My goal was to develop a greater voice for vanilla growers worldwide. My mission was to provide transparency and information for growers, education and awareness for consumers and a non-profit organization that would create educational opportunities for farmers. As nearly 80% of the crops grown in the developing world are grown by women, this would largely be focused on women. Lofty goals, to be sure.

To say that the program was transformative is an understatement. With new tools and a network of support,  I then attended a speaker’s training retreat in New Mexico. I had the tools. I had the support. I had several speaking engagements lined up.  I was ready to rock the world.

Two weeks later I learned that the cancer had returned to my liver. I spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco and Villa Montalvo in Saratoga and retired to a year of aggressive chemotherapy. ​

I have since sponsored three amazing women leaders to the WLW. Additionally, the GWLN team and I worked together to bring my dear friend Mariam Mukalazi to the 2006 program. But visas are  difficult to come by in the developing world where millions of desperate people wish to escape poverty and injustice. Despite our best efforts, Mariam was denied a visa. Their reason? She was considered a potential flight risk.

Fast forward several years. Mariam worked for an international program with women survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A member of the team brought Mariam to The Netherlands in 2010.  Mariam has just returned from a trip to Israel sponsored by her church. We fervently hope that these trips will convince the Embassy that she is not a flight risk and that she will join us in Santa Clara in July.

If anyone deserves to come to the program, it’s Mariam!

Mariam was born and raised in a village alongside Lake Victoria in Uganda. She majored in economics and accounting at the University of Uganda in Kampala. Afterwards, her father set up an arranged marriage over which she had no say.

The marriage was difficult from the start, in part, because she is strong-willed and had difficulty being a passive servant to her husband. By the time they had two children her husband had taken additional wives. He beat Mariam regularly and forced her to sleep outside. She fled to her mother’s home but after a number of months, the tribal elders told her she must return.

In the meantime, Mariam joined a Christian church in Kampala and began a program for women refugees of war and physical violence. Some were widows; most had HIV/AIDS. She set up counseling for them and helped them develop skills and crafts. She started a farming program in the countryside where they grew rice, vanilla and other crops to support the women.

In was when they decided to grow vanilla that Mariam and I met via the Internet. This was in 2002 when the price of vanilla was dazzling tropical farmers worldwide as it was selling for $225 a kilo.  Although it was too late for her group to benefit from the bubble,  Mariam and I forged a lifelong bond and a friendship that has now grown to include hundreds of Americans who know about her through the GWLN and cow shares.

After she returned to her husband’s home, he nearly killed her. She called just after being released from the hospital after he kicked in her sternum. I told her that she must leave immediately, no matter what the elders said, as he would kill her if she didn’t. It was a dark time but she left and she persevered.

Mariam is a bright light. She is a natural leader who has chosen a difficult, but very important path.

Through her church, she worked in refugee camps in Northern Uganda with the victims of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, Rwandan genocide survivors and women who had fled the war in the Sudan.  At one point she contracted malaria and shortly after, typhoid and nearly died in a bush hospital.  She then went to work with the pygmy women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, another incredibly dangerous post.

Currently Mariam is working with the pygmy women on the outskirts of Kisoro, Uganda. The pygmies traditionally lived in the forests of Bwindi, home to the Ugandan mountain gorillas, but they were relocated by the government to a rural area outside Kisoro and it has been very difficult for these beautiful forest dwellers to adapt to modern city life.

Mariam provides basic skills training as they have no experience with living in homes, growing crops, caring for animals, and sending children to school. It has been a daunting task, but she is helping to save the lives of a marginalized group of people who have suffered throughout Central Africa.

Mariam’s vision

The women attending the WLW must come with a project that will bring transformative change to their work. Mariam’s vision is to create a phone application through which women can receive and pay back micro-finance for starting cottage industries.

Considering that the people she represents live in a rural area with no running water or electricity, it may seem strange that she wishes to create a phone app. The reality is that nearly ​everyone​ has a cell phone as it is also a lifeline, especially in dangerous territory. Because of this, having a phone app will make it possible for women to get funds without the men having access to it. ​

Recently, while in Kampala visiting her mother and her sons, she met a tele-communications expert from Australia who is now developing the application. This application could potentially change the lives of thousands of women and children.

Mariam and I need your help to get her to the WLW.

In order to attend the program each woman must raise $500 upon acceptance as well as $1500 to attend the program. They will receive the balance of the cost in scholarship funds.

The acceptance money is paid and Mariam will receive donated frequent flier miles for her plane ticket. However, we still need a minimum of $1500 to pay the balance-of-costs for the WLW ​as well as funds for a laptop computer to assist her with research and record-keeping and additional supplies she can purchase here in California to take home to Uganda.

Mariam is fund raising as she can, but as she works in a rural community, this is difficult.

Cow Shares

In 2006 when Mariam attempted to come to the WLW, she was ready to sell three cows she had inherited from her recently deceased grandmother to pay for her admission to the program. When the GWLN leaders found out, they said, “Don’t sell the cows! We’ll create cow shares!”

Each cow share represents a portion of one of Mariam’s cows. With a $25 donation, you will receive a cow share certificate with a picture of Mariam’s mother cow emblazoned on the front. Cow shares are wonderful birthday, Mother’s Day and graduation gifts. It’s a feel-good way to make a difference not only for Mariam, but for women rebuilding their lives in Eastern and Central Africa.

