a lavender honey production engineer at work

The honey bees have come home to roost. Again.

This is the fifth time in the past few years that they’ve taken up residence here at Chez Penn-Romine.

Our lavender, sage and rosemary blossoms are quite a hit with them. I don’t know if our flowering herbs are the sole determining factor in their insistence on being our little roomies. Our backyard is a calm place, with no kids and no dogs. Just Tex, the rangy neighbor cat who has made it his office. His business is sleeping, and he works a dedicated 20-hour-a-day shift. (If only I could be paid for that!) He doesn’t interfere with the bees’ work, and they don’t interfere with his.

Tex is even more suspicious of paparazzi than Cosmo is of bees.

One of the bees flew in the front door of our house last week. It was late in the day, and I’m sure she was just looking for the most direct route home. Don’t we all after a hard day’s work? I noticed her because our tomcat was sitting very still on the doormat and leaning way-waaaay back. He was squinting at something and had turned his ears backward as far as he could make them go. I walked over to take a look and realized there was a honey bee hovering at eye level, just about a foot from Cosmo’s face. No doubt he’d aimed his ears backward so the levitating wonder wouldn’t fly into one of them.

When the weather is nice–which is most of the time here in Southern California–we leave the door open, with just the security gate locked, so the light and fresh air can come in. Sometimes wee visitors come in, too. Like Mademoiselle Bee.

I herded her out gently, guiding her with a magazine. She came back in, and I escorted her back out. We replayed this scenario a couple more times. Since she obviously wasn’t getting the message, I finally closed the door. The next day I found her clinging to the security gate, dead. Bees have some pretty amazing bee-sense, but it doesn’t seem to extend to flying around what they cannot go through. We humans often behave that way, too, so I can’t fault our little visitor for not figuring it out.

I feel for the bees. Colony collapse is a serious problem. That may not sound like a worry to some people, but an awful lot of our vegetables and fruits are pollinated by these little guys. I’d like to give you a more precise measure than “an awful lot,” but different agencies calculate the amount in different ways, most of them confusing. I’ll just say that almost every bite of produce we enjoy is available to us because of bees.

A handful of bees may not sound like much (except a world of pain if you take it literally!), but a hive contains in the vicinity of 30,000 bees. When we blast a colony with bug spray, we’re removing thousands of pollinators from the landscape. They’re having a pretty tough time anyway, what with agribusiness’s willy nilly large-scale use of chemicals. So on a smaller scale, we can help them out by being patient when they decide to move in with us and relocate them to a spot that is better for us all.

I called Backwards Beekeepers to come and remove them. These Los Angeles-based volunteers collect honeybees and their queens and move them to locations where they can do their bee thing without causing problems for anyone else.

This isn’t easy for me. After a childhood filled with bee stings on the soles of my feet because I ran around barefoot in our clover-covered yard, I can state definitively that I am not a bee fancier. But I have at least a rough understand of what’s at stake. And I know it’s better to go against my natural inclination (which involves a spray can and running shoes) and do what’s right to help them mind their own beeswax.

The next wave: sage honey production is under way

My pâte à choux pig–at least that’s what it’s supposed to look like…

This may be a foolish flaunting of an unpopular opinion in the face of my ongoing need to be hired to write something, edit something, cook something, teach something, or take others on a tour of something.

Homemade pappardelle: I cut it freehand with the pizza cutter. It shows.

But hear me out. Someone somewhere–no doubt an inspirational speaker sweating in front of a large audience–once said, “Don’t strive for perfection. Strive for excellence.” To which I say, “Hear, hear!” “Huzzah!” and “Preach it, brother!” for it affirms that rather than spinning ourselves up into a tizzy in pursuit of what is essentially unattainable, if we just make what we’re doing incredibly good, then everything will be just fine.

Lamb ragu on my homemade pappardelle: those imperfectly cut noodles don’t looks so bad now. And they tasted great.

I got my first inkling that this might be so while in culinary school when our chef instructor was rolling veal meatballs one day. He admonished us not to bother with one of those unitasking tools that produces meatballs that are all the exact same size and shape. As long as they’re in the ballpark size wise, they’ll all cook in the same amount of time, which is all that really matters, he said. Plus, you want people to know they were special enough for you to hand make meatballs for them. If they’re perfectly uniform they’ll look machine made, and your guests will think they came from a factory and not from you. And they’ll think they were only special enough for the store-bought kind.

