FROM SCRATCH CLUB

I feel bad. I’m forever making goodies for my family, friends, and neighbors… but what about our poor dogs? Should they be resigned to a life of drab kibble, and nothing but? Whenever I make cookies for lunchpails, etc., I also try to set aside some time to make cookies for the dogs. Yes, we call […]

April is a transitional month in my neck of the woods. At the start of the month, cold winds still blow and snowflakes dot the air. By the end of the month, the tulips and daffodils are in full blossom, and everything appears a bit hazy from the delicate buds that start to pop open […]

Guess what kids… it’s still winter. At least it is here in Upstate New York. While the temperatures are supposed to hit a “balmy” 40 degrees this week, there is still a decent blanket of snow and ice covering everything on my little farm. While the terms “hot chocolate” and “hot cocoa” might seem interchangeable, […]

Clockwise from top: White sugar, honey, brown sugar, demerara sugar, vanilla sugar, stevia, evaporated cane sugar Sugar is my weakness. If I could just eat dessert all day, I gladly would (rivaled only by cheese). Life could get a little one-dimensional, though, so maybe incorporating different sugars/sweeteners into my diet would be a good idea. […]

Whether you are throwing a big holiday shin-dig, or you just want to keep a well-stocked cabinet of libations, it is good to know how to create a home bar to suit a variety of tastes and palates. You don’t need to spend tons of money or buy-out an entire liquor store to achieve this… […]

My friend Julie turned me on to homemade infusions years ago. She has a big shelf in her amazing kitchen/dining room filled with homemade bitters, digestifs, infusions, shrubs, and the like. It’s like walking into a delicious apothecary. Julie recently attended the FSC Schenectady Food Swap and brought with her a bunch of her homemade bitters […]

A few times a year, I try to do a complete walk around the perimeter of my farm. It’s nice to take inventory of how the farm has changed with the seasons (or, more generally the case, what needs fixing). A few weeks ago I stumbled upon four rather large black elderberry trees. After harnessing […]

Editor’s Note: I am very excited that we have our very first contribution, by Deanna, in our ‘pulling back the curtain’ series, showing you, our readers, what & how we “typically” eat for our weekly 21 meals +snacks. I wanted to do this series because I often feel like readers of food blogs, not just […]

Editor’s Note: What relaxes and recharges us from a long hot summer day, and keeps things interesting in the kitchen when you don’t want to turn on the oven, than drinks made with melon, plums, watermelon and the other in-season fruits, herbs and vegetables the Northeast harvest bounty can offer? Get out your blender, cocktail […]

There are two things that we do well here in Upstate New York come summer: Eating watermelon and racing horses. From late July to Labor Day, the population of one of our beloved towns swells to accommodate horse racing aficionados from around the world. And of course, you can’t watch a good running of the […]

I don’t know about you, but I’m nearly up to my eyeballs in strawberries. And that’s saying a lot, considering strawberries didn’t fare so well here in Upstate New York (with a early heat wave and late frost) and that I’m only processing about half of what I usually process each year. From jam, popsicles, […]

So, now we’re on to Part Three of the Pantry 101 series. We’ve covered oil and vinegar, and now it’s time to talk about salt! Salt is (in my opinion) the most important seasoning one can keep in a pantry. Usually when a dish is missing something, salt is the answer. Retailers seem to be realizing this, too, […]

Mother’s Day is the weekend (yep… you better rush and get that card for Mom right now!!). In my family we have a tradition, like many families, of doing brunch on Mother’s Day Sunday. My mom’s mom (my “Mamie”) is a mother to ten children, and many of my aunts, uncles and cousins get together […]

Much like vinegar, cooking oil is such a broad category it can be hard to know which oil to use. There are so many options to choose from – olive oil alone has seemingly endless varieties. Keeping a well-stocked pantry means including a few different types of oils, but how do you know which oil […]

Many people have a specialty in the kitchen. For some, it’s a killer chocolate cake. Others have a meatloaf recipe that cannot be matched. For Mrs. Stiles, it was fried cakes. What are fried cakes? They are essentially the same thing as Old-Fashioned cake donuts (okay, they are the same thing). Who is Mrs. Stiles? […]