any idea what a salt was. A 1636 book by Bernard Palissy, with the dreamy title How to Become Rich and the True Way in Which Every Man in France Could Grow and Multiply Their Treasury and Possessions, states that “sugar is a salt.” In listing all the “various salts,” Palissy includes “grape salt, which gives taste and flavor to wine.” It is not surprising that he concluded that it was impossible to list all the salts. In John Evelyn’s 1699 discourse on salads, he states that sugar is sometimes referred to as “Indian salt.” Apparently, there was little definition of salt other than as something made of white crystals.

We wanted to do French toast for the brunch, but acknowledged that it is a dangerous item for a special event where people might be dressed up. Patrick had an awesome recipe for the toast itself, using day-old Challah, melted vanilla ice cream as a main ingredient in the soaking liquid, and just a hint of sea salt. I had come up with an alternative to the sticky drippy-down-your-front maple syrup problem by mixing equal parts maple sugar and demerara sugar, and having him sprinkle this on top of the already-cooked French toast and doing a quick brûlée under the broiler; giving the toast a thin crackly maple sugar shell. All the sweet and smoky taste, nothing ruining your mother-in-law's favorite silk blouse.

HONEY LOAF (Makes 2 loaves) 3½ cups sifted flour ¼ teaspoon salt 1½ teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon nutmeg ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves ½ teaspoon ginger 4 eggs ¾ cup sugar 4 tablespoons canola oil 2 cups dark honey ½ cup brewed coffee 1½ cups walnuts, chopped Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. In a large bowl, beat eggs, gradually adding sugar, until light in color and thick. Beat in oil, honey, and coffee. Stir in flour mixture and nuts. Oil two 9-inch loaf pans and turn batter into them. Bake for 50 minutes or until browned, and when tester comes out clean. Cool on rack before removing from pan. FROM

In her most recent project, she tested 356 children, ages five to ten, who were brought to Monell to determine their “bliss point” for sugar31. The bliss point is the precise amount of sweetness—no more, no less—that makes food and drink most enjoyable. She was finishing up this project in the fall of 2010 when she agreed to show me some of the methods she had developed. Before we got started, I did a little research on the term bliss point itself. Its origins are murky, having some roots in economic theory. In relation to sugar, however, the term appears to have been coined in the 1970s by a Boston mathematician named Joseph Balintfy, who used computer modeling to predict eating behavior. The concept has obsessed the food industry ever since.

I go to one of my favorite Instagram profiles, the.korean.vegan, and I watch her last video, in which she makes peach-topped tteok. The Korean vegan, Joanne, cooks while talking about various things in her life. As she splits open a peach, she explains why she gave up meat. As she adds lemon juice, brown sugar, nutmeg, a pinch of salt, cinnamon, almond extract, maple syrup, then vegan butter and vegan milk and sifted almond and rice flour, she talks about how she worried about whitewashing her diet, about denying herself a fundamental part of her culture, and then about how others don't see her as authentically Korean since she is a vegan. I watch other videos by Joanne, soothed by her voice into feeling human myself, and into craving the experiences of love she talks of and the food she cooks as she does. I go to another profile, and watch a person's hands delicately handle little knots of shirataki noodles and wash them in cold water, before placing them in a clear oden soup that is already filled with stock-boiled eggs, daikon, and pure white triangles of hanpen. Next, they place a cube of rice cake in a little deep-fried tofu pouch, and seal the pouch with a toothpick so it looks like a tiny drawstring bag; they place the bag in with the other ingredients. "Every winter my mum made this dish for me," a voice says over the video, "just like how every winter my grandma made it for my mum when she was a child." The person in the video is half Japanese like me, and her name is Mei; she appears on the screen, rosy cheeked, chopsticks in her hand, and sits down with her dish and eats it, facing the camera. Food means so much in Japan. Soya beans thrown out of temples in February to tempt out demons before the coming of spring bring the eater prosperity and luck; sushi rolls eaten facing a specific direction decided each year bring luck and fortune to the eater; soba noodles consumed at New Year help time progress, connecting one year to the next; when the noodles snap, the eater can move on from bad events from the last year. In China too, long noodles consumed at New Year grant the eater a long life. In Korea, when rice-cake soup is eaten at New Year, every Korean ages a year, together, in unison. All these things feel crucial to East Asian identity, no matter which country you are from.

Because this tea kaiseki would be served so soon after breakfast, it would be considerably smaller than a traditional one. As a result, Stephen had decided to serve each mini tea kaiseki in a round stacking bento box, which looked like two miso soup bowls whose rims had been glued together. After lifting off the top dome-shaped cover the women would behold a little round tray sporting a tangle of raw squid strips and blanched scallions bound in a tahini-miso sauce pepped up with mustard. Underneath this seafood "salad" they would find a slightly deeper "tray" packed with pearly white rice garnished with a pink salted cherry blossom. Finally, under the rice would be their soup bowl containing the wanmori, the apex of the tea kaiseki. Inside the dashi base we had placed a large ball of fu (wheat gluten) shaped and colored to resemble a peach. Spongy and soft, it had a savory center of ground duck and sweet lily bulb. A cluster of fresh spinach leaves, to symbolize the budding of spring, accented the "peach," along with a shiitake mushroom cap simmered in mirin, sake, and soy. When the women had finished their meals, we served them tiny pink azuki bean paste sweets. David whipped them a bowl of thick green tea. For the dry sweets eaten before his thin tea, we served them flower-shaped refined sugar candies tinted pink. After all the women had left, Stephen, his helper, Mark, and I sat down to enjoy our own "Girl's Day" meal. And even though I was sitting in the corner of Stephen's dish-strewn kitchen in my T-shirt and rumpled khakis, that soft peach dumpling really did taste feminine and delicate.

HOPE CAKES 2 tablespoons butter 8 ounces cream cheese 3 bananas 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups white sugar 2 eggs, refrigerated 3 cups flour ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt Topping ½ cup flour ¼ cup oats ¼ cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon ¼ cup butter ½ cup nuts Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a big baking pan with butter. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, cream cheese, bananas, vanilla, and white sugar. Add the eggs. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, mixing all the while. Pour the batter into the pan. To make the topping, in a medium bowl combine flour, oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon, then mix in the butter and the nuts. Using a fork, gently lay the topping on the batter. Bake in oven for 40 minutes, or until an impossible thing comes true.

GERMAN APPLE PANCAKE ••• 2 tart cooking apples (Granny Smiths are good) 1 lemon ½ stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter ¼ cup brown sugar ½ teaspoon cinnamon Small grating of nutmeg 3 eggs ¾ cup flour Pinch of salt 1 tablespoon sugar 1 cup milk Sugar for sprinkling Rum or cognac (optional) Peel the apples, core them, and slice them thinly. Shower them with about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Melt half the butter (2 tablespoons) in a medium skillet, and stir in the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the apple slices and cook over medium-high heat for about 8 minutes, until they’ve become quite darkly caramelized and smell impossibly delicious. Remove them from the heat. Meanwhile, beat the eggs. Gently whisk in the flour, salt, and sugar. Add the milk. The batter should be thin. Melt a couple of teaspoons of butter in an 8-inch skillet, and when it’s hot, pour in a third of a cup of batter, tilting the pan so that it covers the entire surface, making a thin crepe. Cook just until set, about 2 minutes. Evenly distribute a third of the apples over the crepe, pour another third of a cup of batter over the apples, then turn the pancake (this is easiest if you have two pancake turners) and allow the bottom to brown. Turn out onto a large plate, sprinkle generously with sugar, and roll the pancake up like a jelly roll. Sprinkle with a bit more sugar and, if you like, a splash of lemon juice. Repeat this until you have three plump rolled pancakes. If you want to flame your creations, lightly warm a few tablespoons of rum or cognac for each pancake in a pan, add the pancakes, spoon the liquor over the top, and set the pancakes on fire. Serves 6

Caramel Apple Bundt Cake For people. Cake 1½ cups flour 1 cup pecans 2 teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda 1½ teaspoons cinnamon ¾ teaspoon nutmeg ¾ teaspoon cloves ¼ teaspoon salt 2 medium apples, peeled and cored ½ cup sugar + extra 1¼ sticks (10 tablespoons) butter at room temperature + extra for greasing the pan 1 cup packed dark brown sugar 2 large eggs at room temperature 1 cup applesauce Preheat oven to 350ºF. Place the flour, pecans, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt in a food processor and pulse until the pecans are fine. Transfer the flour mixture to a bowl. Insert the grating disk and grate the apples. Take 1 tablespoon of sugar out of the plain sugar and set it aside. Cream the butter with the sugars. Beat in the eggs. Alternate adding the applesauce and the flour mixture until completely combined. Stir in the grated apples. Grease the Bundt pan liberally. Sprinkle the extra sugar on the butter. You may need another tablespoon of sugar for full coverage. Use a cooking spoon to ladle the batter into the Bundt pan and smooth the top. Bake 40 minutes or until it begins to pull away from the sides and a cake tester comes out clean. Allow to rest on a baking rack about 5 to 10 minutes. Loosen the edges, and flip onto the rack. When cool, top with caramel. Caramel 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 cup packed dark brown sugar ¼ cup heavy cream Place the ingredients in a deep microwave-safe dish (I used a 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup). Microwave in short bursts, stirring occasionally, until it bubbles up and the sugar melts. (You may find that you even like it if the sugar doesn’t melt!) Swedish Tea Ring For people.