My macarons are good. Those feet aren’t perfect, but if ever I want to make them professionally, that’s something I can work on.

So if your homemade pizza is shaped more like an amoeba than a steering wheel, who cares? If you made it, it tastes good, and you had a good time making it, then that’s what really matters. If you want to get a job making pizza, then you can focus on improving your dough shaping skills.

Too often we become intimidated in the face of the idea perfection. Personally, I’ve seldom made a soufflé that was ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille. They always taste just fine, but they’re usually lopsided. In fact, my soufflés often look like they’re searching for a lost contact lens on the oven floor. Maybe I can blame it on the tremors I don’t feel but that continue to tilt my stove millimeter by sneaky millimeter, until one day I bake a cake that is three inches tall on one end and two and a half on the other.

But why assign blame? I say it’s time to give the notion of perfection the ol’ heave-ho. Let’s enjoy our food. Let’s enjoy making it and sharing it. And let’s enjoy the people we make it for and share it with.

As for that lamb ragu, the recipe came from Poor Man’s Feast, by Elissa Altman. It was excellent.

Future Hens, a.k.a. Eggonomics Engineers

Meet Precious and Steve, hens in the making. More about them later.

This past weekend I attended Edible Institute, which is held each spring by Edible Communities. It is a weekend-long event in which food writers and publishers, educators, chefs, artisans, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, wine makers and others affiliated with the food industry gather to discuss issues related to healthy food, sustainability, farm-to-fork initiatives, food politics and policy, farming, farm worker issues, food safety…you name it.

Helena, my friend and hostess during my Santa Barbara stay (and owner of Steve and Precious), always asks what I’ve gleaned from the weekend and what I might write about it. I’m glad she does this, for it prevents me from getting lazy and putting off the info processing. And since I always experience information overload, putting it off is easy to do. As the kid asks his teacher in the Far Side cartoon, “May I be excused? My brain is full.”

So here are some things that really stuck with me from this weekend:

> The wisdom of our keynote speaker, food politics superstar Marion Nestle, who said, “Don’t eat products–eat food.”

The first thing Marion wrote that I remember reading several years ago was her admonition to shop only in the periphery of the grocery store. This will keep you out of the center aisles where all the processed, high-salt, high-sugar, high-fat pseudo-foods lurk, so that you spend more time in the fresh fruit and vegetable, dairy and meat sections, focusing on real food. I’ve been dedicated to this philosophy ever since. I park my cart on the ends of the aisles and only venture down them if I need to fetch particular items like oatmeal, flour, coffee, wine, light bulbs and cat litter. And I’ll be honest–the occasional emergency bag of Cheetos.

> Guner Tautrim of Orella Ranch urged us all to, “Put your dollars in the change you want to see.”

If we want more readily available healthy food, we must buy it whenever we can, instead of the processed stuff. This sends the message to suppliers that we want better food options. Admittedly this can be difficult. As Marion pointed out, when you can go to a fast food chain, hand them $5 and receive either five burgers or one salad, then you see the dilemma for those who don’t make much money and have a family to feed. But it is worth our effort to make healthy choices whenever possible, for both the personal good and the collective good it can do in the long run.

> The panel on school lunches addressed the question: What if the school lunch room was treated as a classroom, with cooking skills (a.k.a. life skills) being incorporated into education for K-12? When kids learn to cook, they also learn about science and math, which creates a much more integrated approach to learning. As for school yard gardens, plenty of anecdotal evidence shows that even when kids don’t like a particular vegetable, they’ll eat it if they grow it themselves. Pride of having planted, tended and harvested wins out over a case of the pickys almost every time.

There’s so much more, more than I can cover in a blog entry–in fact, more than we could cover in one weekend. This is tip of the tip of the iceberg. The problems are many and the solutions, not always easy to divine. But it’s worth the effort to do whatever we can.

So back to Steve and Precious, hens in the making and named, I might add, by Helena’s young grandchildren (Eggs à la Steve will be on the menu soon!). At this point the chicks are sporting a funky combo of chick down and grown-up chicken feathers. They’re not ready to take their place in the yard with the other ladies just yet. But soon they’ll be out there, scratching, pecking and producing great free range, organic eggs.

