I've been quite taken of late with all the little vegetable dishes on offer at restaurants of all sorts. Starters often include numerous ingeniously composed salads that really let seasonal produce shine. Sides are no longer merely a choice between boring steamed broccoli or french fries, and I've been known to make a whole meal from the enticing options—pureed squash with hazelnuts, chile-sauteed broccoli rabe, ragù of mushrooms, polenta with gorgonzola, fennel braised in cream. I think I've mentioned to you a few lovely meals I've had recently at A Voce, Missy Robbins' Italian-inflected restaurant in New York City's Time Warner Center. The lunch menu includes a selection of verdure, small vegetable dishes like eggplant with calabrian chile; beets with pistachios and orange; cauliflower with almonds and raisins; and a delightfully simple salad of radishes with an anchovy vinaigrette. After trying this last combination, I began craving it at home. It's crisp, salty and satisfying while still being light and healthy.
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This photo doesn't really begin to capture the insane blizzard swirling through Times Square as we stepped out of the theatre last night. Broadway was virtually deserted except for the rush of people desperately trying to make it home by any means necessary. The silence and the fluffy whiteness were magical but there were also lightning and strong winds. Luckily we made it down the snow-packed subway steps and safely back to the Ace, where we awakened today to a foot of snow out the window. Our White Christmas, just a little late.

As of tomorrow, I will be on the road, traveling to Todos Santos, Mexico. Four of us are gathering at a rented house on a pineapple plantation in this tiny surf town/artists' colony on the Baja peninsula to celebrate Scott's 50th birthday. I don't surf but I plan to swim, stroll the beaches, eat lots of fresh fish and generally soak up as much relaxation as possible. Not sure what the wireless situation will be, but stay tuned...
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Around this time every year, our house turns into a veritable hive of activity. Of course there is the requisite wrapping of presents, but mostly it centers around the annual caramel bonanza. There is something about the convergence of salt and sweet and butter and chew (and chocolate) that makes these humble candies so addictive. We pour lots of love into them and send them out into the world as a reminder that something homemade, something from the heart, is the most wonderful gift of all. If you've never made candy, I recommend these as a starting point. All you need is a big, heavy pot, a baking sheet and a candy thermometer. It's a bit like baking in that you need to follow the instructions closely as far as temperature and proportions, but the rest is all stirring and wrapping. Always use the best ingredients because the flavors are quite concentrated. And give yourself plenty of time, because it's best to avoid panic when there is molten caramel around.

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Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. Somehow I neglected to tell you about one of my favorite treats. I do like having secret sources, but this one is too good not to share. Askinosie is a bean-to-bar chocolate operation based in, of all places, Springfield, Missouri. (No, not all groovy handcrafted chocolate is from the new Brooklyn.) The owner, Shawn Askinosie, had a sort of chocolate epiphany in 2005 and got really distracted from his career as a criminal defense attorney. He studied cocoa post-harvest techniques in the Amazon rain forest and worked in a chocolate factory in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the result is a very interesting company that is not at all pretentious despite its sophistication. They seek out farmers in Latin America, really understand the beans and process them into award-winning bars at their factory located in a historic building from 1894. Not only is their single-origin dark chocolate some of the best I've ever sampled, but they also do a Soconusco White Chocolate bar made from non-deodorized cocoa butter and goat's milk powder that is studded with pistachios; a Dark Milk Chocolate with Fleur de Sel; and their new Malted Moo Moo Dark Milk Chocolate Bar, with the robust, funky flavor of malt that I find totally irresistible. (Full disclosure: Shawn just mailed me one of these to try after I sent the family chocoholic an Askinosie gift certificate for his recent birthday.)
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I met the impossibly dashing Albano through my friend Lisa when I visited her in Singapore several years ago. He's a dapper Australian designer of Italian extraction with impeccable taste in all things. Our friendship has been sustained mostly through Facebook, one of the very few reasons I can't be totally cynical about "social networking." He has been kind enough to share with me a couple of flawless recipes for what can best be described as tea cakes, those simple homey loaves you slice up and serve alongside a cup of something hot. Both of them allude ever-so-slightly to his Asian environs; one is made with kabocha squash, the other with Japanese sweet potato and seaweed. Toasted and buttered, with jam or just plain, a slice of these bread-like cakes hits the spot at breakfast, too.

