Tomorrow will mark the sixth anniversary of my beloved husband Larry’s heart attack. It has become a yearly ritual to write a short post, remembering how I almost lost him.  Yes, I admit to being a little superstitious about keeping up the custom.

You can read my first post after his MI here.

Larry came through with no damage to his heart, thanks to all those professionals who cared for him.  We remember his cardiac team and their leader, Dr. Prasad, at UCSD Medical Center. We are forever grateful to the team of paramedics and firefighters from our neighborhood Station 8.  Station 8 had Larry in the Cardiac Catheter Unit within 42 minutes after my 911 call. These are fine people, people you never forget, whose job it is to routinely save lives every day of their service.

Both Larry and I continue to enjoy good health and are forever grateful and appreciative of the beautiful life we have shared for the past twenty years. The past six, however, have been the most appreciated and meaningful.

Saturday will mean a walk down to Station 8, with a note and a Starbucks gift card, maybe a lunch out, nothing fancy. But so precious. Six rich years!

Hug your loved ones and hold them close.

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My newest chutney, Triple Ginger & Pear, features seasonal pears and three different kinds of ginger, one of my favorite flavors.

Bartlett pears are at their peak right now, and I used seven or eight in this batch of chutney. Adding some dried pears helps intensify the pear flavor of the chutney.

I’m such a fan of ginger, from cocktails to baked goods. I love to snack on a handful of peppery crystallized ginger slices. Maybe I got hooked as a kid, when my mother would bring me a ginger ale – with a straw – to settle my stomach. In those days, ginger ale contained real ginger, something you don’t find now in most commercial ginger ales. (Trader Joe’s sells a terrific “real” ginger ale.)

Recently, I was in an expensive food shop, actually a branch of Harrod’s at London’s Heathrow Airport, and I spied a jar of ginger jam. It was heavy and super expensive, so I made a mental note to try to make a batch after the trip. A future post, maybe…

Looking back at earlier chutney recipes that I have posted here, I see that I used white sugar for most of them. Some time ago, I made a switch to using brown sugar and prefer the depth of flavor.

LtC TIP: Use your handy rasp to grate the fresh ginger root, once you have peeled it.

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Just a few weeks ago, Larry and I were sitting at a café high in the Alps, enjoying spectacular views. He raised his coffee and toasted “Happy Fall”, which reminded me of my sixth anniversary as a food blogger.

I don’t feel too deserving of a celebration this year, as my blog has taken a back seat for almost a year to going through double thumb surgeries. After each surgery came months of splints, casts, medical appointments, OT and rehab. My functioning in the kitchen and garden were severely limited, especially when each hand was casted for six weeks. Let’s skip the part when each respective six-inch pin was removed…It’s been a long haul and I’m glad to feel some gains towards full recovery.

A slow recovery is nothing compared to the pain I had experienced summer before last, which finally drove me to seek out a hand surgeon. I was lucky and our internist referred me to a terrific doctor. Pain is a great motivator and I had each surgery as soon as I could handle it.

And here it is Fall once again, just about my favorite time to hang out in the kitchen. My thoughts turn to roasting a chicken with lots of garlic and Meyer lemons, braising a roast in rich red wine – and to apples, my favorite fall fruit. I’m especially partial to Honey Crisps and Fujis, but I found a bag of organic Galas that smelled like autumn. Inspired, I drove home to whip up an apple cake.

It’s pretty easy to make a decent apple cake and this recipe was no exception. I grabbed the recipe I’d clipped from last month’s  Sunset magazine, a recipe you can find here.

As with most Sunset recipes, this cake turned out as promised and pretty enough to snap with my iPhone before I sifted powdered sugar on top.

My only caveat is that they recommend a baking time of 60-75 minutes and mine was easily done in 55 minutes. My oven can run a little hot, but check yours around 55 minutes, just to avoid over-baking the cake.

Happy Fall – and see you again soon.