1¼ cups white wine vinegar 1¾ cups water 2½ tablespoons sugar ½ bay leaf 4 thyme sprigs A pinch of dried chile flakes ½ teaspoon coriander seeds 2 whole cloves 4 garlic cloves, halved 1½ teaspoons sea salt Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add small or chopped vegetables to the brine, cooking each type of vegetable separately and removing them when they are cooked but still a little crisp. Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and set them aside to cool to room temperature. Once all the vegetables are cooked and cooled, allow the brine to cool as well. Stir the vegetables together gently in a large bowl, then transfer to jars or other covered containers, cover with the cooled pickle brine, and refrigerate. You can keep this basic brine in your refrigerator and reheat it to make fresh pickles when you are inspired by a trip to the farmers’ market.

I have salt and sugar at home, but I'm paying eighty bucks to have ya'll rub it on my feet. If I want to yell at my sister-in-law about that fact that I just found out I am pregnant, and how my boyfriend, the recovering alcoholic, is still fragile and I don't know if he'll make it, whether I'm going to miscarry like I did before, and a whole other list of shit, like, hell, I don't know, what I'm going to be when I grow up, then I will! And maybe, just maybe, for the eighty bucks you're charging me, I can yell a bit." The woman only blinked as Lacey snickered beside her. "Keep it down and congratulations." "Thanks, and I'll try," Kacey said as the woman walked away. She then turned to Lacey, who was fully laughing at this point. "Really> This is not funny." "Oh, I'm cracking up because if you're already this emotional and bitchy, God help us all once you reach the third Trimester.

Snacks at sleepovers are a must. Try this one next time your parents forget to stock the snack cupboard. Supplies: brown paper lunch bag stapler measuring cup microwave Ingredients: ¼ cup popcorn kernels 2 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp chocolate chips 2 tbsp butter or margarine pinch of salt Pour the popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag then fold the top of the bag ¼ of an inch, twice. Secure two staples (trust me, I Googled it!) at the folded part to seal the bag shut. Lay the bag flat in the microwave and cook on HIGH for about 1:45 (one minute and forty-five seconds, people!). Each microwave is different, though, so you may need to adjust the time. Meanwhile, add the brown sugar, chocolate chips, butter/margarine and salt to a microwave-safe measuring cup. Cook on HIGH for about 15 seconds or until the gooey buttery-chocolaty mixture is melted. Mix well with a fork then pour it over the popcorn.

Like it or not, we are slightly fat, furless, bipedal primates who crave sugar, salt, fat, and starch, but we are still adapted to eating a diverse diet of fibrous fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, tubers, and lean meat. We enjoy rest and relaxation, but our bodies are still those of endurance athletes evolved to walk many miles a day and often run, as well as dig, climb, and carry. We love many comforts, but we are not well adapted to spend our days indoors in chairs, wearing supportive shoes, staring at books or screens for hours on end. As a result, billions of people suffer from diseases of affluence, novelty, and disuse that used to be rare or unknown. We then treat the symptoms of these diseases because it is easier, more profitable, and more urgent than treating their causes, many of which we don’t understand anyway. In doing so, we perpetuate a pernicious feedback loop—dysevolution—between culture and biology. Maybe

Now alongside Scovell, John eased preserved peaches out of galliot pots of syrup and picked husked walnuts from puncheons of salt. He clarified butter and poured it into rye-paste coffins. From the Master Cook, John learned to set creams with calves' feet, then isinglass, then hartshorn, pouring decoctions into egg-molds to set and be placed in nests of shredded lemon peel. To make cabbage cream he let the thick liquid clot, lifted off the top layer, folded it then repeated the process until the cabbage was sprinkled with rose water and dusted with sugar, ginger and nutmeg. He carved apples into animals and birds. The birds themselves he roasted, minced and folded into beaten egg whites in a foaming forcemeat of fowls. John boiled, coddled, simmered and warmed. He roasted, seared, fried and braised. He poached stock-fish and minced the meats of smoked herrings while Scovell's pans steamed with ancient sauces: black chawdron and bukkenade, sweet and sour egredouce, camelade and peppery gauncil. For the feasts above he cut castellations into pie-coffins and filled them with meats dyed in the colors of Sir William's titled guests. He fashioned palaces from wafers of spiced batter and paste royale, glazing their walls with panes of sugar. For the Bishop of Carrboro they concocted a cathedral. 'Sprinkle salt on the syrup,' Scovell told him, bent over the chafing dish in his chamber. A golden liquor swirled in the pan. 'Very slowly.' 'It will taint the sugar,' John objected. But Scovell shook his head. A day later they lifted off the cold clear crust and John split off a sharp-edged shard. 'Salt,' he said as it slid over his tongue. But little by little the crisp flake sweetened on his tongue. Sugary juices trickled down his throat. He turned to the Master Cook with a puzzled look. 'Brine floats,' Scovell said. 'Syrup sinks.' The Master Cook smiled. 'Patience, remember? Now, to the glaze...

PORK AND BEANS BREAD Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 15-ounce can of pork and beans (I used Van Camp’s) 4 eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 cup vegetable oil (not canola, not olive—use vegetable oil) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups white (granulated) sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt 1 and ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (measure after chopping—I used pecans) 3 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) Prepare your pans. Spray two 9-inch by 5-inch by 3-inch-deep loaf pans with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray.   Don’t drain the pork and beans. Pour them into a food processor or a blender, juice and all, and process them until they’re pureed smooth with no lumps.   Place the beaten eggs in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the pureed pork and beans and mix them in well.   Add the vegetable oil and the vanilla extract. Mix well.   Add the sugar and mix it in. Then mix in the baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir until everything is incorporated.   Stir in the chopped nuts.   Add the flour in one-cup increments, stirring after each addition.   Spoon half of the batter into one loaf pan and the other half of the batter into the second loaf pan.   Bake at 350 degrees F. for 50 to 60 minutes. Test the bread with a long food pick inserted in the center. If it comes out sticky, the bread needs to bake a bit more. If it comes out dry, remove the pans from the oven and place them on a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes.   Run the sharp blade of a knife around inside of all four sides of the pan to loosen the bread, and then tip it out onto the wire rack.   Cool the bread completely, and then wrap it in plastic wrap. At this point the bread can be frozen in a freezer bag for up to 3 months.   Hannah and Lisa’s Note: If you don’t tell anyone the name of this bread, they probably won’t ever guess it’s made with pork and beans.

Nut Cake 3½ cups plain flour, not self-rising ½ pound salted butter, room temperature 3 cups sugar 6 large eggs 1 cup heavy whipping cream 3 cups chopped pecans 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon lemon extract Preheat oven to 325°F. Generously grease a tube pan with Crisco and lightly flour. Sift flour three times and set aside. Cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time. Beat only until each disappears. Blend in 1 cup flour followed by ½ cup whipping cream. Repeat with 1 cup flour then ½ cup whipping cream. Add 1 cup flour. Coat pecans with remaining ½ cup flour. Carefully fold pecans into batter. Fold in vanilla and lemon extracts. Add batter to pan, level it, and knock bottom of pan on the edge of the counter, once, to get out the air bubbles. Place in the center of the oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until it’s medium brown on top and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.* Remove from oven. Wait 10 minutes and invert on a cake plate. Do not cover until cool to touch.