Please make checks payable to the GWLN and write For Mariam Mukalazi in the memo. Mail your checks for however much you would like to donate (even five dollars will help) to me: Patricia Rain, P.O. Box 3206, Santa Cruz, CA 95063. 100% of all donations will go to support Mariam’s vision.

I will keep you updated on how we’re doing at The Vanilla Company on Facebook. Come Like us and please spread the word. We need all the support we can get!

Thank you. Together we can bring the change we wish to see!

Yep, we sure did and the price of a little bottle of vanilla was ridiculously high! So how can this be happening again? Sadly, very easily.  Worse, it shouldn’t have to happen!

In the commodity world the operative words are supply and demand. When it comes to anything grown in the tropics, most especially luxury crops like coffee, chocolate, vanilla and sugar, supply and demand are sometimes manipulated to drive prices up or down. More than anything, however, most buyers attempt to pay the lowest possible prices and sell as high as the market will bear.

Coffee, cacao and sugar are large enough volume  to be sold on the commodities market, including sales of futures. Vanilla is the poor stepsister of these bigger luxury crops.  While the other three  commodities sell in millions of containers, vanilla sells in metric tons. Only 2300 metric tons in a very good year. And while it once sold on the exchange, those days ended in the early decades of the twentieth century.

So why is vanilla the poor stepsister? After all,  everyone loves vanilla and it’s in just about everything –  ice cream, sodas, desserts, yogurt, candles, perfume — why isn’t it on the exchange?

There are cheap, readily available imitation flavors: Only one percent (1%) of everything vanilla-flavored and perfumed worldwide is made with pure vanilla!

There simply aren’t good imitations for coffee or cacao. There are sugar substitutes and corn syrup but because sweet is addictive to humans, the demand for cane and beet sugars is always very high.

Here’s a brief overview of vanilla in the last 15 years.

In 1997, cured, dried gourmet quality vanilla beans were selling for $5 a pound at source in Madagascar.  In some countries it sold for even less. Farmers selling the green, undried beans were paid anywhere between a nickle and 35 cents for 2.2 pounds of vanilla.  The people who cured and dried the beans made a little more than the farmers, just enough to break even, if that.

Understandably, farmers tore up their crops, then major weather events that destroyed much of the vanilla crops still being grown. Suddenly there was low supply/high demand.

By 2003 the prices had  shot up to $225 a pound at source! Sounds good for the farmer and those who cured and dried the beans, doesn’t it?

Not necessarily. Beans were stolen, farmers were  killed crops were harvested too early to prevent theft. Local police and the military had check points to monitor outsiders.  For about two years, growing vanilla was as dangerous as the drug trade.

The high prices helped those who understood that soon the prices would collapse again. They bought trucks, generators and other items that would make life a little easier.  For many farmers in rural areas where money was so hard to come by they didn’t quite grasp the concept of lots of it, they squandered it on palm wine, women and even status symbols they couldn’t actually use, such as refrigerators in areas with no electricity. (They double well as a dresser, however.)

In 2004 the prices dropped dramatically and continued to fall. Those who could, diversified their crops. Given that the majority of farmers have the equivalent of five acres at most, they tore up their vanilla and planted something else.

By 2010, vanilla was selling for $7.00 a pound – two dollars more than fifteen years earlier! In Madagascar, farmers were encouraged to store part of their crops in order to force prices up. Remember — supply/demand. You do what you must in order to survive. Problem is, many didn’t have storage for the vanilla.

Now all the stashed vanilla has been used. Extreme weather events and global climate change are affecting production. Mexico lost 90% of their 2011 crop, first to a bad freeze, then heat and drought, the very same drought that devastated Texas crops.  Some countries suffered major loss due to plant viruses.

Vanilla has gone up 20% at source in the last few months and is expected to go up another 20% within the next  two months. You won’t see a change at the retail end for a while, but there will be a change in price, maybe before the winter holidays.

Vanilla is incredibly labor-intensive. That’s why it’s  expensive, and it really should cost more than it does. Growing vanilla requires a long-term investment of time, energy and money as the first big crop won’t be ready for about five years.

Only those who are still growing it will benefit from the price increase. When farmers see that vanilla prices are rising quickly, they’ll plant again with hopes of making money. Chances are, the prices will drop again before they get the windfall they desperately need.

Most vanilla is grown organically but the majority of farmers cannot afford to pay certification fees. There are only a few groups worldwide that are Fair Trade certified. If they could be certified, they could make enough money to survive.  The reality is that the majority of vanilla sold is not purchased at fair trade prices.

What will happen next? We have no idea how high the prices will go. What we do know is that the big vanilla companies that sell both pure and imitation vanillas have no intention of paying the high prices caused by the shortage. Instead, they will promote their imitation vanilla and the big manufacturers will happily buy it.

The manufacturers will blatantly ignore the FDA regulations and will use “natural flavors” or “other natural flavors” in their products. These are euphemisms for imitation ingredients, in this case vanillin created from rice bran extract or paper pulp effluent. In fact, many of the manufacturers of the pricey boutique vanilla ice creams sold to the big supermarkets switched to imitations during the last crisis and never switched back to pure vanilla!