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Still recovering from my double hand surgeries, my cooking skills still have a way to go, but progress has been good and I am regaining strength and dexterity every week. The latest kitchen fiasco, though, has been the breakdown of my oven. As it turns out, it takes weeks (!) for the proper part to be shipped here before it can be successfully repaired. So, my summer cooking is limited to my stove top and Larry’s grill. Meanwhile, the 4th is just around the corner – guess we will be grilling steaks and enjoying some homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh berries, as close to these crumbles as we can get this year!

July 4th has traditionally meant a cherry pie on the picnic table for our family, even when I was a kid. This year, I decided to shake things up a bit and make individual berry crumbles. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, they made a patriotic presentation of red, white and blue for our dessert last evening. Berries were looking so gorgeous in the market and I had grabbed up raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.

I felt a little guilty when I  announced to Larry that a berry crumble would be replacing the customary cherry pie this year. “No pie?!” my Midwestern husband exclaimed. I stood strong, hoping to win him over with my crumble.

After we had enjoyed our salad and grilled steaks, I served the crumbles and was rewarded with a big “thumbs up” from the crowd, especially from Larry, who ate two.

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT: You will need 6 eight ounce-sized ramekins.

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Summer is just around the corner, a time when I streamline my cooking and turn to simple and seasonal ingredients. This fruity summer salsa pulls together so quickly and is a nice side to pair with almost any grilled entrée. Still recovering from two hand surgeries, my knife skills remain pretty compromised, but even I can chop up a few ingredients to assemble a fresh and fruity salsa.

Any stone fruit pairs well with tomatoes, but apricots are in season and I use them in just about anything these days. Add salt to taste – we are a low sodium household, so I tend to substitute a squeeze of Meyer lemon juice for the salt shaker.

Lots of folks cannot abide cilantro, so feel free to use flat-leaved parsley instead. My husband claims cilantro tastes just like soap, a common complaint. You either like the stuff or not…

This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled for a crowd. We’re having Larry’s tennis pals over for a cook-out on Memorial Day this weekend, so I will probably make a big batch to enjoy with our grilled rib-eyes.

LtC TIP: I heated up the salsa for 30 seconds in the microwave last night to have with our roast chicken. I liked the warmed salsa with the piping hot chicken and the salsa’s flavors intensified.

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This easy rhubarb ricotta cake is going to surprise my rhubarb-loving husband, Larry, this evening. Although his birthday isn’t until next Thursday, we will be in Santa Fe that day, so why not start the celebration early?

It was no easy feat to actually get my hands on some rhubarb. I have been looking in all the markets for several weeks, this being the season for it. Finally, I found some yesterday at a local supermarket – for $6.99 a pound! I was desperate enough that I bought some, knowing I only needed a cup and a half of the precious stuff.

Some years ago, when Larry and I were newly in love, I tried to grow some rhubarb in the garden. It was a miserable flop, since it turns out you need to live in a climate that has frost during the cold months. Where we live in San Diego is a no-frost zone, so I gave up on my efforts to raise “pie plant”.

I switched out the strawberries for rhubarb, using on my Strawberry-Ricotta Cake recipe. I used 1 1/2 cups of rhubarb instead of 1 cup of strawberries, knowing how much Larry loves rhubarb.  You can get the recipe here.

Happy Birthday to my Midwestern sweetheart xoxo Next time, a pie – I promise!

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After months of not being able to post new recipes because of two complicated hand surgeries, I’m celebrating my ongoing recovery with the Meyer Lemon Dark & Stormy cocktail.

It feels terrific to slowly regain strength and dexterity in both my hands. Goodbye to unwieldy casts, awkward splints and one-handed driving. Being back in the kitchen with two hands, however weak and stiff, feels almost intoxicating. Gardening is still a challenge, but I will get there and hope to plant our summer herbs and vegetables in a couple weeks.

