December is here! In the north, that means you’ll need a good cup of hot chocolate, and I’m ready. After making snowmen and forts with my brothers on cold, blustery days, Mom would have steaming hot chocolate waiting for us! Nothing tasted better, and nothing warmed us more, beginning with our frozen…
Category: Beverages
Rose and Strawberry Summer Drinks – Sangria or Lemonade
When your roses smell good enough to eat, drink them! It’s been an amazing rose season this year. The air, especially at dawn and dusk, is filled with beautiful perfume, and how we wish it would last. My favorite roses are the old garden roses, once-blooming heirloom treasures that carry so many flowers they bend…
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A Celebration of Maple Sugar Season
It’s our state tree, our state flavor, and this time of year is it also our first crop. The sap is running! We love hearing those words. Our first crop of the year in Vermont is maple! It is also our first real evidence of spring in this cold climate. When I hear that the…
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Holiday Eggnog (dairy free)
Of course, she always made this eggnog with a more than ample addition of spirits, sometimes dark rum, but usually whiskey, or a combination of both
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Something refreshing and cool to drink?
It’s August, we’re drinking a lot of water, but we’d like something a little more interesting and refreshing as well! Spa Water Virgin Cosmopolitan Kombucha and Tonic Haymakers Switchel it’s hot. Humid. Hazy. I seem to be drinking a lot of water, but not always feeling refreshed. At dinner, I like filling…
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Homemade Oat Milk
A cup of organic oats costs about 25 cents and makes a quart of oat milk. A purchased quart is between $2.99 and $3.99. Any questions? I remembered making “oatmeal water” for a Victorian picnic many years ago. It was delicious, and proved to be both refreshing and popular with everyone. It was thinner than…
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Crystalized Ginger
This is a “three-for-one recipe” using only two ingredients – ginger and sugar! You can always have crystalized or candied ginger in the pantry if you make it yourself! If you have a local source for ginger, even better! Our Vermont farmers have started growing fresh ginger during our long daylight hours of summer. They grow…
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Mulled Apple Cider
Cider mulling in the kitchen is the aroma of Vermont in Autumn. Add a crackling fire in the hearth, and you’ve no reason to venture out. I’m not sure if the wood smoke of the fireplace makes the cider taste better, or if the cider makes the fire dance more slowly. Either way, it’s a perfect…
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Haymaker’s Switchel
The original energy drink from Colonial times, haymaker’s switchel has kept New England farmers, and others, well hydrated in the humid summer months. (Rum optional). When I was a child, once in a while someone in the family made haymakers switchel. I didn’t care for it much as a kid, but a few years ago,…
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From the Treasure Box
Vintage cookbooks are a window on another time, and a record of how we lived and fed each other My late mother-in-law Pat was the second wife of my husband’s father and an amazing addition to the family she was. Cooking was the biggest part of Pat’s life; she was an accomplished chef and restauranteur…
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Fairy Punch
This rhubarb punch makes its appearance in the spring, just about the time the fairies wake up from their winter’s rest and start to explore the spring garden. When the kids were very young, we started searching for fairies in the garden. We actually got a photo of one once, in the early spring after…
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Homemade Limoncello
Just three ingredients, and a flavorful lemony liquor is yours––well, in just a month or so! But it’s worth the wait! Picture this. Warm summer afternoon. You are sitting under a lush lemon tree in Tuscany, chatting with your friends, birds are singing, there’s a gentle breeze floating through the green countryside, and you are…
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Sylvia’s Floating Islands with Hot Buttered Rum Sauce
And a few simpler techniques for a festive holiday dessert in no time For a treat on cold winter days, our mother would often make us floating islands of luscious meringue in soft, spiced custard; we all thought it was good, and the little islands were fun to play with. My own children loved this…
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Conjuring Clarified Consommé
It’s Kitchen Magic at its Best! It really seems like magic when you take a pan of murky stock and in just minutes transform it into crystal clear broth! There is no nutritional reason to clarify stock, it is all about the appearance and nothing more. But if you have never done this, it is…
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A Perfect Cup of Tea!
A perfect cup of tea is whatever you want it to be! The weather turned, and the iced tea stepped aside, replaced by the steaming pot. One of the most enjoyable parts of running our small Vermont inn was the ritual of afternoon tea – that little stop at 4 p.m. to nibble a snack and savor…
