One of our favorite fall and winter fruit combinations is pears and cranberries. This cake speaks of the seasons and is welcomed on a dessert table for brunch, coffee or teatime, and dinner. I enjoy its simplicity but use your imagination on how to serve…

A recent series of dental procedures required I expand my repertoire of soft food dishes.  No chewing, so either puréed or very, very soft to eat.  I made my way through Chinese jook (rice congee), lentil soup, and this bread soup through the several weeks…

And by “anytime” I mean morning, noon or night.  This cake is equally enjoyed as a breakfast sweet, mid-afternoon coffee or tea pick-me-up, or dinner’s dessert! Technically zucchini is a fruit since it grows from the flower of a plant and contains the seeds for…

  Now is the perfect time when ratatouille ingredients are abundant at our markets.  Every year, late summer into early fall, versions of zucchini, eggplant, and tomato dishes appear on our table for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We enjoy ratatouille as a versatile accompaniment to…

If zesty, tangy, and salty flavors please your palate, this salad is an excellent accompaniment to a summer lunch or dinner.  Our Piedmont summer days are relatively mild, but plenty of my family and friends live where daytime temps soar above 100°F and a cold,…

Strawberry fields stretch seemingly forever along Monterey Bay, which means we have a plentiful supply of multiple varieties at our local farmer’s markets.  In fact, the majority of strawberries finding their way to American tables come from our California Coastal fields. In the past I…

This quick-ish stir-fry is inspired by a recent dinner with friends.  I prepared a veggie-only side dish of stir-fried zucchini and cherry tomatoes.  It made an easy switch to a weeknight dinner, with added chicken, for an all-in-one skillet meal. The “weeknight” in the recipe…

Many may not be familiar with kumquats, a petite jewel of the citrus family, where the entire fruit is consumed in one delicious bite of sweet and tart.  About the size of a grape, the entire kumquat is eaten including the skin, which is actually…

Every spring I eagerly anticipate the arrival of strawberries at my favorite farmers market vendors.  It takes a lot of restraint to skip them the first couple of weeks when they look under ripe with white shoulders and ruby tips.  Perhaps the farmers are as…

Spring brunch time is nigh, and this “strata” features the classic pairing of ham and sweet potatoes.  Technically the method here doesn’t layer the ingredients, thus a strata, but over the years I’ve found the layering process doesn’t make a big difference in the end…