We started it off by gabbing about the weird things people put in coffee, the evolution of the sweet tooth, and the history of cereal boxes, among other topics. We explored five ways to eat many kinds of seasonal produce. We launched a new Monday feature called Inviting Writing, and you all have been responding with wonderful stories on themes like road trips, college food and eating at Grandma’s house.

Looking back. Image courtesy of Flickr user hhoyer (saturn ♄).

Yes, it’s been a wonderful year. But personally, it’s not just 2010 that I’m wrapping up and waving goodbye to… I’m also leaving Smithsonian to work for another magazine. While that’s certainly exciting, it’s bittersweet, since it means parting ways with Food & Think, the blog I helped launch just over two years ago. We really hit our stride last year thanks to Lisa Bramen, the fantastic freelance co-blogger who joined me “temporarily” and is still going strong. You can look forward to reading more of Lisa’s work here, as well as posts from a few new and returning writers in months to come.

For me, this blog has been an excuse to do some fun things like interview a movie food stylist, attend a Red-Bull-themed art opening and sip Spanish wines with Jose Andres.

It has challenged to me to pay closer attention to serious issues of the day like food safety, childhood obesity and sustainable seafood, as well as track down answers to not-so-serious questions like “Does cheese pair better with beer or wine?” and “Why are chocolate Easter bunnies hollow?”

And it has inspired me to taste or cook many things for the first time: fresh sardines, jellyfish, lionfish, biltong (South African jerky), poutine, kohlrabi, sunchokes, purple long beans and more. Heck, I’d never even cracked into a crab or a whole lobster until I became a food blogger! I’m grateful for those opportunities, and to all of you for reading.

If you’d like to stay in touch, you’re welcome to visit my new personal blog, The Editor Eats, or connect with me on Twitter (@AmandaBensen).

Happy New Year, everyone!

Pot from Cyprus. Courtesy of NMNH

A question for the end of the  year, a time to look back: What’s the oldest kind of wine still in modern production?

If you answered “Commandaria,” I’m impressed. I had never heard of such wines until a few weeks ago, when I attended a Smithsonian Resident Associates lecture about the cuisine of Cyprus. It’s a sweet dessert wine, with a dark amber to light brown color, and an intriguing taste that starts like honeyed raisins and figs and ends like coffee. It reminded me somewhat of Hungarian Tokaji wine, while the woman next to me said she found it pleasantly similar to Portuguese Madeira.

I learned that Commandaria’s history dates back at least 3,000 years, although it was called Mana for much of that time. The ancient Greeks drank it at festivals celebrating Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who, according to myth, was born from the sea foam on the shores of Cyprus. The wine’s modern name can be traced to the 12th and 13th centuries, when the Knights Templar and Knights of St. John established a headquarters (commandery) in the growing region and began to produce and export the wine commercially. Commandaria proved so popular with European palates that it is said to have been served at King Richard the Lionheart’s wedding, and to have won what was perhaps the world’s first wine-tasting competition in France.

Commandaria is made from two kinds of native grapes which I’d also never heard of before—white Xynisteri and red Mavro—which are partially dried in the sun to concentrate the juices before pressing and fermentation. By law, Commandaria wines must be aged for at least two years in oak barrels, but many of the best are aged for a decade or more. (I sampled a phenomenal 30-year-old vintage, Etko Centurion, although at $100 and up a bottle I don’t expect I’ll drink it again. But younger versions are also excellent, and much more affordable at around $20.)

Although its international popularity faded in the centuries after the knights lost power, Commandaria has been staging a comeback in recent decades. The name has been given “protected designation of origin status” in the European Union, the United States and Canada, and there is an official Commandaria wine region in southern Cyprus.

To learn more about the history of Cyprus, currently the subject of an exhibit at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, read this Smithsonian magazine piece.

In the charitable season of the spirit, we’ve extended the submission deadline a few days! Send your stories to FoodandThink@gmail.com by Wednesday morning, Dec. 22.

The Heat Goes On
By Judy Martin

When I moved to California in 1984, I had limited experience with ethnic cuisine. My Chinese food repertoire included fried rice, egg rolls and Chung King chow mein from a can. The new town where I moved had a main street that was like the United Nations of dining, so it wasn’t long before I began to explore the unknown foods there.

Hunan beef, courtesy Flickr user sergeant killjoy

Chinese food seemed approachable, and there was a restaurant where my husband and his coworkers ate lunch frequently that he thought I would enjoy. It was owned by a friendly couple who spoke very limited English. We began to dine there at least weekly and work our way through the menu. Before long, I was ready to tackle the items marked with their HOT symbol.

But as with ethnic food, I also didn’t have much experience with spicy. (I was raised mostly on canned and frozen food.) One night I ordered Hunan beef. It was a beautiful dish, featuring a rich caramelized sauce sprinkled with little red pepper flakes. I took a bite that included some of the beef, rice, and what I thought looked like a mushroom. Right about then, the chef/owner came to our table and saw me eat the first bite.

“NO EAT PEPPER!!!” he said waving his hands wildly. “FLAVOR ONLY!!!”

Well, it was too late. I had bitten into the hottest pepper I’d ever encountered and my mouth exploded. I had never experienced such a sensation. Sweat began to stream from every pore. I grabbed my glass of water. “NO WATER, NO WATER!!! RICE AND SALT!!” he urgently advised and demonstrated cramming my mouth full of rice.

I survived my first hot-pepper encounter thanks to that restaurant proprietor, and rather than being daunted, I was intrigued. I returned many more times to enjoy his cooking. Hunan beef became one of my favorites, the spicier, the better. I began to explore the flavors of peppers and developed a love for heat. Give me habaneros or Brazilian malaguetas any time; I’ll cook you a spicy dish that will make you sweat!

My son was five or six years old at the time of the pepper experience, and for a long time refused to eat Chinese food. The owner and his wife would come out and try to entice him with little treats, usually with no success. Once, after they had made a routine friendly visit to our table, our son asked us their names. I was embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know.

“But it’s on the window,” my son said. I didn’t understand what he meant. So he took us outside and pointed to the front window of the restaurant, which read: “Mandarin and Szechuan Cuisine.”

After that, we always referred to them as Mr. and Mrs. Cuisine. The restaurant eventually closed and they moved away, but we still remember them and their food fondly.

