When our daughter lay in the ICU on her second day of being alive in the world, we stood above her bed and asked her to breathe. Her small hands were strapped to the bed because she was already so strong she nearly ripped out her breathing tube. (Somehow, though, she kept making a Buddhist mudra with her fingers and held it.) Her feet were tangled up in cords and covered in bandaids where the

I made three batches of shortbread yesterday. Yes, Im a little nuts. Its the last day of posting holiday cookie recipes around here. After jam tarts, gingerbread men, coconut sugar cookies, cannolis, plus 8 more, you think Id be done. Thats an even dozen, right? (Plus, if you go over to our friend Silvana Nardones blog, Dish Towel Diaries, youll find our recipe for chocolate crackle

Mexican wedding cookies. Of all the requests people had for gluten-free holiday cookies, I think this was the most requested. Finely ground nuts, butter and shortening, gluten-free flours, and powdered sugar. It isnt much more complicated than that. All that deliciousness and its easy too? Sign me up. Now this cookie, with tiny variations of shape and technique from kitchen to kitchen, can

"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." Im tempted to write only this. After all, its the only phrase I hear in my head when someone says cannoli. Probably you too. (And if you dont know what it is, look here. Watch out — youre going to want spaghetti and meatballs after watching this movie.) However, I want to share just this bit more. I am constantly astonished by how much better my life

We are coming into the home stretch of holiday cookies and goodies around here. I dont want to think about how many pounds of butter, flours, and sugar have been used in this kitchen the past month. I cant even calculate how many times the paddle of the KitchenAid has whirled around these weeks. Every day I am a little bit tempted to throw up my hands, put away the flours, and lie down on the

This is a cake pop. Its a cake pop made by my wonderfully talented and lovely friends Jessie (also known as Cakespy) and Megan (also known as Not Martha).If you are lucky enough to know people who want to spend the afternoon with you crumbling up cake with their hands, manipulating marzipan, and making zombie santas into the evening? You know you have good friends. This is a Rudolph cake

We cant seem to stop buying new cookbooks. I mean, after that list of our favorite 12 of 2010, we should be done for a bit. There are plenty of meals to be made in that towering stack. However, the lure of another good cookbook is powerful. On the other hand, we cant go broke on cookbooks. Solution? Ive been buying all our "new" cookbooks at thrift stores. Im all for the lure of the

I spent about 15 minutes this morning fretting that this photograph wasnt good enough. Its messy. You cant see the ooze on the cookies. The top cracked — I ran out of AP flour before I needed 46 grams of it, so I just used sweet rice flour. Dont do that anymore, Shauna. Too starchy. It doesnt hold together the same way. I wanted to hide that. I should have cleaned the counter if I was

All of Prousts remembrances began with one bite of a madeleines. I have a confession. I still havent read all of Prousts books. Try as I might, several times, I could never make it past the first 60 pages. Well, youre saying, most of us havent. I know. But I was a literature major, an English teacher, an avid reader from the age of 2. Ive read Ulysses 4 times. Surely I can slog my way

(Holiday candy provided by Indie Candy, which makes allergen-free, delicious candies. I still havent eaten the chocolate Santa, and Lus getting the snowflake lollipop for a special treat, in a few weeks. But their gummy candies are some of the best I have ever eaten. If you know someone with food allergies, this is a lovely present.) Ho ho ho! Are you feeling any more in the holiday

These cookies may not look like much, but they are really quite wonderful. They are also gone. Danny and Lu nibbled them during an afternoon snack, after my photo session, as they lay on our bed together reading an I-Spy book. Weak winter sunlight spilled into the room and on their toes. I had so much else to do, but I stopped to watch them and eat one of these cookies. Oh my, theyre good.

