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The Complete Guide to Chai Tea
What is Chai Tea? With so many different types of tea on the market today, the concoction of ingredients used to make chai tea certainly isn’t common knowledge. Even the most avid tea drinkers may not be able to offer a full description of what exactly goes into the drink. Chai tea has four main elements: black tea, milk, sweetener and spices. The spices, however, vary between countries and across regions, which means that chai tea won’t necessarily taste the same in one part of India as it does in another. Some spices are used widely across Asia, such as cinnamon, ginger and cardamom. Fennel seeds, black peppercorns and nutmeg…
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Warm Winter Whole Grain Salad
Winter, for me, is a season of cleansing and stark beauty. The simplicity of the silhouettes of bare branches against a steely grey sky speaks softly to my heart, also in need of a restful moment or two. Snow is a constant wonder to me, though not in the same way it was when I was a kid barreling down the long steep hill behind our farmhouse on a wooden sled that surely was dangerous with its rusty metal rails. In fact, a new unblemished blanket of white has just fallen overnight and my current home’s window frames a comforting innocence, the usually busy city street out front muffled. Soon…
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Perfect Pumpkin Risotto
Well, hello there! Great news…SFTF is featured on Design*Sponge today! Welcome, all D*S readers! If you’re an SFTF reader (not to drive home any ideas of “camps” here among you all) who has yet to stumble upon D*S, it is a site full of amazing inspirational posts from some of the most creative minds in the world. The topics and projects featured there never cease to amaze me! And I’m addicted, checking in on the D*S divas at least twice a day. My recipe on D*S for Perfect Pumpkin Risotto is one that I conjured up many months ago, and I’ve been biting my nails ever since, anxious to share…
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Canning Pears
I hinted in the last post that I’d been doing a lot of canning recently. I grew up with canning, helping my mom put up all sorts of fruits and vegetables for our family’s winter eating. Sadly, I didn’t always appreciate the font of knowledge that was before me at the time. Nor did I really embrace canning again until last year. This autumn I’ve been a woman on a mission, intent on returning to the traditions of putting up plenty of jars to “keep on keepin’ on” with the local eating long after the garden is in its wintery bed. The recipe I’m giving you today isn’t exactly the…
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From the Archives: Beet Cake
I’ve been horrified lately by the pictures on some of my oldest post, many of which feature outstanding recipes that get many hits from the search engines. My food photography skills have decidedly improved over the past two+ years, and so I’m dusting off a few old favorites as time permits to have a digital makeover for your viewing pleasure. This Chocolate Beet Cake was just as delicious as I remembered. It is very chocolaty and yet has a hint of something most folks can’t quite put their finger on unless you divulge the secret ingredient. Packed with vitamins and minerals, the beets not only add nutritional value to an…
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10 Steps to Gardening from Scratch
One last gardening post and then I swear we’ll be back to food full time, at least for a few months until my garden starts doing very cool things that I’d be remiss in not sharing them with you. I have been hearing from friends and readers (who really are friends too) alike that they are thinking of starting a garden for the first time this year due to either the economy or a desire to be more involved with their food or both. Since I’m a horticulturist by trade, I wanted to take the piecemeal advice I give them and compile it into a post so anyone interested in…
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Celeriac and Ginger Soup
Hey, would you look at this! There’s a food post on SFTF again! And here you’d thought it had become a gardening blog. Truth of the matter is that the local food pickin’s are slim here in March when we’re just shy of getting the season’s first lettuce and baby greens. I’ve had to look to my shrinking stash of root vegetables to carry us through the last few weeks of “winter”. Even if it is 70 degrees outside my front door today here in Philadelphia, it’ll be awhile yet until there’s much fresh eating to be had from the garden and at the farmers markets. See that ugly duckling…
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Cranberry Champagne Sorbet
Happy Valentine’s Day, my dear readers! This is my love letter to you…a bright pink scoop of Cranberry Champagne Sorbet. This is a truly over-the-top and colorful dessert that is made with couples in mind, but it certainly could be shared among friends too. Perhaps it’s not the best option for the kiddies though. Thanks to the alcohol in the champagne, the consistency of this frozen treat is silky smooth and not the least bit crystallized like many sorbets. But don’t worry; while you may get intoxicated by the fun of sharing spoonfuls with your sweetie, there’s not enough alcohol left in the mix after cooking to do any real…
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Cranberry Heart Tarts
Hum-a-na, hum-a-na, hum-a-na! Be still my beating heart! Indeed, Cranberry Heart Tarts garnished with Chocolate Covered Cranberries are worthy of much adoration and attention. This luxurious tart, in the perfect shape and color for serving up to your sweetie on Valentine’s Day, is perhaps the easiest dessert I’ve ever made. Assuming you’ve got some frozen cranberries on hand (they are not in season in February), I have to practically insist you make this tart. Back in college, I worked at the Allentown Farmers Market, a great under-cover year-round market that brought in lots of farmers and specialty food purveyors. I happened to help out at one of those specialty food…
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Roasted Root Vegetable Stew
This week finally felt like winter around here. Don’t get me wrong. It’s certainly been frigid for several weeks now, but the skies were gray and the ground dull brown. The epitome of winter, at least in my mind, is brilliant blue skies with blinding sunlight streaming down that makes a generous blanket of snow glisten as it crunches under your feet. That’s what this week has been in southeastern Pennsylvania. And the sunsets…ah, the winter sunsets are the most beautiful with hues of violet, crimson and orange that cut through the leafless trees. There’s another stunning one developing right this very minute as I type. I love that my…