The Aspiring Home Cook

Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease, by Rozanne Gold. All the recipes in this lovely cookbook are described in 140 words or less, and many have only 5 ingredients, making even sophisticated-sounding dishes like “sauteed chicken with roasted grapes and grape demi-glace” quite approachable.

How To Repair Food, by Tanya Zeryck, John Bear and Marina Bear. The third edition of a perennially helpful classic that offers tips on everything from makeshift ingredient substitutions to stale marshmallows.

Williams-Sonoma: The Art of Preserving, by Rick Field with Rebecca Courchesne. An essential reference guide for anyone interested in making and cooking with their own canned and pickled produce.

The Original King Arthur Flour Cookbook: 200th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, by Brinna B. Sands. A sturdy, ring-bound classic devoted to all things flour-based, from pancakes to pie, and of course, bread.

Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The Cosmopolitan Foodie

My Calabria: Rustic Family Cooking from Italy’s Undiscovered South, by Rosetta Costantino with Janet Fletcher. The first cookbook to focus on Calabria, the region at the tip of Italy’s “boot,” its recipes celebrate ingredients like olives, anchovies, hot peppers… and pasta made on knitting needles.

Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes, by Mark Bitterman. A fascinating tribute to the history and nuances of the many types of “artisan salt” in the world, written by a self-described “selmelier.” Includes a field guide to dozens of specific salts found in the Mongolian steppes, the deserts of Timbuktu and more.

Around my French Table: More than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan. The warm, conversational tone of Greenspan’s writing, combined with gorgeous photographs and tips about serving and storing, welcomes readers into the exciting world of French home cooking.

The Sweetheart

Ready for Dessert: My Best Recipes, by David Lebovitz. From classics like creme brulee to unique concepts like Guinness-gingerbread cupcakes, the Paris-based pastry chef’s heavenly-sounding recipes are anchored in his funny, down-to-earth style. (“If you don’t have a pepper mill, shame on you. Go get one.”)

The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion, by Bill Yosses and Melissa Clark. A collection of 80 sure-to-impress recipes from the White House pastry chef, helpfully organized by occasion (birthdays, brunches, bring-to-a-party desserts, etc.).

The Carnivore

Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Cooking and Sourcing Sustainable Meat, by Deborah Krasner. A satisfyingly thick tome, broken down into chapters on beef, lamb, pork, rabbit, poultry and eggs. Includes recipes for every part of the animals, and explains the terminology and practices involved in meat production and processing.

Planet Barbecue: An Electrifying Journey Around the World’s Barbecue Trail, by Steven Raichlen. More than 300 grill-centric recipes from 60 countries, ranging from South African braai to Korean pork belly.

The Meat Lover’s Meatless Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes Carnivores Will Devour, by Kim O’Donnel. As O’Donnel explains, the inspiration for this marvelous book was helping her mother come up with heart-healthy meals that would pass muster with the meat-loving man in her life, “Mister Sausage.” O’Donnel isn’t condemning carnivores, she’s simply asking them to take a day off: “Meatless Mondays.”

The Vegetarian

The Very Best of Recipes for Health, by Martha Rose Shulman. A collection of simple, healthy, largely vegetarian recipes from Shulman’s popular New York Times column, including nutritional analyses. Mediterranean chickpea salad, creamy cabbage soup, “rainbow tofu” and much more.

The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman’s Romp Through a World of Men, Meat and Moral Crisis, by Tara Austen Weaver. This food writer’s memoir is both entertaining and thought-provoking, as she grapples with the relationship between her vegetarian upbringing and some serious health issues, and gets a crash course in the world of meat production and consumption.

The Nostalgic

Courtesy Pelican Publishing.

The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, by Amanda Hesser. A hefty treasure chest, bursting with gems of culinary history culled from the newspaper’s archives by one of its best food writers.

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, edited by Joan Reardon. Fans of Julia Child will devour this collection of her personal correspondence with her friend and literary mentor Avis in the 1950s. Although the letters discuss much more than food, they offer a window into the process of recipe and testing and development for Child’s famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Memories of a Farm Kitchen, by Bob and Rob Artley. A charming and utterly unique memoir about growing up on a 200-acre farm in Iowa in the 1920s and 1930s, this homespun book recalls bygone days of icebox refrigerators, cellar larders, and ham hanging from the rafters.

The Pop-Culture Geek

Cooking With the Movies: Meals on Reels, by Anthony F. Chiffolo and Rayner W. Hesse, Jr. With recipes based on the foods featured in 14 different films, from 1985′s Tampopo through 2007′s Waitress, this could be the basis for some seriously fun dinner parties.

Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History, by William Woys Weaver. I’ve already told you how much I enjoyed this collection of vintage advertisements, food packaging, menus and tidbits of trivia from culinary history.

Or how about one of these cookbooks by non-culinary celebrities, like Dolly Parton or Coolio?

The Drinks Connoisseur

Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits, by Jason Wilson. From the first chapter, titled “The Ombibulous Me,” this alcohol-soaked memoir from The Washington Post‘s Spirits columnist turns the esoteric into the entertaining. Includes dozens of cocktail recipes.

Whiskey: A Global History, by Kevin Kosar. This intriguing, stocking-stuffer-sized volume from the Alcohol Reviews blogger chases the history of whiskey around the world and through the ages, explains the differences between various types and includes several classic whiskey cocktail recipes.

The Great Domaines of Burgundy: A Guide to the Finest Wine Producers of the Cote D’Or, by Remington Norman and Charles Taylor (3rd edition). Serious oenophiles and/or Francophiles will savor this detailed reference book, which elucidates the methods and personalities at the heart of Burgundy’s best wines.

Vino Argentino: An Insider’s Guide to the Wines and Wine Country of Argentina, by Laura Catena. As described in a previous post, this is an excellent primer on the Argentine wine industry and its beloved malbecs.

The Kid

See our recent list of food-related children’s books.

To be considered for publication, please e-mail your submissions to FoodandThink@gmail.com by this Friday (Dec. 17) morning. We’ll read through all of them and pick our favorites to edit and publish on subsequent Mondays through mid-January. Just a reminder, we’re looking for true, original personal narratives of roughly 500 to 1,000 words. The rest of the details are up to you!

I’ll start with an example…

My Goodness, My Guinness
By Amanda Bensen

Ever heard the term “goody two-shoes?” That was me in high school, and that was still me at 19, as I entered my junior year of college. Up until then, I had never had an alcoholic drink. After all, I wasn’t 21—and underage drinking was not only illegal, but at my college it was an offense that could get you expelled (along with having opposite-sex visitors in your room overnight, or with the door closed).