The use of imitation vanilla  further undermines the farmers, of course. Their market continues to shrink yearly. Only specialty food manufacturers and consumers who care about quality will buy pure vanilla. After all, why pay a premium price if you can use imitation?

Some farmers have – or will – plant other crops. Others have – or will – attempt to migrate to industrialized countries hoping for work. With stricter immigration laws, the dream of a better life is increasingly difficult. Fewer children will go to school as there are school fees in most developing countries. More children will go without medical care. It’s a vicious cycle where no one wins and ultimately, it affects us all.

What you can do:

• If you know that the company you purchase vanilla from is paying fair prices for product, keep buying from them.

• If you don’t know,  find a company that does.  Then tell your friends.

• If you feel so inclined, write to the ice cream or yogurt company you like and encourage them to use pure vanilla in their products.

The Vanilla.COMpany purchases beans from a collective in Madagascar and directly from farmers in Mexico and Tahiti. We pay fair prices to the growers. We also provide information for farmers as well as educational opportunities when possible either through the Global Women’s Leadership Network or Worldwide Farmers Exchange.

Until we, as consumers, take a stand to support small family farms and farmers, whether here in the US or elsewhere in the world, we will see cyclic events like this repeat until finally, the farms or the products will cease to exist. In this case, there will be no more pure vanilla.

As more information becomes available, I will post it at my site at www.vanilla.com and on The Vanilla Company Facebook Page.

Please help us save pure vanilla!

My mother was a good baker and excelled in the art of baking pies. Occasionally she baked cookies, but she didn’t have a sweet tooth so she baked primarily for special occasions. I, on the other hand, had a sweet tooth, and the only way to satisfy it was to bake as we lived too far away for us to walk to the local markets.

By the time I was in high school I was baking bread, cakes, pies and an array of cookies – baking well enough to win the local school contests. Although I now live alone and am so busy that baking should be low on my list of priorities, I still make time to bake something every couple of weeks, and now that I am hosting tea parties for our Capitola New Leaf Market, I indulge myself by baking something special for each event.

If you love good baked goods but don’t have time to make them yourself, you can use short-cuts. Purchase a pre-made angel food cake, which makes a great base for a variety of desserts. The simplest is to cut slices of the cake and drizzle warm fudge  or caramel sauces over them. Add a scoop of high-quality ice cream, and you’re home free.

One step up is to whip lightly sweetened cream and serve the angel food cake with fresh berries or peaches topped with cream. For a fancier presentation, cut the cake in half horizontally and add berries or peaches and whipped cream to the top of the bottom half, replace the top half of the cake and add more cream to the top of the cake and decoratively place slices of strawberries or raspberries and blueberries on top. Usually store-bought angel food cakes are  good enough that no one will be the wiser if you say it’s homemade. For a gorgeous presentation, pour a little raspberry sauce on each dessert plate, then place the cut slice of cake on top.

For those of you who, like me, yearn to bake something special for birthdays, holidays and “just because,” here are two new cake recipes for you. The first is the cake is a Rum Almond Cake that I baked for the March tea party. This was originally a coffee cake but I have elevated its status to afternoon and evening tea cake. I’ve included a powdered sugar glaze to top it if you choose. Personally, I prefer to simply dust the top with powdered sugar. It can be served plain, with a Crème Anglaise (thin custard sauce) or almond ice cream. Rum Almond Cake.

The second cake can be used for Passover as it is unleavened. While I haven’t tried this, if you have a nut sensitivity or allergy, you could probably substitute tapioca or potato flour or starch or Gluten-Free Pantry’s all-purpose flour with no problem. Otherwise, substitute sifted, unbleached wheat flour.

I admit I’m a fool for sponge cakes because they’re light as a feather. My daughter was born in late June, just when all the berries were in season and fabulous. I made sponge cakes that I rolled and filled with sweetened whipped cream and berries that were lightly sugared. I covered the top with whipped cream and decorated the cake with edible flowers and berries.

My cakes weren’t as cute or as clever as the cakes made by one of her friend’s mothers, who had studied how to professionally decorate cakes. Her cakes were a little girl’s dream, with flowers and dolls and everything else you can imagine on them, but the frosting was Crisco and sugar. The children oohed and aaahed over the cakes, then ate two bites and abandoned their plates. I had little girls lining up for seconds, the best revenge I can imagine! Sponge Cake with Almonds and Citrus

If you decide to roll the sponge cake, you will need to line a rimmed baking pan with parchment paper. Include a little extra parchment so that you have something to hold onto.  Let the cake rest in the pan on a rack  for about 5-8 minutes. Then carefully remove it from the pan, keeping it on the parchment.

Lay a large tea towel on a smooth surface and dust it well with powdered sugar. Very carefully, flip the cake onto the tea towel, then ease off the parchment paper. Roll the cake carefully into the towel and allow it to cool rolled up in the towel. When you are ready to fill it, open it carefully, add the cream and fruit, then roll it up again.

My directions are probably not as specific as any by Flo Braker, Rose Berenbaum or even Joy of Cooking. If you don’t feel 100% confident in what you’re doing, check a good baking book before proceeding.

If you don’t roll the cake, there are lots of ways to enjoy it. Slice it into layers and fill it with Lemon Curd and whipped cream or berries and whipped cream. Glaze the top with chocolate or caramel sauce. Frost it with butter cream (scroll past the cake recipe for the butter cream). Or slice it and serve it “nude” with high-quality ice cream and peaches or berries.

