PTCPapa

When I was boy, my uncle used to tell me a story about a man who served him some rabbit stew. My uncle said to the man that it tasted a little different, and he asked the man what was in it, and the man said "well it has some horsemeat in it and some rabbit meat," and my uncle said "it's pretty good, how do you make it?" The man said, "oh, it's really easy, all you do is boil a big pot of water and carrots and cabbage, season with salt and pepper, and then add the meat." "I see," said my uncle, "how much of each kind?" "Oh, that's easy too," said the man, "I use one horse and one rabbit." Well, with this Collaboration cheesecake, Vivi made the fantastic cheesecake, she bought and rinsed the raspberries and asked me to put them on the chocolate gnache topping in any design I wanted for Nana's birthday. So I did....and that's all I did, but that's apparently all that you need for a collabora...

What a nice way to celebrate on a snowy January Day in Minnesota

We've always had these markers on the fire hydrants, in case the snowbanks are taller than the hydrants, but this is the first year in 24 that they've really been needed in our neighborhood. Our cold weather has kept the snowmelt very slow, so we've still got about 15"on the ground.

I bought a box of cereal the other day. It said "New Look, Same great taste." That describes the mince pie I tried to assemble this week. Keep in mind the inherent simplicity of my assignment: (1)Unroll two store-bought pie crusts. (2) Put one into pie plate (to be the bottom of this 2-crust pie. (3) Pour in full jar of None Such Mince Pie Filling. (4) Lay remaining pie crust on top of pie, and crimp edges. (5) Bake in 350 oven for 40 or so minutes. Then Voilà ! Hot mince pie, absent the superficial presentation touches. We'll address the presentation aspect of pastry art in a future post, possibly. In the meantime, it's safe to say, you rarely see mince pie like this one. But trust me, Same great taste!