When I was a kid, my mom would make me whatever I wanted for Birthday Dinner. The only thing I ever remember asking for was fried flounder, egg noodles and peas & carrots. And for dessert, it was always Boston Cream Pie.

As an adult, I’m continuing this tradition with my husband. I asked him what kind of birthday dessert he wanted and he said “Birthday Cake.” After a few days of deliberation and hemming and hawing

Continue reading How to Make Birthday Cake

We are undergoing a lot of exciting changes behind the scenes, so things may look a little different from time to time and may be wonky or messy and for that we sincerely apologize!

Please use the navigation up above to look through the archives and click around, leave comments and sign up for our email list to stay up to date on our evolution.

Sign up for our email and you’ll be the first to know our

Continue reading Coming Soon! A Whole New Gourmand & the Peasant!

There’s a lot to this stuff thing. I took to my wardrobe this morning because it is something I can tackle without my husbands input. I started culling the stuff in the front room, but that really takes both of us being here and I hate to spring what is proving to be an emotional and burdensome task on Mark after a long day of work. Today, I decided to focus on my stuff and went

Continue reading Unstuffing My Clothes

For a few weeks now, I’ve been trying to read your minds and have decided that the best answers to my questions will come from you directly.

You may have noticed that the last two posts you received were not food related. I’ve been writing The Gourmand & the Peasant as a food-focused website for nearly three years (in the early years as In the Making, if any of y’all have been around that long!) and am

Continue reading Evolution

I haven’t edited a single thing, and yet have had multiple moments of angst about this whole idea of minimalism and one heated discussion with my husband about the importance of refrigerator magnets and visual texture. Maybe I don’t need to get rid of my stuff. Maybe my stuff is charming and tells a story about my life in a way that I can’t articulate and maybe this will lead to endless fighting and maybe we

Continue reading Unstuffing My Stuff: Day 1, Front Room

Before I left to teach the Lobster Primer last night, I was vacuuming, feeling anxious about a life path that is everything but stable and consistent. And, as I was vacuuming, I was looking at all my/our stuff. And I was a little disgusted with myself. I’ve recently quit smoking, not because I set out to or wanted to, but because I was smoking one night and was filled with an overwhelming feeling of what are

Continue reading Stuff

I’ve been intermittently away from my writing work, so here is a repost of my Canning 101 guide to coincide with my radio appearance on Martha Stewart Living Radio on Sirius. If you are new here, sent from Morning Living, welcome! You’ve discovered a fabulous website! Be sure to enter your email address on the left and keep up to date with all the recipes and news from my kitchen and urban farm. Happy Eating!

October 24,

Continue reading Water Bath Canning

July 21, 2010

Dear Mr. Werfelnann and Chef Weingarten,

I am writing you this letter to share my dinner dining experience on July 20, 2010. I came with my husband and his parents to celebrate our

Continue reading An Open Letter to Inside Park

October 19th, 2008

Day 1 Arrive in Ithaca. I love it here. If I could magically wake up a Cornell Professor, I could imagine spending more than just a vacation exploring

Continue reading Hitting the Road to the Finger Lakes

As I write this, my husband is in the backyard, in the evening on a Friday, trying to figure out the best way to humanely put down our Red Star chicken, Mrs. Farquar. I poured him a big glass of bourbon and after much deliberation, decided that I didn’t want to be part of the process.

I knew that this was going to be part of the whole raising animals experience, but this was awfully soon after

Continue reading In Memoriam: Mrs. Farquar