Mary reporting. It’s time to begin baking holiday cookies. I’ve never had too much success with iced sugar cookies shaped like trees, bells or snowflakes. Too thick, too thin or burned on the bottom is the usual result in my kitchen. Grandmere’s Butter-Pecan Fingers are my favorite cookie to bake and eat this time of […]
Helen reporting. Modern readers think of absinthe as the nectar of poets and artists. Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire were among the many luminaries said to enjoy the green fairy in copious amounts. Even today, rumors abound about absinthe’s hallucinogenic properties, partly because these artists experienced high levels of creativity, delirium, epileptic-like […]
About the third or fourth day of turkey sandwiches, it’s time to take a break from holiday shopping, stay home and make a delicious gumbo. As Louisiana gumbos go, this is a simple one—turkey, andouille sausage and plenty of spices served over rice. My grandmothers boiled the turkey carcass for hours and made their own […]
Mary Reporting. I think Charlotte Russe holds the top position in the pantheon of Southern desserts because my grandmothers made it only twice a year—Thanksgiving and Christmas. For months, I’d look forward to this traditional confection of whipping cream, eggs and sugar that’s lighter than ice cream, but richer in taste. Charlotte Russe on the […]
Mary and Helen Reporting. In Love Lessons, our work in progress, we needed a secondary character in great distress to pull Carine Botoloph and Vespasian Colville apart. We created Evelina Levert, a young lady who has lost both parents and lives with her older brother, who is her guardian. The problem is, Evelina thinks he […]
