« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »
Just up on Serious Eats, the latest Baking with Dorie recipe: Slippery-Slidey Cinnamon-Espresso Cup Custard -- smooth, comforting, tasty, easy and right for the season. Hope you'll enjoy it.
I wish I had 532 books to give away - I would have loved to have given each one of you a signed copy as a way to thank you for your sweetness and generosity. But, alas, I had only 10 and when the numbers came up on the screen, here's who had won:
NANTANA CHITMAN, whose book will be dedicated to her and her daughter
KATIE B., whose book will go to her mother, Priscilla, who just had a birthday
DR. BEHAVIOR, who wants the book for his oldest daughter, Jordana
TINA COLE, whose book will be autographed for her son, Aaron
MARIA, whose fingers were crossed, and who will have to uncross them to bake from her personalized copy
CINDY, who'll be baking from the book herself
JESS, whose book will be signed to her with her full name, Jessica
MARY, from Ann Arbor, who left her entry and then went off to bake cheese bread
SUSAN, who wants the book for her sister, Julia, the baker in the family
LEEYUEN, who will be baking from her own personalized copy of the book soon.
I'll be writing to each of you winners soon so I can get your mailing addresses.
ONCE AGAIN, MY DEEPEST AND WARMEST THANKS TO ALL OF YOU
It's going to be all over tomorrow, Wednesday, October 10, at noon New York time (aka Eastern Daylight Time). That's when I'll close the comments and figure out how to use that random-number generator I downloaded.
So, if you'd like to join the contest to win one of 10 autographed copies of BAKING FROM MY HOME TO YOURS, just click here and leave your name and the name of the person you'd like me to dedicate the book to. (I'm not taking comments on this post, so be sure to click over.)
Again, thank you so much for your great comments and your boundless enthusiasm.
At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I'll admit at the top that I don't go in much for garden gnomes. True, a gnome played a major role in one of my favorite French films, Amelie, which, incidentally, has a soundtrack that's so wonderful it coaxed a smile out of me even after I discovered that the 2 cups of sugar sitting on the kitchen counter belonged to the cake that was already in the oven! (Note to self: Don't talk on the phone and bake at the same time.)
That's Audrey "Amelie" Tatou up there with her gnome (thank you Miramax). Cute, I know, but not cute enough to make a gnome-lover out of me. Even after the celebrated designer, Philippe Starck, whose work I love, created a family of garden gnomes (here's one)
I still wasn't about to make a place for a gnome in my garden, my home or my heart.
But it turns out that my little corner of Connecticut must be a hotbed of anonymous gnomial activity because, unseen, unheard and uninvited, the gnomes turned up.
I mean, take a look at this - it's what I found in my garden earlier this summer, just after returning from Paris
Pretty fabulous, isn't it? And obviously the work of gnomes, right? Who else would do such a thing?
Then yesterday, Michael and I pulled up to the house and, as I always do, I jumped out of the car and went directly to the garden. Here's what I found
To you, this might look like an ordinary scarecrow. But to me, it looks precisely like a mini female edition of Abner, the scarecrow who lives up the block. Could Abner have wandered down and bequeathed me his firstborn? I don't think so. It's got to be the gnomes at work again.
Next thing I know, the ghost of Christmas past will be hovering over the garden.
If this keeps up, I might just start believing in the tooth fairy. In the meantime, I'll keep believing in the adorableness of my friends.
To get the weekend off to a good start, why not make Ricotta-Berry Muffins? The recipe's in this week's Baking with Dorie at Serious Eats.
All of the recipes I've done for the Baking with Dorie column can be found here.
Happy baking! Happy weekend!
You've got until Wednesday, October 10, to enter your name in the random drawing for an autographed copy of BAKING FROM MY HOME TO YOURS, which is celebrating its first birthday.
CLICK HERE TO LEAVE YOUR NAME and the name of the person to whom you'd like me to dedicate the copy - I've got 10 copies - if your name is pulled. (I'm not taking comments here - it would be too confusing - so click over.)
There are already soooooooooooooooooo many comments and I'm overwhelmed by them.
THANK YOU all so very, very, very much for your incredible sweetness.
This week marked the tenth anniversary of Read to Grow, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving literacy in Connecticut by starting early - as soon as a baby is born!
Every mom who gives birth to a child in a participating hospital gets a visit from a Read to Grow volunteer and a goody bag containing a pamphlet detailing the importance of reading to children and a brand-new book, so moms can start reading to their little ones immediately.
It's a terrific organization doing very important work and, to get the word out and to celebrate their anniversary, Read to Grow held ten house parties over the weekend, each attended by an author. I was not just flattered to be invited to speak at a party, I was delighted, honored and, frankly, very surprised.
As I told the group, when I decided to give up on my doctoral dissertation and go bake cookies in a Greenwich Village restaurant, only my husband was in favor of my move. My friends thought I was nuts and my mother was pretty sure I was ruining my life. I understood how she felt: she was looking forward to saying, "my daughter, the doctor," and, instead, she was stuck with, "my daughter, the underpaid cookie baker who works in a cellar."
Being a chef and writing about chefs and food wasn't sexy or glamorous then - it wasn't even considered interesting.
Happily, a lot has changed, thanks, I think, to the James Beard Foundation, which honors chefs and cookbook authors, and, most definitely, to The Food Network, which makes chefs stars and food compelling.
I took being invited to speak about what Julia Child called "cookbookery" to a literacy group as another way to measure just how far we in the food world have come.
Of course, the best criterion of change is my mom. She's very proud of me now - so proud that she doesn't even remember not being delighted when I gave up that dissertation!
If you want to learn more about Read to Grow, click here.
Subscribe in a reader