GRAHAM CRACKER CAKE Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. ½ cup salted butter, softened (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) ¾ cup white (granulated) sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 large eggs 2 teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt 2 and ¼ cups graham cracker crumbs 1 cup whole milk 1 cup chopped nuts (measure after chopping—I used walnuts)   8 and ¾ ounce can crushed pineapple WITH juice ¼ cup white (granulated) sugar Hannah’s Note: You can either crush your own graham cracker crumbs by placing graham crackers in a bag and rolling the bag with a rolling pin, crushing them in the food processor by using the steel blade, or you can buy ready-made graham cracker crumbs at the store. Spray a 9-inch square baking pan with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray and sprinkle the inside with flour. Shake out excess flour. You may also use Pam spray for baking, which contains a coating of flour. Both will work well. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugar, adding the sugar gradually with the mixer on MEDIUM speed. Add the vanilla extract and mix it in thoroughly. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating the first egg before you add the second. Add the baking powder and the salt, beating until they’re thoroughly mixed. Mix in half of the graham cracker crumbs with half of the milk. Beat well. Mix in the other half of the graham cracker crumbs with the remaining half of the milk. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the chopped nuts by hand. Pour the Graham Cracker Cake batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Bake your cake at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Take your cake out of the oven, turn off the oven, and place the cake on a wire rack to await its topping. In a saucepan on the stovetop, combine the contents of the can of crushed pineapple and juice with the white sugar. Cook the pineapple mixture over MEDIUM HIGH heat, stirring constantly until it boils. Turn the burner down to LOW and cook the pineapple mixture for an additional 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Pour the hot pineapple sauce over the hot cake. Cool in the pan. Serve the Graham Cracker Cake with sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

... If I am correct... ... the secret to this sauce is honey and balsamic vinegar ." "Got it one, sir! Both ingredients have a mild sweetness that adds a layer of richness to the dish. The tartness of the vinegar ties it all together, ensuring the sweetness isn't too cloying and giving the overall dish a clean, pure aftertaste. The guide told me that Hokkaido bears really love their honey... ... so I tried all kinds of methods to add it to my recipe!" "Is that how he gave his sauce a rich, clean flavor powerful enough to cause the Gifting? Unbelievable! That's our Master Yukihira!" Something doesn't add up. A little honey and vinegar can't be enough to create that level of aftertaste. There has to be something else to it. But what? "...?! I got it! I know what you did! You caramelized the honey!" CARAMELIZATION Sugars oxidize when heated, giving them a golden brown color and a nutty flavor. Any food that contains sugar can be caramelized, making caramelization an important technique in everything from French cooking to dessert making. "I started out by heating the honey until it was good and caramelized. Then I added some balsamic vinegar to stretch it and give it a little thickness. Once that was done, I poured it over some diced onions and garlic that I'd sautéed in another pan, added some schisandra berries and then let it simmer. After it had reduced, I poured bear stock over it and seasoned it with a little salt... The result was a deep, rich sauce perfect for emphasizing the natural punch of my Bear-Meat Menchi Katsu!" "Oho! You musta come up with that idea while I was relaxing with my cup o' chai! Not bad, Yukihira-chin! Not bad at all! Don'tcha think?" "Y-yes, sir..." Plus, there is no debating how well honey pairs well with bear meat. The Chinese have long considered bear paws a great delicacy... ... because of the common belief that the mellow sweetness of the honey soaks into a bear's paw as it sticks it into beehives and licks the honey off of it. What a splendid idea pairing honey with bear meat, each accentuating the other... ... then using caramelization and balsamic vinegar to mellow it to just the right level. It's a masterful example of using both flavor subtraction and enhancement in the same dish!

Flour on the floor makes my sandals slip and I tumble into your arms. Too hot to bake this morning but blueberries begged me to fold them into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb plotted a whole pie. The windows are blown open and a thickfruit tang sneaks through the wire screen and into the home of the scowly lady who lives next door. Yesterday, a man in the city was rescued from his apartment which was filled with a thousand rats. Something about being angry because his pet python refused to eat. He let the bloom of fur rise, rise over the little gnarly blue rug, over the coffee table, the kitchen countertops and pip through each cabinet, snip at the stumpy bags of sugar, the cylinders of salt. Our kitchen is a riot of pots, wooden spoons, melted butter. So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet the angry voices next door, if only for a brief whiff. I want our summers to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked with love, a table overflowing with baked goods warming the already warm air. After all the pots are stacked, the goodies cooled, and all the counters wiped clean—let us never be rescued from this mess.

FRIENDSHIP BREAD STARTER 3 cups sugar 3 cups flour 3 cups milk Day 1: In a nonmetal bowl, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour and 1 cup milk. Stir with wooden or plastic spoon (don’t use metal spoon or electric mixer). Cover bowl loosely with a tea towel. Keep at room temperature, not in fridge. Stir mixture once each day on days 2, 3 and 4. Day 5: Add 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour and 1 cup milk, and stir. Stir mixture once each day on days 6, 7 and 8. Day 10: Add 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour and 1 cup milk. Remove 3 cups of mixture and give 1 cup each to three friends, with instructions. Save remaining starter for yourself. FRIENDSHIP BREAD 1 cup starter 1 cup oil 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup milk 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 2 cups flour 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 3 eggs 1 large box instant vanilla pudding mix Combine starter with all the other ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Grease 2 large loaf pans and dust with mixture of cinnamon and sugar. Spoon batter into pans. Coat top of batter with butter and sprinkle with remaining cinnamon/sugar mixture. Bake at 325°F for 50-75 minutes, or until done.

CHOCOLATE CHIP CRUNCH COOKIES Preheat oven to 375° F., rack in the middle position. 1 cup butter (2 sticks, melted) 1 cup white sugar 1 cup brown sugar 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons vanilla 2 beaten eggs (you can beat them up with a fork) 2½ cups flour (not sifted) 2 cups crushed corn flakes (just crush them with your hands) 1 to 2 cups chocolate chips Melt butter, add the sugars and stir. Add soda, salt, vanilla, and beaten eggs. Mix well. Then add flour and stir it in. Add crushed corn flakes and chocolate chips and mix it all thoroughly.   Form dough into walnut-sized balls with your fingers and place on a greased cookie sheet, 12 to a standard sheet. Press them down slightly with a floured or greased spatula. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes, then remove to a wire rack until they’re completely cool. (The rack is important—it makes them crisp.)   Yield: 6 to 8 dozen, depending on cookie size.   (These cookies have been Andrea’s favorites since high school.)   Hannah’s Note: If these cookies spread out too much in the oven, reduce temp. to 350° F. and do not flatten before baking.

too little—and complex, because the manufacturing and marketing of food products has changed dramatically. Dr. David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has extensively documented how food manufacturers and restaurant and fast food chains carefully combine fats, sugar, and salt in precise ratios that reach the “bliss point”—which means they trigger brain systems that increase the desire to eat more, even after our stomachs are full. On a global basis, the World Health Organization has found a pattern of increased consumption of “energy-dense foods that are high in fat, salt and sugars but low in vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients.” Hyper-urbanization has separated more people from reliable sources of fresh fruit and vegetables. Quality calories in fruits and vegetables now cost ten times as much as calories per gram in sweets and foods abundant in starch. In a report for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Arielle Traub documented the increase from 1985 to 2000 in the price of fresh fruits and vegetables by 40 percent, while prices of fats declined by 15 percent and sugared soft drinks by 25 percent.

1¾ cups flour 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 teaspoon nutmeg ½ teaspoon ginger 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda 2 eggs ¾ cup honey 4 tablespoons melted butter ¼ cup oil (vegetable or canola) 1 cup milk (buttermilk can also be used) 1½ teaspoons vanilla Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside. In another bowl, whisk eggs, honey, butter, oil, milk, and vanilla. Fold dry ingredients into wet and stir until just combined. Grease a donut pan or cupcake tin and fill halfway with batter. (If you do not have a donut pan, use a cupcake/muffin pan. Create small cylinders of tinfoil, place one in the middle of each cup, and spray each cylinder with cooking oil. If using the cupcake tin with aluminum foil cylinders, transfer batter to a ziplock bag and cut a hole to pipe batter around cylinders.) Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. HONEY GLAZE ¼ cup melted butter 1 cup confectioners’ sugar ½ teaspoon vanilla ⅓ cup hot water 1 teaspoon honey Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Dip warm donuts in glaze. You can omit the glaze and just drizzle honey on top and, if you like, sprinkle with sea salt.

TICKLED PINK LEMONADE COOKIES   Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. Hannah’s 1st Note: This recipe is from Lisa’s Aunt Nancy. It’s a real favorite down at The Cookie Jar because the cookies are different, delicious, and very pretty. ½ cup salted, softened butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) (do not substitute) ½ cup white (granulated) sugar ½ teaspoon baking powder ¼ teaspoon baking soda 1 large egg, beaten cup frozen pink or regular lemonade concentrate, thawed 3 drops of liquid red food coloring (I used ½ teaspoon of Betty Crocker food color gel) 1 and ¾ cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the softened butter with the sugar until the resulting mixture is light and fluffy. Mix in the baking powder and baking soda. Beat until they’re well-combined. Mix in the beaten egg and the lemonade concentrate. Add 3 drops of red food coloring (or ½ teaspoon of the food color gel, if you used that). Add the flour, a half-cup or so at a time, beating after each addition. (You don’t have to be exact—just don’t put in all the flour at once.) If the resulting cookie dough is too sticky to work with, refrigerate it for an hour or so. (Don’t forget to turn off your oven if you do this. You’ll have to preheat it again once you’re ready to bake.) Drop the cookies by teaspoonful, 2 inches apart, on an UNGREASED cookie sheet. Bake the Tickled Pink Lemonade Cookies at 350 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. (Mine took 11 minutes.) Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Then use a metal spatula to remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. FROSTING FOR PINK LEMONADE COOKIES   2 Tablespoons salted butter, softened 2 cups powdered sugar (no need to sift unless it’s got big lumps) 2 teaspoons frozen pink or regular lemonade concentrate, thawed 3 to 4 teaspoons milk (water will also work for a less creamy frosting) 2 drops red food coloring (or enough red food color gel to turn the frosting pink) Beat the butter and the powdered sugar together. Mix in the lemonade concentrate. Beat in the milk, a bit at a time, until the frosting is almost thin enough to spread, but not quite. Mix in the 2 drops of red food coloring. Stir until the color is uniform. If your frosting is too thin, add a bit more powdered sugar. If your frosting is too thick, add a bit more milk or water.

