From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (March 1986)

If I am never to find out who said, “a kitchen is a kingdom,” I’m going to have to claim it for myself. I had thought it might be one of the aphorisms of Brillat-Savarin, eighteenth-century politician-author-gourmet (hyphenate your name and I’ll hyphenate your credentials), but I couldn’t find it in there—too short, maybe; too cute in its lilting alliteration. My other hunch was my late mother-in-law (note hyphens), another brilliant savant of the galley and an author of some note, herself. She felt that way about kitchens.

It’s how I feel too, although it was not always thus. My own mother, caretaker of dark secrets, likes to remind me that all through my growing-up days, I was a kitchen illiterate. Like all the kids, I knew where to find the things I needed—a box of cereal, the milk, the mayonnaise—and I knew what to do with a knife and fork. But as far as I was concerned, measuring and mixing were what mothers did. Home ec classes scared me to death. The junior high laboratory kitchen was the one place at school where I felt completely unsure of myself, where no amount of skill at diagraming sentences could ever bail me out.

Mummy despaired of my ever learning even basic minimum survival cooking. On the eve of my wedding, she did manage to handcuff me to the kitchen stove long enough to administer a crash course in baked beans. And I’ll always be grateful for the extra handful of rice she threw my way, as my bridegroom and I made our getaway after the reception. But those heroic efforts on my behalf had nothing to do with turning this kitchen caterpillar into the butterfly I seem to have become. No one can take credit or blame for the changes in someone else. Pygmalion was fiction. Like salvation, you have to do the big makeovers yourself.

The change in me was as evolutionary as it was sudden, a spontaneous adjustment to radically changed circumstances. It happened almost the minute I, the bride, walked into my first kitchen and asked myself the big question: “Now what?”

The promise of omnipotence is what that first kitchen of my own offered in reply. I didn’t have to be a Betty Crocker to know important things happen in kitchens, that to be sovereign of a kitchen is to have supremacy over a major source of domestic noise, heat, and action. Things get hot in kitchens. Things freeze, they hum, pop open, drip, whir, ring, light up. Sometimes things burn, flop, overflow, explode, smell awful. Standing there in that first kitchen for the first time, it didn’t matter (nor did I realize) that the apartment-size oven wouldn’t heat above 250 degrees or that the refrigerator my new husband had picked up for $15 at the Salvation Army didn’t work. This place was the seat of power. I wanted it all.

Control of a kitchen, I learned, generated more confidence than diagraming the most complicated sentence. With the kitchen came tools, utensils, pans, appliances. I had counters, cabinets, drawers, and shelves to arrange and rearrange however I wanted, and nobody could object. I could make any amount of noise, and nobody would mind. It’s the one place in the house where I could drive a nail or screw in a cup hook without fear of ruining the place.

But a kitchen is more than power and hardware and architecture. It’s where the dinner guests and drop-in neighbors always want to be, even if it’s so small they have to stand in the doorways—because friendly, fragrant things take place there. It’s a window near the sink from which to see apple trees and deer tracks, an old mantelpiece over the stove to hold a pig collection and an oil lamp, a shelf above the doorway crammed with cookbooks…because in spite of myself and my mother, and thanks largely to the appeal of a kitchen kingdom’s comforts, I turned out to be a pretty good cook.

Amie’s Headnotes

Earlier this year, I mentioned the forthcoming excerpt I’d sold from the book I’m writing. I was hoping it would be published by now and I’d have a link to share with you. I don’t. I also don’t know why it’s stalled. Such is the writing life!

The excerpt, A Kitchen is a Kingdom, Volume 2, is named after an article I discovered in a 1959 issue of Gourmet magazine in my attic three summers ago. My grandmother, the mother-in-law my mother mentioned above, wrote that article. I read the article and thought, hmmm…What if I wrote a book about the three generations of food-writers in my family?

Three generations of female food-writers sharing words, recipes and the belief that a kitchen, like Disney’s Magic Kingdom, can indeed be the happiest place on earth.

BROCCOLI QUICHE IN A RICE CRUST

Makes 6-8 servings

• 4 eggs

• 2 c. cooked rice

• 2/3 c. finely grated Swiss cheese

• Garlic powder to taste

• 1 10-oz. pkg frozen chopped broccoli (or spinach), cooked and drained

• 2 T. butter

• ½ t. salt

• 1 c. cottage cheese

• ¼ c. grated Parmesan cheese

• 6 T. half-and-half

• Dash of Tabasco sauce

• Sprinkle of garlic powder

Beat 1 egg; add rice and Swiss cheese. Mix well; add garlic powder to taste. Spread evenly in a 9’ pie dish to form a crust on the bottom and sides. Refrigerate till ready to fill and bake.

Add butter to the well-drained cooked broccoli (or spinach) and set aside. In a medium bowl, beat the 3 remaining eggs. Stir in salt, cottage cheese, Parmesan, cream, Tabasco and dash of garlic powder. Stir in broccoli and pour all into the rice crust.

Bake in preheated 350◦ F oven for about 35 minutes or until firm and a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

PRINTABLE RECIPE!

Amie’s Endnotes

I considered sharing a more, ah, pristine snapshot of the little kitchen where I first learned to cook with my mom and still continue to. If you know me, though, I’m as far from a pro-photographer as I am head chef of anywhere other than my own kitchen. Staging the perfect picture has never been my jam.

Your Voices of the Casual Kitchen,

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

Greetings from Maine! My galley-sized kitchen is officially open for the season, and I’m baking to keep warm. The weather’s been your typical late spring in Maine smorgasbord: two wild 90-degree days (yup, I dove in the cove and the 50- ish-degree water was not quite heart stopping, but close); a boatload of rain; and 40-degree winter hat-worthy mornings. Bring it on! I love this old drafty lobster trap of a house!

Besides baking, I’ve sprung the kayak from hibernation; the paddleboard is parked until real summer arrives. I’ve also been enjoying a food-adjacent literary bonanza. Did you know that Maine has the country’s second most bookstores per capita, more than double the national average? Naturally, I had to check out a couple of new shops (props to Fiction in Wiscasset for the organic dog treat samples) and attend two book events, both involving food, which I’m now declaring a mandatory consideration for all future book signing events.

I’m also very excited for the summer opening of ’s new cookbook shop, Upstairs Books above the pizzeria she and her husband run in Warren. More will be revealed.

Batter Up: A Cookie-Tasting

…masquerading as a book signing. As reader Linda T is fond of saying, I’m here for the food. Or, in this case, cookies. Last week’s event at Print: A Bookstore in Portland featuring friend and baker extraordinaire ’s latest Italian Cookies cookbook was hands-down the sweetest book signing I’ve ever attended. And the cookbook, part travelogue, part art gallery is pretty sweet itself.

The book covers Domenica’s journey across all 20 regions of Italy and features gorgeous artwork, photography and essays and, oh, yeah, 100 cookie recipes. For the event, Domenica baked nearly 200 cookies from five recipes in the book. Were there any left at the end of the night? Nope.

Before the books were signed, a lively conversation ensued between Domenica and Kathy Gunst, James Beard award-winning food journalist and the resident chef on NPR’s award-winning show, Here & Now, during which the audience learned (a) that Domenica considers Pignoli the most overrated Italian cookie; (b) about shrinkflation in Kirkland-brand butter; and (c) where to score leaf lard.

The July leg of Domenica’s book tour will take her westward through Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit, with a potential trip to Southern California in the fall. Trust me, the cookies are worth it!

On Deck: A Yacht Club Launch

Last night, Maine-based author Ellen Baker kicked off her latest book, Summerland Cove, with a launch party at the Wiscasset Yacht Club. The event, featuring a dinner menu inspired by the novel, was catered by Water Street Kitchen & Bar and included signature cocktails and birthday cake for one of the novel’s characters.

Sneak a peek at the “secret” cocktail recipe—the perfect choice for summer book clubs, hammock reading or porch parties.

THE “SUMMERLAND SECRET” SIGNATURE COCKTAIL

Makes 1 serving

• 2 oz. Rosé Prosecco

• 2 oz. Newman’s Own Limeade

• Splash of St. Germain

• Small lemon wedge

• 6-10 Maine (wild) blueberries (frozen) or 1-2 regular blueberries

Combine Rose Prosecco and limeade in a champagne flute. Add a splash of St. Germain.

Add blueberries and lemon wedge. Serve immediately.

If you’re looking for a mocktail version, try substituting nonalcoholic sparkling rosé for Prosecco and elderflower syrup for St. Germain. I have not had time to test this!

For all the recipes from the special menu—sloppy joes, pasta salad, fruit salad and a special cookie cake—sign up to receive the Reader’s Guide for Summerland Cove. The sloppy joe recipe comes straight from Ellen’s mom. “It was a staple of family parties when I was growing up,” Ellen says. “I never dreamed I would end up serving sloppy joes at the launch party!”

I adored Ellen’s first book, Keeping the House, and I’m certain I’ll love Summerland Cove just as much, if not more.

Art To Table: Visual Sustenance

From the “Not Literary but Food-Related” file, a trip to the Art to Table exhibit at the Maine Art Gallery in Wiscasset (what is it with Wiscasset this month?). Two floors of provocative paintings, sketches and sculpture celebrating Maine as a leader in the farm-to-table movement. From sardines to shellfish, blueberries and beyond, I left with a figuratively full plate and heart.

The Bake Session

These chocolate Rolo Cookies from a vintage ’90s issue of Cook & Tell were a far cry from Domenica’s fancy Italian treats. It was the stickiest dough this side of Krazy Glue—the disposable gloves I wore to roll it into ping-pong sized balls literally stuck together. The cookies, with a Rolo caramel melted in the middle, were super gooey even after an extra five minutes of baking and a ten-minute cool-down on the baking sheet before hitting the rack. They were tasty, though and I left from the gathering I made them for with an empty container, but mark my words: I am never making them again.

Yours for good times in the kitchen,

Amie

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Column (February 21, 1980)

Those sweepstakes come-ons that arrive in the mail hold no magic for me. I have never bought a lottery ticket. I wouldn’t be interested in the stock market even if they started carrying natural foods and stayed open 24 hours a day. So I am at a loss to explain what came over me when I took the big chance a few Thursdays ago.

Thursday has been my day for holding small, morning cooking classes for four people at home. The sessions wind up with five of us sitting down to dine on the grub I’ve demonstrated. All the other Thursdays before this one, I have stashed Jack my dog in the back seat of the car parked in the garage, where he spends the ensuing two or three hours going for an imaginary ride.

Jack was brought up on this gimmick. It always came in handy at house selling time—who knows how much the intrusion of a cold nose might influence an offer—and at tea party time (know anybody who’ll accept a refill, when a dog has been seen lapping the milk pitcher?). I’ve never felt guilty about the subterfuge, but I will admit to feeling a tiny bit sorry for him when I’ve employed it.

It must have been the accumulated sympathy that made me take the gamble and let Jack stay in the house, just this one time. Also, I think I wanted to show him off. Sympathy may not be on the list of deadly sins, but pride certainly is. It’s the deadliest, I seem to remember. It goeth before a fall.