Guinness, courtesy of Flickr user Paul Watson

But my junior year was different. I was studying abroad in England, where the drinking age was only 18, which meant that the mysterious world of alcohol was suddenly wide open to me. I was eager to experience British culture, and I quickly discerned that drinking was a necessary part of this—even the church I visited held its “young adults’ Bible study” at a pub.

When Ryan, another American student in my program, heard that I’d never had a drink, he was both incredulous and adamant that we remedy this strange condition immediately. He dragged me into a pub on the outskirts of Oxford. It was early on a weekday evening, and the place was quiet. We sat at the bar, where a handful of middle-aged men were silently watching television and nursing pints of beer.

“She’ll have a Guinness, and so will I,” Ryan announced loudly, as if this were something extraordinary. The bartender smirked as he handed us our drinks. I was about to take a sip when Ryan stopped me.

“Wait,” he said, lowering his voice. “Just so you know, this is a real local pub, not a tourist trap. They know how to drink. That means you have to take at least an inch or two out of the glass in your first swig, or they’ll probably laugh you right out of here.”

I was alarmed. That wouldn’t be a good way to experience the local culture. So, I took a big gulp, choking slightly and getting foam on my nose in the process. It tasted bitter, but not bad…kind of like dark chocolate, or coffee. I liked it!

Trying to ignore the fact that the other customers were now watching us more than the television, we hunched over our pints and tried not to talk. I looked at the vintage beer ads displayed on the pub’s wall, with slogans like “Lovely day for a Guinness” and “My goodness, my Guinness!” and debated whether it would be nerdy or cool to mention that I was reading a biography of the British mystery author Dorothy Sayers, who wrote those slogans in the 1930s. I was hoping it would help prepare me for a tutorial on C.S. Lewis I’d be taking that fall, since Sayers was a friend of his. Probably nerdy, I decided.

By the time my pint was nearly drained, Ryan was already finishing his second. “What did you have for dinner?” he asked. I said I hadn’t had dinner yet.

He put on a look of mocking seriousness (although the mocking part went straight over my head at the time).

“What?!? No food in your stomach? That means you’re going to be sick in…” he looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”

I felt fine, but he sounded certain, so I was worried. We tossed a handful of pound coins down on the bar and hurried out to the street in search of a quick bite. With only five minutes left in our ridiculous countdown, we found a food truck. I ordered a tray of fries and a greasy veggie burger, and downed them quickly, as if they were medicine. I don’t know how Ryan managed to keep such a straight face through it all.

By the end of that year, I was the one dragging visiting friends to the local pubs, although I never got into heavy drinking. After buying me eight shots in a row one night without seeing any effect, Ryan declared me the best drinking buddy he’d ever seen: “Such a tolerance! Never seen anything like it in a girl!”

What he didn’t realize is that I was the one doing the leg-pulling this time — it was a dark pub, there was nothing behind my chair but a dead-end stairwell, and I’d been tossing the shots over my shoulder the whole time.

I’ve long since lost touch with Ryan, but I still love Guinness.

When my father-in-law sent us home from Thanksgiving with a bag full of fresh leeks from his garden, I thanked him (diplomatically, of course), but was secretly befuddled. Having seen leeks only in restaurant dishes, I’d assumed they were something smaller, closer to scallions. These were white cylinders nearly as wide as soda cans, lopped off at the top as they grew greener.

After a bit of online research, I learned that late-harvested leeks like the ones I got are bigger than spring ones, with a stronger flavor that’s still milder than most onions. These bulbous vegetables have been called “the poor man’s asparagus” in France, but in Wales, people wear leeks (yes, wear them!) as a treasured national symbol. Ancient Egyptians and Romans apparently loved leeks, too.

Chopped leek, courtesy Flickr user Scot Rumery

Leeks can be cooked in many different ways. A few suggestions:

1) Potato-leek soup. A classic, easy-to-prepare winter comfort food. I made mine without a recipe, first sauteeing some chopped leeks and butter in a saucepan for about 10 minutes, then adding chopped potatoes and broth to simmer for about 20 minutes (until soft), and pureeing it with an immersion blender. I added some plain yogurt, creme fraiche and rosemary for a richer taste and texture, and crumbled a bit of blue cheese on top before serving. Yum. For a more precise recipe, see Pinch My Salt. Simply Recipes also has a creamless version with a kick, and NPR’s The Splendid Table offers several variations on Julia Child’s classic leek and potato soup recipe.

2) Risotto. I’m a little addicted to making risotto, as my husband, Charles, can attest. Cold weather only makes me crave it more. But at least my repertoire is expanding! This caramelized leek risotto from Daily Unadventures in Cooking is phenomenal. Cauliflower or butternut squash would be tasty additions, and if Charles didn’t hate mushrooms, I’d also be trying The Kitchn’s mushroom and leek risotto. (That blog also has a helpful explanation of how to clean leeks.)

3) Latkes. Add another one to Jess’s list of not-so-orthodox latkes! One of my favorite blogs, Food & Style, recently featured an enticing butternut squash and leek latke recipe, although carnivores may prefer these leek and beef latkes. Along the same lines, WGBH’s The Daily Dish has a recipe for shredded potato cakes with leeks and cheese.

4) Mac & Cheese. Just when I thought homemade macaroni and cheese couldn’t get any better…it did. Try this recipe from Food & Wine, which the Capital Spice bloggers can testify to.

5) Bread Pudding. Smitten Kitchen wins the prize for most creative use of leeks with this Leek Bread Pudding recipe adapted from the Ad Hoc cookbook. Doesn’t that look great?

Also, a recipe to keep in mind for spring—Martha Rose Shulman’s grilled leeks with romesco sauce make me dream of warmer weather.

Do you like leeks? How do you use them?

Today’s featured writer is Jane Pellicciotto, a graphic designer in Portland, Oregon who keeps an illustrated log of her fresh produce purchases and contributes occasionally to the Portland Farmers Market blog.

Pass the Gravy
By Jane Pellicciotto

Whenever we visited my father’s family in New York, it was with a mix of excitement, curiosity and a little dread.

