A Way to a Lover's Heart

Cooking is like love. Both should be entered into with abandon or not at all. ~ Harriet Van Horne

Rainy Days and Pancakes

The end of winter is a bit dreary and I'm tired of grey skies. I long for Italy's sparkling sunshine and and the scent of her lemon groves. March has occasionally tempted me away to sunny southern Italy but more often I'm here, pouting and dreaming of lemons. I'm sulking a little today, so offer you these to sate my senses:


Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Lemon Curd and Fresh Berries

Serves 2, because that’s how many people live in my house. If you want more, increase the recipe accordingly and make more!

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 lemon, zested and juiced
Non-stick spray such as Pam
1 (11-ounce) jar prepared lemon curd
Fresh berries, for garnish – use whatever kind you like: strawberries for me, blueberries for my beloved, huckleberries for my native Inland Empire friends, raspberries for my Yankee friends. Make yourself happy and use your own favorites.
Confectioners' sugar, for garnish


Whisk the dry ingredients together in a small bowl – that’s the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, salt, and sugar.

Whisk the wet ingredients together in a large bowl – that’s the cheese, eggs, milk, lemon juice and zest.

Gently incorporate the dry flour mixture into the wet ingredients until just combined. DO NOT OVERMIX or your pancakes will be tough. Just gently incorporate the ingredients together, don’t madly stir or beat them. Pancakes, like children, are delicate creatures and don’t respond well to beating. Set the batter aside.

While the batter is sitting there patiently waiting for you, preheat your griddle. If you use the batter immediately after mixing it up, your pancake batter will expand on the griddle and your pancakes will rise too high and be too fat – like weird little soufflés. Pancake batter needs a few minutes to blossom, its ingredients melding in the mixing bowl before it hits the hot griddle.

When you think the griddle is hot, dampen your hand with a little cold water and shake a water drop onto the griddle surface. If it dances and evaporates, it’s hot enough. If it just sits there in a tiny puddle, the griddle is not hot enough. If the water droplet immediately fizzles into a wisp of smoke, the griddle is too hot – remove it from the heat for a minute and then check it again.

Spray the griddle with non-stick spray. I suppose you could brush it with melted butter or canola oil if you want, but I don’t want. I’m saving my butter to plop on top of the hot pancakes where it will melt into a golden puddle. Yum. For each pancake, pour approximately 1/4 cup measure of the batter on the griddle and cook on both sides until light golden brown. You know how to do this, don’t you? Spoon your measure of batter on the griddle and leave it alone. You’re only going to flip your pancakes ONCE. When you see little bubbles forming around the edge of the cake and a couple of tiny bubbles pop on the surface of the raw dough, it’s time to flip, flip, flip! With luck and practice, you’ll have golden brown pancakes in front of you. DO NOT flip it again. All this over handling will make the little darlings tough.

Repeat until no batter remains. Keep them warm in a single (!!!) layer on a rack on the oven or warming drawer. Don’t stack them or the residual heat will steam them in the oven and ruin your nice pancake texture.

If you’re good at multi-tasking, you can do the next step while your pancakes are cooking. But if you’re better off doing one thing at a time, do this next step while your little pancakes are waiting patiently in the warming oven.

Empty the contents of the jar of lemon curd into a small saucepan and warm over low heat. You can also take off the metal lid and warm the jar directly in the microwave oven if you want – on 50 percent power for 2 minutes, stopping after 1 minute to stir the curd. Drizzle a few tablespoons of the curd over the pancakes, top with fresh berries of your choice, and then sprinkle everything with a little confectioners' sugar. I have a friend with an over-the-top sweet tooth, and she drizzles these with (real Vermont Maple) syrup. That’s too sweet for me, but it makes her happy. Please yourself. I always do.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

Today is a cloudy and drizzly, so I’m going to the kitchen to make these right now. I'm even going to garnish my plate with a few slices of fresh lemon. I'll stop pouting soon.

Hope you have a fun day, too!

Here's To Us! Who's Like Us? Damned Few!