The risks involved in my decision were many. Jack is a first-class itch in the presence of unfamiliar people, often intruding a damp muzzle into laps, striking innocent arms with a determined paw, sighing peculiar and annoying setter sighs. Not even counting these potential nuisance factors, there was the whole matter of food. This large dog of our is the original chowhound. Would he be uncouth and drool? Would he urge his way into my pint-size galley, thus upsetting the class, in quest of crumb and droplet, as he does on his regular patrol all other days of the week?

And the big question: Would he, whose sonar can detect whether an outside door has completely latched simply by the sound it makes closing, make the great escape he is always angling to make, between the comings and goings of the class members? For Jack is no stay-at-home, when conditions allow. Elaborate, time-consuming plans have had to be developed over the years to cope with getaways. Because, while he has mastered the art of departure, the importance of return appears to have eluded him completely.

Therefore, it was with no small amount of pride and pleasure that I performed my kitchen routine with the class that morning, aware that the noble-looking creature lying benignly in the dining room was minding his own canine business. So worried had I been about his manners, that I had forgotten how gorgeous he could be. As he lay in regal repose, his black backside decorated with a rainbow of light refraction from the prism in the window, I thought smugly to myself, how right my decision!

During lunch, we all admired the well-behaved male guest who was miraculously keeping his distance from the table. If dogs have memories and any sense of time, Jack knew this was Thursday again, and Thursday always means at least five luncheon plates and dessert plates, plus countless bowls and pans to lick once the students are gone. That should be bounty enough, eh, Jack? Why mess it up and lay your chin on the table and nudge plates in front of all these strangers, right?

The class left, one by one. And just before the last one left, so did Jack.

Rescue Plan A went into effect immediately, whereby a vehicle is dispatched in the direction the subject is known to have taken off at top speed. The object is to get ahead of the subject, so that the subject believes he is chasing the vehicle. This performance goes on for about two or three miles at a speed of about 25 mph, to the accompaniment of horn blowing, whistling and assorted cheers to sustain the competitive spirit and flush the subject out of the woods when necessary. By the time the vehicle enters the driveway at home base again, the subject—now lagging from exhaustion—is ready for the back seat of the car, which he accepts as a reward for a great chase (I think.)

It worked, as it always does. And, sigh, in spite of the mutual double cross, he still got the plates and pans to lick. Not that there was much of them left to lick. The main course had been Fried Fish Rolls, and they were too good to leave much more than the toothpicks that held them together.

Amie’s Headnotes

I’m still not quite sure how I feel about pairing fish with ham. Aside from the bacon loophole that exists only if I’m out somewhere having brunch or in a diner ordering a BLT and fries, I’m not a meat eater. But even so! As with everything else, though, preserving the vintage vibe of 80s recipes is very much on brand for this newsletter. If you also think ham is weird with fish, you have my full permission to skip it.

FRIED FISH ROLLS

• ½ pound white fish fillets (like sole)

• 1 T. fresh minced ginger root or 1 t. ground

• ½ t. salt

• 4 slices ham, shredded

• ½ c. raw spinach, shredded

For the Batter

• 1 c. flour

• 1 egg, beaten

• 2/3 c. water

• 1 T. sesame seeds

Cut fillets into pieces about 2” x 4”. Stuff with mixture of remaining ingredients, roll up and fasten with toothpicks. Combine batter ingredients and mix well. Dip rolls into batter and deep fry. Don’t worry about stuff falling out. A certain amount may, but the batter really glues it all together.

Dip rolls into soy sauce or a sweet-and-sour sauce.

PRINTABLE RECIPE!

Amie’s Endnotes

Jack was our first dog and from the moment he chose us at the animal shelter, he had our hearts. Part Gordon Setter, German Shorthair Pointer and Saint Bernard, he was a big boy with an even bigger appetite.

He accompanied me in on my frequent summer dives in the cove across the street; up the stairs at bedtime; in the backseat on a cross-country family road trip. He was the brother I’d never had.

Mom and Jack are gone now, but like her old newsletter, I’ve resurrected the old dog. Max, the current black canine who has my heart, is the official Cook & Tell mascot in this digital incarnation. He’s not only a member of the clean plate club like his nemesis, but he also hosts his very own book club.

Your Pantry Pals,

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

For more about Jack, including another daring escape, here’s one with a recipe for his favorite apple cake.

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (June 2008)

My daughter was on the other end of the phone connection, on the other side of the country, as she usually is every Sunday night. One of her more famous little-girl sayings, first uttered in frustration and never forgotten by her mother, came back in reply to my less colorful, all-purpose “Hello?”

“Still alive,” Amie answered. The phrase was one she had loudly sighed into the silence of her room all those years ago, after about 20 minutes into a sentence I had handed down: to take a nap. And what was happening was clearly not a nap. Looking back (you will forgive me if I digress), I wonder why I did that. Was she exhausted? Cranky? Naughty? She was eight years old, that much I remember, because it was the year we moved here, and on the afternoon of the heavy sigh, I was working on fashion illustrations in my studio at the other end of the hall. Eight-year-olds don’t normally need naps, do they? Dare I admit I might have been simply buying time for myself, to finish the drawings in relative peace?

Like the smile of the Cheshire cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the detail that remains is that endearing phrase, one that has proven useful in many contexts over the years. Two or three weeks before that recent Sunday evening chat, Amie had run the American River Fifty-Mile ultramarathon somewhere out west. After that, there had been a longer stretch of silence than usual. Her “Still alive” greeting was delightfully reassuring.

The Kid—she may have outgrown the afternoon nap, but she’ll never outgrow that nickname—announced she’d be coming east on business this month and has factored in an extra week for vacation at the home place with her mother. The maternal concierge was pleased to book her into her old room at the end of the hall upstairs. We babbled about all the places we would go, the things we would do. Think of it! A week of adventure, of trips here, trips there. We could go to Blue Hill overnight. Update your passport, The Kid advised. We might cross the border and stay in St. Andrews by the Sea.

Or maybe not. How we loved that place, before the squads of decorators and rehabbers infiltrated the authentic old town and embellished their buildings with signs sporting chiseled lettering and gold leaf.

All right then, maybe Prince Edward Island! Our favorite fictional girl lived there, and this year they’re celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables. It’s the Year of Anne!

And it’s a long way to Prince Edward Island.

I said I’d get to work on a list of possible excursions and events. Amie said she’d send me her complete itinerary. By the time I received it, I had slowed down the speed and lowered the volume on travel and entertainment plans. I already cook too much, so we would eat out a lot: travel to Wiscasset, a journey of 20 miles, for the huge, fabled lobster roll at Red’s Eats; to our island store for pizza. We could go ethnic at Ports of Italy in the Harbor or dress up and dine at the Rocktide. To preserve my credibility, I might even cook a meal.

On my activities list, everything was optional. For expensive entertainment, we could take in a show at the Music Theater in Brunswick, 35 miles from home. For educational enrichment we could visit the Coastal Gardens right here in Boothbay. For self-improvement, she could run around the island, and I could test a recipe. To escape without going anywhere, we could stretch out on the old teak deck chairs and read, listening to the flag flapping in the breeze off the cove, remarking on how busy everyone else was, and fall asleep.

We talked again the next Sunday night. I told her how my approach to vacationing had shifted down from touring and gallivanting to something more like doing nothing and resting afterward. She was relieved, confessed to looking forward to vegging out and catching up on sleep, and ratified my essentially no-plan plan. After a week of driving to work appointments, calling on clients and “womaning” a booth at a dental convention for a day, the little girl will not have to be told to take a nap.

And I suspect her mother won’t be hearing a voice sighing “Still alive” from the room at the end of the hall.

Amie’s Headnotes

This is a rehash of a rehash of the original recipe from the April 1995 newsletter. Like many previous subscribers who’ve rediscovered the “new” Cook & Tell (hi, Sandy Oliver👋!), OG fan Sara T found me a couple of summers ago. “I subscribed for many years and corresponded with your mom a good bit,” Sara writes. “For a while, she had a special feature [that] ran for a year called ‘Sara’s Picks.’ That was me!”

For that feature, Sara would choose a month, leaf through the past Cook & Tell issues in her extensive collection and pick a handful of favorites. Sara’s Picks for April 1999 included these scones—perfect for a Mother’s Day tea, from Mrs. T herself.

SCONE FINGERS

• 1 c. flour

• 1 t. baking powder

• ¼ t. salt

• 1 T. brown sugar

• 1 T. grated orange rind

• 3 T. butter, melted

• ½ c. golden raisins

• 1/3 c. milk

Sift the dry ingredients into a medium bowl. Add the rind and butter and mix in. Add the raisins and milk and mix to a soft dough. Pat it into an 8” square on a floured board. It will be thin. Cut into 8 rectangles and bake on a buttered sheet 12 min. at 375◦ F.

To turn these into soft, rich scones, use 2 ½ c. flour, double everything else, and add an egg. Knead gently, pat to a ¾” thick circle, dab with milk; cut into 8 wedges. Bake 12-15 min. at 450◦ F.

PRINTABLE RECIPE!

Endnotes

Endurance is what I needed for that 50-mile race, and endurance is what’s prevailed over the years in every incarnation of Cook & Tell. From the first column my mother wrote for the weekly Boothbay Register 50 (!) years ago, to the newsletter she wrote and produced for more than three decades, to my digital reboot three years ago and beyond, her spirit lives on. As timeless and immortal as a recipe handed down through generations, Cook & Tell is the gift that keeps giving.

Still alive, indeed.

Catch up on past Mother’s Day issues: The Kid Visits the Mother, A Poppy's Promise, Let's Pretend.

What People are Saying About Cook & Tell

I loved your mom’s newsletter. I’m glad I have yours to read now.

—Holly S

I can’t decide who writes better - you or your mom. You both have a way with words that place me right there with you. Your stories always evoke my own fond memories.

—Beth N

Such timely and timeless writing. Plus, your mother’s sketches are delightful. Thank you for sharing.

—Sharon H

See you next time! Your Pantry Pals,

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

In this week’s issue, I’m sharing my kitchen tools of the trade and a sweet peace offering; a trio of fiesta favorites and my Portland Press Herald interview on the Cook & Tell legacy.

Crockpots & Cookie Sheets: The Essentials

Whoever said all you need in the kitchen are three knives (chef, serrated, paring); two skillets (cast iron and ceramic); and a set of mixing bowls may be right, but my list of kitchen essentials is a bit more expansive.

My grandmother’s wooden ladle, a whisk. Two sets of mixing bowls, both red, because one of anything is never enough; a pair of plaid oven mitts, sporting burn marks like a badge. Parchment paper. Waxed paper. Tin foil. My mother’s cookbook. A rubber spatula. The Betty Crocker Cookbook. The wooden block of self-sharpening Henkels’ knives. A battered electric wok from the ’80s, candy apple red. Nutmeg, flour, dark brown sugar, molasses. A tea towel from Paris, from the riverboat trip with my father and stepbrother purchased the day Notre Dame burned down. A jar of rainbow-hued toothpicks for cake testing. Cooling racks, the kind that make an annoying clatter when they collapse. The blue pie plate for my annual Thanksgiving cranberry walnut and raisin pie. Three sets of measuring cups: stainless steel, mismatched plastic, and the almond-colored Tupperware set missing the ¾ cup measure. A basil plant on the windowsill, its earthy scent a meditation. The maple leaf-shaped spoon rest I made one agonizing afternoon at the DIY pottery shop and gave to my mom for Mother’s Day the year I quit my job to take care of her. The one I inherited along with all her equally eclectic kitchenware; the one she broke that summer; the one still held together by Krazy glue and faith.

