Received a gift of book.

Many cookbooks make good gifts. This one is exceptional. In Celebration Breads, Betsy Oppenneer tells a story of each bread and provides three methods of preparation for most recipes.

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Bad news. The poached fish fell flat. Maybe not exactly flat. It looked good and tasted okay but fell short of greatness. Since many restaurants provide okay taste lacking greatness, why bother cooking at home? We cook to greatness, not less.

Fortunately, the bread and potatoes wowed the diners.

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For the third experiment with yellow cake, I selected a recipe from an old cookbook. The recipe came from the only cookbook I remember my mother having: The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery – An Encyclopedic Handbook for the Homemaker covering Foods and Beverages -their Purchase, Preparation and Service.

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After tasting and testing Yellow Cake from a box, the next step in the experiment was to bake a Yellow Cake from a recipe. To keep things apples-to-apples, a recipe was selected from a cookbook published under the same name as appeared on the box of the box-cake.

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Many people, if they endeavor to create cake at all, choose to make cake from a box. Whether one of the more popular, instantly recognized name cakes or a lesser known, top shelf, hoity-toity cake, they elect the box cake path none-the-less. Considering the disadvantages of preservatives, old ingredients and artificial flavoring, there must be some great, hidden advantage of a cake mix.

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It’s been unseasonably cold, snowing and blowing here; and when it’s unseasonably cold in these parts, it’s chilly, willy cold. After a morning of shoveling the twinkling white dust of early snow; cheeks red with the crisp kiss of clear Winter air; feeling refreshed and energized, a body can do with a steaming plate of comfort food. Macaroni and cheese is a great choice.

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Bread can make you a hero. It comes together easily and fast, if you do not count time waiting for it to proof. Yet, it can make new friends and impress enemies. With four basic ingredients: flour, water, yeast and a touch of salt, you get a classic, good, bread dough. Bake it with the windows open, fill the neighborhood with the mouth-watering goodness of fresh bread aroma and even the most unfriendly neighbors will turn out.

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Some ingredients lend themselves to sweet, some to savory and some to both. I’m here to tell you, boys and girls, pumpkin lends itself to both. The Blonde cooked Savory Pumpkin Quiche from our homegrown and hand processed pumpkin. It not only swirled delight around my mouth and nose, but the next day, when I unpacked the leftovers at work, every woman in the lunch room had to stop by to see what smelled so good.

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Little-known Tips for Easy Holiday Baking

Are you wondering if you have the time to bake homemade Christmas cookies this year? Every year at about this time we all start to get a little panicked that the holidays are coming up fast and we’re not really ready yet. Here are a few little-known tips and tricks, for almost every type of cookie, to help you get the most out of the time you spend baking.

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EASY No-Roll Pie Crust
by: LeAnn R. Ralph

* 3 cups flour

* 1 teaspoon salt

* 2 teaspoons sugar

* 2/3 cup cooking oil (I like to use Canola oil)

* 1/3 cup water or milk

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