Brooklyn had what the Maryland suburbs lacked—subways rumbling overhead, the Chinese five-and-dime, colorful accents, and Grandma Pell’s cooking. But it also meant a nail-biting journey in the car with my father, for whom driving was sport. He would jockey for position among the black Cadillacs on the narrow avenues, while I’d slide down the vinyl seat so I couldn’t see the too-close cars. Instead, I’d try to think about the pizza awaiting us.

Grandma Pell. Photo courtesy of Jane Pellicciotto.

Grandma Pell, whose name was Lena, was born in Manhattan in 1908, a year after her parents emigrated from Italy. She’d never been to Italy herself, but maintained her family’s ways around food. Put oregano in the pizza sauce, never in the marinara. Fry sausages in olive oil, but the meatballs in vegetable. Soak the eggplant in salt water first; fry the slices not once, but twice.

Rules were not universal, however. An argument once broke out between my uncle’s sister and her husband whether to stuff peppers with raw or cooked pork. Heads turned when a hand came down hard on the table. Raw won.

The kitchen was always grandma’s domain and from its small space came humble, but glorious food: unadorned pizzas, stuffed squid, spaghetti pie, green beans stewed in tomatoes, and eggplant parmesan that melted in your mouth like butter. We saw these visits as an excuse to eat with abandon—salami and proscuitto and capacollo, slabs of salty wet mozzarella, extra helpings of rigatoni and meatballs. But most of all, for me, it was about the stuffed artichokes. One by one, I’d savor the slippery metallic leaves and the slow journey to the heart.

Grandma, who always wore a cotton housecoat, was methodical. She had a head for numbers, having been a bookkeeper despite her father’s orders to be a seamstress. And she was practical. Once, she overheard my uncle ask us if we wanted greens. Grandma came into the dining room, set down a bowl of broccoli rabe dotted with slivered garlic and said, “You don’t ask. You just put it!” Meaning, if someone wants it, they’ll eat it. Don’t fuss. (Then again, grandma would also ask over and over, “Did yas have enough? Have some more. It’s gotta get eaten.”)

My siblings and I were hungry for words and language and culture, keeping our ears perked for delicious turns of phrase like “just put it,” which we added to our own lexicon. Sauce didn’t just taste good, it “came nice,” as if a benevolent thing arrived at the front door. Dishes were “put up” rather than loaded into the dishwasher, and the ends of words were clipped while their centers were drawn out, adding bouncy drama to Madonna, calamari, mozzarella.

There is an edge to New Yorkers, not to mention Italians. And my grandmother had the misfortune to outlive her only two children—my father and aunt—by almost half a century. So I cherish one of the lighter moments in my memory. Back when my brother was a teenager, and very particular about clothes, Grandma announced on one visit that she had been saving a pair of dungarees for him. She returned with a relic of the bygone disco age. We looked at each other with alarm, but to our surprise my brother tried on the jeans. He emerged from the bathroom walking stiffly, stuffed into the jeans like a sausage. His flattened butt was emblazoned with metallic gold lightening bolts. We didn’t want to hurt grandma’s feelings, but none of us could contain the laughter, including grandma, who could see the jeans were painfully out of date.

It is no myth that getting a recipe from an Italian grandmother is nearly impossible. Once, I tried to get an answer as to how long she kept the marinated artichokes in the refrigerator, knowing that botulism could be a problem.

After many fits and starts, she finally offered, “not long.”

When I asked why, she said, “they get eaten.”

My sister’s efforts were able to extract more details of Grandma’s amounts and processes, until we had something resembling recipes. Try as we might, we can’t quite duplicate the flavors we tasted all those years. I’m convinced it’s about more than just ingredients. Taste is about place—the cold ceramic floor, the well-used paring knife, the loud exchanges, even the distant sound of car alarms. Still,  when I prepare roasted peppers, I make sure never to leave a seed behind.

Grandma Pell died last summer just shy of turning 101. Salute.

Gross, right? But a century ago, the term didn’t refer to hormonally-induced epidermal horrors. It was simply a brand of cheese-covered popcorn!

Cover image courtesy of University of California Press.

According to the new book “Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History,” by William Woys Weaver, a Philadelphia company called Tassel Corn Foods made a snack called “Cheese Zits White Popcorn” in the 1920s.

Weaver provides a photo of the label, and offers this explanation of the word’s evolution:

This company also introduced the term ‘zits’ into American slang. Originally, the term…referred to a type of popcorn covered with powdered cheese. Zits were a popular snack at movie theaters, so doubtless sometime during the 1940s Philadelphia teenagers made this snack a moniker for something quite different. The term has since gone mainstream.

He also notes that Tassel used a type of corn with a naturally buttery taste, so that the company didn’t have to add butter to its popcorn products. That heirloom variety, called Pennsylvania Butter-Flavored Popcorn, still exists today—so why can’t we get that in movie theaters?

There are many other intriguing tidbits in Weaver’s book, too. Here’s just a few:

1. Bananas were once viewed a luxury food by Americans, so exotic that they deserved their own special glass dishes.

2. Being fat was considered a good thing in late-19th century America. At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, a 442-pound teenager named Frank Williams was displayed as “a specimen of American achievement.”

3. “Magnetized” food used to be marketed as health food for babies. It may have actually contained powdered magnets—yikes!

4. Constipation was such a problem around the turn of the 20th century that the inventor of shredded wheat wrote a tract titled “The Vital Question and Our Navy,” about how to make things, um, go more smoothly on the high seas. The temperance movement may have unwittingly contributed to that problem, because it promoted baking-powder based breads based on a belief that “the consumption of alcohol in all its forms, even in natural yeast for bread baking, was a sign of moral decay.”

5. The term “moxie” got its start as a medicinal drink for women, marketed by a Lowell, Massachusetts doctor. It apparently had a “peculiar” taste, which may explain why the term is now a slang synonym for gutsy behavior. As Weaver puts it: “If you could stand to drink Moxie, you could face just about anything.”

Unless otherwise noted, all titles were published this year. If I’ve missed something great, please add it in the comments!

Picture Books (Elementary Readers)

Cover image courtesy of Random House.

1. Perfect Soup, by Lisa Moser, illustrated by Ben Mantle (Random House). This engaging, colorful story about a mouse’s quest to find a carrot so he can make “the perfect soup” is a creative way to teach kids the classic maxim that it’s better to give than to receive—and that you don’t always have to follow recipes exactly.

