Reading: The last two chapters of The Indian in the Cupboard to Daniel. We both have loved this magical book. The story is compelling--who wouldn't want the ability to bring plastic toy figures to life?--but interwoven with the fantasy is the sensitive treatment of themes such as friendship and responsibility.

Now She's Cooking!

It's cold outside today, but inside my kitchen the air is warm and redolent with baking fragrances: cranberry and orange; cinnamon, cloves, pumpkin, and pastry crust. I have a pumpkin pie and a loaf of cranberry orange nut bread in the oven right now.

Something about colder weather inspires me to bake. Of course, baking has always been my favorite form of cookery. I am an alchemist in the kitchen, transforming the dross of raw ingredients--flour, sugar, eggs, butter, a dab of this and a dab of that--into culinary gold. I'm less likely to heat up the kitchen in the hot summer weather, but as the mercury falls, I start poring over cookbooks and thumbing through dogeared recipe cards and tattered newspaper clippings. I'm tempted by the exotic, but I tend to fall back on the tried and true. Comfort food.

A couple of years ago, during one of our recent several "Blizzards of the Century," I made cheese bread, coconut bread, chocolate chip cookies, Scottish shortbread, and brownies, all between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening. Midway through the weekend I ran out of flour and ran low on sugar. Since our road was still unplowed, I trudged through the two-foot high snow drifts to our next door neighbor's to trade finished products for more raw materials.

Tonight I opened the pantry door and inventoried my supplies: flours and sugars, salt, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, spices, baking chocolate, chocolate morsels, pecans, and walnuts. Mmmmm.... I'm fully stocked and not going to run short any time soon.

Tab's all-time favorite pie is pumpkin. I like it well enough, but not as much as he does. Tonight's pie is a kind of trial run for Thanksgiving. I follow the recipe on the Libby's can of pumpkin, but I use a little less evaporated milk, and I adjust the spices slightly.

The cranberry orange nut bread is one of my favorite quick breads. Way back in 1990 I was in search of a good cranberry bread recipe. In desperation, I went to the Internet--Gopher, anyone?--and found this one in the old USENET cookbook. My search was over, and I've been making this bread every fall since. I once tried to email Brian Reid, the recipe's contributor, at his DEC address to thank him for sharing it, but my email bounced. I'd love to find him and tell him his grandmother's bread has become a tradition in our house, too.

The boys like to observe and help when I bake. I gave them nuts to chop, cups of flour to measure, and beaten egg to pour into the mixing bowl. Matthew and Daniel eventually drifted away to play with their racetrack, but Stephen kept me company. He stood on a kitchen chair that he had pulled up to the counter so he could watch the KitchenAid mixer at work. Standing there, next to the refrigerator, he became intrigued by one of my magnets, and picked it up to look at it. Then he accidentally dropped it into the batter as the mixer was turning.

"Oh, Stephen," I sighed, turning off the KitchenAid and pulling his chair away from the counter. "Go on and play with your brothers."

I fished the magnet out of the batter. Fortunately it is made of soft plastic so it didn't harm the beater. That magnet probably was dusty before its impromptu bath. I wondered if I should toss out the batter, but then I rationalized that the high temperatures would take care of any germies. I've probably eaten worse things in my life than a tiny bit of dust: weevil eggs, for one thing.

The two loaves of cranberry orange nut bread and the pumpkin pie are all baking now, and the house smells wonderful. Yep, it's definitely winter, no matter what the calendar says.

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