Happy Baking! I’m about to go into the kitchen myself to bake cakes for our annual Easter/Passover/Spring Celebration.

Unless you have a crush on the dentist and hope multiple tortuous visits will somehow make the feeling mutual, spending time at the dentist is not high on anyone’s good times list. And while I’m grateful that they’re saving all of my teeth except one sad molar, the amount of time and money this has cost is almost as painful as the procedures. Which brings me to the subject of pudding in general and rice pudding in particular.

Many of us were served puddings and custards made by our doting mothers or grandmothers but my memory bank on this subject is a blank slate. My mother went on a flan spree for a while; my brother and I referred to it as flop. And I vaguely remember her once making baked custard, about which we were even less enthusiastic. But no tapioca, no rice pudding, no Blanc Mange made from a recipe on the  back of the cornstarch box or even from a mix. Didn’t she know that’s what mothers do?

I did. I made a killer rice pudding (literally — pure fat and carbs) by making a stove top custard, adding in freshly cooked rice, letting it cool, then  adding lots of vanilla and whipped cream.  It was pure pleasure and my daughter and her friends adored it, especially when I served it as part of breakfast (I did use brown rice).

Now that I’m older, I still love that version of rice pudding but it also incites an enormous amount of guilt. Cholesterol, fat, calories. The scale teeter-totters back and forth wildly. Pleasure/Guilt — Guilt/Pleasure.

At work a couple of weeks ago I decided to serve Kozy Shack rice pudding. It was a chilly late afternoon and Kozy Shack products were on sale. When I tasted it I was reminded of the coziness (cozy/Kozy — smart branding) of rice and tapioca puddings and that I should make it as my reward for enduring oral surgery. So I did.

However, what should have been a straight-forward just-make-rice-pudding turned into an absurd, angst-driven event. Would it be better to use Basmati rice or Arborio rice? Is it better with a vanilla bean or vanilla paste? Milk or coconut milk? Rice cooked in milk or pre-cooked and added to stove-top custard? Only an idiot or a food professional (that may be an oxymoron) would get this engrossed in something as straight forward as pudding for crying out loud.

Ultimately I used Arborio rice cooked separately and organic milk, whole eggs , agave and vanilla paste made into a thin custard. It was very good but I made way too much rice. To “thin it,” I broke down and whipped cream. Delicious, of course, but back on the teeter-totter. Also, I used vanilla paste, which gave it a lovely flavor but turned it a dismal shade of grey. The whipped cream helped some but not enough. It didn’t look even remotely like the perky Kozy Shack rice pudding. But then, Kozy Shack doesn’t use pure vanilla — they use “natural flavors,” which means vanillin from paper pulp or rice bran extract.

I decided to try a different recipe, this time using coconut milk, which is really good as long as you like coconut, which I do. I used Arborio rice again, which I cooked in the coconut milk, and used a vanilla bean, a cinnamon stick and agave for sweetening. I cut way back on the rice and ended up with a soupy finish, so I cooked more rice and tossed it in.

Overall, it was good though I’d use half coconut milk and half dairy as it was a little too much coconut. I also missed the custard texture. The vanilla bean and cinnamon were lovely but didn’t impart quite enough flavor. I added a little extract and Ceylon cinnamon.

My third attempt was the charm; just the way I wanted it.  I cooked the Arborio rice separately in water. I made a stovetop custard with an extra egg yolk, which made it thicker and gave it a nice healthy custard color. I used vanilla sugar and added a touch of extract at the end. When I added the rice the end result was a perfect balance of custard-to-rice. There was no need for whipped cream. And, oddly enough, it was like Kozy Shack but much, much tastier.  Here’s the final recipe.

You can use part or all coconut milk if you like. If you do, I strongly recommend Native Forest brand as it’s not only superior in quality, it has a BPA-free lining, especially important with coconut milk.

Hopefully you won’t wait to make this until you have oral surgery or your appendix removed. It’s a guilty pleasure that should be enjoyed just like chocolate. However, if you do wait, I can assure you that you will feel much, much better.

First, I hunted for a glass bread pan, which I thought should be a simple score. As it turned out, no so. Not at Ross (a great place for discounted kitchen items), not at Kohl;s and not at Bed, Bath and Beyond, the one spot I was sure would come through. As I was running out of store options as well as time, I finally opted for a very good-quality but dark metal bread pan. As it turns out, it was fine.

I blanched and ground the almonds, decided to use Bob’s Red Mill white rice flour despite my mental objections to “white flour,” and adapted the recipe for gluten-free. I carefully followed the directions for brushing the glaze onto the warm loaf for five minutes. Voila, a perfect cake!

The biggest challenge I’ve found with gluten-free cakes that have a syrup topping, is keeping the slices intact. While they aren’t crumbly, they do tend to easily break in half. I put the cake into the refrigerator and took it out just before slicing the loaf. With the exception of a couple of slices that I cut a little too thin, it came out perfectly.

