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September is the perfect month to learn how to bake a pie. If you’ve never made one before, you’re still straddling two seasons: summer fruit tastes best in September and then, as the weather cools, you’ll transition into making apple pies, pumpkin pies, pecan pies, etc. So if your first few crusts are disasters, you’ll…

Romeo asked, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” The same can be said of ice cream flavors. If we didn’t call Cookies & Cream “Cookies & Cream,” would it still taste like Cookies & Cream? Ice cream is an arena where names seem to matter. We…

Is there anything better than a hand-written recipe? When my mom got married, her father’s co-workers gave her a bunch of handwritten recipes that she still has. And here on Eliza Island, where we’re on our last full day of summer vacation (which we’re lucky to have, considering what’s going on in the world), it’s…

This summer, if I were the sort of person who named their summers, might be called “The Summer of Stone Fruit.” That’s because, for a good part of it, I’d bring home lots of stone fruit (mostly peaches, but also nectarines and plums) from the West Hollywood Farmer’s Market. I’d put these stone fruits into…

The farmer’s market can be an intimidating place, especially in summer when there’s just so much to choose from. Sometimes I get overwhelmed, buy a few peaches and tomatoes and leave quickly. Other times, I just buy everything in sight, a strategy that seems wasteful at first but which almost always pays off. When I…