2. Don’t Let Auntie Mabel Bless the Table, by Vanessa Brantley Newton (Blue Apple Books). Lively illustrations and simple rhymes celebrate a mixed-race family’s Sunday dinner by poking gentle fun at the relative whose “grace” drags on forever.

3. Three Scoops and a Fig, by Sara Laux Akin, illustrated by Susan Kathleen Hartung (Peachtree). A sweet story about a girl who wants to help prepare a feast for her visiting Nonno and Nonna, this gives young readers a taste of Italian words and foods.

4. Oscar and the Very Hungry Dragon, by Ute Krause (NorthSouth). With wonderfully wry lines like: “The dragon, who had only eaten princesses so far, was amazed when he tasted Oscar’s cooking,” this fairy tale offers a lesson about the power of shared meals to turn enemies into friends.

5. Wolf Pie, by Brenda Seabrooke, illustrated by Liz Callen (Clarion). An impish spin on the classic fairy tale about three little pigs and a hungry wolf, this early chapter book will delight kids who love jokes and wordplay.

6. You Are What You Eat, and Other Mealtime Hazards, by Serge Bloch (Sterling). Award-winning illustrator Serge Bloch plays with food idioms. His creative combination of photography and cartoon sketches will make young readers “pleased as punch.”

7. The Gigantic Sweet Potato, by Dianne de Las Casas, illustrated by Marita Gentry (Pelican Publishing). Adapted from a Russian folktale called The Giant Turnip, the cute cast of human and animal characters in this watercolor-illustrated version work together to harvest a huge sweet potato from Ma Farmer’s garden. Includes a recipe for sweet potato pie.

8. Too Pickley! by Jean Reidy, illustrated by Genevieve Leloup (Bloomsbury). From the very first line (“I AM HUNGRY!”), this book takes the voice and perspective of a pint-sized picky eater. The silly rhymes and bright, playful illustrations encourage kids to experience food with all their senses.

9. Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake, by Thomas Taylor, illustrated by Jill Barton (Boxer Books). When a little mouse discovers a tasty treat that’s even bigger than he is, he must learn the importance of sharing and appropriate portion sizes.

10. A Garden for Pig, by Kathryn K. Thurman, illustrated by Lindsay Ward (Kane Miller Books). This whimsically illustrated story about a pig who craves vegetables also includes tips for kids to plant their own organic gardens.

Chapter Books (Middle & Teen Readers)

1. Noodle Pie, by Ruth Starke (fiction, Kane Miller). This pre-teen novel follows an 11-year-old boy raised in Australia on a trip to Vietnam, where his father takes him to explore his roots. Food becomes his touchstone for learning about Vietnamese culture, and the book includes several recipes.

2. When Molly Was a Harvey Girl, by Frances M. Wood (fiction, Kane Miller). A historically based story about the hardships and adventures faced by an orphaned 13-year-old girl in the 19th-century Wild West. In her job as a New Mexico railroad station waitress, she serves up American classics like chicken salad and peach pie, but also forms friendships that introduce her to Mexican food.

3. Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science, by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos (nonfiction, Clarion). A dense but engaging book that ties together many important and complex historical issues.

4. Candy Bomber: The Story of the Berlin Airlift’s “Chocolate Pilot,” by Michael O. Tunnell (nonfiction, Charlesbridge). This true story about an American pilot who started dropping candy for kids during the 1948 airlift in West Berlin teaches both World War II history and a deeper lesson about putting “principle before pleasure,” as its subject, Gail Halvorsen, writes in the preface.

5. The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids, by Michael Pollan (nonfiction, Dial, 2009). An easier-to-read, yet not oversimplified version of Pollan’s popular manifesto about sustainable eating, the young readers’ edition looks at the American food chain from four perspectives—Industrial, Industrial Organic, Local Sustainable, and Hunter-Gatherer—and offers plenty to chew on.

Cookbooks and Activity Books

1. The Children’s Baking Book, by Denise Smart (DK Publishing, 2009). Ages 7 to 12. With plenty of pictures, step-by-step instructions and a glossary, this book makes baking look both exciting and accessible to young novices.

2. My Lunch Box: 50 Recipes to Take to School, by Hilary Shevlin Karmilowicz (Chronicle Books, 2009). Ages 3 and up. This isn’t a book, technically—it’s a box full of recipe cards with colorfully illustrated ideas to get children excited about packing their own simple, healthy lunches.

3. Sam Stern’s Get Cooking, by Sam Stern (Candlewick). Teenage British cook Sam Stern aims this book at his “mates,” with simple recipes like My-Style Chicken Parmigiana (“a classic tomato sauce with the coolest chicken dish”) and Cheese and Potato Pizza, although he does sneak in more sophisticated dishes as well (Korma and Cucumber Salad; Chocolate Soufflé).

4. Kitchen Science Experiments: How Does Your Mold Garden Grow? by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, illustrated by Edward Miller (Sterling). Ages 9 to 12. Bright, curious young minds will enjoy experimenting with food to answer questions like “How do temperature and time affect the growth of microbes in milk?” and “What happens when you heat a marshmallow?” (Their parents might be slightly less grateful.)

5. I’m a Scientist: Kitchen, by Lisa Burke (DK Publishing). Ages 5 to 9. With sturdy, colorful pages and simple experiments such as mixing oil and water to understand density, this will whet kids’ appetite for science by encouraging them to play with their food.

Editor’s Note: For more holiday shopping ideas, check out our guide to crafty gifts made from recycled food packaging.

Grandma Joan
By Elizabeth Breuer

Whirls of exhaled cigarette smoke filled my grandmother’s kitchen. She always stood at the counter with her lit cigarette, a neatly folded New York Times and a glass of wine, from a gallon jug stored neatly under the sink, filled with ice cubes. She incessantly flipped from The Weather Channel to CNN on a small television that sat just beyond the table, silently beaming out bold closed captions of the daily occurrences.

Homemade oatmeal cookies, courtesy Flickr user prettyinprint

Her table was made gracefully. Atop a neat tablecloth perched an English porcelain bowl filled with fresh fruit—mostly grapes, though sometimes peaches or other local produce from the farm stand. While I sat the table sipping my orange juice, she would stand there puffing and thoroughly examining my life.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”  That was always the first question.