Dealing with soreness instead of acute and relentless pain from arthritis in both my thumbs is such a difference. I am so grateful, both to my brilliant and supportive surgeon and to my talented OT who supervises my ongoing rehab.

I started my journey towards recovery early last November and here we are now, well into Spring. It has been a bumper crop season for Meyer lemons in our neighborhood this season, and we are picking a handful almost daily. Our lemons are such a boost to a low salt diet, adding a spark of flavor to so many dishes and drinks.

The classic dark & stormy cocktail adds a slice of lime to a mixture of dark rum and ginger beer. I substituted a squirt of Meyer lemon juice, as well as a slice for a garnish.

Cheers and a belated happy Spring!

LtC TIP: I like Reed’s ginger beer, available at Trader Joe’s.

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Still recovering from my second and complicated hand surgery, I’m rejoicing in returning to simple cooking. Unfortunately, my food photography and blogging has to take a back seat to rehab. Meanwhile, this is a timely post from a couple of years ago that I recently made using oranges and Meyer lemons from our bumper citrus crop this Spring…

I’m always looking for recipes to please my gluten-free, vegan friends and made this red quinoa salad recently for our monthly writing group to enjoy. It has been a challenge for me to learn how to make both gluten-free and vegan recipes, so it is an ongoing search for new recipes that I can prepare.

Since our Meyer lemon and navel orange trees are covered with fruit, I wanted to feature them in this red quinoa salad, even in the vinaigrette. Hoping that the colors would be pretty, I opted to use red rather than plain quinoa here.

Because I was in a hurry and knew I’d be busy the morning of our meeting, I made the salad the night before, adding the orange sections and toasted pistachios just before serving at lunch.

You could throw almost anything into this salad, but I kept it simple and let the seasonal citrus flavors dominate in my salad.

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It has been five years of gratitude since my husband Larry’s heart attack and subsequent full recovery. I have a need to honor the anniversary each year by writing about it, the most dramatic piece being about the trauma itself – which you can read about here.

Both of us have learned so much about gratitude – for our family, friends, and the ins and outs of our daily life together. There is hardly a day that passes without one of us remarking to the other how lucky we have been these past five years.

Today will be so special for us and will include a visit to our local fire station. It was the men and women of Station 8 here in Mission Hills who saved Larry’s life. All of “our” original team have moved on to other stations, but we consider all the heroes of Station 8 to be folks whose courage we acknowledge on a regular basis.

So, I will shed a tear or two and share many hugs with my sweet husband and the brave firefighters who save people like Larry almost every day. It has, indeed, been five precious years of gratitude and thankfulness.

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If all has gone well, I am 72 hours post-op from reconstructive thumb surgery on my dominant hand for stage 4 arthritis. I’m afraid that my Valentine will only have memories of this fabulous chocolate bark from last year – but he’s still my one and only and there are some pre-purchased treats for him…

Ever since I first watched Ina Garten make her white chocolate bark, I have wanted to try my hand at it. You can find her original recipe in her How Easy Is That? cookbook or online at the Food Network recipe site.

Because Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, I made a few changes to Ina’s recipe to feature red and white colors. I splurged on a handful of Marcona almonds, my favorite, and added some cashews instead of the pistachios in Ina’s recipe. Dried cherries replaced her dried apricots, but I kept the dried cranberries. I had really wanted to throw in some dried strawberries but couldn’t find them anywhere. I kept to Ina’s technique, except for toasting the nuts in a skillet instead of, as she suggests, the oven. Marcona almonds toast really quickly and I wanted to keep a close eye on them.

As careful as I am about using salt in my cooking and baking, you need to use salted nuts here to contrast with the sweet chocolate and tart dried fruit. Splurge on the best white chocolate you can afford – I used Valrhona – expensive, but your Valentine deserves the best, right?

TIP: Don’t use white chocolate chips, tempting as it is, because they contain stabilizers and won’t melt properly. They don’t taste very good, either.

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