Recent Photos

 

Pizza Dinner 

Corn Chowder

Bacon and eggs for breakfast 

Cereal with peaches IN SEASON

Another Swan

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Winter Quiet

 

Rereading an old bestseller — Foucault’s Pendulum.
Unberto Eco’s magnum opus is not as compelling now as it was when it was new. I may not finish it.

The first time that I read Foucault’s Pendulum, we were living in Paris, and we went with friends to the location where we could see the 1851 original. It hangs above the apse of the former church which is now the Musée des Arts et Métiers, located in the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Of course this location is critical in both Eco’s book and the movie version of the book.

The pendulum swings…24 hours a day.
In the dome: a classic mural, shared with Sami’s Monday Murals.

What We Are Eating

Critters

Lobster Socks

Zebra Socks — shared with Eileen’s Critters.

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Shared with the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.

What is Pumpkin?

An edible pumpkin about to be cooked in my kitchen a few years ago.

Thanksgiving is coming, and thus pumpkins have turned from a decorative/scary item into a food. Pumpkins that are grown for jack-o-lanterns generally have flesh that is stringy and watery — including, both big and small decorative pumpkins.  Small edible pumpkins are the ones you buy if you want to cook them — the stores label them as “pie pumpkins.” They would also make good pumpkin soup, roast pumpkin, or pumpkin stew. I assume that canned pumpkin also comes from this cultivar, though certain other types of squash are also used (legally) in canned pumpkin.

Decorative pumpkins wouldn’t poison you, but just wouldn’t make good food. After the holiday, the giant pumpkins in our neighborhood (as far as I know) are picked up by the same truck that brought them. I have no idea how the disposal is done, but I assume they go to some composting center.

Canned pumpkin or pie filling can legally be either
actual pumpkin or one of a few kinds of orange squash.
Details here: https://www.allrecipes.com/article/whats-in-canned-pumpkin/

Pumpkin Decorations

The pumpkin wall on Halloween night. It goes on much longer than this. (Alice’s photo)

The pumpkin wall on Sunday. Some pumpkins remain, others are gone.

Cooking pumpkin and squash

A pumpkin pie web image search.

An old spice container with pumpkin pie spice that my mother always used.

Some people confuse the “pumpkin spice” blend (allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves. and cinnamon) with actual pumpkin. The spice is used in many beverages and dishes at this time of year, sometimes with actual pumpkin, sometimes not.

Making soup in my kitchen this week: a squash that’s equivalent to pumpkin.

 

Stereotyped Thanksgiving image with pumpkins.

Our Leaders Enjoy A Meal?

Presidential banquet, starving masses. (Image from the Guardian)
Thinking about Thanksgiving forces me to consider how some Americans are being abused,
deprived of ways to buy food, and kicked around by our leaders.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Food: Fast and Slow

 Fast: Breakfast

Pastry from the freezer. Breakfast in 5 minutes.

Another instant breakfast. Once in the cereal aisle of the grocery store we were making a choice. I said “I’m tired of Life.” A passer-by heard me and was alarmed until I explained that we were talking about the product, not the process.

  

Fast: Lunch

PB&J is very fast!

Great to have one more chance to eat outside under the trees.

Slow: Dinner

Stock cooks for a few hours. On Sunday when I cooked this, my goal was not only to have stock, but to get the odds an ends out of the freezer. We strained out the over-cooked veggies, added some white beans, and called it soup.

The Crock-Pot is slow by definition. I cooked the meatballs along with the red sauce.
Saturday: I slow-cooked this and we ate meatball sandwiches.
Monday: I added red and white beans along with some salsa, and it was chilli. 
Some time in the future: there’s a box of the leftovers in the freezer.

Pretty fast: Trader Joe’s falafel. A jar of olives.
Not too fast: home made yogurt sauce, sliced cucumber, and baba ganoush.

Fast: Dessert

Sara Lee Cake with premium ice cream from a local dairy.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

February in the Kitchen

In the dolls’ kitchen: a new Whole Foods shopping bag.

What’s new in my kitchen this month? I’ll start with a few items that we brought back from our 10-day trip to Virginia, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. While visiting our relatives, we also cooked for our hosts, and enjoyed foods that they cooked for us. I’ve already posted about most of the trip and the kitchens where we visited. I’m sharing this post with Sherry’s In My Kitchen and other bloggers who also share kitchen stories each month.

In My Kitchen

Magnets from the National Museum of the American Indian and from an Alexandria craft shop.
I try to bring home a few magnets from each trip, and retire the older ones as the new ones arrive.

New placemats: a gift from Arny and Tracy. We had artichokes for the first time in ages.

New tablecloth, also a gift from Evelyn & family.

New mugs: a gift from Evelyn, Tom, Miriam, and Alice.

New Foods

Condiments from the market in Lancaster, PA

Seriously, a new flavor of Cheerios? It’s unexpectedly good.

The “cosmic creme” to me tastes just like the white mystery filling in ordinary Oreos.

At least they were a bargain!

Instant dinner after a 9 hour car trip home. The broccoli quiche was much better than the spinach quiche.

Quiche from Trader Joe’s.

Cooking at home and while visiting

Prep for sheet pan green-beans with olive oil, onion, garlic, and cheese.

Bread-baking tools and dishes.

The loaf of bread.

Steaming the artichokes in my silicone steamer.

Smoked salmon, pimento cheese, and veggies. A nice meal.

Frying vegetables and sliced deli roast beef.

At Arny and Tracy’s house: Tracy made mushroom pasta and salad.

White beans, chicken, and peppers. Vegetable garnish. A great chili!

From the New York Times Recipe Archives

In February, we made four new-to-us recipes from the New York Times cooking archives. I’ll give you a hint from our recent experiments with NYT recipes: we always feel that there should be more sauce. We now double the sauce ingredients for recipes from this source. Here are the recipes that we made:

• Roast Cauliflower and Garlic Soup was bland and disappointing. I added several items, including pepper flakes, feta cheese, and white beans, to improve the leftovers. (Recipe here but not recommended as written: Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup Recipe.)
• Mark Bittman’s Vinegar Chicken was delicious and quite different. We used the mushroom and lettuce garnish from a different version of Vinegar Chicken, which is a Lyonnaise dish made popular by Paul Bocuse. (Vinegar Chicken Recipe)
• Adobo Chicken — which Len made at Evelyn’s house — was a good recipe that Len had wanted to try. The NYT calls it “the national dish of the Philippines.” (Chicken Adobo Recipe)
• Pasta Puttanesca, an Italian classic, was very tasty, thanks to lots of anchovies, garlic, and other good flavors. (Pasta Puttanesca Recipe).

Note: NYT recipes are behind a paywall, but I  have included the links for completeness.

“America today is truly a factory farming nation.”

I like to look at the big picture of food and farming from time to time in my end-of-the month blog post, but understanding the statistics is a burdensome challenge. A recent article in the Guardian, “America is a factory farming nation’: key takeaways from US agriculture census” (link) explains the recently released data about American agriculture. The subtitle summarizes the result of this vast survey: “Small farms and Black farmers are going out of business, while corporate-controlled farms are booming, raking in subsidies.”

A Michigan farm around a century ago (source).
In 1920 US farms numbered 6.5 million. In 2020: two million.

One of many important facts about meat production:

“In the past five years, the US lost 34% of dairy farms, 9% of hog farms and 7% of beef cattle farms but the livestock numbers stayed more or less constant. That means fewer, but much larger, concentrated lots – which are linked to an array of harms including water and air pollution, poor animal welfare, labor abuses and climate impacts.”

Blog post © 2024 mae sander