All popovers are not created equal. Awhile back I made a recipe for oatmeal popovers by Marion Cunningham, whom I normally adore. With finely ground oatmeal, and a dollop of orange marmalade baked in the bottom, they sounded superb. Well, turns out they weren’t. They never really puffed (or popped as it may be), and I had a muffin pan of full of deflated batter with marmalade that was too bitter for my taste. Oh well, every cookbook writer is allowed a dud every now and again.
When I was at the market last week, the strawberries finally looked good– rosy, with a sprightly green stem– not a crinkly brown one. I bought a basket, and ate almost all of them plain. But with the final few, I decided to make a more classic popover to redeem the oatmeal debacle of late. And [...]

We all know that Dr. Pavlov, with his multitudes of salivating mutts, has very little to do with a sweet Pavlova dessert, besides a similarity in surnames…but this dessert was so scrumptios it had me salivating, bells or not!
The Pavlova is one of those desserts that is only read about in novels set in the turn of the 20th century. Clarice, the young traveller, gazed across the linen table cloth with a longing desperation at Antonio, who firmly grasped his silver spoon, and with utter obliviousness to the torrent of thoughts in Clarice’s head, plunged it into crisp Pavlova, adorned with stiff whipped cream, and mounds of fresh berries. You get what I mean. And I guess it must be fairly clear that I don’t read much from the early 20th century. But with the first of the spring berries showing their rosy faces at the [...]

One of my earliest “cooking” memories is making popsicles with my mother. Mom had this set of popsicles moulds, nothing special, just empty, oblong shaped moulds, each with a brightly colored, reusable popsicle stick. Intended for children, they even had cut-outs of circus animals emblazoned on the stick. We never made outrageous frozen treats– simply frozen juice, or even lemonade, set to freeze for a few hours until pops were made. I think it was my mother’s attempt to raise a healthy child by avoiding processed, overly sugary snacks, but what I was always fascinated with was the prospect of freezing a liquid into a solid. That something so ordinary could magically transform into a frozen treat amazed me.
Well, those particular moulds are long gone; the child that they once served is now a married adult. But each summer, as the months progress and the temperature rises, I think back [...]