Oatmeal cookies and blueberry pies would frequently end up in front of me. If they weren’t baked that day, they were taken from the industrial-size freezer—pies woken from hibernation to thaw in the spring for hungry granddaughters. We would sit and chat and nibble, the morning turning into afternoon to evening. A simple dinner of potatoes, shrimp and broccoli would suddenly appear, lightly drizzled in a thin layer of butter and a crumble of pepper.

Then we would eat more pie, with a scoop of vanilla Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. My grandparents would drink a whole pot of coffee and stay up chatting as I wandered up the creaky stairs of the 200-year-old house. In the morning, back down the creaky stairs, I would pack up my car with my clean and folded laundry, a tin of cookies and an “emergency” sandwich, and haul myself back through the mountains to school.

My grandma died a month before I graduated from college. I’ll always cherish the weekends we spent together in New England in her kitchen. I think she’d be happy to know that I love to bake pies and cookies, that I’ve still never smoked a cigarette—and that I do have a boyfriend, who I am marrying.

Courtesy of Flickr user Dustan Sept.

There’s usually at least one relative who asks prying questions, tells terrible jokes or talks too much about their latest doctor’s appointment at the Thanksgiving dinner table, isn’t there? When you need to change the subject or fill an awkward pause, just look to your plate for inspiration. A few suggestions, based on recent science news:

Please pass the…

1) Turkey: Have you heard the good news? Researchers are almost done sequencing the turkey genome, which could help breeders improve the quality of the birds’ meat for future Thanksgiving dinners. Also, did you know that turkeys were initially domesticated as a source of feathers rather than meat?

2) Rolls: Hey, speaking of flour…new archaeological evidence shows that humans were making flour from plants like cattails as long as 30,000 years ago!

3) Lima beans: These little rascals are smart. They can tell the difference between day and night, and play some sweet defense during daylight hours by secreting a nectar that attracts ants, whose presence repels hungry herbivores.

4) Yams: Did you know yams are a daily staple food for more than 60 million people in Africa? That’s why the Global Crop Diversity Trust wants to collect 3,000 yam samples to preserve biodiversity in the African “yam belt.”

5) Cranberry sauce: Cranberries could help fight cavities and gum disease. (They can also help prevent urinary tract infections, but that may be too gross for table talk.)

6) Chocolate cream pie: Cacao may be even older than we thought. Kinda like Great-Aunt Matilda…uh, never mind!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Granny’s House
By Mary Markey

Every year, my mother and I took the train from Illinois to spend the summer with our family in Georgia. The “Nancy Hanks” would pull into the little train station in Millen late in the evening, where we were met by an uncle and aunt or two and whichever of my cousins had begged the hardest to make the trip. Our trunk was loaded into the bed of the truck, the cousins and I clambered up after it, and we were off to Granny’s house in the country.

In the immense dark, her porch light glowed like a beacon. And there she was, wiping her hands on her homemade apron, come to the doorway to meet us. Small, round, and soft and rosy as a withered peach, Granny was the heart and soul of our family.

Granny's house, on a farm between Woodcliff and Rocky Ford, Georgia. Photo courtesy of Mary Markey.

Aunts and uncles and more cousins were soon assembling on the porch. Transplanted early to the Midwest, where I was already a lonely outsider, here I was content to be taken back into the fold of a large, extroverted Southern family. I looked forward to a summer of many playmates and indulgent grownups.

Cuddled in with a few cousins in the spare room’s creaky iron bedstead, I smelled the deep, mysterious odors of Granny’s house—old wood, damp earth, wood smoke, cooking and the chamber pot that we had used before turning in. On the porch, the adults would stay up late talking as they rocked in chairs or on the glider. Their laughter was the last thing I heard as I drifted into sleep.

When we woke, the uncles were long gone to the fields, and the aunts were at work in the textile mills in town. My mother was in the kitchen, helping Granny prepare the noon dinner. We snatched a cold hoecake or leftover biscuit smeared with jelly and took off on our own adventures.

Granny’s house was a one-story frame building that had once housed a tenant farmer on my grandfather’s farm. The dining-room was light and airy, with windows on two sides curtained in the translucent plastic plisse curtains that the dime stores once sold to poor people, but the kitchen was a dark, close little room. In the even darker little pantry were Mason jars of home-canned food, plates of leftover breads and biscuits, and an occasional mouse.

My nose remembers these rooms best: open Granny’s big freezer, and you smelled frost and blackberries. The refrigerator held the sharp tang of the pitcher of iron-rich well water cooling there. The kitchen was saturated with years of cooking, a dark, rich scent of frying fat and spice overlaid with the delicious smells of whatever was being prepared for dinner that day.

Almost everything was raised by my family and if not fresh, had been frozen or canned by Granny and the aunts. Meat was the anchor of the noon meal, and there were three possibilities: chicken, pork, or fish. The fish, caught by my Aunt Sarah from the Ogeechee River, were delectable when dredged in flour or cornmeal and cooked in Granny’s heavy cast-iron skillet. (Did you know, the best part of a fried fresh fish is the tail, as crunchy as a potato chip?) My favorite dish was chicken and dumplings. Granny made the dumplings by hand, forming the dough into long, thick noodles to be stewed with the chicken until they were falling-apart tender.

There was bread, though nothing leavened with yeast. Instead, there were biscuits, rather flat and chewy, speckled brown and gold. We had cornbread at every meal, but it wasn’t “risen”; we had hoecakes, light and sweet with the flavor of fresh cornmeal, cooked quickly on a cast-iron griddle. There was always rice, cooked to perfection and topped with gravy or butter, as you preferred. If we were eating fish, we fried some hush puppies along with it, airy puffs of cornmeal and onion.

And the vegetables! Granny’s table had an infinite variety: fresh green beans, black-eyed peas, crowder peas, lima beans. Collard, mustard and turnip greens had been picked last fall and stored in the mammoth freezer. Okra was stewed with tomatoes, boiled with butter, fried to a crisp or just sautéed until it fell apart. Fresh tomatoes were served cold, sliced, and dusted with salt and pepper. There were yams, candied or simply baked and buttered. Green vegetables were cooked a long time with salt pork—no hard, unseasoned Yankee beans for us, please.

We washed it all down with heavily sweetened iced tea served in mismatched jelly glasses, or aluminum tumblers in jewel colors, or in that cliché of all down-home clichés, Mason jars.