VICTORIAN FUNERAL BISCUITS Adapted from the third edition of Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book, published in 1862. ½ c sugar ½ c salted butter, softened 1 c molasses ½ c warm water 2 tbs fresh minced ginger 2 ¼ c flour ½ tsp baking soda In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Add the molasses, water, and ginger, and beat until combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda. Add flour to molasses mixture and use electric mixer to combine well. Dough will be stiff. Split dough into two balls. Knead each dough ball several times to remove any air bubbles. Form dough into two even logs, approximately 8 inches long. Wrap each log tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for several hours until firm. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Slice each log of dough into ¼-inch rounds and place one inch apart on baking sheets. Each dough log makes approximately 25 biscuits. If desired, use a knife or stamp to impress an image onto the biscuits. Bake 20 minutes. Let cool completely (biscuits should be crunchy). Wrap several biscuits in wax paper and secure with a black wax stamp or black string.

HONEY-GLAZED SPICED DONUTS (Makes a dozen) 1¾ cups flour 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 teaspoon nutmeg ½ teaspoon ginger 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda 2 eggs ¾ cup honey 4 tablespoons melted butter ¼ cup oil (vegetable or canola) 1 cup milk (buttermilk can also be used) 1½ teaspoons vanilla Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside. In another bowl, whisk eggs, honey, butter, oil, milk, and vanilla. Fold dry ingredients into wet and stir until just combined. Grease a donut pan or cupcake tin and fill halfway with batter. (If you do not have a donut pan, use a cupcake/muffin pan. Create small cylinders of tinfoil, place one in the middle of each cup, and spray each cylinder with cooking oil. If using the cupcake tin with aluminum foil cylinders, transfer batter to a ziplock bag and cut a hole to pipe batter around cylinders.) Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. HONEY GLAZE ¼ cup melted butter 1 cup confectioners’ sugar ½ teaspoon vanilla ⅓ cup hot water 1 teaspoon honey Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Dip warm donuts in glaze. You can omit the glaze and just drizzle honey on top and, if you like, sprinkle with sea salt.

JUMBO GINGERBREAD NUT MUFFINS Once you try these jumbo-size, nut- and oil-rich muffins, you will appreciate how filling they are. They are made with eggs, coconut oil, almonds, and other nuts and seeds, so they are also very healthy. You can also add a schmear of cream cheese or a bit of unsweetened fruit butter for extra flavor. To fill out a lunch, add a chunk of cheese, some fresh berries or sliced fruit, or an avocado. While walnuts and pumpkin seeds are called for in the recipe to add crunch, you can substitute your choice of nut or seed, such as pecans, pistachios, or sunflower seeds. A jumbo muffin pan is used in this recipe, but a smaller muffin pan can be substituted. If a smaller pan is used, reduce baking time by about 5 minutes, though always assess doneness by inserting a wooden pick into the center of a muffin and making sure it comes out clean. If you make the smaller size, pack 2 muffins for lunch. Makes 6 4 cups almond meal/flour 1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut ½ cup chopped walnuts ½ cup pumpkin seeds Sweetener equivalent to ¾ cup sugar 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg ½ teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon sea salt 3 eggs ½ cup coconut oil, melted 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ½ cup water Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place paper liners in a 6-cup jumbo muffin pan or grease the cups with coconut or other oil. In a large bowl, combine the almond meal/flour, coconut, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sweetener, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Mix well. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs. Stir in the coconut oil, vanilla, and water. Pour the egg mixture into the almond meal mixture and combine thoroughly. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Per serving (1 muffin): 893 calories, 25 g protein, 26 g carbohydrates, 82 g total fat, 30 g saturated fat, 12 g fiber, 333 mg sodium BRATWURST WITH BELL PEPPERS AND SAUERKRAUT Living in Milwaukee has turned me on to the flavors of German-style bratwurst, but any spicy sausage (such as Italian, chorizo, or andouille) will do just fine in this recipe. The quality of the brat or sausage makes the dish, so choose your favorite. The spices used in various sausages will vary, so I kept the spices and flavors of the sauerkraut mixture light. However, this makes the choice of bratwurst or sausage the crucial component of this dish. You can also add ground coriander, nutmeg, and

Cheddar Cheese Grits Ingredients: 2 cups whole milk 2 cups water 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 cup coarse ground cornmeal 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 4 ounces sharp Cheddar, shredded Directions: Place the milk, water, and salt into a large, heavy-gauge pan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Once the milk mixture comes to a boil, gradually add the cornmeal while continually stirring. Once all of the cornmeal has been incorporated, decrease the heat to low and cover. Remove lid and stir frequently, every few minutes, to prevent grits from sticking or forming lumps; make sure to get into corners of the pan when stirring. Cook for 20 to 25 minutes or until mixture is creamy. Remove from the heat, add the pepper and butter, and whisk to combine. Once the butter is melted, gradually whisk in the cheese a little at a time. Serve immediately. Sweet Potato Casserole Ingredients: For the sweet potatoes 3 cups (1 29-ounce can) sweet potatoes, drained ½ cup melted butter ⅓ cup milk ¾ cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 beaten eggs salt to taste For the topping: 5 tablespoons melted butter ⅔ cup brown sugar ⅔ cup flour 1 cup pecan pieces Instructions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mash the sweet potatoes and add the melted butter, milk, sugar, vanilla, beaten eggs, and a pinch of salt. Stir until incorporated. Pour into a shallow baking dish or a cast iron skillet. Combine the butter, brown sugar, flour, and pecan pieces in a small bowl, using your fingers to create moist crumbs. Sprinkle generously over the casserole. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until the edges pull away from the sides of the pan and the top is golden brown. Let stand for the mixture to cool and solidify a little bit before serving. Southern Fried Chicken Ingredients: 4 pounds chicken pieces 1 1/2 cups milk 2 large eggs 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons salt 2 teaspoons pepper 3 cups vegetable oil salt to taste Preparation: Rinse chicken; pat dry and then set aside. Combine milk and eggs in a bowl; whisk to blend well. In a large heavy-duty plastic food storage bag, combine the flour, salt, and pepper. Dip a chicken piece in the milk mixture; let excess drip off into bowl. Put a few chicken pieces in the food storage bag and shake lightly to coat thoroughly. Remove to a plate and repeat with remaining chicken pieces. Heat oil to 350°. Fry chicken, a few pieces at a time, for about 10 minutes on each side, or until golden brown and cooked through. Chicken breasts will take a little less time than other pieces. Pierce with a fork to see if juices run clear to check for doneness. With a slotted spoon, move to paper towels to drain; sprinkle with salt.

English Gingerbread Cake Serves: 12 to 16 Baking Time: 50 to 60 minutes Kyle Cathie, editor for the British version of The Cake Bible (and now a publisher), informed me in no uncertain terms that a book could not be called a cake "bible" in England if it did not contain the beloved gingerbread cake. When I went to England to retest all the cakes using British flour and ingredients, I developed this gingerbread recipe. Now that I have tasted it, I quite agree with Kyle. It is a moist spicy cake with an intriguing blend of buttery, lemony, wheaty, and treacly flavors. Cut into squares and decorated with pumpkin faces, it makes a delightful "treat" for Halloween. Batter Volume Ounce Gram unsalted butter (65° to 75°F/19° to 23°C) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) 4 113 golden syrup or light corn syrup 1¼ cups (10 fluid ounces) 15 425 dark brown sugar, preferably Muscovado ¼ cup, firmly packed 2 60 orange marmalade 1 heaping tablespoon 1.5 40 2 large eggs, at room temperature ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (3 fluid ounces) 3.5 100 milk 2/3 cup (5.3 fluid ounces) 5.6 160 cake flour (or bleached all-purpose flour) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (or 1 cup), sifted into the cup and leveled off 4 115 whole wheat flour 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon (lightly spooned into the cup) 4 115 baking powder 1½ teaspoons . . cinnamon 1 teaspoon . . ground ginger 1 teaspoon . . baking soda ½ teaspoon . . salt pinch . . Special Equipment One 8 by 2-inch square cake pan or 9 by 2-inch round pan (see Note), wrapped with a cake strip, bottom coated with shortening, topped with a parchment square (or round), then coated with baking spray with flour Preheat the Oven Twenty minutes or more before baking, set an oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F/160°C. Mix the Liquid Ingredients In a small heavy saucepan, stir together the butter, golden syrup, sugar, and marmalade over medium-low heat until melted and uniform in color. Set aside uncovered until just barely warm, about 10 minutes. Whisk in the eggs and milk. Make the Batter In a large bowl, whisk together the cake flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter mixture, stirring with a large silicone spatula or spoon just until smooth and the consistency of thick soup. Using the silicone spatula, scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the Cake Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a wire cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center. The cake should start to shrink from the sides of the pan only after removal from the oven. Cool the Cake Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. While the cake is cooling, make the syrup.