Bombs Away

These treats are the perfect peace offering for any negotiation on your agenda. Plus, they meet the 2026 Cook It Easy mandate.

PEANUT BUTTER PEACE BOMBS

• ¾ c. melted butter or margarine

• 2 c. graham cracker crumbs

• 1 12-oz. jar peanut butter

• 2 c. confectioners’ sugar

• 1 12-oz. package semi-sweet chocolate chips

In medium bowl, combine everything but chocolate with wooden spoon til well mixed and crumbly. Press firmly and evenly into 9 x 13” pan and set aside.

In top of double boiler over hot water (or in microwave, being careful), melt chocolate chips. Spread evenly over PB mixture.

Let stand at room temp until chocolate hardens, then cut into small squares. Share them with any warmongers you know. It just might restart a stalled peace talk.

PRINTABLE RECIPE!

Fiesta Forever (Literally)

Here’s a throwback Mexican menu to jump start your Cinco de Mayo festivities. It’s a Cook & Tell readers’ favorite, from the easier, softer times when the price of filling your tank wasn’t the equivalent of a down payment on a car.

Extra! Extra!

Cook & Tell was featured in a recent Portland Press Herald story!

And if you’re in Maine, pick up a copy of the Maine Sunday Telegram (5/3/26) and read it analog-style.

See you next Tuesday for an early Mother’s Day celebration.

Your Pantry Pal,

Amie

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newspaper Column (April 14, 1977)

My neighbor took care of the weather situation nicely when she pronounced on me an old Chinese proverb: Blessed is the bride it rains upon. With a benediction like that resting on me, I would have welcomed a downpour. As it was, sunshine blessed us, all thirty of us, a crowd of friends and family gathered in my barn living room at 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning.

There were flowers everywhere. Wednesday a heather plant was found tucked between the back door and the storm door with a note from my neighbor Ramona, down on the next cove. Helen had carried in an armload of forsythia on Thursday to brighten up a corner. Day before the wedding, Betty brought two red roses, one for me and one for him. Friday morning, Mary drove up from the lighthouse with a pot of yellow primroses. Returning home from errands that day, I found a husky yellow chrysanthemum plant, its pot wrapped in gold foil—the gift of my neighbor across the street, the one with the Chinese proverb. And at supper time, Amie’s school chum came with a begonia.

Besides gifts came help. Two friends moved in on the kitchen Friday morning, outfitted with their own equipment, and produced six quiches for me. A machine more efficient than any three pairs of hands shredded gobs of swiss cheese, sliced a million mushrooms, and chopped onions galore in large gulps. After two hours of chatter and good cheer, those two kitchen elves had given me the dearest wedding gifts of all—friendship and helping hands.

When they left, I layered the bacon and swiss cheese in two pans, mushrooms, onion and cheese in another two, and crabmeat and swiss cheese in two others, then poured eggs and cream over all. They were baked a day ahead so I’d only have to reheat them next day.

Marge arrived on the day of the wedding with a cauldron of fresh fruit cup she had volunteered to make. Alice brought a cold curried shrimp, made from a recipe that’s been a family favorite with me for years.

The trick at these peopled affairs is to emerge with enough cups and saucers, forks and spoons. So Betty of the red roses loaned me two dozen spoons, Shirley let me take a punch bowl and thirty cups, Helen offered her pie server, and Lydia brought her cake disher-upper. Cups and saucers came courtesy of Lou and Grace, who discovered a cache of never-sold Depression glass in the attic of their general store up the street. My mother provided the punch recipe and the bride.

*

Thirty people in my living room is a throng. Everyone found out a lot about everyone else’s shoulders, just by standing on the ground. On the ladder-like steps to the loft above the living room sat Amie and her five young friends, demure ladies in long dresses. But something was missing and it was Jack, the big black dog. Maybe it was easier, being able to carry trays of food without having to lift them above my head, but I’m sorry, I missed that heel-lapping, food-grabbing character and began to feel guilty for sending him off for a week’s vacation to the kennel. On the way out of town after the wedding, we stopped at the dog motel to drop off a slipper of mine for him. It seemed to me he needed something that smelled like home to make his stay bearable.

*

Some people don’t believe my address; they think I made it up. But I do live on Love’s Cove, I really do. The wedding that was held there Saturday makes the name ring true and now it’ll be we, and not I, living here. I like that.

Amie’s Headnotes

Mom’s original story included a recipe for a molded Chutney Aspic filled with Cold Curried Shrimp, which, besides emitting palpable vintage vibes right down to the ring mold, is just plain cringe as far as I’m concerned, a reaction I’m positive I had when it was served at the wedding nearly 50 years ago. Today’s cookies—shared by subscriber, writer, runner and pen pal —teleport us into the current millennium. They’re gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan, a trifecta of trends that will no doubt be cringeworthy in another fifty years.

Intrigued by the whole Chutney-Shrimp affair? Cook & Tell-O-Phone operators are not standing by. Email me at amie.mcgraham@gmail.com and I’ll send you the recipe.

HEALTHY LEMON COOKIES

Makes 8 cookies

from The Conscious Plant Kitchen

For the Dough:

• 2 c. almond flour

• 3 T. maple syrup

• 3 T. melted coconut oil

• 2 T. lemon juice from one small lemon

• 2 t. lemon zest from the previous lemon

• ½ t. almond extract

Lemon Glaze

• ½ c. confectioners’ sugar

• 1 T. lemon juice

• ¼ t. almond extract

Preheat oven to 375◦ F (350◦ if using convection). Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In mixing bowl, stir together first 6 ingredients, using a rubber spatula. When it starts to look dry, squeeze by hands to form a cookie dough ball. If too dry, add a little extra lemon juice to bring the dough together into a soft dough that can be easily rolled into balls. If too wet, add more almond flour.

Divide into 8 portions, lightly oil hands (or use gloves) and roll each piece of dough into a ball. Place each dough ball 1” apart on the baking sheet and press the top with back of glass to flatten.

Bake cookies for 10-12 min until slightly golden and slightly hard on top. (NB: watch them around 8 min, mine browned up fast).

Cool cookies on sheet for 5 min, then transfer to cooling rack. Cool completely, then glaze. For glaze, stir sugar, lemon juice and extract into a small bowl until thick and smooth, adding more sugar if too thin. Drizzle over cookies.

Don’t skip the glaze! It balances the sweetness and gives an extra punch of lemon.

PRINTABLE RECIPE!

Amie’s Endnotes

Publishing these photos is a bold move, I realize this, but I felt compelled to share more cringe with the fashion faux pas of my youth: brown (brown!) floral maxi dress and floppy hat over my Dorothy Hamill wedge cut. I guess hats were trending then; my wedding posse is proof. (Note to Linda: where is your hat??)

You know what never goes out of style, though? The island community. It’s reassuring to be welcomed and still feel part of it all, even after all my years away. And even after my mom and the mothers who helped with the wedding are gone, we daughters remain to carry on the legacy, from potlucks to picnics. Minus the hats.

Creating a community united through food,

Amie & Karyl

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From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newspaper Column (March 31, 1977)

They brought it all in baskets and they came by night. They tapped on the window, scaring me right out of a telephone conversation. They opened the door and hollered, “Surprise!”

Three old friends, they were. And out of their baskets came fancy crabmeat sandwiches, potato chips, pickles, cheesecake, china plates and silverware, a candelabra, champagne for them and sparkling Catawba for the teetotaling almost-bride. A shower! A party! In my honor!

Having now used up all the exclamation marks I intended to use in the next six months, I will try to control my excitement and keep calm. But it won’t be easy. Bridal showers just don’t take place too many times in one’s life. The last and only other time I was guest of honor was twenty years ago. So now, tonight, I am showered for the second time in two days. Yesterday, an afternoon tea party with gifts and punch and giggles and dainty cucumber sandwiches and jellied salads and nuts and nibbles. How nice to be a bride-to-be.

The few days that remain before rings are swapped, the bouquet tossed and my singlehood becomes passé leave me very little time indeed to tell another story about another party. I will talk fast.

I had thought, when singularity came over me and a reasonable amount of time had passed enabling me to adjust to it, that being a woman, single, in Maine, was not all that bad. I thought I had been doing rather well taking the proverbial one day at a time, noticing things on my own, saying hello to myself in the mirror when I got lonesome, and in general faring not too badly in the independence department.

Then I get this funny invitation from a good friend to go to a singles party with him. It was funny because—correct me if I’m wrong—the idea of a singles party is to go unattached and meet people. Women meet men, men meet women, stuff like that. And me, I get asked to go to this party as somebody’s date. Really it was much worse than funny. The mere mention of singles parties makes me want to cringe. I try to decline. You wouldn’t catch me at one of those icky parties, I protest. That is simply not my idea of a fun way to spend an evening, no matter how single you are, I sneer. Singles parties are dumb, I scoff.

I go to the singles party anyway. After all, I say to my single self, if I am ever to write a definitive book about being a single woman in Maine, this would be a very important chapter for which I may need vast amounts of reference. Furthermore, my date reminds me, we’ll have each other. I find this vaguely reassuring even if it does violate the unwritten singles party rule of arriving unspoken for.

Well. In no time at all I am vindicated. It is a dumb party. Instead of asking questions and recording the answers in the notebook I forgot to bring, I ask myself a question: If I am so capable and independent, what am I doing at a singles party?

Even the food is dull. Somebody turns the lights down before I even get a chance to locate someone at least interesting enough to talk to. Look, if I’m dredging up background material for my book, I’m not going to talk to a toad, am I? My itinerant date, circulating through the crowd according to previously arranged ground rules, waves occasionally from across the room, apparently reminding me we still have each other.

Long before the agreed-upon termination time, he is at my side, ready to leave. “I have come to the conclusion,” he announces grandly, “that there are only two women here worth talking to, and one of them is you.” Frankly, the other woman didn’t impress me at all.

The worst part of that whole evening was the fact that on my way home from our halfway meeting point, my speedometer passed the historic 100,000-mile mark and I didn’t even notice it. Don’t ever talk me into another singles party.

Karyl’s Headnotes

Surprise showers and the happy occasion they precede are much more to my liking. And the food is so good at these ladylike shindigs. Here’s a super-duper, super-easy punch for whatever celebrations spring may bring.

And let the word go out that the guy from the singles party is soon to be married, too, but not to me. May his bride-to-be be as thrilled as this one. Exclamation point.

Teetotaler’s Punch

• 1 large can frozen lemonade and the water required

• 1 large can frozen orange juice*, ditto

• 1 quart cranberry juice

• 1 46-oz. can pineapple juice

• 1 quart ginger ale

• 1 quart of tea made with 3 teabags

Mix, chill, serve.

