Sweet potato pie

White girls can’t make no sweet potato pie… One year, I made this sweet potato pie for my office Christmas party. On the light-rail train on the way home that evening, I had the remains of the pie under my seat. One stop before mine, I stood up and moved over to the door, and …

Rhubarb crisp

Rhubarb’s one of the first things you get to eat fresh in the spring, plus it grows like a weed for practically everybody wherever you plant it (except for me; I have a rhubarb plant in a big pot that never produces anything ever. But for everyone else.) But in the fall, I make the …

Baked apples

Fairly healthy dessert Baked apples aren’t health food – if you want that, just eat an apple, which is also good! But they are better for you than pie and certainly better than cookies or ice cream. And baked apples only take a few minutes to put together, cook while you are eating dinner, and …

Haroset (and haroset pie!)

What is haroset? Haroset is a mixture of chopped apples and nuts that plays a part in the traditional Jewish seder meal at Passover. By March, it’s hard to get the kids excited about more apples, but they love making and eating haroset. Ashkenazi or Sephardic? Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, like my Lithuanian ancestors, …

Candied carrots

Kids gobble these up The sugar, and the sweetness of the caramelized carrots, makes these a big favorite with kids. The biggest problem is that I get tired of cutting up carrots and never make enough of them, and then I have the kids fighting over them. But hey, kids fighting over carrots – that …