My reward was a delicious cake that looked exactly as it should and was a huge hit with everyone. In fact, it was the kind of cake that people who assume that gluten-free means nasty texture or flavor, would swoon over and become instant converts. The only issue was that the bread pan was extra-large so the loaf was “long and lean.” So here’s the Best Damn Lemon Cake Redux. If you possibly can, use Meyer lemons as they are so right for this recipe.

In addition to the Best Damn Lemon Cake, I made Lemon Curd, also with Meyer lemons. I whipped cream, folded in the lemon curd and placed it in a serving bowl. I blended organic berries — blueberries from Chile and raspberries and strawberries from California — in a bowl with just enough raspberry wine to give the berries a late winter flavor boost, and let them rest for a while.

Instead of filling an angel food cake with the lemon curd mix and topping it with whipped cream, I decided it would be simpler and far more manageable if the cake was cut into slices. This way people could opt for cake or not and have the berries with the lemon-curd-cream mix, or have just plain berries. This was a wise decision.

I had just enough leftover lemon curd to blend it with some fresh whipped cream and make parfaits with fresh fruits and the cream blend for a luncheon this afternoon. Refreshing, elegant and pretty, the berries barely covered with the raspberry wine,  fresh peppermint leaves garnishing the topping of lemon cream in each small glass bowl.

It occurred to me that it would be fun to have  a tea party because if I like our customers, they’d probably like each other too. And, if they liked each other, they would network and support each others’ endeavors. At the same time, I could serve a variety of treats that would also stimulate sales. A convivial arrangement all the way around. I’m happy to report that this is exactly what happened. We’re going to make it a monthly event.

I planned to serve cheeses and crackers, dips and vegetables and chips as well as cookies.  But I also wanted to bake a cake so there would be something fresh and homemade. With our Navel and Cara Cara oranges on sale and the Meyer lemons coming into season, it didn’t require rocket science to choose something citrus. And, as  many of customers have dietary sensitivities, I’d make a gluten-free cake.

My mother and her sister traded recipes constantly. Born with a genetic propensity to silliness, they would rename the recipes  something appropriately silly. The cake I made for the tea party was Deep Down Orange Cake ’cause it’s really deep down orange!

Everyone loved  Deep Down Orange, and it came out well as a gluten-free cake except that, with the syrup, it was difficult to keep it held together.  (I’ve included the standard recipe as well as the gluten-free version.) Naturally, I forgot my camera the day of the party and didn’t get a picture of the cake. Imagine a bundt cake with moist, darker-than-usual slices because of the ground walnuts. Imagine delicious.

As a way to rectify the lack of photo for this blog, I decided to make another favorite,  Best Damn Lemon Cake, which is one of Maida Heatter’s recipes. Clearly she came from the same gene pool as my mother and aunt, but it really is.

Now here’s where I lost it. I decided to make the cake as a bundt cake instead of in a loaf pan, which is what Maida Heatter suggested. Given that she tested and retested her recipes, I should have known better. One of the details I hadn’t put on my copy of her recipe is that it’s better to use a glass or light metal loaf pan than a darker pan as the cake will turn out darker than it should. And guess what? It did.

When the cake came out of the bundt pan it wasn’t burned but it wasn’t bright  and lemony looking. This was also because I didn’t use blanched almonds to make the almond meal. I sprinkled powdered sugar over the top and took a few shots.  It wasn’t ugly, but it wouldn’t have caught your attention either.

I sliced it and put the slices on a plate to shoot. The pieces had holes often found in gluten-free products where the xanthum gum causes uneven rising. Even though the cake  tasted fine, the pictures didn’t cut it.

Now, if I had a life, I would have made the cake again in the right pan with blanched almonds and even wheat flour. And I would take a stunning picture for you. That’s not what’s happening at the moment.

These days, everything is visual. Blogs show every step of the process — even the simplest steps, which verges on hilarious, in my opinion. So, at the least I should have one reasonable photo with each blog. But I don’t today. And probably won’t lots of other times. And all I can say is trust me, the recipes are all they’re cracked up to be. And if yours turn out a little funny looking like mine, no one will freak out it. In fact, they’ll have forgotten as soon as they taste it.

Actually, my mother and her sisters had an appropriate saying for when something turned out looking wrong, whether a lopsided cake or a bad hair day:  If a man on a galloping horse wouldn’t notice, it’s not important.

Just don’t blow up the oven.

Even stranger, we had the foggiest summer in decades. The kind of damp weather that gets to your bones. And we had no spring whatsoever as it rained right up until the end of June when the fog started. Weird.

Of course I’m loving the sunny weather as I can walk to see Monterey Bay on my lunch breaks, poke around in the garden at home or just sit and let the warm rays soak into my skin. Also nice not to start or end the day driving to or from work in wild wind and pouring rain. The reality, however, is this coming summer we’ll be coming up short on water, on rationing and with a dead garden.

Despite the balmy days, as soon as the sun sets it gets chilly real fast. And while most of the country has had warmer weather than usual this year, it’s definitely not popsicle time! Live in Alaska? You wish we could help you by pulling the storms south.  Believe me, some of us would  if we could!

All this is to say, that this is the time of year when I most enjoy a cup of hot vanilla and a couple of cookies, whether I have the rare opportunity to sit on the couch and read the paper, or I’m snuggled under flannel sheets with a book.

