pease porridge

Scones (to put honey on)

In addition to the several shelves of cookbooks that I have, in my kitchen I've got a file box full of recipes dilligently cut from magazines or printed from online sources or gotten at food festivals and the like.  Liberally sprinkled throughout are the photocopies that I made of my mom's recipe binder when I left home.  They were, for the most part, handwritten on lined paper; many of them are credited to a relative or a friend, some of whom I only vaguely remember, a few of them I never met.

This is the food of my childhood.  I'm not going to say that I love each and every one of these recipes.  I don't.  I do, however, love that they're there.  That I have them around for when I need a reminder of my youth, or to feel like part of a culinary heritage.

My mom's scone recipe is very simple and plain.  It looks like either she copied it in a hurry, or she copied it from someone else who copied it in a hurry.  But it works.  In a world of a million-million scone recipes, these are dependable, tried and true.  Make them and you'll understand why they've lasted so long, and why I'll pass them on to my own kids someday.

Perfect Pancakes

If you were on the East Coast this weekend, chances are you got stuck in a mighty snowstorm.  If you were lucky, you were someplace warm and comfy, and you didn't have to go out all day unless you wanted to make a snow fort.  We stayed in our pjs until very late into the morning, made pancakes and breakfast sausages, and what did we care how much it may storm?

These really are the perfect, Platonic pancakes.  They're not at all cakey, which I hate; they're tender and light and really just supurb.  They're also ridiculously easy to make, so throw away that crappy ol' mix, would you?

In our house, there's really only one way to have pancakes: with real butter and real maple syrup.  I'm the sort who always orders the real stuff, even in diners, no matter how much extra it is.  In fact, on occasion, I've brought my own bottle when I knew there would only be that horrible fake 'pancake syrup'.

Blueberry Muffins Gone Wild!

This morning my husband had rather generously gotten up early with the kids, and I was lazing about in bed, enjoying my solitary rest, when I remembered the frozen wild blueberries I had found the other day at the market.  The thought of wild blueberry muffins for breakfast propelled me from my warm cocoon of blankets and out into the kitchen.

Usually, I only see fresh, wild blueberries for a few weeks in the summertime, and then I hoard them like crazy when I find them.  They are so much better than the big, fat, tame ones you can buy all year 'round that they're almost a different fruit entirely.  I feel the same way about wild strawberries, which, sadly, are even harder to get around here.

These muffins are cinnamon-y, and moist; the recipe is more a cake recipe than a muffin recipe.  They were especially good this morning, warm out of the oven, with a mug of hot coffee.

Cuccía

Our weekends are generally hectic, between visiting with family and friends, entertaining the kids, running errands, and doing chores we were supposed to finish during the week but didn't; but it was cold and snowy when we woke up today, so this morning we took it easy, snuggled down, and ate the sort of hearty breakfast guaranteed to keep you warm for the rest of the day.

Also: the blog is called 'pease porridge', so I pretty much had to start off on a porridge-y note.

 

Cuccía is a robust porridge from Southern Italy, made with wheat berries and fresh ricotta.  I love it for brunch; I love it even more now that I've discovered how ridiculously easy it is to make my own homemade ricotta.