Desserts were simple, probably because too much baking would heat up the house. There was an abundance of fresh fruit—peaches and watermelons were favorites, with or without store-bought ice cream. My aunt Camille would sometimes bring a spectacular caramel pecan cake with dense, sugary icing. Aunt Carmen was known for her sour cream pound cake. Granny often made a huge blackberry cobbler, served drenched in milk. I was torn between by love of its flavor and distaste for all those little seeds that got caught between my teeth.

As small children, we cousins ate at the kitchen table, watched over by the women. It was a day to remember when you were finally thought old enough to sit at the big table in the dining room, and since all of us were all within a year or two of each other, we graduated pretty much en masse. In adolescence, we cousins often preferred to perch in the living room to talk, pawing through Granny’s photo albums to laugh at our parents’ (and be embarrassed by our own) baby pictures. We returned to the big table more often as we moved through our teenage years, and one day, as a married woman in my twenties, I looked up from my fried chicken to see a kitchen table ringed with my cousins’ children. The cycle was completed.

(More from Millen after the jump…)

But say I’m eleven.

Debbie and Brenda, Bonnie and Helen, Becky and Winnie and I have finished our dinner and are contemplating one more piece of pound cake. Outside, the heat of a Georgia July afternoon is blazing. Inside is hot, still, and stuffy with that peculiar dust that seems to reside in old maroon mohair living room suites. Do we have that extra piece of cake, or do we hightail it out to play before our little cousin Danny can escape from the kitchen and want to tag along?

Granny’s yard is our playground. Under the huge oak trees is an assortment of fascinating toys. We could go for an imaginary drive in one of our uncle’s trucks, or pretend to float away in one of the rowboats. We could ride the big silver propane tank like a horse, drumming its sides with our heel until the grownups yell, “There’s gas in that thing! Do you want to blow us all up?”

The yard is a huge sandbox. We can build castles or sculptures. We could help Granny by taking her “bresh broom”—made from a bundle of twigs tied together—and sweeping the yard into beautiful patterns of curves and swirls. We could go back to the fig trees behind the house and pick figs and catch June bugs. (Tie a thread to a June bug’s leg and you have a little airplane that circles you, buzzing.)

We could think up a play to give for the grownups later, or think of recitations that we learned in school. We could play the best game of all, which is pretending to be other, more interesting, people and acting out their stories for ourselves.

By this time, the table’s been cleared and the grownups are drifting out to the porch. Those that don’t have to get back to work settle themselves around Granny for the afternoon, with dishpans of peas and beans to shell or snap. The kids hover close to the porch to hear the stories they tell; stories of death, sickness, tragedy and hard times. The grownups ply their funeral home fans, which have pictures of small children crossing rickety bridges over raging rivers, accompanied by their guardian angels.

As the afternoon heat increases, the women will retire from the porch into Granny’s room to gossip and watch soap operas on a tiny black-and-white TV with two fuzzy channels. We children will try on Granny’s lipstick, powder, rouge and jewelry until our mothers tell us to stop and Granny says, “now you let the little girls have fun. They’re not hurting anything.”

When the sun got lower, aunts and uncles collected their children and headed home for supper. Supper at Granny’s is quite a different thing from the lavish dinner at noon: A couple of cold biscuits and jelly, a cold piece of chicken, and whatever other leftovers there might be, and that was that.

Night came on. A long shaft of golden light stretched across the yard from the front door. It was time for bed again, to dream of the long fascinating day ahead of me.

On a trip home, I discovered Vermont Spirits, a small St. Johnsbury distillery that makes vodka from the fermented sugars of maple sap instead of potatoes or grain, the usual suspects.

“We’re the only ones I’m aware of in the world who do this,” the company’s distiller, Harry Gorman, told me. “Others are using maple as an additive or flavoring, but we’re actually making alcohol from it.”

A builder by trade, Gorman met the company’s founder, Duncan Holaday, while building a house for him. Gorman mentioned that he’d been experimenting with making his own beer, wine and cider for decades, and Holaday eventually recruited him as a distiller.

Bottles of Vermont Spirits vodka at a trade show, courtesy of Flickr user Christopher Lehault

Vermont Spirits has existed since 1998, but this is the first year it has been able to offer tastings to the public at events like the craft festival where I encountered it. (Before a 2009 change in Vermont legislation, distillers could only sell bottles in liquor stores, with no sampling.) Now that word is spreading and business is picking up, the micro-distillery plans to move into a larger, better-located facility next year and start offering tours.

“People go around looking for a gift, and maybe they’re used to buying maple syrup and other things made in Vermont, but they’re usually surprised to see this,” Gorman said.

The vodkas from maple are called Vermont Gold and Vermont Gold Vintage; the company also makes a Vermont White using milk sugars. The idea in both cases, he said, was to use ingredients that represented the state.

“Maple is a very expensive source of sugar for fermentation—potatoes or beets would be much cheaper. But Vermont doesn’t grow as many potatoes or beets as it does maple trees,” Gorman explained. “Plus, it just makes an extraordinarily good vodka.”

To make the Gold, he starts with something between sap and syrup, since sap is only 2 or 3 percent sugar and syrup is at least 66 percent, while about 20 percent is best for fermentation. The distillery ran its own sugaring operation at first, but it was “a huge project,” so now they buy syrup in bulk and dilute it with spring water. The mix is fermented with yeast in a temperature-controlled tank for roughly a week.

“At that stage it’s about 9 percent alcohol, so we call it a beer, although it’s not a particularly good one,” he said. The first distillation stage separates the heart (ethanol) from the heads (other compounds) of this “beer,” and the heart continues into a “fractionating-column still” for evaporation. The third and final distillation refines any remaining compounds (tails) out of the alcohol. You can see the process in this photo gallery on VPR’s website.

“I think one of the big secrets to distilling good vodka is making absolutely certain than you’ve made a clean cut between the heads and the heart, because heads really make the flavor go bad,” Gorman said. “After making that cut you’ve got 192-proof pure spirits, 96 percent alcohol, which is as pure as you can distill.”

After adding distilled spring water to dial the alcohol down to 80 proof, he runs the vodka briefly through a charcoal filter “to take the sharp edges off, but ensure that we’re not removing the flavor,” and then it’s ready for bottling. Vermont Spirits produced about 30,000 bottles this year, which retail for $40 and up.

Technically, there’s no maple in Vermont Gold, just alcohol—but the taste somehow lingers through the distillation process, giving the vodka a very subtle sweetness and hints of buttery caramel.

