Recipes

A Time to Come Together

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With an abundance of caution and under orders from Sonoma County and the State of California (caused by the Covid-19 Virus in case you live on Mars), the prudent course of action for me (and this blog) is to hunker down at home and postpone new food and wine posts until some time in the future – a time that is more conducive to safe travel. To that end, over the next few weeks (months?) I will re-publish some of my previous posts that you have indicated as your favorites. I know that we will all pull together and make the best of a hard time.  As someone recently said “My parents were called to go to war. We are being called to sit on our couches. We can do this.”

Alabama Brunswick Stew

“Brunswick Stew is what happens when small mammals carrying ears of corn fall into barbeque pits.”– Roy Blount Jr.

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Salted Caramel Apple Butter

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“And with every bite, the crisp tartness of apples pop like fireworks, glittering brightly and fading, only to sparkle once again.
Its sweet deliciousness ripples from the mouth straight up to the brain…
a super-heavyweight punch of moist, rich goodness!”
“Yeeah!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, all the judges have looks on their faces! What on earth could have created a flavor that rapturous?!”
“The biggest secret to that flavor is right here, brushed on the underside of the pastry crust…
apple butter!”
“Apple butter?!”
“Hmm…” – Yuto Tsukuda

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Merry Christmas!

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Christmas Tree at the Chateau de Chenonceau

It was a sweltering hot July afternoon in 1945 when famous jazz vocalist Mel Tormé showed up for a writing session at the Toluca Lake house of his lyric partner Bob Wells. Mel let himself in and walked over to the piano. There, on the music board, was a pad of paper with four lines of a verse:

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Jack Frost nipping at your nose

Yuletide carols being sung by a choir

And folks dressed up like Eskimos

When Wells walked in the room, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, Tormé asked him about the little poem.

“It’s so damn hot today, I thought I’d write something to cool myself off,” Wells replied. “All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather.”

And that is “the rest of the story” behind one of America’s most loved contemporary Christmas hits, A Christmas Song. With this intro, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and all of the best for 2018.

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