I make a great fried egg sandwich. Want to try it?" Chloe stared at her with an encouraging smile until Josey finally laughed and nodded. "Okay." "Great!" Chloe put on a pair of disposable gloves, then she took butter and two eggs from the under-the-counter fridge. "Go ahead and take a business card. You can call me here if you want. And the bottom number is my cell." She plopped a pat of butter onto the grill. When the butter melted, she cracked the eggs into it, close enough for their whites to merge. While they sizzled, she buttered two slices of sourdough bread and put them on the grill. "I didn't know this place was called Red's," Josey said, reading the card. Chloe smiled when she thought of her great-grandfather. "Another family tradition. My great-grandfather had red hair. So did my mother." Chloe sprinkled the eggs with salt and pepper and a pinch of dill, then turned them over with her spatula. She flipped the quickly toasting bread too. She'd spent her childhood watching her great-grandfather do this, and here at the shop was the only time she felt him near anymore. "Do you want this for here or to go?" "To go." Chloe sprinkled a little more salt and pepper on the eggs, made sure the yolks had firmed ever so slightly, then topped them with cheese. She let the cheese melt before scooping the eggs up and putting them on the buttered sourdough.

CAKE whole black peppercorns whole cloves whole cardamom 1 cinnamon stick 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt 3 large eggs 1 large egg yolk 1 cup sour cream 1½ sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 cup sugar 2 large pieces fresh ginger root (¼ cup, tightly packed, when finely grated) zest from 2 to 3 oranges (1½ teaspoons finely grated) Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 6-cup Bundt pan. Grind your peppercorns, cloves, and cardamom and measure out ¼ teaspoon of each. (You can use pre-ground spices, but the cake won’t taste as good.) Grind your cinnamon stick and measure out 1 teaspoon. (Again, you can use ground cinnamon if you must.) Whisk the flour with the baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt in a small bowl. In another small bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolk into the sour cream. Set aside. Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer until the mixture is light, fluffy, and almost white. This should take about 3 minutes. Grate the ginger root—this is a lot of ginger—and the orange zest. Add them to the butter/sugar mixture. Beat the flour mixture and the egg mixture, alternating between the two, into the butter until each addition is incorporated. The batter should be as luxurious as mousse. Spoon batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 40 minutes, until cake is golden and a wooden skewer comes out clean. Remove to a rack and cool in the pan for 10 minutes. SOAK ½ cup bourbon 1½ tablespoons sugar While the cake cools in its pan, simmer the bourbon and the sugar in a small pot for about 4 minutes. It should reduce to about ⅓ cup. While the cake is still in the pan, brush half the bourbon mixture onto its exposed surface (the bottom of the cake) with a pastry brush. Let the syrup soak in for a few minutes, then turn the cake out onto a rack. Gently brush the remaining mixture all over the cake.

There's a million dark little corners in Baytowne for you two to snuggle-" "Ohmysweetgoodness, Chloe, stop!" I giggle and shiver at the same time and accidentally imagine walking around The Village in Baytowne Wharf with Galen. The Village is exactly that-a sleepy little village of tourist shops in the middle of a golf-course resort. During the daytime anyway. At night though...that's when the dance club wakes up and opens its doors to all the sunburned partiers roaming the cobblestoned walkways with their daiquiris. Galen would look great under the twinling lights, even with a shirt on... Chloe smirks. "Uh-huh. Already thought of that, huh?" "No!" "Uh-huh. Then why are your cheeks as red as hot sauce?" "Nuh-uh!" I laugh. She does, too. "You want me to go ask him to meet us, then?" I nod. "How old do you think he is?" She shrugs. "Not creepy-old. Old enough for me to be jailboat, though. Lucky for him, you just turned eighteen...What the...did you just kick me?" She peers into the water, wswipes her hand over the surface as if clearing away something to see better. "Something just bumped me.” She cups her hands over her eyes and squints, leaving down so close that one good wave could slap her chin. The concentration on her face almost convinces me. Almost. But I grew up with Chloe-we’ve been next-door neighbors since the third grade. I’ve grown used to fake rubber snakes on my front porch, salt in the sugar dish, and Saran wrap spread across the toilet seat-well, actually, Mom fell prey to that one. The point is Chloe loves pranks almost as much as she loves running. And this is definitely a prank. “Yep, I kicked you,” I tell her, rolling my eyes. “But…but you can’t reach me, Emma. My legs are longer than yours, and I can’t reach you…There it is again! You didn’t feel that?” I didn’t feel it, but I did see her leg twitch. I wonder how long she’s been planning this. Since we got here? Since we boarded the plane in Jersey? Sine we turned twelve?

TIO TITO’S SUBLIME LIME BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. ½ cup finely-chopped coconut (measure after chopping—pack it down when you measure it) 1 cup cold salted butter (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound) ½ cup powdered (confectioners) sugar (no need to sift unless it’s got big lumps) 2 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it)   4 beaten eggs (just whip them up with a fork) 2 cups white (granulated) sugar cup lime juice (freshly squeezed is best) cup vodka (I used Tito’s Handmade Vodka) ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ cup all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it) Powdered (confectioners) sugar to sprinkle on top Coconut Crust: To get your half-cup of finely-chopped coconut, you will need to put approximately ¾ cup of shredded coconut in the bowl of a food processor. (The coconut will pack down more when it’s finely-chopped so you’ll need more of the stuff out of the package to get the half-cup you need for this recipe.) Chop the shredded coconut up finely with the steel blade. Pour it out into a bowl and measure out ½ cup, packing it down when you measure it. Return the half-cup of finely chopped coconut to the food processor. (You can also do this by spreading out the shredded coconut on a cutting board and chopping it finely by hand.) Cut each stick of butter into eight pieces and arrange them in the bowl of the food processor on top of the chopped coconut. Sprinkle the powdered sugar and the flour on top of that. Zoop it all up with an on-and-off motion of the steel blade until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Prepare a 9-inch by 13-inch rectangular cake pan by spraying it with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, for even easier removal, line the cake pan with heavy-duty foil and spray that with Pam. (Then all you have to do is lift the bar cookies out when they’re cool, peel off the foil, and cut them up into pieces.) Sprinkle the crust mixture into the prepared cake pan and spread it out with your fingers. Pat it down with a large spatula or with the palms of your impeccably clean hands. Hannah’s 1st Note: If your butter is a bit too soft, you may end up with a mass that balls up and clings to the food processor bowl. That’s okay. Just scoop it up and spread it out in the bottom of your prepared pan. (You can also do this in a bowl with a fork or a pie crust blender if you prefer.) Hannah’s 2nd Note: Don’t wash your food processor quite yet. You’ll need it to make the lime layer. (The same applies to your bowl and fork if you make the crust by hand.) Bake your coconut crust at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes. While your crust is baking, prepare the lime layer. Lime Layer: Combine the eggs with the white sugar. (You can use your food processor and the steel blade to do this, or you can do it by hand in a bowl.) Add the lime juice, vodka, salt, and baking powder. Mix thoroughly. Add the flour and mix until everything is incorporated. (This mixture will be runny—it’s supposed to be.) When your crust has baked for 15 minutes, remove the pan from the oven and set it on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. Don’t shut off the oven! Just leave it on at 350 degrees F. Pour the lime layer mixture on top of the crust you just baked. Use potholders to pick up the pan and return it to the oven. Bake your Sublime Lime Bar Cookies for an additional 30 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool your lime bars in the pan on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. When the pan has cooled to room temperature, cover it with foil and refrigerate it until you’re ready to serve. Cut the bars into brownie-sized pieces, place them on a pretty platter, and sprinkle them lightly with powdered sugar. Yum! Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you would prefer not to use alcohol in these bar cookies, simply substitute whole milk for the vodka. This recipe works both ways and I can honestly tell you that I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like my Sublime Lime Bar Cookies!