“People have often said that good vodka has no flavor; it’s supposed to be a clear, neutral spirit for mixing,” Gorman acknowledged. “But making it from these sources produces vodkas with a very different character. The Gold has such a unique flavor that I would only have it neat, personally. I use a lemon twist and that’s it.”

Neat is right.

Cranberries, courtesy Flickr user jillmotts

So, this entry is for Bryn—and for people like me who buy too many fresh cranberries at the grocery store simply because they’re seasonal and on sale, but don’t know what to do with them!

1. Red and Green: Cranberries can grace your Thanksgiving table in more ways than just sauce. Use them to add color and zing to your green vegetable sides, like these roasted brussels sprouts with cranberry brown butter or wilted kale with cranberries.

2. Red and Orange: They also pair wonderfully with orange vegetables—try Simply Recipes’ butternut squash, cranberry and apple bake, this cranberry sweet potato bake or some roasted carrots with fresh cranberries. I’m also intrigued by the idea of apples and cranberries baked in a pumpkin.

3. Red and Brown: Bryn’s favorite recipe is Mollie Katzen‘s cranberry brown bread, which balances the berries’ tartness with molasses, orange juice and brown sugar. You can find it in Katzen’s “Enchanted Broccoli Forest” cookbook, or see this version on Modern Sage. I can’t wait to try it!

4. Red and White: Baked apples are my latest obsession. Peel the top third of some large apples and scoop out their cores (I used a grapefruit knife and a melon baller), leaving the bottoms intact. Squeeze a lemon over them, using your fingers to coat any exposed parts of the fruit. Stuff the cavities full of cranberries coated in brown sugar, the zest of one orange and a generous sprinkle of cinnamon. Put the apples in a glass baking dish, and pour a few tablespoons of sweet liquid into and over each one—I used pear cider with a splash of maple syrup and cognac. Bake at 325 degrees for an hour, basting occasionally. Top with white chocolate shavings, as this Cooking Light recipe suggests, or a scoop of your favorite white topping, like creme fraiche, whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

5. Red and Blue: Make your cranberry sauce more interesting by throwing some blueberries into the mix, as Elise from Simply Recipes suggests, and maybe even some red wine. You can also pair the berries in a dessert, such as Sweet Life Kitchen’s cranberry blueberry pie or Food for Laughter’s cranberry blueberry crumble.

What’s your favorite way to eat fresh cranberries?

Lefse Lessons
By Jenny Holm

“You can roll lefse for forty years and still it won’t always behave for you. Humdinger!”

My grandmother, Eunice Sylvester, bunches the dough she’s just been rolling back into a ball and spreads her pastry cloth with an additional dusting of flour. “Now don’t you dare stick to that board, stinkerpot!”

Grandma making lefse. Photo courtesy of Jenny Holm.

Chided into submission, the dough behaves this time. Grandma swiftly rolls out a 12-inch round so thin you can see through it, flips its edge over a flat wooden stick and peels it from her pastry cloth. It hangs precariously there for only a second or two before she unfurls it onto the hot electric griddle sitting atop her kitchen table.

She has spent holiday seasons laboring over these delicate potato-based crepes, called lefse, since 1967, when her husband, Arvid, (my grandfather) presented her with this very griddle as a Christmas present. “Some gift!” she quips as she jabs Grandpa with the end of her rolling pin. “I haven’t been able to escape it since!”

Lefse was one of the recipes that Grandma’s grandparents, Norwegian farmers, brought with them to the western Minnesota prairie where they settled in the late 1800s. While our dough chills in the fridge, Grandma tells me how her mother Sophie used to prepare this winter treat. A few technological upgrades notwithstanding, the process has remained essentially unchanged.

She would mix pounds upon pounds of minced potatoes with butter, milk, and salt, adding flour and working it in with her powerful hands until the mixture reached the desired consistency—too much flour and the lefse would come out dense and tough; too little and the paper-thin rounds would tear. After forming balls of dough and chilling them in the frigid outdoor air, Sophie would roll out circles two feet in diameter and cook them directly on her flat iron stovetop, feeding the fire with spent corncobs. The resulting pancakes came out light and chewy, a warm and filling treat that Sophie’s 16 children (of whom my grandmother was the youngest) enjoyed slathering with butter, sprinkling with sugar, and rolling like cigars before devouring.

My family has abandoned many of the other “old country” dishes our ancestors cooked, like lutefisk (cod soaked in lye to preserve it) and rolle pulse (beef and pork pressed into a roll with ginger and onions, sliced, and served cold), but lefse remains beloved. Demand for it at our holiday table consistently exceeds supply. However, the labor-intensive nature of its preparation and the necessity of an experienced hand to judge the quality of the dough by its texture mean that only dedicated disciples are likely to carry on the craft for future generations.

That’s why I asked Grandma to let me shadow her as she prepares the first batch of the year. My lefses come out crisper than hers do (because I spread the rolling board with more flour than necessary, she says). They are not always round, and take me at least three times as long to roll out, but I’m starting to get the hang of it.

“Don’t worry,” Grandma assures me over my shoulder. The first time she tried to make lefse on her own, she used red potatoes instead of the requisite russets, and ended up in tears over a wet, gloppy mess. “It’s nice to have an assistant. Eighty was alright, but 81—goll!”

My grandfather is no longer strong enough to help out the way he used to, but he still joins us for the company. He sits at the kitchen table over his coffee and cookies, snatching the occasional lefse still hot from the griddle while Grandma is turned toward her rolling board. Sixty years of marriage have attuned her to his every move, and without turning her head nor slowing the rhythm of her rolling she warns, “Arvid, you better stop stealing those or we won’t have any left for your grandchildren to eat!” Grandpa sheepishly finishes the mouthful he’s been chewing, takes a sip of his coffee, and launches into a jazzy, syncopated version of “Jingle Bells,” his tenor voice wavering slightly but still clear and merry.

As the small kitchen warms with the familiar, comforting aroma of boiled potatoes and the heat emanating from the two grills set up at opposite ends of the room, flour settles onto our hair and clothes like first snowflakes. My mother, who has been monitoring the grills while Grandma and I roll the dough, tears a just-cooked lefse in half, spreads it with butter and sprinkles sugar on top, then rolls it up and thrusts it into my mouth.

The first sweet, chewy bite floods me with memories of all the holiday celebrations that begun and ended with this very taste, and reminds me that so much more than butter and sugar are tucked into this delicate pancake.