A blog friend posted a list that I thought was quite fun – a list of her blogger friends she identified simply by writing a line or 2 to describe them. No names – the blogger friends had to guess who they were. I liked it a lot and was especially flattered since she listed me as one of her new friends. But her list made me think – I wouldn’t be able to make a list of blog friends. To be sure, I have a few cherished friends, but not the 27 that my buddy Natalie listed. Popular girl! So what do I have that you might find interesting? Hmmmm. I have a list of friends you don’t know, some of whom lurk in and out without leaving comments, some of whom send me private email to talk about my blog thoughts and some of whom don’t know about the blog at all. Some of them also wend their ways through my stories and poetry – for good or ill. By knowing a little about them, you’ll know a little more about me.

1. My partner and friend. If I could snowboard, what fun we’d have! If you loved musical theater, what fun we’d have! And still, every day with you is fun.
2. You were my sunshine and now you bring your sunshine to other lucky people. Thanks for encouraging me to start this blog in the first place.
3. A new friend I’d like to know more and more of. It’s wonderful to have a girls’ evening with sisters – grown up girls with the hearts of sorority sisters.
4. My friend from the day of my birth to the day of my death (some long distant day in the future!). I love you for our past, present and future together, and I love you for the roots you give me to my own history. I love you forever.
5. Even though you are daughter to my friend, I’d be proud to have you as my own child. It’s breathtaking watching you grow into a beautiful woman, touched by Mediterranean sunshine. I’ll miss you this summer as you stretch on newfound wings.
6. My baby brother, who pokes at me to see if my head will spin off. My baby brother, my friend. We are part of each other. Alike but not. Different but the same. You grew up to be a wonderful son, husband, father, brother, man. I love you always.
7. You wore two different colored sox. A mixture of giggles and fears, we laughed at the world.
8. With you I learned to give voice to what I want instead of accepting the wants of others. I learned to fight – not always fair. And I learned to fly, loving the shriek of peepers in the dusk and the scent of summer nights.
9. You taught me to see color and to look at the world differently. We were like an unfinished song left in a piano bench. No longer my love, still my friend.
10. The state of your birth may be black and white, but you’re Technicolor. Long talks from the heart go better over ginger martinis. You’ve added giggles to my life and three people to my family of choice.
11. The power of genetics. We look like vaguely out of focus photos of each other, one version younger than the other. You have my twinkling sense of humor and my belief that hair is a coloring book. How much more alike would we have been if so many miles hadn’t kept us apart? I adore you.
12. We were children playing at being in love. I still have some leftover dreams that, like worn out, discarded jeans, would only fit on you. Another long ago love, now a cherished friend.
13. “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad,” may be the opening line of Scaramouche, but I think Raphael Sabatini might have been describing you. We share a twisted sense of irony, arrogance, laughter and exile.
14. East Coast tough as nails on the outside, tender hearted on the inside. If I ever need an advocate, I want you by my side. I’d trust you with my life, too.
15. Leaders like you are born and I’d follow you into a foxhole. With a dictionary and a thesaurus just to be on the safe side.
16. Sometimes I long for who we used to be in the old times when we clung only to each other, like flowers dying in the rain. But I’m proud of the way we grew and the way we learned to love. Missing you feels as though vital parts of me have been amputated.
17. I’m so glad you turned out not to be cousins so we could love the same children. Great companions through travel and through life. My expanded family.
18. Bravery to fight on, without a knight in shining armor, you never let fear stop you. Cooking and singing and dreaming for more, you don't talk the talk, but you sure walk the walk.
19. You saved me from myself and taught me to look at the world as if I were seeing it for the first time. I wasn’t helpless after all, because you helped me.
20. You make everything more fun – museums, movies, cooking, laughing and being Italian – and most especially, shopping! I can’t wait for you and your wonderful kiddos to visit!
21. We love the same boys and the same children. You’re my brother and brother-in-law of choice rolled into one.
22. My five-year-old friend in the grown up clothes, what a grand father you’ll make!
23. I was determined not to love you but fell for you anyway. My friend and arbiter and sister-in-law of choice.
24. Brother of choice, I’ve spent more holidays with you than with anyone else, and they’ve all been far happier than the ones of my past.
25. We’ll be together again. Our story is far from over. After all, it’s only a plane ride. You made me feel safe for the first time. You are my family of choice – my friend, brother, mother, husband, sister, conscience and heart.
26. My heart. My peace. My secret smile. My laugh-out-loud-'til-tears-run-down-my face. My eyes wide open love. My safety. My strength. My forever life.