*Minute Maid is discontinuing all its frozen juice cans in the U.S. and Canada by April 2026 due to low demand; you may still find a store-brand alternative if you’re committed to keeping the vintage vibe. Or just use the equivalent of fresh juice.

PRINT THE RECIPE!

Amie’s Endnotes

I wasn’t quite twelve years old when my mom went to that singles party, hadn’t yet become the second runaway of the family, and have no clue on the identity of the mystery date but I remember that night, my first without a babysitter, feeling grown-up and terrified all at once as I watched Starsky & Hutch on our little black-and-white TV in the living room, where a year later, she would exchange vows with her new husband, Bob. We’d have the reception there, too! Another party! With food! For friends and family! Now I’ve exceeded my exclamation point allotment but stay tuned: our next issue will cover the wedding. Exclamation point.

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Two weeks ago, we said goodbye to Cook & Tell KP Team Member Kimber, who never met a pan or a bowl she didn’t like. I’m pretty sure she’s found a celestial kitchen to keep tidy. May she enjoy every last lick.

Where’s the Beef?

For my Irish husband, St. Patrick’s Day wouldn’t be complete without corned beef and cabbage, a meal I have cooked exactly never in our 24 years of marriage.

I haven’t been a meat eater for some time now, and even when I was, corned beef was never on my list. Also, boiled cabbage? Ewww. Clearly, I’m Irish in name only.

At best, I’ll make a loaf of Irish Soda Bread. My husband, whose cooking skills are mostly limited to scrambled eggs and a microwaved Lean Cuisine cheese pizza, actually did cook a corned beef dinner one year early in our marriage. But these days, he’ll just pick up a corned beef sandwich the size of Long Island from the New York deli down the street.

I hate to be the one to ask, but do they really eat corned beef in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day?

This year, to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and the 25-year anniversary (!) of my mom’s cookbook, Cook & Tell: No-Fuss Recipes & Gourmet Surprises, we’re skipping corned beef altogether. This recipe is legit Irish, though; it came all the way from the Clare Inn in County Clare, Ireland and ought to please vegetarians, Irish folks and those of you who got excited over our earlier “Cook it Easy” pledge.

Before I could test this recipe for Irish Soda Bread Scones (thanks, !) this appeared on my counter. Manna from heaven, if heaven is the Sprouts Bakery. How’s that for cooking it easy?

What We’re Writing & Reading

An excerpt from the process journal I keep alongside Food Issues, the book I’m (still) writing about three generations of family food writers.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

—Soren Kierkegaard

As I transcribe my mother’s and grandmother’s journals and newspaper columns, the clippings yellowed with years and ads for shops that no longer exist, their personas begin to take form. The setting and characters slowly come to life, as if I were writing a novel.

I did not realize I held the power to build a nonfictional world. How the words of two women would recreate all the moments I’d lost. How the darkened corners of our long-ago lives would be illuminated with these flashbulbs of memory.

All the years I never listened, and now I hear their voices. Because they run through my words, my pages. Because their voices are mine.

An update: I recently sold an excerpt from the book to Off-Menu, a magazine focused on food’s cultural, emotional, and social connections. I guess this book does have a place in the world, even if writing it takes much longer than I realized.

Thanks for joining us! Sláinte,

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (March, 2005)

My Fellow Beater, Whippers, Mashers, and Poachers:

The State of the Kitchen is alive and well, up and running, ready and waiting, and able and willing.

The new fridge we bought last year continues to thrill us with its glass shelves, its commodious door, and its mysterious ability to accommodate more baggage than its predecessor, in presumably the same number of cubic feet of space. But the outside surface of that door, the face it turns to the public has been a wee bit troubling. At the outset, I declared it a junk-free zone—no calendar, no recipe clippings, no snapshots, no postcards, no scribbled notes allowed. I wanted to celebrate the pristine whiteness.

The door has been experiencing a clipping creep lately, and there is no one but me to blame. Here’s a recipe for sausage and cabbage from the New York Times. Here’s a calendar, a postcard of Old Glory and one of the Union Jack, a list of snowstorm dates and a list of possible meals for the coming week. My favorite scrap is a newspaper photo of a leaping ballerina captured by the camera in midair, a nanosecond record of a position you would never see with your slow, blinking eyes. How can I put such ephemera into folders or scrapbooks? Who needs pristine whiteness?

The Office of Strategic Gadgetry reports the acquisition of a spiffy new can opener (No, not electric. Are you kidding? You hold this in your hand), a set of cookie sheets that finally forced me to pitch the ones I bought when the world was young and that, in the intervening decades, had acquired a brown, lacquer-like finish on the bottoms; a thing that looks like a peeler and purports to julienne vegetables, but seems to render a carrot into soft thin shreds, which is nice, but is it julienned?

The Secretary of Cutlery and Crockery has just ordered one of those new-fangled Santoku knives that are all over the cooks’ catalogs and magazines. They’re the ones with the odd-looking grooves running perpendicular to the cutting edge. I almost don’t really care about the touted benefits; what I liked about them was the sound of Santoku. Then I found out those grooves are called kullens, and that did it. I had to have one.

It doesn’t take much to make this administration happy.

But my ancient and honorable stove is in trouble. You all know my Hotpoint, vintage 1954. Through endless publicity in columns like this, it has become an icon to all who value funkiness over efficiency. You have sympathized or puzzled over my passion to keep the old thing, regardless of its shortcomings: no little lights to let you know a burner is on; no clock; to timer; no over light or window. And even if I do remember cleaning the oven once, it would be hard to prove.

Well, it’s worse than you think. This stove’s days are numbered. One night while I was making supper, I turned on the big burner and got a fireworks display that featured a ring of sparklers and Roman candle-type flares, leaving a weird, ragged residue of lava-like substance when it cooled and hardened. Those stovetop pyrotechnics, added to the fact that only one of the other three burners still operates on all five speeds, and that I can never remember if it’s the left front or left rear that only works on high, have done more than any dark and dubious oven could do to convince me that this is no longer a piece of Americana worth saving.

I must confess that my daughter and her husband gave us a gift certificate for Christmas worth $200 toward the purchase of a new stove. “We don’t want the cooking to stop,” she said. An insurgency of cranky burners can’t begin to compete with a persuader like that.

Amie’s Headnotes

The same year she wrote this piece, my mom cashed in that gift certificate and replaced her old stove with a ceramic cooktop model. For twenty years now, it’s been an appliance as remarkably reliable as the refrigerator referenced earlier in this story, which I have unapologetically filled with postcards, recipes, photos and menu lists. Somewhere between then and now, though, the shelf-life of anything purchased new—appliances, computers, cars—seems to be limited to a one-year warranty. Planned obsolescence, indeed.

Speaking of maple (we weren’t! just checking if you’re paying attention), March is the month where sap usually runs best in Maine’s maple trees. Here’s a sweet and simple recipe for maple pudding to bake in your favorite oven.

Maple Cottage Pudding

• 1 c. maple syrup

• ¼ c. butter

• 3 T. sugar

• 1 egg

• ½ c. milk

• 1 ½ c. flour

• 2 t. baking powder

• ¼ t. salt

Bring syrup to boil and pour into 1 or 1 ½ quart baking dish. Or you can boil the syrup in an 8” square pan and bake the pudding in the same pan.

Cream the butter and sugar; beat in egg. Add milk. Sift dry ingredients and fold in.

This is a somewhat stiff, rich biscuity batter, like a shortcake. You have to spoon it out into the pan, right into the syrup and sort of spread it, best you can. It comes together in fine shape in the baking—25 min at 400◦ F. You can invert, but I’d rather not, thank you.

Serve warm or cool with unsweetened whipped cream.

PRINT THE RECIPE!

For an authentic Québécois experience (and more accents aigus), reader and fellow Maine islander Carole E, shares her favorite Pouding Chômeur recipe.

Amie’s Endnotes

Even though I have a self-sharpening block full of every knife you’d ever need, I can’t bring myself to let go of the Santoku my mother sent for my birthday the year she wrote this—like when her old Hamilton Beach food processor finally gave out a month after she did, and I held onto it for a year because discarding it felt like throwing away a piece of her…

If you missed the earlier story about our iconic old Hotpoint, it’s pretty funny.

For a refresher on previous State of the Kitchen Addresses, here’s 2025 and 2024.

Your Pantry Pals,

Amie & Karyl

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From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (March 1986)

Daughter Amie said we ought to have a Chinese menu this month. In fact, she was insistent. The Kid is sovereign over a kitchen of her own, and a very good cook (but yes, dear, in that meat loaf recipe, where it says to soak the bread in the water and “add it to the meat mixture,” it means to add the bread, not the water) so how could I object?

She said the menu should be easy, so everybody could learn how much fun stir-frying is. Besides, it’s shrimp season in Maine1, so why not celebrate with a shrimp stir-fry, she said, offering this one from a Junior League cookbook I gave her.

Then I said, hey, it’s also Chinese New Year season, so there was no way to avoid a Chinese menu, because as long as we’re celebrating, let’s celebrate the Chinese part too, I said. Furthermore, said The Mother to The Kid, let’s wind up the Real Meal section with REAL fortune cookies like you never get in Chinese restaurants! And The Kid said Great! Send me the recipe.

Okay, Amie, here it is. They are worth the fuss, incredibly delicate and delicious. I took a tin of them to our local Chinese eatery and passed them around after dinner—waitress, hostess, chef and all. To ensure good fortune, stuff the cookies with messages that promise all the things you’ve ever wanted.

Amie’s Headnotes

Chinese New Year, more broadly known as Lunar New Year, is a 15-day festival marking the first new moon of the lunisolar calendar which signals spring’s arrival. Celebrated across Asia and worldwide, it focuses on family reunions, honoring ancestors, (hi, Mom! 👋) and new beginnings through food, red decorations, and fireworks for luck.

The traditional feast includes a whole fish to signify abundance; instead, we’re bringing you a simple shrimp stir fry, along with the uninspiringly-named-yet-unbelievably-tasty broccoli dish I’ve been making since my teens. And if I actually did make my mom’s fortune cookies in the little kitchen of my cabin on Lucerne Lake—the last place I lived in Maine before I moved out West—I’ve forgotten. There’s so much of those years I’ve forgotten.

STIR-FRIED SHRIMP AND PEA PODS

• 3 T. vegetable oil

• 1 t. fresh ginger, minced, or ½ t. ground

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1 lb raw shrimp, peeled and deveined

• 6 oz. pea pods, fresh or frozen

• 1 4-oz. can sliced water chestnuts, drained

• 1/3 c. chicken stock

• 1 T. soy sauce

• 1 t. sugar

• 1 T. sherry

Heat oil in wok or skillet with ginger and garlic. Add shrimp and stir-fry 1 ½ min. Add pea pods and water chestnuts; stir-fry for 2 more min. Add remaining ingredients and stir-fry 2 min. Serve over rice.

PRINT ALL THE RECIPES!

Endnotes: What I’m (Not) Reading

In support of authors and the seemingly dying species of actual, real-life books, I’ve been on a pre-ordering binge of the latest offerings from my favorite food writers and micro storytellers.

