When our daughter lay in the ICU on her second day of being alive in the world, we stood above her bed and asked her to breathe. Her small hands were strapped to the bed because she was already so strong she nearly ripped out her breathing tube. (Somehow, though, she kept making a Buddhist mudra with her fingers and held it.) Her feet were tangled ...

I made three batches of shortbread yesterday. Yes, I'm a little nuts. It's the last day of posting holiday cookie recipes around here. After jam tarts, gingerbread men, coconut sugar cookies, cannolis, plus 8 more, you think I'd be done. That's an even dozen, right? (Plus, if you go over to our friend Silvana Nardone's blog, Dish Towel Diaries,...

Mexican wedding cookies. Of all the requests people had for gluten-free holiday cookies, I think this was the most requested. Finely ground nuts, butter and shortening, gluten-free flours, and powdered sugar. It isn't much more complicated than that. All that deliciousness and it's easy too? Sign me up. Now this cookie, with tiny variations of sh...

"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." I'm tempted to write only this. After all, it's the only phrase I hear in my head when someone says cannoli. Probably you too. (And if you don't know what it is, look here. Watch out ”As you're going to want spaghetti and meatballs after watching this movie.) However, I want to share just this bit more. I am...

We are coming into the home stretch of holiday cookies and goodies around here. I don't want to think about how many pounds of butter, flours, and sugar have been used in this kitchen the past month. I can't even calculate how many times the paddle of the KitchenAid has whirled around these weeks. Every day I am a little bit tempted to throw up my ...

This is a cake pop. It's a cake pop made by my wonderfully talented and lovely friends Jessie (also known as Cakespy) and Megan (also known as Not Martha).If you are lucky enough to know people who want to spend the afternoon with you crumbling up cake with their hands, manipulating marzipan, and making zombie santas into the evening? You know yo...

I spent about 15 minutes this morning fretting that this photograph wasn't good enough. It's messy. You can't see the ooze on the cookies. The top cracked ” I ran out of AP flour before I needed 46 grams of it, so I just used sweet rice flour. Don't do that anymore, Shauna. Too starchy. It doesn't hold together the same way. I wanted to hide that...

All of Proust's remembrances began with one bite of a madeleines. I have a confession. I still haven't read all of Proust's books. Try as I might, several times, I could never make it past the first 60 pages. Well, you're saying, most of us haven't. I know. But I was a literature major, an English teacher, an avid reader from the age of 2. I've r...

(Holiday candy provided by Indie Candy, which makes allergen-free, delicious candies. I still haven't eaten the chocolate Santa, and Lu's getting the snowflake lollipop for a special treat, in a few weeks. But their gummy candies are some of the best I have ever eaten. If you know someone with food allergies, this is a lovely present.) Ho ho ho! ...

These cookies may not look like much, but they are really quite wonderful. They are also gone. Danny and Lu nibbled them during an afternoon snack, after my photo session, as they lay on our bed together reading an I-Spy book. Weak winter sunlight spilled into the room and on their toes. I had so much else to do, but I stopped to watch them and e...

When Danny and I tried to decide all the cookies we would bake for the cookie-baking extravaganza here, we pulled down all our baking books and cookbooks with baked goods. We ran our fingers down the index of each one, looking for baked goods that appealed to us both. Quickly, we realized we had a problem. There were too many cookies to make. Gin...

As you have probably guessed, I have been baking cookies and more cookies for weeks. Nuts and flours spill on the counter. Lu is frequently reaching for a piece of dried fruit or a chocolate chip. We are making memories, she sitting on the kitchen counter, wanting to crack eggs with me, still amazed when the Kitchen Aid mixer turns on and makes tha...

Hey sweetie, do you want to read books?? Lu bounces across the room, almost skipping. Her eyes grow wide and she shouts, Yes! Yes! Yes!? We go over to the mound of books that are always spilling from the blue and red tubs in the corner of the room. The bookshelf in her room is bulging with books (and only neat and tidy, without books on the flo...

I still miss Gourmet. I know that it has been gone for more than a year, and I'm supposed to have moved on by now. And frankly, it's not as if I had time to read every article those last couple of years, or even most of them. With a newborn, who became a toddler, my reading time has diminished to the point of thin sadness. Creating recipes on our...

They say that print is dying. Great magazines have left us (I still miss Gourmet) for lack of subscriptions and monetary interest. Newspaper presses are stopping in one city after another. Yesterday, some good friends of us said that they are reading most of their books on their telephones. Print is dying, right? Not in this house, it's not. We...

Well, with our trip to Colorado, a two-day power outage covering the entire island, and Thanksgiving, it took me longer to choose these winners, using Random.org, than I had hoped. But here they are! Winners of our cookbook Ricki of Diet Dessert and Dogs with her Coconut Walnut Shortbread Cookies Megan, who wrote: "This is my first gluten-fre...

Yesterday afternoon, Danny and I huddled on the couch, trying to keep Lu under a blanket. Do you have any idea how much this kid loves to run and jump, dance and spin? Keeping her under that red fleece blanket, particularly her hands, was tough. But she had to be under the blanket. It was cold in our house. 22 degrees cold. The power went out at ...

Lately, Lu and I have been eating sweet potatoes nearly every evening. Thick slices, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, a bit of fresh thyme, roasted in the oven until they yield to the fork but still have a bite -- this has been part of our dinner at least four times a week. Throw in the sweet potato puree I have made, the soup with sweet po...

Thank you to everyone who contributed such delicious recipes for our gluten-free Thanksgiving challenge. My goodness, people! Not only did the original bloggers who posted about their own gluten-free baking challenge blow me away, but the hundreds and hundreds of links to great gluten-free food in the comments could keep anyone baking for months on...

I probably don't need to tell you just how soon Thanksgiving is, right? Every time this year I see people coming to this site through urgent questions. "how do I make gluten-free stuffing? Is there such a thing as gluten-free pumpkin pie. gluten-free thanksgiving. help!" Well of course, we're here to help. Over the past few years, Danny and I...

gluten-free potluck in San Francisco, early October In less than 48 hours, we will be on an airplane to Denver. Lu has been walking around the house saying "Airplane! Airplane!" Danny has been grinning wide and tearing up at times. You see, Colorado is Danny's home. Here is too, of course, and we're going to be living in this place for the res...