There are more, of course. I’ve left out the young ones – youth embarrasses too easily. I’ve purposely left out some other very special people, too. You may meet them another time. We’ll see.

In between the lines of this well loved list, you’ll find bits and pieces of me peeking out from behind this curtain of friends.

Banana Bread, Prozac, Elavil or Paxil?

I’ve already discovered that sharing happy things on a blog is pretty darned fun. Well, THIS is certainly something that makes me pretty darned happy. Ok, more than happy. The kind of happy that’s misty eyed, replete and content. I know it will make you happy, too. And misty eyed, replete and content.

With Banana Bread, Who Needs Prozac, Elavil or Paxil?

4 over-ripe bananas, smashed lightly with a fork
1/3 cup melted butter (Yes, butter. Don’t substitute. That would be silly.)
1 cup sugar (In truth, I actually use a bit less – down to 3/4 cup if the bananas are nicely sweet.)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla (Don’t ever – EVER – use fake vanilla substitute. That wouldn’t be silly, that would be just plain criminal.)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1-1/2 cups of flour
1/2 cup dried cranberries (I suppose you could use raisins, but they’re a bit sweet for me.) (optional)
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, chopped coarsely (optional)

The really spiffy thing about this recipe is that you only need one (ONE!) bowl and no special equipment of any kind. WooHOO! You can also change the amounts of spices and optional ingredients. Don’t want nuts or cranberries? Leave ‘em out! If you’re a purist and don’t want the cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger, leave ‘em out! Add a jolt of orange zest or a tablespoon or orange juice or rum into the wet ingredients if you want. I prefer it as above, but (and if you read the chili recipe on October 23, 2006 you’ll know I’m repeating myself here) please yourself.

Here. I’m pasting a very gently edited snippet from the chili recipe below that I really want to make sure you believe:

“In life and in cooking, it’s important to use whatever quantities and combinations of ingredients that please you. Luckily we don’t all have a taste for the same things. Just keep trying cooking – and living – until you get both just the way you want them.”

So. Time for banana bread. You don’t need anything other than some measuring tools, a fork, a spoon, a bowl and a loaf pan for this dandy recipe. Oh. And an oven. If you can stir, you can make this yummy bread.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

With a wooden spoon, mix the melted butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Don’t mash the bananas into baby food – leave them a little bit chunky. The banana texture is lovely when the bread bakes. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla (and any other wet flavorings if you’re using them). Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and stir them in gently. If you’re adding the optional cranberries or nuts, toss them into the measurement of flour and coat them with the flour. The coating of flour around the fruit and nuts helps them suspend themselves nicely throughout the batter without sinking before the bread’s baked through.) Last, add the flour (along with those cute little raisins and/or nuts) into the bowl. Mix gently. Don’t stir it too much, or the texture won’t be as nice. Just incorporate the ingredients.

Pour the mixture into a 4x8 inch loaf pan sprayed with a cooking spray like “Pam” or “Pam for Baking.” (Ok. I don’t actually do this. I put that part in for you. I use my wonderful Pampered Chef loaf pan. It’s made of clay and is naturally non-stick and bakes the bread evenly and beautifully. If you want to know how to get one, email me and I’ll be happy to tell you.) Bake in the center of your preheated oven for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool the pan on a rack for about 10 minutes, and then gently take the bread out of the pan and let it cool it completely on a rack. I know the waiting is hard. Your home will smell wonderful and you’ll want to eat it right away. Don’t. It’ll crumble and fall apart. But when it’s cooled, you can slice it easily – and eat it all up.

Repeat as necessary. Of course you should check with your doc before you toss your Prozac, Elavil or Paxil into the trash heap, but I’m sure this banana bread will un-depress you. And has fewer side effects.

Go. Make this. Be happy. And full.

Of Course You Can Trust Me. Really.

Start to trust a man
And they take you away
At the end of the movie.