Hot Vanilla! Or, should I say, Haute Vanilla? When we serve hot chocolate, it doesn’t mean a cup of melted chocolate.  It’s made of cocoa or finely chopped bar chocolate with milk and maybe a marshmallow. So why is it that we don’t see hot vanilla on the menu at Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee?

Hot or haute, I love a cup of warm cow, soy or almond milk, richly flavored with vanilla extract or paste and with  a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg. It’s soothing, it doesn’t have the alkaloids of chocolate, no caffeine — just a smooth, slightly sweet and very delicious flavor to calm me down and warm me up. Like this, for instance.

Even though some of you may have made New Year resolutions to avoid sweets and you might still be adhering to your resolutions, there are a lot of us (okay, at least me) who think that it’s very civilized to have a couple of cookies along with a warm beverage.

My assistant Gina brought in some Almond-Oat Lace Cookies a couple of weeks ago. She had baked them as a gift for a friend and  had two left so she kindly shared one with me. It was all I could do to keep from tackling her for the other one. Instead,  I immediately took the butter out of the freezer and made a double batch of these seductive, delicate treats.

If you’ve every had Lacey’s you know how addictive these cookies are. But what’s interesting is that as much as I like chocolate, I prefer these cookies plain. The chocolate kind of overpowers them. Here’s the recipe.

I made the cookies with Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free all purpose flour, but I didn’t add any xanthum or guar gum to them. As a result, they spread a lot, making them super-thin. If you want to make sandwich cookies with chocolate chocolate centers, and you use gluten-free flour, you’ll want to add a pinch of one of the gums.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll try some haute, hot vanilla. If you do, let me know what you think. And if you have any suggestions or improvements on the beverage, please do share!

When January comes around, everyone else is partied out and we retail workers, ready at last to celebrate, most often do it on our own. However, as a January baby,  January is my month, whether with friends or without and I do my best to make it memorable.

As Christmas and the new year fell on Sundays  I’ve had a few extra days off from the market where I create new recipes, prepare the food and engage customers in the fun.  Instead, I  cleaned and polished the house, put the garden to bed for the winter, and  sent out belated greetings to family and friends. Today  I rewarded my hard work with an indulgence: Dungeness crab.

My family moved to California when I was three years old. My parents immediately discovered this most delicate of crustaceans and it was a standard on our table each New Year and several more times in the early months of the year.

Crab season begins in California just before Thanksgiving most years and runs until May or June.  The exact dates vary due to availability of the crabs and the weather, but it is a revered tradition with many of us who live along the Coast to enjoy crab during the holidays and in the late winter when they are at their best.  Later in the season they’re not as good, they become less available, and the price goes up. This is as it should be; we rarely eat it often enough that it becomes too familiar and loses its appeal.

As I walked to the harbor early this afternoon, it was warm in the sunshine, cool in the shade, and the water sparkled.  People worked on their boats, removed holiday lights, dogs trotted by their owner’s sides and workers spruced up the paint on out buildings. A beautiful winter day.

Thinking about the crab I was about to purchase brought back a slew of  memories. In my home there was a standard meal for crab. There was plenty of crab to go around, nutcrackers to open every joint and crevice for the sweet meat,  mayonnaise in several bowls, a large romaine salad with vinaigrette, and warm sourdough bread and butter. A large empty bowl sat in the middle of the table where we discarded the shells.  It was heavenly.

We kids reached for the legs and ate our crab as quickly as we could crack the shells and pry out the sweet meat. We paid no attention to the salad or bread; we were only focused on the prize. By contrast, my mother chose the carapace with its thin white membrane separating the meat in small chambers. Very carefully she removed the meat from the matrix and placed it in a tidy little mound in the center of her plate.  While she worked she ate salad and drank wine.

Soon our share of the crab was gone and we were left with the reality of  salad and bread. It was now that my mother tucked into her crab, daintily dipping it into the mayonnaise and savoring each bite.  I remember wondering how she had such willpower to create the lovely pillow of crabmeat with only a little nibble here and there. Much older now, I’ve learned the value of patience.

Crab is enjoyed in many ways.  While I haven’t eaten at the wharf in San Francisco for decades, I imagine that it hasn’t changed much. You could order a whole crab in the restaurants or pick them up next to the steaming pots outside, tended by workers who got the crabs from the Italian and Portuguese families who ran the small white boats in the Bay, dropped the traps, checked them daily and sold them to their friends and relatives at the wharf.

You could have a crab cocktail with a tomato sauce that I have never  liked, eaten using small seafood forks and with lemon squeezed over all.  Or you could order a Crab Louis, a salad made with iceberg lettuce, tomato chunks, hard-boiled eggs, a hefty serving of shelled crab and a dressing similar to Thousand Island but not quite so sweet.  In my opinion, these recipes  smother the delicate sweetness of the crab.

I’ve had crab cakes — some memorable, some memorable for all the wrong reasons, Italian cioppino, Chinese-style crab, served hot with a black-bean sauce, rich and decadent crab and artichoke casserole and even crab quiche and ravioli.

But really fresh crab on its own, whether served with drawn butter or homemade aoili, is my idea of wonderful.

The least expensive place to procure crabs other than setting traps yourself, is to go to the harbors or wharfs where the boats come in. No middle man or wholesale-to-retail charges.  As I wasn’t prepared to wait for boats, I went to my favorite little dive — an unmarked fish depot tucked underneath a solitary restaurant and next to a boat repair facility.  Prices are scribbled on a board, the floors are wet, the fresh catch of fish is iced in a barrel and the live crabs are in a big tub outside.

