Blueberry Cornmeal Pancakes

I have always thought that pancakes were the most overrated breakfast food.  There’s nothing objectionable about them, but given the choice between those and other breakfast goodies – waffles, and omelets, and bagels with lox, pancakes just always have seemed boring to me. I may be coming around though because these were delicious.  Something about [...]

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Bay Infused Blood Orange Syrup

I recently attempted an olive oil polenta cake that was a major fail.  I don’t know if the recipe was bad, if I missed a step, or if it was supposed to taste dry and bland.  So, I won’t be making that again.  What I will be making again is the syrup I drizzled on [...]

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Dark Days Week 13 – Ricotta and Leek Frittata

Last weekend, we went to a housewarming party for friends.  It was a late night, filled with good food and lots of wine and rhubarb mojitos.  So, on Sunday morning when I woke up, I was quite happy I had a fridge full of good, local breakfast making supplies to help take the edge off. The [...]

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Lemon Vanilla Scones with Saffron Glaze

  Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I wanted to make something luxurious for breakfast.  And what is more luxurious than saffron? To make these, I just followed my standard scone recipe.  I left out the berries, and replaced it with the goodies scraped from a half a vanilla bean and the zest from one lemon.  To make the [...]

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Dark Days Week 5: Breakfast for Dinner

  For my local dinner this week, I went for something simple – breakfast.  It really must be one of the easiest meals to do locally – eggs and bread really form the basis of most good breakfasts.  Eggs, butter, and cream from farms in Sonoma, baked with leeks and thyme from the farmer’s market, served with [...]

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Persimmon bread, with apologies to Mr. Beard

If kindergarten teachers watched me in the kitchen, they’d probably give me a lecture about following directions.  I’m not very good at it.  To me, recipes are usually just suggestions or loose guidelines. So, when I found this James Beard recipe for persimmon bread, the fact that he is practically the godfather of modern American cooking [...]

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A hearty breakfast

A dear friend came to visit last weekend.  After a long cross-country flight and a long night of sleep thwarted by jet lag, I thought she deserved to wake up to baked goods. This recipe was inspired by Ina Garten’s cheddar dill scone recipe, however, I wound up modifying the recipe from the strawberry scones I baked [...]

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Strawberries!

It’s strawberry season in California and I have been obsessed.  I feel the urge to buy local strawberries whenever I see them at farmer’s markets and produce stands.  I bought so many this week that I couldn’t keep up with eating them them before they went bad.  And, when I realized more strawberries would be [...]

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Cranberry Vanilla Coffee Cake

This delicious little cake from Gourmet, via Epicurious, has been all the rage on the food blogs lately, it seems. It sounded so good, and I thought it would be a wonderful Christmas morning breakfast. Unfortunately, as I discovered earlier this fall, cranberries are in short supply out on the west coast. After checking at [...]

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