CRANBERRY SCONES Preheat oven to 425 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 3 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 2 Tablespoons white (granulated) sugar 2 teaspoons cream of tartar (important) 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt ½ cup softened salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) 2 large eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 cup unflavored yogurt (8 ounces) 1 cup sweetened dried cranberries (Craisins, or their equivalent) ½ cup whole milk Use a medium-size mixing bowl to combine the flour, sugar, cream of tartar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir them all up together. Cut in the salted butter just as you would for piecrust dough.   Hannah’s Note: If you have a food processor, you can use it for the first step. Cut ½ cup COLD salted butter into 8 chunks. Layer them with the dry ingredients in the bowl of the food processor. Process with the steel blade until the mixture has the texture of cornmeal. Transfer the mixture to a medium-sized mixing bowl and proceed to the second step.   Stir in the beaten eggs and the unflavored yogurt. Then add the sweetened dried cranberries and mix everything up together.   Add the milk and stir until everything is combined.   Drop the scones by soup spoonfuls onto a greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick baking spray) baking sheet, 12 large scones to a sheet. You can also drop these scones on parchment paper if you prefer.   Once the scones are on the baking sheet, you can wet your fingers and shape them into more perfect rounds. (If you do this and there are any leftovers, you can slice them in half and toast them for breakfast the next morning.)   Bake the scones at 425 degrees F. for 12 to 14 minutes, or until they’re golden brown on top.   Cool the scones for at least five minutes on the cookie sheet, and then remove them with a spatula. Serve them in a towel-lined basket so they stay warm.   Yield: Makes 12 large and delicious scones.

Grumpy Cutter’s Flaky Square Buttermilk Biscuits 3 cups of all-purpose flour 2 Tbsp sugar 1 tsp salt 4 tsp baking powder ½ tsp baking soda 2 sticks of butter, frozen (16 Tbsps) 1½ cups of buttermilk Preheat oven to 400°F. Prepare a baking sheet with a light spray of oil or cover with parchment. In a bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda. Grate the two sticks of butter and add to the dry ingredient mixture. Gently combine until the butter particles are coated. Next add the buttermilk and briefly fold it in. Transfer this dough to a floured spot for rolling and folding. Shape the dough into a square; then roll it out into a larger rectangle. Fold by hand into thirds using a bench scraper. Press the dough to seal it. Use the bench scraper to help shape the dough into flat edges. Turn it 90 degrees and repeat the process of rolling it out to a bigger rectangle and shaping it again. Repeat this process for a total of five times. The dough will become smoother as you go. After the last fold, and if time allows, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Otherwise, cut the remaining dough into squares and place 1 inch apart on the baking sheet. Brush the tops with melted butter. Bake at 400°F for 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool on a rack before serving—if you can wait that long. Tips to remember: • A buttermilk substitute can be made by adding one teaspoon vinegar to one and a half cups regular milk and letting it stand for a few minutes. • Handle the dough lightly—don’t overwork it. • Freeze the butter. It makes it easier to grate and distribute it throughout the dough. • For the very best results, your bowl and other utensils should be cold. • Rolling and folding the dough 5 times produces the flaky layers—again, don’t get too heavy handed. • Shaping the dough into a square and cutting it into squares avoids waste and rerolling (and overworking) the scraps. • If time allows, let the dough rest for 30 minutes wrapped in plastic wrap in the fridge before you cut into squares. This helps them rise tall in the oven without slumping or sliding. Makes about a dozen biscuits.

Mystery is the sugar in the cup,' said the Doctor. She picked up the container of white crystals the delicatessen had included in the picnic basket and poured a large dollop into her cognac. 'I don’t think I’d do that, Gunilla,' said Darcourt. 'Nobody wants you to do it, Simon. I am doing it, and that’s enough. That is the curse of life—when people want everybody to do the same wise, stupid thing. Listen: Do you want to know what life is? I’ll tell you. Life is a drama.' 'Shakespeare was ahead of you, Gunilla,' said Darcourt. '"All the world’s a stage,"' he declaimed. 'Shakespeare had the mind of a grocer,' said Gunilla. 'A poet, yes, but the soul of a grocer. He wanted to please people.' 'That was his trade,' said Darcourt. 'And it’s yours, too. Don’t you want this opera to please people?' 'Yes, I do. But that is not philosophy. Hoffmann was no philosopher. Now be quiet, everybody, and listen, because this is very important. Life is a drama. I know. I am a student of the divine Goethe, not that grocer Shakespeare. Life is a drama. But it is a drama we have never understood and most of us are very poor actors. That is why our lives seem to lack meaning and we look for meaning in toys—money, love, fame. Our lives seem to lack meaning but'—the Doctor raised a finger to emphasize her great revelation—'they don’t, you know.' She seemed to be having some difficulty in sitting upright, and her natural pallor had become ashen. 'You’re off the track, Nilla,' said Darcourt. 'I think we all have a personal myth. Maybe not much of a myth, but anyhow a myth that has its shape and its pattern somewhere outside our daily world.' 'This is all too deep for me,' said Yerko. 'I am glad I am a Gypsy and do not have to have a philosophy and an explanation for everything. Madame, are you not well?' Too plainly the Doctor was not well. Yerko, an old hand at this kind of illness, lifted her to her feet and gently, but quickly, took her to the door—the door to the outside parking lot. There were terrible sounds of whooping, retching, gagging, and pitiful cries in a language which must have been Swedish. When at last he brought a greatly diminished Gunilla back to the feast, he thought it best to prop her, in a seated position, against the wall. At once she sank sideways to the floor. 'That sugar was really salt,' said Darcourt. 'I knew it, but she wouldn’t listen. Her part in the great drama now seems to call for a long silence.' 'When she comes back to life I shall give her a shot of my personal plum brandy,' said Yerko. 'Will you have one now, Priest Simon?

ELEANOR OLSON’S OATMEAL COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound) salted butter, softened 1 cup brown sugar (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 1 cup white (granulated) sugar 2 eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 and ½ cups flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 3 cups quick-cooking oatmeal (I used Quaker Quick 1-Minute) ½ cup chopped nuts (optional) (Eleanor used walnuts) ½ cup raisins or another small, fairly soft sweet treat (optional) Hannah’s 1st Note: The optional fruit or sweet treats are raisins, any dried fruit chopped into pieces, small bites of fruit like pineapple or apple, or small soft candies like M&M’s, Milk Duds, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, or any other flavored chips. Lisa and I even used Sugar Babies once—they’re chocolate-covered caramel nuggets—and everyone was crazy about them. You can also use larger candies if you push one in the center of each cookie. Here, as in so many recipes, you are only limited by the selection your store has to offer and your own imagination. Hannah’s 2nd Note: These cookies are very quick and easy to make with an electric mixer. Of course you can also mix them by hand. Mix the softened butter, brown sugar, and white sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on HIGH speed until they’re light and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs and mix them in on MEDIUM speed. Turn the mixer down to LOW speed and add the vanilla extract, the salt, and the baking soda. Mix well. Add the flour in half-cup increments, beating on MEDIUM speed after each addition. With the mixer on LOW speed, add the oatmeal. Then add the optional nuts, and/or the optional fruit or sweet treat. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, take the bowl out of the mixer, and give the cookie dough a final stir by hand. Let it sit, uncovered, on the counter while you prepare your cookie sheets. Spray your cookie sheets with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, you can line them with parchment paper and spray that lightly with cooking spray. Get out a tablespoon from your silverware drawer. Wet it under the faucet so that the dough won’t stick to it, and scoop up a rounded Tablespoon of dough. Drop it in mounds on the cookie sheet, 12 mounds to a standard-size sheet. Bake Eleanor Olson’s Oatmeal Cookies at 350 degrees F. for 9 to 11 minutes, or until they’re nice and golden on top. (Mine took 10 minutes.) Yield: Approximately 3 dozen chewy, satisfying oatmeal cookies.