A cute young man, probably not old enough to legally drink, was taking an order by phone. He had on a rubberized apron and rubber boots and clearly was no beginner at his trade. He fished a crab out for me, weighed it on the scale and called 2.06 pounds as 2.  He did me the favor of whacking the crab with a wooden mallet, wrapped it and put some ice in the bag to keep it cold while I walked home. It was $2.50 a pound cheaper than the market price and and far fresher.

While the water boiled I prepared a salad and made fresh aoili, which is my recommendation unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool drawn butter person from the East Coast.

I placed the crab and aoili on top of my salad, poured a glass of Pinot Grigio and sat in the sunshine on my deck until it dipped behind the pines. This is my idea of the perfect way to begin a new year.

A word about aioli: First, it’s really easy to make, whether by hand or in a food processor or blender.  Second, there are many variations on the theme.  You can add as much garlic as you’d like, fresh herbs, use a blend of oils, use just lemon juice or a mix of vinegar and citrus.  The one very unusual ingredient that is anything but traditional, is a dash of pure vanilla!

Sounds crazy, I know, but vanilla adds some unexpected depth along with a hint of sweetness.  I had a moment of hesitation before adding it the first time and was more than pleasantly surprised.  Try it: if you don’t like it don’t use it again. I suspect you may become a believer like me. Here’s my recipe for aioli.

I am envisioning a wonderful year for us all.

I’m not sure which came first for me — discovering a love of dessert through baking or baking because I love dessert. While the answer might appear obvious,  we didn’t have daily dessert when I was a child nor did my brother or I have access to stores on our own as we lived several miles from town.

However, my first  forays into the kitchen included baking cookies.  My mother also made glorious pies and when she made them, we were right next to her as she would take the last bits of crust and make jam-filled turnovers. So, however it came about, I’m a fool for dessert as well as a fool for baking. And if there is ever a time for dessert, it’s during the holidays!

This year I was overtaken by retail.  I worked at New Leaf Market  six days straight before Thanksgiving. My business was  in high gear at the same time. There was no time to think of baking though I was surrounded by pies, cakes and cookies at the market. The Christmas push began the day after Thanksgiving and I worked seven of the last nine days before Christmas at New Leaf.  I got off work at 5:00 pm Christmas Eve, and I baked a Christmas pie within an hour of getting home, just before my daughter, son-in-law and grandsons burst onto the scene to celebrate.

This pie is why I’m writing tonight about egg whites.  It’s the most amazing pie I’ve ever developed.  I will give you the recipe, just not today.  In fact, I really don’t want to share the recipe at all except for the fact that I made limoncello as my holiday gift this year.  Not everyone is Italian and thinks that a hot day must be made better with a glass of icy, syrupy limoncello, so I felt obliged to share the recipe so that my friends know what to do with the contents in the beautiful bottle. And if I’m sharing it with them, I may as well share it with you.  To repeat myself, just not today.

Egg whites.  One of the ingredients in the incredible pie is lemon curd.  The recipe calls for 3 egg yolks and 3 whole eggs.  The question invariably then arises about how to use the egg whites. And while sensible people would use them in an omelet or fritatta, I’d rather use them in dessert. And the best desserts that come to mind that use only egg whites are meringues and marshmallows.

My first choice was meringue.  On the front of the December Sunset magazine was a picture of perfectly formed meringue cookies, some of the bases dipped in dark chocolate and the tops studded with pieces of crushed peppermint candy.  Yes, I thought, I’ll whip up some lovely meringue cookies, fill them with a blend of Guittard white and dark chocolate, and cover them with peppermint.

There was also an article in the San Francisco Chronicle’s baking page where several Bay Area chefs shared peppermint dessert recipes.  In said article was the suggestion that you use small peppermint candy canes as there is a larger surface area that’s pink and it will look better on the dessert.

By the time I had decided to make the cookies, it was less than two  weeks before Christmas and the miniature candy canes were on sale. I came home from work with boxes of candy canes and heated the oven first thing.  I whipped up the egg whites with cream of tartar and sugar.  Only problem was I forgot that I had three egg whites instead of two and that the three were from jumbo eggs.  Ooops.

The whites became quite thick but somehow bypassed the stiff peak stage and went on to an almost marshmallow cream texture.  By now it was 9:00 pm and I was in no mood to fight it.  I added the chocolate and plopped the gooey blobs onto parchment and sprinkled them with the peppermint candy I had smashed with a meat tenderizer.  They came out puffed but certainly nothing like the beauties on the cover of Sunset.

I didn’t care.  The staff at New Leaf eats anything that shows up in the break room, which is great as  experiments gone awry are never wasted.  What I hadn’t anticipated was the number of compliments I received.  “Those are amazing,” was the general consensus.  So I decided to make them again so that I could take a photo, only this time I’d make them right.

And I did.  However, the reality is the first batch was better.  The trick, it seems, is to underbake the cookies so they aren’t dry.  That way the peppermint doesn’t get hard and the chocolate stays soft.  Here’s the recipe.  Even though Christmas is over, no one will care that you have leftover candy canes in the cookies.  We’re all so addicted to sweets during cold weather that no one will think about it. Here you go.