Arriving later this month: The Irish Goodbye, by .

In March, from , whom I wrote with at the Tucson Book Festival workshop a few years back, a memoir in flash: Scrap: Salvaging a Family.

And finally, in April, the long-awaited Italian Cookies cookbook from and Alicia Kennedy’s On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites.

By the way, Happy Mardi Gras! If you’re hankering for some Fat Tuesday flavor, here’s the official Cook & Tell Jambalaya Recipe.

And here’s a couple shots from the best meal of the official Cook & Tell Palm Springs Galentine’s Weekend, Cinnamon Swirl French Toast at Rick’s Restaurant; check out Bob Hope and his ham in the background.

Your Pantry Pals,

Amie & Karyl

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From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (February 1997)

Dear Daughter, again:

How was that for a follow-up to the letter I wrote you in the December issue of your favorite almost-monthly kitchen newsletter? Re-reading that letter/essay to a nationwide radio audience on public radio was what it took to make us get on our horse and out to Phoenix to see you. I’m glad you were able to catch it on your car radio on your way to lunch, and even gladder that we could get away for a visit in your own dear home.

And didn’t I have just the best time prowling the aisles of your supermarket, noticing the products we don’t have back here. Like the interesting-looking Thomas cranberry English muffins that I managed to squash into the suitcase for the trip back to Maine. They showed up not only on our breakfast table the morning after our return home, but sure enough, plain as day, on the shelf of our very own supermarket where they’ve been holding down a space for months, I learned.

That’s what I get—along with more apples than the fridge drawer will hold and sometimes the wrong kind of tomatoes—for delegating most of the marketing to my willing Shopper Bob. I only wish for you the same good fortune.

I just love the shoulder bag you gave me for my birthday, loved your spontaneity in buying two—one for yourself and one for me—when we simultaneously spotted them that day in Sedona. My mother made mother-and-daughter dresses for herself and me, but I think the fad skipped your generation. Now it’s back, in reverse!

It’s good to be your mother. All love,

Mum, again

Amie’s Headnotes

Once upon a time, we had presidents so exceptional, we gave two of them holidays for their birthdays. Eventually the two authentic natal dates were officially blended into one and now we have Presidents’ Day, where patriotic Americans get to honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln over a long weekend of skiing, sleeping in, or shopping for cars.

Not me, though. I’ll be observing the holiday by hosting a belated Galentine’s Brunch for my nieces-in-law, Southwest style, with this Chilaquiles Brunch Casserole, a nod to our south of the border friends. For dessert, I’ll bake up a batch of Cream Cheese Pastry Hearts, a nod to my grandmother who got the recipe while at art school in Vienna more than a century ago.

APRICOT CREAM CHEESE PASTRY HEARTS

Makes approximately 24

Pastry

• 1 c. sifted all-purpose flour

• Dash of salt

• ½ c. butter (1 stick, 4 oz.)

• ½ of 8 oz. package cream cheese, cut in small pieces

Filling

• Apricot preserves, I subbed strawberry preserves because it felt more Valentines-y

• 1 beaten egg

• Sugar for sprinkling

Sift flour and salt into bowl. Cut butter and cheese into small pieces, then cut into flour mixture til well blended. Lightly shape into ball. Wrap in saran and refrigerate until well chilled.

Heat oven to 400◦F. Lightly grease 2 cookie sheets. On floured surface, roll out dough 1/8” thick.

Cut heart shapes with a cookie cutter, rerolling trimmings. Depending on the size of your hearts, put about 1 tsp. preserves in the middle of half of them. Brush edges with beaten egg, cover with another heart, press edges with fork.

Arrange on cookie sheets, brush top of each with beaten egg, sprinkle with sugar. Bake 10-12 min or til golden. Cool on rack.

PRINT THE RECIPE!

Endnotes

Another bunch of February festivities that aren’t holidays, but noteworthy: Groundhog’s Day (settle in for more winter), the Superbowl (go, Pats!) and my 24^th wedding anniversary. I’ll be making Marry Me Chicken with a healthy spin, a recipe sent in by the same reader who will never live down calling my eating healthier New Year’s resolution “stereotypical.” What could be more stereotypical than the name of this recipe?

We’ll cover the next round of February holidays—Chinese New Year and Mardi Gras—in our next issue. For a short month, February is long on celebration…

Your Pantry Pals,

Amie & Karyl

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The thing about this diet, eating plan, menu reset—however I want to spin it—is I’m constantly thinking about food. I mean, way beyond the normal life of a food-writer: the recipe testing, the tasting, the research, the writing. I don’t want to say I’m obsessed with food, but as I relearn the ways and whys of better nutrition, it’s hard not to be.

I promise I will not be one of those people who can’t shut up about how great their [insert trendy new diet here] is and how much everyone would benefit from said trendy new diet; this is the only time I’ll dish about my new diet, trendy nor not. In three more days, my resolution allegedly becomes a habit* or at the very least, a more nutritious lifestyle.

*

To be clear: aside from the usual holiday baking mania, I always considered myself a healthy eater. I’m a pescatarian. I love salads and cottage cheese. I only eat bread if I’m dining out (fair warning: you better grab a roll quick before I empty the basket). And, okay, there were times when a bag of sour gummy bears functioned as lunch. But the bulk of my daily 80-100 grams of protein came from protein shakes and bars, leaving me feeling empty and depleted. I felt it in my workouts; I felt it in my mental clarity.

I needed actual food.

The basic takeaways:

• Eat early and often but be smart about it.

• Don’t obsess about calorie counts.

• I forgot how good sweet potatoes are!

• Healthy carbs (sweet potatoes, beans, whole grain bread, brown rice and quinoa) are best eaten before dinner to avoid a blood sugar spike. I was aware of this but until I put it into practice, didn’t quite believe it.

• It’s not all grilled chicken breasts, rice and broccoli, though. I lived that hell during my body-building phase. So far, I’ve made protein power bars, Sloppy Joe-style stuffed peppers, the protein carrot cake I mentioned in the last issue, protein pancakes, protein bowls and oven-baked zucchini “fries.”

• Prep and planning are everything. They’re also time-consuming.

• Breaking up with sugar isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

• A weekly cheat meal is the icing on the cake <ouch>

PRINT THE CARROT CAKE RECIPE!

Staying true to the 2026 “Cook It Easy” mantra, I’ve created an assortment of protein bowls worth checking out. You don’t have to be on a diet to try a tasty bowl or two and they’re a cinch to make!

THE SUPER BOWL RECIPE COLLECTION

Breakfast Protein Bowls

• PBJ: Mix together ½ cup oatmeal or protein oats + a scoop of vanilla protein powder+ ½ cup berries + water or milk; microwave for 1 min; stir and adjust liquid if necessary and zap for another min. Top with 1 tbsp peanut butter.

• Black bean: sauté in olive oil ½ a can drained & rinsed black beans sprinkled with crushed red pepper, garlic powder and cumin for 5 min; add ½ a cubed roasted sweet potato, peeled and cubed, and sauté for 3 more min. In bowl, add ½ cup cooked brown rice, black bean mixture and top with fried or poached egg and cubed avocado. Squeeze in half a lime; mix well.
  A riff on at recent recipe shared by .

Lunch Protein Bowls

• Spicy Szechuan Bowl: mix together 1 tsp each: soy sauce, chili paste, hoisin sauce, rice vinegar & sesame oil in bowl; add 10-12 medium shrimp (fresh or thawed from frozen) or half a chicken breast cut into bite sized pieces and marinate for 2 hours. Stir fry, then add to 1 cup brown rice and steamed broccoli.

• Roasted Salmon Bowl: prep a 4 oz. salmon filet with maple rub; roast for 25 min at 425◦ F. Flake with fork and add to 1 cup quinoa, chopped tomatoes, cucumber and avocado. Top with a smidge of vinaigrette and mix together.

Spice It Up

• Mexican: 1/2 a can of drained, rinsed black beans or 4 oz. protein of choice + 1 cup brown rice +2 T each guacamole and salsa + chopped tomatoes + lettuce

• Mediterranean: 1/2 a can of drained, rinsed garbanzo beans or 4 oz. protein of choice + 1 cup brown rice/quinoa + 2 T each hummus, lemon juice & sliced olives

Snack Bowl

• Chocolate Mango Smoothie Bowl: Blend together til smooth ½ cup frozen mango +1/2 frozen banana + ½ cup plain Greek yogurt + ½ scoop chocolate protein powder + 1 heaping tsp cocoa powder + ¼ to ½ cup water. Optional 1-2 dates, pitted.

  Adapted from a recipe card from writer, runner and pen pal .

Endnotes

• I just can’t with the new food pyramid, and neither can

• *Does it REALLY take 21 days to form a habit?

• And the Oreo flavor of 2026 is…

• Access to my recipes will always be free; use the Recipe Index link below to discover more protein options!

Your Kitchen Correspondent,

Amie

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From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (October 1984)

The Classic Look of Glass, Incorporating Handsome Accents of Woodgrain, sounded intriguing. But oh, that Promise of Clean! That’s what started my mouth watering for a new kitchen stove.

Imagine, I said to myself, in the seductive language of the advertising copy writer: the full-width storage drawer, with ample space for pots and pans, may be easily removed to provide unobstructed access when cleaning the floor under the range.

When cleaning the what?

But the proffered guarantee of cleanliness primarily covered the oven, not the floor. If I were to latch on to one of these beauties, I could choose the self-cleaning or continuous-cleaning model. I could press a button any hour of the day or night and stand there observing baked-on splatter vaporize. In addition to that alluring Promise of Clean, there was an implied Promise of Interesting.

Pretty soon, I concluded that the picture of me consorting with one of those new-fangled “cooking centers” is simply not me. Me is perfectly content navigating a white—not almond, olive or harvest gold—job, circa 1954, which has a never-cleaning oven and four burners that do not plug in and plug out for easy removal and cleaning of reflector bowls. I call those things burner bibs and buy replacements whenever the ones currently in use cease responding to my casual swipe with a soapy sponge.

I was uneasy about those Handsome Accents of Woodgrain, too. If it were real wood, I think it would be called wood. The only thing plastic about my 30-year-old stove is the knobs, a non-feature that makes me feel like a privileged custodian of vintage Americana.

The stove was eighteen years old when we bought the place in 1972. We were going to replace it forthwith, but after brief deliberations, the family finance committee strongly recommended a policy of thrift. Never mind the shortage of doodads—no magical dials, no window in the oven door, no light in the oven. The darn thing worked. So what if the panel just below the oven flew open and hit the floor with an awful crash every time I opened the oven door? I figured out soon enough how to prop my foot against the panel and actually came to enjoy the noisy little feature. For twelve years, the family maintenance committee has not seen fit to fix it, apparently waiting to see how long the foot will hold out.

All my 1954 Hotpoint has going for it is the simple, doodad-less fact that it works. And it works good. My repairman, who comes to fix the dishwasher, the refrigerator and the washing machine, but never the stove because the stove has never needed service, told me you could drive a tricycle into my stove without denting it, but that the ones they make today crumple and chip at the drop of a spoon.

