| Ice cream is the natural fallback, at least for our brand of celiac disease: When my sister Amanda was in college, still undiagnosed, unable to force herself to eat a thing because it caused her so much pain, she’d fall back on either raspberry-filled donuts from Shipley’s, or banana ice cream with nuts mixed in for some protein. The donuts would be delicious enough that she’d eat them despite the utter absence of her appetite (according to her, you can burn out half a rat’s brain so it won’t normally eat, but it’ll still eat a delicacy), but the ice cream always went down more smoothly. |  |
| So, let me guess what you’re thinking: Hey, there’s already a breadstick recipe up on this blog, isn’t there? They’re nice, fairly dense, have a bit of a crust to them, not bad at all if that’s what you’re after. In that post, I talked about my “last meal” at Olive Garden, and how I wanted to recreate everything in it — breadsticks, salad with croutons, ravioli. I like the kind of breadsticks I made then, nearly a year ago now, but they just weren’t like the breadsticks from Olive Garden — soft, chewy, light. And I wanted to make breadsticks like those. |  |
| My grandmother used to make these whenever family was coming over for a holiday, be that Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter. When it was my Uncle Wim and his family coming over, she’d have to make them twice — he’d eat the whole pan before anybody else had a chance to grab any! |  |
| Ah, zucchini bread. The staple of everyone who suddenly awoke one morning to a world awash in zucchini, or at least, or everyone so situated who likes zucchini bread. It’s good stuff, in any case, and very easy to make. In fact, my mother makes it 2 or 4 loaves at a time. |  |
| This week, we have a guest spot for my oft-mentioned friend Ginny — she did so much of the work for these, it’s only fair she should get to gush about them. 🙂 Here she is! |  |
| Making these cookies with my family is one of my earliest memories. We’d all sit around the table and churn out massive quantities of dough factory-style during Advent, throwing in Dutch ovens to serve as additional mixing bowls. We’d make cookies with no chip, with chocolate chips, with mint chocolate chips, with white chocolate chips, with peanut butter and chocolate chips, with cinnamon chips (once, and I don’t recommend it — yuck). |  |
So Jocelyn may have been hoping her post on kolaches would prompt me to do the same, but nope, it’s hermuffins instead. I took one look at that post and thought, “Wow, has it really been so long since I made muffins? I want some!” Blueberry muffins were one of my first posts, but I hadn’t really done anything with muffins since then. I’d always intended to post more varieties of muffin, though, so here you go!
| You know, sometimes you just need chocolate. And sometimes that chocolate needs to be warm and gooey and have a good bite to it, and no matter how many times various family members tell you to just go make some hot cocoa, you just need brownies. |  |
| It’s hilarious, really: Hamburgers are yet one more thing I never cared for when I was a kid, but like just fine now. I don’t think it had anything to do with the burger itself; I just had a hard time eating a whole burger at once, which I was naturally expected to do, and I didn’t like so many ingredients appearing all at once on a strange and infrequent food. (I was a finicky eater; you may have noticed.) And I generally prefer chicken to beef anyway. But when my brother went on the gluten-free diet, and started eating beef patties or sandwich meats with “buns” made of two thick slices of cheese, I figured I’d better make some hamburger buns! 🙂 |  |
| There’s a strange little scene from my childhood that still plays in my head sometimes, over and over, like a missed prophecy: I was somewhere between twelve and fifteen, I think, and my whole family was home sick from work or school, so we were actually having a sit-down lunch together–a real rarity for us. Of course, everyone was completely exhausted, and tasks were being distributed on the customary who’s-the-most-tired-I-win-you-do-it basis . . . |  |