CUPPA’S ‘TO DIE FOR’ CINNAMON ROLLS Did the description of Cuppa’s amazing cinnamon rolls make your mouth water? Every time I described them in this book I thought about my family’s favorite recipe for cinnamon rolls, and I’ve included it here for you. I think Tory and Meg would approve. All measurements/temperatures are in US units. Makes 12 wonderfully large rolls Dough: 2 packages active dry yeast 1 cup warm water 2/3 cup plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar, divided 1 cup warmed milk (I microwave this and then stir to be sure there are no hot spots) 2/3 cup softened butter 2 teaspoons salt 2 eggs, beaten 7 to 8 cups all-purpose flour Filling of Deliciousness: 1 cup melted butter, divided (that’s 2 sticks) 1-3/4 cups dark brown sugar, divided 3 Tablespoons ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (fresh, if possible) 1 to 2 cups chopped pecans (optional) 1-1/2 cups dark raisins (optional) Frosting: 1/2 cup melted butter 3 cups powdered sugar 1 and a half teaspoons real vanilla 5 to 8 Tablespoons hot water   DIRECTIONS: To make dough combine yeast, warm water and 1 teaspoon sugar in a cup and stir. Set aside. In a large bowl mix warmed milk, remaining 2/3 cup sugar, butter, salt, and eggs. Stir well and add yeast mixture. Add half the flour and beat until smooth. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to make a slightly stiff dough. It’s okay for the dough to be sticky. Turn out onto a well-floured board and knead for 5 to 10 minutes. Place in a well-buttered glass bowl. Cover loosely and let rise in a warm draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. When doubled, punch down dough and let it rest for 5 minutes. Roll out onto floured surface into a 15 x 20-inch rectangle. Filling: Spread dough with ½ cup melted butter. Mix together 1/-1/2 cups brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Sprinkle over buttered dough. Sprinkle with pecans and raisins, if you want. Sometimes I go really crazy and add a cup of finely-chopped apples, too. Roll up jellyroll-fashion and pinch the edges together to seal. Cut into 12 slices. Coat bottom of a 13”’x 9” and a square 8” pan with the last ½ cup of melted butter, and sprinkle remaining ¼ cup of sugar mixture on top. Place slices close together in pans. Let rise in warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk (about 45 minutes). Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until nicely browned. Let cool slightly and spread with frosting. Share with others, and be prepared to get marriage proposals ;) Frosting: Mix melted butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Add hot water a tablespoon at a time, mixing after each, until frosting is of desired consistency. Spread or drizzle over slightly-cooled rolls.

There is no fault that can’t be corrected [in natural wine] with one powder or another; no feature that can’t be engineered from a bottle, box, or bag. Wine too tannic? Fine it with Ovo-Pure (powdered egg whites), isinglass (granulate from fish bladders), gelatin (often derived from cow bones and pigskins), or if it’s a white, strip out pesky proteins that cause haziness with Puri-Bent (bentonite clay, the ingredient in kitty litter). Not tannic enough? Replace $1,000 barrels with a bag of oak chips (small wood nuggets toasted for flavor), “tank planks” (long oak staves), oak dust (what it sounds like), or a few drops of liquid oak tannin (pick between “mocha” and “vanilla”). Or simulate the texture of barrel-aged wines with powdered tannin, then double what you charge. (““Typically, the $8 to $12 bottle can be brought up to $15 to $20 per bottle because it gives you more of a barrel quality. . . . You’re dressing it up,” a sales rep explained.) Wine too thin? Build fullness in the mouth with gum arabic (an ingredient also found in frosting and watercolor paint). Too frothy? Add a few drops of antifoaming agent (food-grade silicone oil). Cut acidity with potassium carbonate (a white salt) or calcium carbonate (chalk). Crank it up again with a bag of tartaric acid (aka cream of tartar). Increase alcohol by mixing the pressed grape must with sugary grape concentrate, or just add sugar. Decrease alcohol with ConeTech’s spinning cone, or Vinovation’s reverse-osmosis machine, or water. Fake an aged Bordeaux with Lesaffre’s yeast and yeast derivative. Boost “fresh butter” and “honey” aromas by ordering the CY3079 designer yeast from a catalog, or go for “cherry-cola” with the Rhône 2226. Or just ask the “Yeast Whisperer,” a man with thick sideburns at the Lallemand stand, for the best yeast to meet your “stylistic goals.” (For a Sauvignon Blanc with citrus aromas, use the Uvaferm SVG. For pear and melon, do Lalvin Ba11. For passion fruit, add Vitilevure Elixir.) Kill off microbes with Velcorin (just be careful, because it’s toxic). And preserve the whole thing with sulfur dioxide. When it’s all over, if you still don’t like the wine, just add a few drops of Mega Purple—thick grape-juice concentrate that’s been called a “magical potion.” It can plump up a wine, make it sweeter on the finish, add richer color, cover up greenness, mask the horsey stink of Brett, and make fruit flavors pop. No one will admit to using it, but it ends up in an estimated 25 million bottles of red each year. “Virtually everyone is using it,” the president of a Monterey County winery confided to Wines and Vines magazine. “In just about every wine up to $20 a bottle anyway, but maybe not as much over that.

STRAWBERRY SHORTBREAD BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   Hannah’s 1st Note: These are really easy and fast to make. Almost everyone loves them, including Baby Bethie, and they’re not even chocolate! 3 cups all purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ¾ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (don’t sift un- less it’s got big lumps) 1 and ½ cups salted butter, softened (3 sticks, 12 ounces, ¾ pound) 1 can (21 ounces) strawberry pie filling (I used Comstock)*** *** - If you can’t find strawberry pie filling, you can use another berry filling, like raspberry, or blueberry. You can also use pie fillings of larger fruits like peach, apple, or whatever. If you do that, cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces so that each bar cookie will have some. I just put my apple or peach pie filling in the food processor with the steel blade and zoop it up just short of being pureed. I’m not sure about using lemon pie filling. I haven’t tried that yet. FIRST STEP: Mix the flour and the powdered sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the softened butter with a two knives or a pastry cutter until the resulting mixture resembles bread crumbs or coarse corn meal. (You can also do this in a food processor using cold butter cut into chunks that you layer between the powdered sugar and flour mixture and process with the steel blade, using an on-and-off pulsing motion.) Spread HALF of this mixture (approximately 3 cups will be fine) into a greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) 9-inch by 13-inch pan. (That’s a standard size rectangular cake pan.) Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner on the stove, but DON’T TURN OFF THE OVEN! Let the crust cool for 5 minutes. SECOND STEP: Spread the pie filling over the top of the crust you just baked. Sprinkle the crust with the other half of the crust mixture you saved. Try to do this as evenly as possible. Don’t worry about little gaps in the topping. It will spread out and fill in a bit as it bakes. Gently press the top crust down with the flat blade of a metal spatula. Bake the cookie bars at 350 degrees F. for another 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden. Turn off the oven and remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner to cool completely. When the bars are completely cool, cover the pan with foil and refrigerate them until you’re ready to cut them. (Chilling them makes them easier to cut.) When you’re ready to serve them, cut the Strawberry Shortbread Bar Cookies into brownie-sized pieces, arrange them on a pretty platter, and if you like, sprinkle the top with extra powdered sugar.

Thirty-Nine Ways to Lower Your Cortisol 1 Meditate. 2 Do yoga. 3 Stretch. 4 Practice tai chi. 5 Take a Pilates class. 6 Go for a labyrinth walk. 7 Get a massage. 8 Garden (lightly). 9 Dance to soothing, positive music. 10 Take up a hobby that is quiet and rewarding. 11 Color for pleasure. 12 Spend five minutes focusing on your breathing. 13 Follow a consistent sleep schedule. 14 Listen to relaxing music. 15 Spend time laughing and having fun with someone. (No food or drink involved.) 16 Interact with a pet. (It also lowers their cortisol level.) 17 Learn to recognize stressful thinking and begin to: Train yourself to be aware of your thoughts, breathing, heart rate, and other signs of tension to recognize stress when it begins. Focus on being aware of your mental and physical states, so that you can become an objective observer of your stressful thoughts instead of a victim of them. Recognize stressful thoughts so that you can formulate a conscious and deliberate reaction to them. A study of forty-three women in a mindfulness-based program showed that the ability to describe and articulate stress was linked to a lower cortisol response.28 18 Develop faith and participate in prayer. 19 Perform acts of kindness. 20 Forgive someone. Even (or especially?) yourself. 21 Practice mindfulness, especially when you eat. 22 Drink black and green tea. 23 Eat probiotic and prebiotic foods. Probiotics are friendly, symbiotic bacteria in foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Prebiotics, such as soluble fiber, provide food for these bacteria. (Be sure they are sugar-free!) 24 Take fish or krill oil. 25 Make a gratitude list. 26 Take magnesium. 27 Try ashwagandha, an Asian herbal supplement used in traditional medicine to treat anxiety and help people adapt to stress. 28 Get bright sunlight or exposure to a lightbox within an hour of waking up (great for fighting seasonal affective disorder as well). 29 Avoid blue light at night by wearing orange or amber glasses if using electronics after dark. (Some sunglasses work.) Use lamps with orange bulbs (such as salt lamps) in each room, instead of turning on bright overhead lights, after dark. 30 Maintain healthy relationships. 31 Let go of guilt. 32 Drink water! Stay hydrated! Dehydration increases cortisol. 33 Try emotional freedom technique, a tapping strategy meant to reduce stress and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (our rest-and-digest system). 34 Have an acupuncture treatment. 35 Go forest bathing (shinrin-yoku): visit a forest and breathe its air. 36 Listen to binaural beats. 37 Use a grounding mat, or go out into the garden barefoot. 38 Sit in a rocking chair; the soothing motion is similar to the movement in utero. 39 To make your cortisol fluctuate (which is what you want it to do), end your shower or bath with a minute (or three) under cold water.