When I want to feel sorry for myself, I think of all the years I could have been driving a tricycle into my stove and watching it not dent. I certainly have no business feeling sorry for myself over the fact that it’s well on its way to winning the equivalent of an Oscar for best and longest performance by a major appliance. And even though I’ll admit my head can be turned temporarily by a Promise of Clean and a Classic Look of Glass, I know I’d hate myself if I ever turned in that heirloom for the cheap thrill of zapping some harmless blueberry-pie overflow into ash.

Not only that, but the cheap thrill is not cheap. For what one new range would set me back, I’ll bet I could outfit ten kids with new tricycles and crash helmets and have more fun watching them bounce off my oven than I’d ever have cleaning the floor under it.

Amie’s Headnotes

It’s Cook & Tell’s 3-year “digital” birthday this month (technically we’re 50 years old, if you count the original newspaper column that my mom began in 1976) and we’re celebrating with the super easy 3-ingredient cake I made on New Year’s Eve, involving neither oven nor trike.

Side Note: Cook & Tell really started 60-some years ago, with the letters and recipes my mom and grandmother exchanged before I was even born, and eventually became the manuscript for a never-published cookbook in the late ‘60s—the foundation of the book I’m writing about three generations of female food writers.

3-INGREDIENT ICE CREAM CAKE

• 1 half gallon (or, in current shrinkflation terms, 1.5 or 1.75 quarts) ice cream of your choice; I used Brownie Carmel Moose Tracks

• 1-11.78 oz. package Oreo Thins

• 3 T. unsalted butter, melted

Remove ice cream from freezer and let soften slightly, enough to scoop and spread easily over a cookie crumb crust. Don’t let it melt, though—I let it sit for about 30-35 mins.

While ice cream is softening, crush Oreos in a Zip-lock with a rolling pin. Reserve 1/4 of the crushed cookies and set aside in small bowl. Crush the remaining cookies even more to help crust stay together.

In medium bowl, mix remaining 3/4 crushed cookies with melted butter. Spread evenly over an 8 x 8” pan, forming a cookie crust. Spread softened ice cream over the crust with the backside of a soup spoon and top with reserved crushed Oreos.

Cover and chill in freezer overnight.

PRINT THE RECIPE!

Amie’s Endnotes

Like my other two goals for 2026, my culinary resolution is simple: cook it easy. Some of you may remember the so-called “Cook It Easy” section in vintage issues of Cook & Tell. Happy New Year, people, I’m bringing it back!

Anyway, at this stage of my life I figure I have more years behind me than ahead, so why spend it all in the kitchen? Also, I’m still writing this damn book and may be for the rest of my life.

Besides resolving to complete a final (?) draft of the book this year, I’m also reshaping the way I eat, which I’m told is a very stereotypical resolution (thanks, Allie!) but whatever: the plan is to eat clean for January. Clearly, ice cream cake is off the menu, but I’ve found a way to have my cake and eat it, too. I’ll write more about this Protein Carrot Cake in the next issue.

Your Pantry Pals,

Amie & Karyl

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (December 1994)

That first Christmas in that obscure place signaled such a big idea that, ever since, men, women and children have been known to spend their lives exploring the idea’s promise and endeavoring to live its meaning.

The world was small, in terms of what was known, on that night when shepherds heard the choir of angels sing of peace and good will. But the joy intrinsic to the big idea and embedded in its revolutionary simplicity shined a light so large as to be indistinguishable, no matter what gloom or grief could be manufactured to oppose it.

Nothing special has to happen to make it Christmas, because, of course, it already happened a long time ago in Bethlehem. But something special often does take place, along with the “keeping” of Christmas, that remains in memory, to be recalled when the settling calm of the season affords a moment’s reflection. Here is the front page of the Boston Herald for Saturday, December 25, 1948, which I found in the old family files. There, right in the middle, under a banner headline proclaiming the “City’s Eve Quietest in Years,” a close-up photograph shows five boys and girls from Needham Junior High, holding song books and singing carols on Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill the night before. The carolers are identified—Billie, Ralph, Nancy, Janet and I—and we are all babushka-ed and ear-muffed against the record 15-degree cold, “coldest to date,” according to the accompanying news article.

What fun to remember that special Eve! We actually started the caroling that night, until the crowd, estimated at a meager 15,000 due to the weather, could be heard all over the Hill’s crooked streets, “carrying on the tradition that has made the Hill famous for its night-before-Christmas celebration.” How could we know, as we nibbled Christmas stollen and warmed our hands around mugs of cocoa back in Billie’s kitchen after caroling, that Christmas Day would find us on page one!

Then there is the Christmas, many years later, when the music of my life seemed silenced and no amount of hot chocolate could bring the needed comfort. Clinging as best I could to a sense of joy whose source I knew was not another person, I eventually began to hear again the harmony that is part of the big idea announced by angels.

And what about the red wool shirt I labored to complete in time to give Bob for Christmas in 1976? I was still working on it late on Christmas Eve and presented it to him, somewhat apologetically, without its buttonholes finished. I ended up owning that shirt, because he married me, and the sleeves were a little too short for him.

*

It was such a simple setting, the place where that big idea appeared so brightly. So undecorated, so tinsel-free, so not dressed up. So quiet, except for the singing of angels that kept the shepherds awake and the light they couldn’t put out.

Amie’s Headnotes

As I retype this essay of my mother’s, as sweet and pure as the first Christmas, I can’t help but tear up. Recapturing that simple joy isn’t always easy during the hustle of the holidays, even when I skip the part about the state of the world. But baking sweets and treats for holiday gift tin deliveries to friends and neighbors—a tradition I began last year during a particularly troublesome time in my life—is a good way to spread joy, and the delight in the recipients’ eyes? That’s the best gift of all.

You’d think needhams, the staple of many a New England Christmas gift tin, originated in Needham, the Massachusetts town where my mom grew up but the chocolate candy was actually created in Maine in the late 19^th century by candymaker John Seavey. Named after a popular preacher of the era, George C. Needham, its history is really quite bizarre.

I beg you: do not freak out over the mashed potatoes. Maine once harvested more potatoes than even Idaho, and they remain a major crop in Aroostook County. They remain a major ingredient in the needham, too.

NEEDHAMS

Makes 30-45 pieces

• ¾ cup hot mashed potatoes

• 1 stick butter

• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

• ¼ tsp. salt

• 1 (2-pound) bag confectioners’ sugar

• 2 cups firmly packed shredded coconut

• 12-ounce bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

Heat all ingredients except chocolate chips in a double boiler, stirring until well blended. When mixture is cool enough to handle, spread out on waxed paper and cut into squares.

Melt chips in double boiler. Dip squares into the chocolate to coat. Place needhams on waxed paper to cool.

PRINT THE RECIPE!

Wishing you peace and joy,

Amie & Karyl (who was almost named Joy, and I often think of her as Joy, for that is what she brought to my life and our family)

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

1. A Sweet & Savory Party

Before apps blew up our smartphone screens, we ate them. Deviled eggs, sweet & sour meatballs, cheese balls, onion dip. My holiday girlfriend get-together this year deviated from the usual Dessert in the Desert party: everyone brought a savory app and I provided the sweets.

Of Note: Allie D’s Crab Dip, a reliably old-school Minnesota dish passed down from her mom and a little like my own mom’s Crabmeat Dreams. Allie served hers in a fondue pot (electric, but still: reminiscent of the copper one in my attic that screams 1968), with crusty French bread for dipping; my mom’s was spread on a quartered English muffin and broiled in her toaster oven. The key ingredient in both is Old English cheese, and let me tell you trying to find this relic in a grocery store was like going on a year-long scavenger hunt.

ALLIE’S MOM SUE’S HOT CRAB DIP

• 1 jar Old English cheese

• 1 8-oz. package cream cheese

• 1 can crab meat

• ¼ cup light cream

• ½ tsp Worcestershire sauce

• ¼ tsp garlic salt

• ½ tsp cayenne pepper

Heat thoroughly. Serve with crusty French bread.

As the official Provider of Sweets, I baked up a bunch of treats: chocolate frosted lemon-strawberry cookies; a gingerbread that truly failed to deliver; GF, DF & vegan pumpkin muffins; ’s roasted cashews that will be on every party menu from now on; and s’mores fudge from Marjorie Standish’s Cooking Down East cookbook, which she accurately described as “a not-to-sweet confection” with an interesting texture.

PRINT THE RECIPES!

2. Cathy Cooks & Tells, Vol. 2

In the October issue, I challenged readers to make the Brown Bread recipe with bonus points for using a pressure cooker. As I predicted, a New Englander rose to—and exceeded—the challenge. Subscriber Cathy McC made not just one, but three loaves.

“After you posted that brown bread recipe, I knew I had to try it,” writes Cathy. “And I will love forever any recipe that includes the phrase ‘elderly remnants’ in its headnotes!”

Cathy used a combination of cornmeal and whole wheat flour; her extremely creative stale bread remnants included a pumpkin muffin, old gingersnaps, graham crackers and whole wheat bread.

Cathy’s creativity didn’t stop there: she baked the bread in the large-size (29-oz.) cans of pumpkin puree and will keep them for future loaves. “The bread is absolutely delicious,” she says. “I think I’ll be making it forever.”

For her noble efforts, Cathy received a bonus digital Cook & Tell Fall 2010 issue, featuring Mocha Raspberry Whoopie Pies and Yankee Baked Beans, along with an invite to snag a few old-school paper copies from the archives on her next visit to Chestnut Lodge.

3. The Bright Night of the Soul

Winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere occurs on December 21 (at 15:30 UTC/Zulu Time to be precise), the shortest day of the year. Maybe it is the seasonal dark night of the soul, but why can’t it also be a time to honor the light and the darkness that live in each of us?

To celebrate the solstice this year, I invite you to turn that darkness into light with me. Jot down the things you want to let go of on small scraps of paper and throw them in the fire. Then, brew up a batch of wassail and set an intention for the New Year.

HOLIDAY WASSAIL

Combine in saucepan or crockpot:

• 2 quarts apple cider

• ¾ c. pineapple juice

• 1 ½ c. orange juice

• 1 T. brown sugar

• ½ t. lemon juice

• Dash of ground cinnamon & cloves

• 2 cinnamon sticks

Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Discard the cinnamon sticks, pour into mugs, and serve.

Endnotes

Cook & Tell, along with a dozen other cooks, was featured in ‘s recent newsletter about kitchen catastrophes. Good to know I’m not alone!

Dish Lister

The Kitchen Failures That Made Us Better Cooks

We all make mistakes in the kitchen. Even those of us who spend countless hours cooking and have built a career around it have faced our share of blunders, big and small. But it’s what we learn from those mishaps that truly counts. My own kitchen misadventures have taught me some of my best (life) lessons and led to some of my most satisfying personal g…

Read more

6 months ago · 27 likes · 26 comments · Kerry Faber

See you next time! Your Pantry Pal,

Amie

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

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It’s Cook & Tell’s Third Annual Stocking Stuffer Guide and I’ll admit, it’s been a bit of a struggle this year. While the rampant commercialism of the season isn’t exactly new, it feels more blatant than ever, especially with leaner wallets and budgets.