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Fruit leather! You can make it with practically any fruit you have on hand. Chewy, lightly sweet and loaded with delicious fruit flavor, it's ideal to stash at the office, pack in lunch boxes or take along on a hike. Better than what you can buy—because you've made it yourself with organic fruit, honey and spices—it virtually makes itself. You just cut up fruit, cook it down to a puree, pass it through a sieve, sweeten it a little and spread it out on baking sheets to dry in a very low oven. I made the mistake of leaving mine in overnight, so I couldn't monitor its progress and the edges got a little too dry, but even so they are like wonderful shards of stained glass that crunch and dissolve in the mouth.
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I was struck by how much this pumpkin stem reminded me of an umbilical cord. Which, in fact, it is. Through this ropey connection, now so beautifully gnarled and withered, the plant takes life from a root ball that is essentially the placenta. And the resulting pumpkin? A baby, of course! Chubby cheeked and ruddy, with sweet, tender flesh. The comparison goes South when you consider the tough exterior—this baby means business. Hardy enough to spend the cold months solo down in your root cellar (or most any consistently cool, dry place), pumpkins are a great sort of sustenance during the winter. They can go sweet or savory: custard, ice cream, quickbread, ravioli, risotto...they are endlessly adaptable. At a recent lunch, the discussion had already turned to Thanksgiving recipes, so I want to make sure you consider my favorite pumpkin custard with candied pumpkin seeds and gingered crème fraîche as a candidate for your holiday dessert. It's foolproof, can be made ahead, and I've never heard anyone complain about the lack of crust (usually sodden anyway).
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It's hot. And evidently it's hot everywhere. A record-setting year. 113 degrees in Baghdad. 122 in Kuwait. Tempers must be running high. Even the most verbose turn laconic. So I'll just say one word: Popsicles. And maybe I'll just add: Easy. Cooling. Refreshing. Light. (My cat looks like a mink throw tossed onto the windowsill.) Take these recipes and run with them. (Or walk very slowly, fanning yourself with a large palm leaf.) Substitute whatever fruits you have on hand; use a little sugar, honey or agave; try a bit of cream instead of the yogurt, or no dairy at all. G is about to try an herbal protocol from the multi-talented Bryan Thomson, and he can't have dairy for a minimum of 6 weeks, but I can't promise I'll be that restrained. (I'm quite addicted to my morning chai made with raw milk. I even had it today, and promptly almost passed out from the heat! Surely not an Ayurvedically-approved choice...) Anyway, basta with the chit-chat. Whiz up these popsicles in no time flat and you can lie prostrate on your hardwood floor, covered with a wet towel, and eat several while watching the entire season of Dexter which you've wisely downloaded from iTunes. I used these molds which I recommend with reservation. They make a nice shape but getting the stick in at the right height was challenging. (I really wanted these but they are expensive and weren't available right away. Plus they come from a site called The Tickle Trunk. WTF?) Even though Jake Godby, the wizard behind the Bay Area's Humphrey Slocombe, wouldn't deign to offer you such a pedestrian combo as strawberry-rhubarb, I do it with pride. For you flavor snobs out there (and I know none of you is actually reading this blog), there's always the esoteric tang of wild lime to the rescue.
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This week, a friend asked me to post a recipe for hummus. This is a somewhat controversial issue: just ask someone from Jerusalem or Beirut. People in the Middle East are totally obsessed with this creamy stuff, as you can see by the gigantic vat above (weighing 23,520 pounds) prepared by Lebanese chefs who set the latest Guinness world record—beating Israel, which had previously beat Lebanon. So there’s the Galilee hummus or the Jerusalem kind, with or without fava beans, topped with warm chickpeas or served without. I suppose it’s like masala or gumbo, with every good chef developing his own version. Mine was inspired by a horseradish-laced hummus I once bought at Whole Foods. I was never able to find it again and, after hankering for it for months, I finally concocted the version which I humbly offer you here.
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Growing up in Santa Cruz, still a hippie mecca to this day, I was exposed early on to all manner of what used to be known as "health foods"—sprouts, carob, smoothies, kefir, whole grain sourdough bread. Maybe that's why I still enjoy trawling about crunchy food co-ops, peering at bags of sesame sticks, bins of millet and containers of powdered spirulina. There is almost always an assortment of carob-covered items (raisins, almonds, ginger) and sometimes these little nuggets, studded with lots of goodies. I love carob's dark, earthy richness; its mild bitterness and distinct winey taste hold up to chocolate's complexity. Carob is a species of flowering evergreen tree in the pea family that is cultivated for its edible seed pods, which are also known as "St. John's bread" because John the Baptist was said to have subsisted on them in the wilderness. Supposedly they also fed Mohammed's armies. The pod can be elongated, compressed, straight or curved and takes a full year to develop and ripen. It is the dried and sometimes roasted pod that we eat, and not the peas or seeds inside. These are called locust beans and are used for animal feed or as the source of locust bean gum, a thickening agent that is an ingredient in many  processed foods.
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