BUTTERSCOTCH BONANZA BARS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) 2 cups light brown sugar*** (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 and ½cups flour (scoop it up and level it off with a table knife) 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) 2 cups butterscotch chips (optional) ***- If all you have in the house is dark brown sugar and the roads are icy, it’s below zero, and you really don’t feel like driving to the store, don’t despair. Measure out one cup of dark brown sugar and mix it with one cup regular white granulated sugar. Now you’ve got light brown sugar, just what’s called for in Leslie’s recipe. And remember that you can always make any type of brown sugar by mixing molasses into white granulated sugar until it’s the right color. Hannah’s Note: Leslie says the nuts are optional, but she likes these cookie bars better with nuts. So do I, especially with walnuts. Bertie Straub wants hers with a cup of chopped pecans and 2 cups of butterscotch chips. Mother prefers these bars with 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips and no nuts, Carrie likes them with 2 cups of mini chocolate chips and a cup of chopped pecans, and Lisa prefers to make them with 1 cup of chopped walnuts, 1 cup of white chocolate chips, and 1 cup of butterscotch chips. All this goes to show just how versatile Leslie’s recipe is. Try it first as it’s written with just the nuts. Then try any other versions that you think would be yummy. Grease and flour a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan, or spray it with nonstick baking spray, the kind with flour added. Set it aside while you mix up the batter. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat on the stovetop, or put it in the bottom of a microwave-safe, medium-sized mixing bowl and heat it for 1 minute in the microwave on HIGH. Add the light brown sugar to the mixing bowl with the melted butter and stir it in well. Mix in the baking powder and the salt. Make sure they’re thoroughly incorporated. Stir in the vanilla extract. Mix in the beaten eggs. Add the flour by half-cup increments, stirring in each increment before adding the next. Stir in the nuts, if you decided to use them. Mix in the butterscotch chips if you decided to use them, or any other chips you’ve chosen. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth out the top with a rubber spatula. Bake the Butterscotch Bonanza Bars at 350 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes. (Mine took 25 minutes.) When the bars are done, take them out of the oven and cool them completely in the pan on a cold stove burner or a wire rack. When the bars are cool, use a sharp knife to cut them into brownie-sized pieces. Yield: Approximately 40 bars, but that all depends on how large you cut the squares. You may not believe this, but Mother suggested that I make these cookie bars with semi-sweet chocolate chips and then frost them with chocolate fudge frosting. There are times when I think she’d frost a tuna sandwich with chocolate fudge frosting and actually enjoy eating it!

TREASURE CHEST COOKIES (Lisa’s Aunt Nancy’s Babysitter’s Cookies) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. The Cookie Dough: ½ cup (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) salted butter, room temperature ¾ cup powdered sugar (plus 1 and ½ cups more for rolling the cookies in and making the glaze) ¼ teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons milk (that’s cup) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 and ½ cups all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it) The “Treasure”: Well-drained Maraschino cherries, chunks of well-drained canned pineapple, small pieces of chocolate, a walnut or pecan half, ¼ teaspoon of any fruit jam, or any small soft candy or treat that will fit inside your cookie dough balls. The Topping: 1 cup powdered (confectioners) sugar To make the cookie dough: Mix the softened butter and ¾ cup powdered sugar together in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Beat them until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the salt and mix it in. Add the milk and the vanilla extract. Beat until they’re thoroughly blended. Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing well after each addition. Divide the dough into 4 equal quarters. (You don’t have to weigh it or measure it, or anything like that. It’s not that critical.) Roll each quarter into a log shape and then cut each log into 6 even pieces. (The easy way to do this is to cut it in half first and then cut each half into thirds.) Roll the pieces into balls about the size of a walnut with its shell on, or a little larger. Flatten each ball with your impeccably clean hands. Wrap the dough around a “treasure” of your choice. If you use jam, don’t use over a quarter-teaspoon as it will leak out if there’s too much jam inside the dough ball. Pat the resulting “package” into a ball shape and place it on an ungreased cookie sheet, 12 balls to a standard-size sheet. Push the dough balls down just slightly so they don’t roll off on their way to your oven. Hannah’s 1st Note: I use baking sheets with sides and line them with parchment paper when I bake these with jam. If part of the jam leaks out, the parchment paper contains it and I don’t have sticky jam on my baking sheets or in the bottom of my oven. Bake the Treasure Chest Cookies at 350° F. for approximately 18 minutes, or until the bottom edge is just beginning to brown when you raise it with a spatula. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the sheets for about 5 minutes. Place ½ cup of powdered sugar in a small bowl. Place wax paper or parchment paper under the wire racks. Roll the still-warm cookies in the powdered sugar. The sugar will stick to the warm cookies. Coat them evenly and then return them to the wire racks to cool completely. (You’ll notice that the powdered sugar will “soak” into the warm cookie balls. That’s okay. You’re going to roll them in powdered sugar again for a final coat when they’re cool.) When the cookies are completely cool, place another ½ cup powdered sugar in your bowl. Roll the cooled cookies in the powdered sugar again. Then transfer them to a cookie jar or another container and store them in a cool, dry place. Hannah’s 2nd Note: I tried putting a couple of miniature marshmallows or half of a regular-size marshmallow in the center of my cookies for the “treasure”. It didn’t work. The marshmallows in the center completely melted away. Lisa’s Note: I’m going to try my Treasure Chest Cookies with a roll of Rollo’s next time I make them. Herb just adores those chocolate covered soft caramels. He wants me to try the miniature Reese’s Pieces, too. Yield: 2 dozen delicious cookies that both kids and adults will love to eat.

MONKEY BREAD   Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 1 and ¼ cups white (granulated) sugar 1 and ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon 4 cans (7.5 ounce tube) unbaked refrigerated biscuits (I used Pillsbury) 1 cup chopped nuts of your choice (optional) 1 cup chocolate chips (optional) (that’s a 6-ounce size bag) ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) Hannah’s 1st Note: If you prefer, you can use 16.3 ounce tubes of Pillsbury Grands. If you do this, buy only 2 tubes. They are larger—you will use half a tube for each layer. Tony’s Note: If you use chocolate chips and/or nuts, place them between each biscuit layer. Spray the inside of a Bundt pan with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Set your prepared pan on a drip pan just in case the butter overflows. Then you won’t have to clean your oven. Mix the white sugar and cinnamon together in a mixing bowl. (I used a fork to mix it up so that the cinnamon was evenly distributed.) Open 1 can of biscuits at a time and break or cut them into quarters. You want bite-size pieces. Roll the pieces in the cinnamon and sugar mixture, and place them in the bottom of the Bundt pan. Sprinkle one-third of the chopped nuts and one-third of the chocolate chips on top of the layer, if you decided to use them. Open the second can of biscuits, quarter them, roll them in the cinnamon and sugar, and place them on top of the first layer. (If you used Pillsbury Grands, you’ll do this with the remainder of the first tube.) Sprinkle on half of the remaining nuts and chocolate chips, if you decided to use them. Repeat with the third can of biscuits (or the first half of the second tube of Grands). Sprinkle on the remainder of the nuts and chocolate chips, if you decided to use them. Repeat with the fourth can of biscuits (or the rest of the Grands) to make a top layer in your Bundt pan. Melt the butter and the remaining cinnamon and sugar mixture in a microwave safe bowl on HIGH for 45 seconds. Give it a final stir and pour it over the top of your Bundt pan. Bake your Monkey Bread at 350 degrees F. for 40 to 45 minutes, or until nice and golden on top. Take the Bundt pan out of the oven and let it cool on a cold burner or a wire rack for 10 minutes while you find a plate that will fit over the top of the Bundt pan. Using potholders or oven mitts invert the plate over the top of the Bundt pan and turn it upside down to unmold your delicious Monkey Bread. To serve, you can cut this into slices like Bundt cake, but it’s more fun to just let people pull off pieces with their fingers. Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you’d like to make Caramel Monkey Bread, use only ¾ cup of white sugar. Mix it with the cinnamon the way you’d do if it was the full amount of white sugar. At the very end when you melt the butter with the leftover cinnamon and sugar mixture, add ¾ cup of brown sugar to the bowl before you put it in the microwave. Pour that hot mixture over the top of your Bundt pan before baking and it will form a luscious caramel topping when you unmold your Monkey Bread. Hannah’s 3rd Note: I don’t know why this is called “Monkey Bread”. Norman thinks it has something to do with the old story about the monkey that couldn’t get his hand out of the hole in the tree because he wouldn’t let go of the nut he was holding in his fist. Mike thinks it’s because monkeys eat with their hands and you can pull this bread apart and eat it with your hands. Mother says it’s because monkeys are social animals and you can put this bread in the center of the table and everyone can sit around it and eat. Tracey says it’s because it’s a cute name. Bethie doesn’t care. She just wants to eat it.