I’ve done my best to keep the gift suggestions useful, yummy and mostly under $15. Small Business Saturday may be over, but you can still shop small, support solo creators and bring a taste of Maine to your gift giving—no Amazon link in sight.

Note: Prices noted don’t account for potentially lower Cyber Monday—hey! that’s today—deals.

Gifts Under $15

• A BLUEBERRY TRIFECTA from The Woods Maine Shop, a DownEast Magazine Best Gift Shop Finalist. Their gift collection—online and at the flagship shop in Norway (Maine), showcases local artisans rooted in the traditional Maine lifestyle of simplicity and community.

  • Blueberry Sea Salt $12

  • Blueberry Pork Rub $18

  • Blueberry Goat Soap $8

• TINNED CHOCOLATE SARDINES: $30 for a two-pack (vegan or milk chocolate) from Bixby Chocolate. I toured their brick-lined Rockland factory last summer and half-expected Willy Wonka to pop out at any minute.

• HAND-CRAFTED CHRISTMAS CARDS that double as ornaments for your tree from artist and foodwriter : $15 for a pack of three, three different designs.

• DARK CHOCOLATE & PEANUT BUTTER WHOOPIE PIE MIX: $13.95. Ragged Coast Chocolates started out with a Maine couple making chocolate in their Isle au Haut barn kitchen and later expanded to a full-fledged chocolate factory with a line of chocolatey baking mixes just outside of Portland.

• SLACK TIDE SEA SALT: $12. Sprinkle this crisp, hand-harvested finishing salt on savory or sweet food to enhance flavor and texture. 100% pure sea salt from the Maine ocean.

  ---

Gifts Under $10

• SINGLE SERVING LAVA CAKES: $6.99. Jarva Cakes offers a slew of single serving lava cake mixes, from dark velvet chocolate to sea salt caramel, with each cake weighing in around 350 calories. Just add water, mix and microwave. The Chocolate Raspberry cake with its melted chocolate raspberry ganache center is calling my name.

• HOW TO COOK VINTAGE: $3.99. A gorgeous 55-page PDF booklet filled with recipes, quotes and notes from a simpler time

• MONOGRAMMED HAND-EMBROIDERED CORNER BOOKMARKS: $1.62 to earmark favorite recipe pages in favorite cookbooks.

Gifts Under $25

• POTPOURRI OF VINTAGE AND MODERN RECIPE CARDS (set of 30): $16

• THE WRITER’S TABLE: FAMOUS AUTHORS AND THEIR FAVOURITE RECIPES: $24.23. “A delectable little read…” writes food blogger, book blogger, and novelist in her recent review. Author Valerie Stivers covers the eating-while-writing habits, dining and entertaining preferences, and favorite recipes of some of the world’s most beloved writers. Intriguing, but, like CJ, I’ll pass on the peacock dish.

Find Cook & Tell’s Stocking Stuffer Guides from Christmases Past here and here.

A Gift For You

From the Cook & Tell Vault, a 40-year-old vintage illustration (of what else but a stocking?) and printable Extra Helping issue with four holiday recipes.

PRINT THE BONUS RECIPES!

What readers are saying about Cook & Tell

The mother/daughter bond is so strong in both her words and yours. Beautiful.

—Elizabeth N

Your written scenarios are so vivid and comforting like your mother’s. When her little newsletters would arrive, everything going on in the house took a backseat…I would drop whatever I was engaged in and plop down with a cuppa and read that precious little pamphlet from front to back…it was the most relaxed I would ever feel until the next one arrived.

—Carol F

Thank you for the reading pleasure your Substack posts give me.

—Kate O

We were so sorry to learn of [your mom’s] passing, but now, thanks to you, we can revisit her through her words and yours.

—Ken B

See you next time! Your Pantry Pal,

Amie

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (November, 1995)

All I can remember clearly is the gratitude. It was a long time ago, but I was grown up; I do remember that. Something was wrong, or not quite right, anyway. We were out of a job, or of money, probably, now that I think of it. And I suppose, if I were to probe memory long enough, I could come up with what the problem might have been called. But I am glad I don’t want to do that, and gladder still that what I remember most clearly was the solution.

It was very likely my mother who gently urged me, back then, to make a list of what I was grateful for. Mothers do that. Such an exercise didn’t strike me as quaint or pointless then, any more than it does now. As a child I had learned that whatever the difficulty, gratitude leads the way out. Far from ignoring the problem, being grateful was doing something about it.

But it wasn’t, and isn’t, just an exercise, this enumeration of things you have to be grateful for, what I always called my grateful list. It’s acknowledging everything good that you can think of at any given moment, and for successive moments, and always. If you will admit to a glimmer of what they call faith, you may agree with me when I suggest it is something beyond human reach, the ultimate good, to whom thanks are due.

So, through tears at first, for whatever distress seemed such a threat to my happiness, I started my list of every good thing that came to my attention. Small things, the things you hardly notice, or forget quickly. The mailman’s cheerful greeting. A compliment. Careful driving. Politeness. I kept my list beside my bed, adding to it at the end of every day and reviewing every morning. As thanks filled my thoughts, my reasons for gratitude expanded to include the idea behind the thing, and not just the thing itself. The very idea of gratitude sang in the storm and lifted me out of despair.

I can’t remember the specific resolution to the problem any better than I can remember the exact nature of the problem. All I remember clearly is the gratitude.

Gratitude is big enough to fill a room. Then it leaks out, spills onto sidewalks, crosses streets, and bounces off neighbors and strangers. But it can start small—about the size of a little girl, whose “Greatful List,” which I found in the family files includes her dog and cat, her Granny, Mom, Dad, her neighbors and “a lot more people”—and grow bigger as it rolls along, as when she came to the bottom of the page and wrapped things up with words that unfurl to infinity: “and it goes on and on. It never stops.”

Amie’s Headnotes

I’ve got two pairs of recipe pairings—no pears involved—that’ll have you feeling grateful for fall flavors. The first features butternut squash: Autumn Bisque, the treasured recipe from a treasured friend’s treasured late mom Ann, and Butternut Squash Crumble, a Cook & Tell favorite.

PRINT THE AUTUMN BISQUE RECIPE

PRINT THE BUTTERNUT CRUMBLE RECIPE

Next up, a pair of creative solutions for leftover cranberry sauce: Leftover Cranberry Sauce Muffins and the Cran-Apple Jalapeño Salsa & Cheese Spread I whipped up to put a dent in the million tiny jalapeños growing in my backyard.

Cran-Jalapeno Salsa & Cheese Spread

For the Salsa

• ¼ cup roughly chopped jalapeno peppers

• ½ cup cranberry sauce

• 1 green apple or whatever apple you’ve got lying around, cored and cut into chunks

• ¼ cup cider vinegar

For the Spread

• 1 8-oz. pkg cream cheese or Neufchâtel

• 4 oz. chevre goat cheese

• ¼ cup walnuts, finely chopped

Put first 4 ingredients in food processor. Blend for about 1 minute until very finely chopped - almost like a paste.

Serve with tortilla chips or use in cheese spread (below).

For cheese spread, set cream cheese & goat cheese in bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment for 30 mins to soften. Beat until smooth; use hand mixer if no stand available. Add 3-4 Tbsp (add more depending on taste) of the salsa to cream cheese and beat until smoothly incorporated and goat cheese mixture. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or until firm.

Top with walnuts & serve with crackers—wheat thins are a perfect pairing.

Notes: for less heat, remove the seeds from your jalapenos. I prefer the heat! Salsa will keep in refrigerator for up to one month.

PRINT THE CRAN-JALEPENO SALSA RECIPE

Amie’s Endnotes

From grateful lists to the Grateful Dead shows I attended years ago, my life is full of gratitude. And when things seem at their bleakest and the even the word gratitude makes me cringe, if I listen hard enough, I hear the still, small voices of mothers near and far: make a grateful list.

We’re grateful to you, readers old and new, for inspiring us to keep cooking and telling.

Amie & Karyl

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

As we enter the season of holiday food and eating, consider paying it forward by helping feed others not as fortunate. You can donate to your local community food pantry or to Americans missing their SNAP food benefits or through the United Nations World Food Programme, Share The Meal.

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newspaper Column (November 11, 1976)

Most of my assets are piled outdoors. Seven beautiful cords of wood, cut in lengths to fit my three stoves, lie in neat rows against the house, or in a tall mound waiting to be split and stacked, or inside my garage, dry as a bone, as insurance against rain and snow. My wealth, these days, is in wood. On that score, I am rich.

An enormous transition takes place this time of the year for me. For a while there is reluctance to let go of autumn, because it has been the next best thing to summer. And summer, no matter how frenzied, is love and laziness and living easy—and who can bear to see it go? But when, at last, the scarecrow lies belly up in the remains of the garden, blown down by the fierce winds from the north, there is finally the acceptance of the fact of cold weather and winter on the way. I am willing to admit there will not be another wildflower to exclaim over until some remote, unknown, future time.

Battening down and buttoning up are on the agenda and I am revved up and ready. The time for the splitting of wood is come. This is a chore I have become adept at, surprising myself with my ability and pleased with the sense of accomplishment. I am of the sledge-and-wedge school of wood splitting, mainly because I care about my shins. But the greatest benefit of my chosen method is the lovely sound of metal on metal, unachievable with an axe, that tonk-tonk of sledge on wedge. When the log splinters with a mighty crack, the tonks are followed by a bleek, so the whole refrain goes, tonk-tonk-bleek.

From somewhere down the cove where echoes live, comes an answer in counterpoint, as if a neighbor were trying to keep up with me. This kind of mockery is music, and I love it.

I am the fulltime wood splitter-in-residence now, having become the sole sovereign of the mountain of wood in my driveway and I have had to adopt strong-arm tactics, quite literally, for reducing the whole logs to burnable stick size. A daughter to stack as you go along is a decided boon. One Sunday, Amie slipped away, leaving me alone with the wood, watching the day darken into dusk. A few more swipes would do it, I thought, not quite being ready to call it a day. Then the nicest thing happened. Amie began to play the piano. Her music, sweet strains of Chopin and Schumann, drifted through the window that she’d opened a crack on the driveway side of the music room. Taking up my sledge again, my splitting was like a metronome to her playing. It made me glad I had a daughter, a piano, and a woodpile.

After supper when night draped black over woods and water, marsh and meadow, I stood outside, coatless but warm, under an almost full moon. The smell of woodsmoke was strong and delicious. Looking up I could see the wispy, curling smoke tumbling and twirling from my three chimneys. It wasn’t hard to think faraway thoughts, to see those distant scintillations as if I were seeing my thoughts flung across the sky. Before I went back into the house, I gathered an armload of wood and made a wish on a cold blue star.

Amie’s Headnotes

As a kid, I learned to play on the petite upright my mom inherited from her uncle, a piano so small entire octaves had been eliminated to accommodate tight living quarters. I dreaded weekly piano lessons with the formidable teacher who pushed all her students to unrealistic concert pianist levels—a steady stream of the classics: Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin (all those damn sharps!) Monthly recitals were stress events as grand as the piano in her living room, and when I think of those Saturday afternoons, the room stuffy and too hot, I still feel the panic roiling in my stomach.