When Danny and I tried to decide all the cookies we would bake for the cookie-baking extravaganza here, we pulled down all our baking books and cookbooks with baked goods. We ran our fingers down the index of each one, looking for baked goods that appealed to us both. Quickly, we realized we had a problem. There were too many cookies to make. Gingersnaps, butterscotch cookies, Florentines

Okay, Im going to call an audible here. (Is that a football term? I sort of have this vague feeling that it is, but I dont want to google it and spend any time looking at football terms. I have to admit, Im totally indifferent to football. I was going to type that I loath it, but thats giving it too much of my time. Baseball? I could play that all day long. When its on the tv, my eyes

As you have probably guessed, I have been baking cookies and more cookies for weeks. Nuts and flours spill on the counter. Lu is frequently reaching for a piece of dried fruit or a chocolate chip. We are making memories, she sitting on the kitchen counter, wanting to crack eggs with me, still amazed when the Kitchen Aid mixer turns on and makes that whirling cacophony. However, I have been

we had intended to bring you a recipe for cranberry-pistachio cookies today. However, we are sitting in a hotel room in Longview, Washington as I type this. We had two wonderful days in Portland, teaching cooking classes at Bobs Red Mill. (They sold out so fast, as soon as they were announced, that we didnt have a chance to tell you about them here.) After the last class, the three of us went

“Hey sweetie, do you want to read books?” Lu bounces across the room, almost skipping. Her eyes grow wide and she shouts, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” We go over to the mound of books that are always spilling from the blue and red tubs in the corner of the room. The bookshelf in her room is bulging with books (and only neat and tidy, without books on the floor, on an occasional basis), so we had to

I still miss Gourmet. I know that it has been gone for more than a year, and Im supposed to have moved on by now. And frankly, its not as if I had time to read every article those last couple of years, or even most of them. With a newborn, who became a toddler, my reading time has diminished to the point of thin sadness. Creating recipes on our own means that I have less time to cook in a

Lets bake, shall we? Its December 2nd. Most of you have probably gathered your recipe cards around you to take notes and make substitutions, pulled out the butter to soften on the kitchen counter, and started planning on sending boxes full of crisp cookies and soft squares of gingerbread to friends and family across the world. I am not sending baked goods as presents this year. In fact,

They say that print is dying. Great magazines have left us (I still miss Gourmet) for lack of subscriptions and monetary interest. Newspaper presses are stopping in one city after another. Yesterday, some good friends of us said that they are reading most of their books on their telephones. Print is dying, right? Not in this house, its not. We subscribe to the Seattle newspaper, no matter

Well, with our trip to Colorado, a two-day power outage covering the entire island, and Thanksgiving, it took me longer to choose these winners, using Random.org, than I had hoped. But here they are! Winners of our cookbook Ricki of Diet Dessert and Dogs with her Coconut Walnut Shortbread Cookies Megan, who wrote: "This is my first gluten-free Thanksgiving and Im actually pretty anxious

Yesterday afternoon, Danny and I huddled on the couch, trying to keep Lu under a blanket. Do you have any idea how much this kid loves to run and jump, dance and spin? Keeping her under that red fleece blanket, particularly her hands, was tough. But she had to be under the blanket. It was cold in our house. 22 degrees cold. The power went out at our house early Tuesday night, about three. We

Lately, Lu and I have been eating sweet potatoes nearly every evening. Thick slices, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, a bit of fresh thyme, roasted in the oven until they yield to the fork but still have a bite -- this has been part of our dinner at least four times a week. Throw in the sweet potato puree I have made, the soup with sweet potatoes and chorizo? Were pretty nuts about

Thank you to everyone who contributed such delicious recipes for our gluten-free Thanksgiving challenge. My goodness, people! Not only did the original bloggers who posted about their own gluten-free baking challenge blow me away, but the hundreds and hundreds of links to great gluten-free food in the comments could keep anyone baking for months on end. If this is your first gluten-free

I probably dont need to tell you just how soon Thanksgiving is, right? Every time this year I see people coming to this site through urgent questions. "how do I make gluten-free stuffing? Is there such a thing as gluten-free pumpkin pie. gluten-free thanksgiving. help!" Well of course, were here to help. Over the past few years, Danny and I have developed recipes for the foods we eat at

gluten-free potluck in San Francisco, early October In less than 48 hours, we will be on an airplane to Denver. Lu has been walking around the house saying "Airplane! Airplane!" Danny has been grinning wide and tearing up at times. You see, Colorado is Dannys home. Here is too, of course, and were going to be living in this place for the rest of our lives. But Colorado is where Danny