The second option is homemade marshmallows.  Light, delicate pillows of sweetness that have hardly any calories.  You can eat them as a way to wean yourself from your holiday high without gaining more than another pound or two.  Hey, that’s a whole lot better than eating toast and gravy!

David Lebovitz gave me a wonderful recipe for marshmallows a long time ago and it’s a good one.  David’s Marshmallows

If you want to go over-the- top, make the marshmallows and then let them rest for a day or two so that they’re not super moist. Then take a 12-ounce bag of dark chocolate chips, add a tablespoon of butter, and melt in the microwave. Start with one minute, then stir. Add 30 seconds and stir again until melted.

One at a time, drop the marshmallows into the chocolate, coating all sides. Lift out with a fork. While the marshmallow is still on the fork, tap off the excess chocolate and place it on a sheet of parchment or foil. Sprinkle with jimmies, if you wish, and let them sit until dry.  Eat them as they are or drop them into cups of steaming hot chocolate.

Now aren’t these two desserts better than an egg-white omelet?

Happy New Year from the V.Q.!

My father was stationed in California during World War II.  He pondered why they lived in East Cleveland, which was  hot and humid all summer, buried in snow each winter, and always dirty from burning coal and steel mills. So when he returned to Cleveland after the war, we three got on the train and moved to California.

The first year we were here, my parents and I were invited for Thanksgiving by a business friend of my father.  We were living in San Francisco and traveled down the Peninsula in our 1947 Ford Coupe.  I remember the trip. The San Francisco Peninsula was still largely rural and the leaves were turning. My mother asked what she might bring to meal and the wife asked her to bring persimmons.

Persimmons were unheard of in Cleveland in those days; my mother had never before seen them.  She chose a dozen cheery, orange persimmons, firm and inviting, and brought them to the party.  The woman, who was at least two generations older than my mother, gave her a withering look and informed her that the persimmons were supposed to be soft, not firm!

My mother was too intimidated to attempt another go with persimmons until five or six years later when she either purchased or was given Helen Evans Brown’s West Coast Cookbook.  It was in this book that she found a recipe for persimmon pudding.

Apparently Helen Evans Brown was not a big fan of persimmons.  She says, “This is one of those dishes that can’t be taken or left alone.  You either like it or you don’t…I am not convinced that the pudding wouldn’t be just as good without the persimmons.  Serves 6 to 60.”  For the record, we like them.

Hachaiya persimmons are a little intimidating, especially if you’ve ever attempted to eat one before it is ready. Mouth-puckeringly astringent!  They need to blett, a term used for only two fruits that I know of — persimmons and medlars –  and you are not real likely to find medlars in the any market as nearly no one grows them.

Bletting means that the fruit isn’t ready to eat until it has essentially collapsed from ripeness and is close to fermenting.  When the Hachaiya persimmon bletts, it’s deliciously delicate.  And ready to be made into pudding.

My mother served the pudding warm with lemon sauce made from Meyer lemons.  Later on I learned that some people also serve whipped cream with it.  The combination of warm persimmon pudding with both lemon sauce and whipped cream is truly unbelievably good and worth begging persimmons from anyone who has a tree.  Here is the recipe

Now for the apples.  In my early 20s I lived in San Francisco.  My primary care doctor was a gardening enthusiast and full of suggestions each time I saw him and mentioned I was going somewhere in particular.  When I told him I was moving to Mendocino County, he told me to be sure to stop at Gowan’s Oak Tree and get Sierra Beauty apples.  “The best apple ever!” he said.  So I did stop at Gowan’s Oak Tree and got to know old man Gowan well enough to have lengthy apple discussions with him over the next several years.

I lived on the second oldest farm on the Mendocino Coast.  It had over an acre of apples and a few pears so I became obsessed with learning about apples.  And although we had many interesting heritage apples, I admit I was hooked on Sierra Beauties.  Enough so that after I left Mendocino, I made yearly pilgrimages to Gowan’s for the apples.  One year I brought some Sierra Beauties to an Italian produce seller to sample.  He contacted old man Gowan and now Sierra Beauties are available in stands and specialty stores throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

After I finally was able to purchase a house in Santa Cruz, I immediately planted a Sierra Beauty and a Red Gravenstein in my front yard.  Both trees are unbelievably prolific.  Fortunately, the Gravensteins are ready in late July and the Sierras first ripen in October.  Nevertheless, I provide apples for a lot of folks in the area.

Which leads me to putting up the applesauce.  I don’t know how you do it, but here’s what I do.  I cook apple chunks in apple cider or apple juice so that I need very little sweetening.  Sierra Beauties are a bit tart, so I usually add a little agave or honey.  I then add Ceylon cinnamon, freshly ground nutmeg, freshly ground allspice and freshly ground vanilla bean powder.

The applesauce is perfect for cakes and cookies or just plain eating.  The way I most like it — the way I ate it just as I began this blog — is warm with full-fat Greek yogurt, heavy cream or creme fraiche.  For company, I add a swig of rum to the warm applesauce.

There’s still time!  The Pink Ladies have come in, some Honeycrisps from Washington are still on the shelves.  If you can find some Romes, they’re excellent.  But if you can find some Sierra Beauties, you will have really scored.