How even to begin a new blog post when it’s been nearly three months since your last one? Do you acknowledge the long absence with a rambling story about what happened in the interim (which sounds a lot like something I would do)? Do you skip the pleasantries and go straight into the recipe as if nothing ever happened (likely easier and certainly quicker)? As eager as I am to jump in and talk about this glorious cake, there is one major change that has occurred since November that at least deserves a brief mention: for the first time in…

Sometime around September of last year, I realized that winter was coming– just like last year, and the year before that, and pretty much every year, come to think of it.  Knowing that there was no way to stop it, and knowing that we had no plans to migrate South (at least not long-term), I turned to the only thing I thought might help me cope: positive thinking.  Or, as I like to call it, lying to myself.  Every time I felt a chill in the air or thought about snow piles and wool socks, I forced myself to say, either…