Four years in, I switched to a different teacher, where I could play the Carpenters and the Beatles and James Taylor. Modern music. Fun music. There were no recitals.

Many woodpile- and piano- free winters have since passed. When I returned home a decade ago to care for my mom, I’d wanted to play again, to feel my fingers dancing along the yellowed ivory on that tiny out-of-tune piano, to see if I could still read music, still find the rhythm, but everything was moving so fast and spare time was rare and piano playing could not have quieted my restless soul. The summer after her death, I found my favorite “Popular Piano Songbook” stashed in a wooden crate and sat down on the wobbly little bench. The Carpenters’ Close To You seemed an appropriate first piece to play after all these years. Because I am.

SWEDISH TEA LOGS

• 1 pkg yeast

• ¼ c. warm water

• 2 ¼ c. flour

• 2 T. sugar

• 1 t. salt

• ½ c. butter

• ¼ c. evaporated milk

• 1 egg, unbeaten

• ¼ c. currants or raisins

Filling

• ¼ c. butter

• ½ c. firmly packed brown sugar

• ½ c. pecans, chopped

Frosting

• 2 T. butter

• 1 c. confectioners’ sugar

• ½ t. vanilla

• 1-2 T. evaporated milk

Soften yeast in warm water. Whisk together flour, sugar and salt, cut in butter and add milk, egg, currants or raisins and softened yeast. Cover and chill 2 hours or overnight.

Divide dough in thirds. Roll out one part on floured surface to a 12” x 6” rectangle. Make filling: cream together butter, brown sugar and pecans.

Spread dough with one-third of filling, then roll up starting with the long side and seal. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet in a crescent shape. Make cuts along the outside edge 1” apart to withing ½” of inside edge. Twist cut pieces on sides. Repeat with remaining dough and filling.

Let rise in warm place for about 45 min. Bake at 350 20-25 min until golden brown.

Frost while warm: brown 2 T. butter; stir in confectioners’ sugar, vanilla and milk.

PRINT THE RECIPE!

Your Pantry Pals,

The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micro mashup | instagram

1. Ghost Busting

“Is this cucumber I taste in the pico?” I asked the server at the Miner’s Café, a tiny hole-in-the-wall carved out of one of the many sloping hillsides of Jerome, Arizona. Maybe the name was taken, but doesn’t Miner’s Diner have a nice ring to it? Nonetheless, I ordered a memorable entrée: Ghost Town Toast, smeared with avocado, pico de gallo, herbed roasted tomatoes, crumbled feta and a fried egg.

The server’s a twenty-something in canvas apron with a long black braid who recently moved from Phoenix to this once-booming-copper-mining-camp-turned-ghost-town-turned-eclectic-art-colony, a fact which led to an initial conversation about life in Jerome: it’s kind of dead in the off-season (unclear if pun intended) and the townsfolk are really nice.

“Yes!” she replied. “I feel like cucumber adds a fresh taste.”

I feel like I’ll be adding it the next time I make pico.

*

I’d made the two-hour drive north on I-17 earlier that morning in my trusty Volvo; not quite Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine, but ghosts were definitely involved in my culinary investigation. I didn’t have time for the famous Lavender Grove Spritz at The Asylum, a restaurant in the Grand Hotel—previously a turn of the 20^th century hospital rumored to be haunted—but everything’s haunted here, including Haunted Hamburger, which hails as the #1 burger joint in Arizona, where I sat down to a late lunch: the Ghostly Burger loaded with mushrooms, bacon and cheddar. I’m not sure exactly what makes this “ghostly;” if I’d been making it, I’d have included ghost peppers. Other options: Haunted Burger (still no ghost peppers); Bourbon Jalapeño Bacon Bison Burger; and a PBJ & Bacon Burger, which, HARD pass.

*

Between meals, I found plenty to keep me busy during spooky season in this spooky town—what locals call the most wonderful time of the year. Ghost City Inn, its ghostly décor literally three sheets to the wind; Gold King Mine Ghost Town, with an old schoolhouse (I totally geeked out on the typewriters) and miner’s cabin, a rustic one room home of an early 1900’s prospector (also geeked out on the kitchen); the Sliding Jail, the prison that slid down a hillside; the Mine Museum, a screamin’ deal for two bucks and excellent source for history, featuring an exhibit on prostitution that took up an entire room; and a bowl of eyeballs at the Rickeldoris Candy Store.

Would it surprise you that this was one of my mom’s favorite haunts when she came to visit?

2. The Bake Sessions

In my past life, this phrase had nothing to do with food and when we spoke of joints, we didn’t mean creaky old bones. Those days are long gone, and now the munchies are sated with homebaked goods, like the trio I tested earlier this month: Maple Cornbread, No-Knead Harvest Bread and Dirty Chai Bars. I realize there are No Kings but Arthur gets a pass because these three recipes are royally delicious.

Tasting Notes

• The Maple Cornbread—our new fave—was coaxed out of the oven by a pair of hand-crafted potholders from none other than , now back with her Time Travel Kitchen newsletter after a brief rest period of potholder-making while recovering from surgery! Love these, Jolene! And they match my kitchen!

• I subbed cranberries and pecans in the Harvest Bread and if you’re considering this, reduce the dried fruit amount to 1 cup.

• The Chai bars call for espresso powder, yet another ingredient I feel everyone but me (and KP crewmember Kimber) knows about.

3. From the No Coincidences File

In her recent newsletter, my pie-dol opened with a quote from the book she’d just finished, The Book of Stillmeadow by Gladys Taber. “Even though it was published in 1948,” Kate writes, “her words feel as if they were written for today.”

Five years after Taber published that book, she and my grandmother, Barbara Webster co-authored Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, the book that started my grandmother’s food writing career, the career that led to correspondence and recipe-sharing between her and my mom that later launched my mom’s food writing career, and eventually inspired my own food writing career, including the book I’ve been writing this year. I’m excited to report that the messy first draft is done—Ahead of Plan—a term that takes me back to production goals in my former work life but always a good place to be, corporate or freelance.

Bonus Treats

• 65 Pumpkin Spice Flavored Foods, Categorized & Ranked

• Candied Cheez-Its: Yay or Nay?

• More Bake Sessions, Road Trips, Vintage Finds and Crazy Pets

With You in Spirit,

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From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newspaper Column (Oct. 16, 1980)

If you had your choice of any day of the week to wake up to, wouldn’t you pick Saturday? Especially, wouldn’t you want it to be a Saturday in October?

Maybe Saturdays are so full of children and chores that we tend to write off that last day of the week as something to endure. Wrong approach. Figure Saturdays are meant for those comings and goings, errands, and wheel-spinning in general, and the scraps of time you can seize for yourself become secret passages in which to stop for a bit and savor Saturday.

You can start with smells. Saturday, as far as I’m concerned, smells different from any other day of the week. The noses in my family have been over-achievers for several generations; my father could tell before he even entered the house on returning from work whether my mother had had anything to do with onions that day. He was Supreme Judge of whether anything edible was anywhere near the dead stage, performing this service at a distance of several feet from the refrigerator. I suppose it’s only logical that I should be able to tell it’s Saturday by the way it smells.

To begin with, coffee and toast at a local eatery are an aromatic double header. This is not to say the same fragrance may not inaugurate other days, too, when served at home. But for us, they positively define Saturday morning.

And then there are baked beans. It’s a question in my mind whether beans can be successfully baked any other day of the week. I have no intention of finding out. But there’s no question that beans baking make the whole house smell like Saturday. At our house it’s usually October before the bean pot makes an appearance at the table on a regular basis, after a season of quick-cook or no-cook meals.

Rainy Saturdays are the best of all. All the way from coffee and toast (at home or out) to baked beans, the Saturday spent indoors, looking out through the prism of rain, is a day when the blessings of home come into clearer, close-up focus. The aroma of a Saturday is intensified and augmented by wet shoes and damp dog. If you can keep your head while all those around you are tracking in mud, you can wring a lot of poetry out of a soggy Saturday.

Karyl’s Headnotes

No need to tell the bean bakers of the region how to do their job. So how about a new slant on a pair of accompaniments? Cole slaw seasoned with curry and steamed brown bread from a New England recipe over a century old. For the bread, start saving the last of the graham crackers, the heel of the rye bread, yesterday’s donuts and other elderly remnants and put them in a bank account in your freezer to add as you go along.

NEW ENGLAND BROWN BREAD

Makes 3 loaves

• 2 c. stale crumbs (sweet rolls, cake, even an Oreo cookie or two for flavor variety)

• 2 c. sour milk or buttermilk

• 1 t. soda

• 1 t. salt

• 2 c. cornmeal or 1 c. cornmeal and 1 c. rye or whole wheat flour

• ½ c. molasses

Spray 3 one-pound coffee cans with cooking spray.

Pour milk over crumbs, add soda and salt. Let stand overnight or until crumbs are soft. Add remaining ingredients. If batter is very thick, add more molasses or buttermilk depending on whim. Be brave.

Pour in coffee cans covered with foil and secured with string or elastics, then set in a large stockpot with a few inches of boiling water. The water should reach about halfway up the sides of the cans. Cover and return to a simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and gently simmer until bread is set and gently pulling away from sides of cans, 35 to 40 minutes. A skewer inserted into the center should come out with moist crumbs.

Remove cans from pot using tongs, set on a cooling rack, and remove foil lids. Let bread cool in cans slightly, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove bread from cans by turning each can upside down and tapping the bottom of the can with the heel of your palm. Let loaves cool completely on wire rack, about 1 hour. The flavor is best if you let it rest 😊, preferably overnight.

BACON SLAW

• ½ c. mayonnaise (or half mayo, half Greek yogurt)

• 2 T. vinegar

• 1 t. salt

• ½ t. curry (or more to taste

• ¼ t. pepper

• 1 T. sugar

• 4 slices crisp bacon, crumbled

• Finely chopped cabbage

Blend first 6 ingredients and pour over cabbage. Add bacon and serve.

PRINTABLE RECIPES!

Amie’s Endnotes

Mom’s original recipe mentioned using a pressure cooker, which, respect if you still have one. I’ve revised with more current directions, but still: Who knew making brown bread could be so complex? And that it would take two days? And who even has three empty 1-pound coffee cans kicking around in this era of pods and pour overs? Clearly, I have yet to make this New England Saturday-night staple, but I have all the faith that somewhere among the vast Cook & Tell community, someone—likely a New Englander—will rise to the challenge and test this recipe, sometime soon. Bonus points if you use a pressure cooker, or even better, make it in an Instant Pot.

Whatever your weapon of choice, send me a pic of your Brown Bread, and I’ll send you a Bonus Printable PDF of the Cook & Tell Fall 2010 issue, all 9 pages and 14 recipes long, featuring Mocha Raspberry Whoopie Pies and Yankee Baked Beans!

After a recent Note about new acquisitions to my vintage Betty Crocker collection, subscriber was compelled to share her favorite cookbooks. I’m delighted to see that Betty and Karyl made the cut!

We’re not just a newsletter, we’re a community!

Your pantry pals,

Amie & Karyl

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