Tangy ice cream with a chocolate wafer ripple

When I was a kid approximately one million years ago, my parents gave me a Donvier ice cream maker. When we moved back to California four years ago, my mom revealed that she had been hanging on to it all this time, and gave it back to us; I promptly put it in the bottom […]

The Emperor’s Rolls

Kaiser Roll

We had a first blaze of summery weather here last weekend, and our thoughts turned towards the delights of summer eating, of course. Back in Slovakia, the fruit trees are blooming and the cherries will soon start to form; here we’ve got strawberries still green and rock-hard, but strawberries! growing in our garden! When it […]

A salad of convenience

Here in California, you could easily assemble a meal from prepacked components almost every night of the week. There are pre-formed hamburger patties, sure to please our six-year-old; par-baked loaves of artisanal bread, even packages of coleslaw with squeezable pouches of dressing to toss together. While we haven’t used too many of these shortcuts, knowing […]

Banana bread (not the kind you’re thinking of)

When I hear “banana bread”, what comes to mind is the bake-sale staple, a quick bread that is more like a cake, really. So when I was at the library a couple of weeks ago and thumbing through a Jamie Oliver cookbook while the kids selected their easy readers, I was intrigued by a recipe […]