What Steve and Precious are up to is a natural thing, and their maturation will take place regardless of what they think about it. The rest of us are another matter. We can choose to cling to our easy but dead-end wasteful and toxic ways, or we can take more responsibility for our health and the health of those whom we feed. And the health of the planet. Even baby steps are better than nothing–which was my conclusion from last year’s Edible Institute, come to think of it. So this year’s Edible Institute was a reaffirmation of last year’s, but with more evidence and more advice on moving forward.

Want to learn more? Check out these resources:

Consult these!

Food Corps

Food Safety News

ConsumersUnion

Read these!

Anything at all by Marion Nestle. Start with Food Politics and What To Eat. She also contributed to A Place at the Table, a collection of essays on solving hunger in America, written by an impressive array of people active on the front lines.

Tomatoland, by Barry Estabrook

The American Way of Eating, by Tracie McMillan

American Wasteland, by Jonatham Bloom

Watch these!

Go online and watch The Perennial Plate.

This is the most original, enjoyable and thought provoking collection of online videos about food, real food. They’re each only about 5 or 6 minutes long. You know, bite-sized! You’ll never look at those food shows on the telly the same way again. This is good stuff.

Here’s a great overview piece to whet your appetite. I especially love Episode 93: “Joseph’s Fields,” which reveals the secret to sweetening collards while adding absolutely nothing to them.

Dig in everyone!

My writer pal Amy Sundberg has some valuable things to say about stoking your creativity by feeding your Muse. Rather than rehash what she has written on the subject, I’ll just direct you right to her words of wisdom.

Enjoy–and get feeding!

my personal stash of mismatchery

Friends who visit my kitchen for the first time are usually surprised when they see my cookware. Most people assume a chef will own a full set of the best, most expensive stuff. But mine looks about as haphazardly assembled as the cookware stash in your local thrift store.

Relish in progress in enameled cast iron

If you’ve read my blog very often–or been in my kitchen–you’ll know I have an affinity for mismatched kitchenware. As this extends to cookware, I own pieces of Lodge, All-Clad, Le Creuset, Chantal, Calphalon, Sur la Table and quite a few of indeterminate origin. As for materials, I have aluminum, stainless steel, carbon steel, tin-lined copper, cast iron–both plain and coated in enamel–and an assortment of metal fusions. Some pieces are cheap, some are moderately priced, and some represent a serious investment.

I love this jumble of cookware. Each piece has a different weight and a different feel in my hands. While I could make oatmeal in just about any vessel, there’s something satisfying about the little one-and-a-half quart stainless steel pot I bought for cheap from a restaurant supply company. If I’m making risotto, osso buco or pot stickers, I gravitate toward the All-Clad pan that’s big enough to take a nap in. There’s just something about it that says, “I’m here to feed all your friends in one go.”

Tackling Dorie Greenspan’s Beggar’s Linguine in the giant All-Clad pan

Beyond personal esthetics, though, I think it’s valuable to learn the properties of different cooking surfaces and how a variety of foods responds to being cooked on those surfaces. Particular materials are best for specific chores. Aluminum is inexpensive and a good conductor of heat, and it does a great job for most things, but cook up a pot of tomato-based sauce in it, and the acid in the tomatoes will turn the pot dark gray or even black. This in turn will render light colored foods some unflattering shades–not good unless you happen to like gray cauliflower. Cornbread baked in anything but cast iron just won’t have the crusty exterior that makes eating it an aural as well as tactile and taste treat.

Cornbread in cast iron…

While I eventually replaced most of the aluminum pots and pans I accumulated during culinary school, I have hung onto the silverstone-coated skillets for cooking eggs and fish, both of which stick to uncoated surfaces. I’ll keep them until I get the seasoning built up on the old cast iron skillets I got from my mother and grandmother.

Cornbread as only cast iron can do it!

The iron skillet my mother used ever since I could remember had a coat of seasoning so absolute that cooking eggs in it was never a problem. Sadly, much later in life she began putting it in the dishwasher and destroyed that amazing finish. I’m working to rebuild it now.

My enamel coated cast iron dutch ovens take forever to heat up, but there’s nothing better in which to braise or stew. As for some of those fancy name brand pieces made of assortments of fused metals, I find it instructive to cook in them and have a good idea of what they can do. Some of them are pretty heavy, so I’ve confined myself to owning smaller pieces from those collections–if they’re too heavy for me to lift when they’re empty (I’m talkin’ ’bout you, Chantal!), I certainly can’t hoist them when they’re full!

Most of us wouldn’t drink hot coffee from a glass or peel an apple with a meat cleaver. So why don’t we give more thought to what we’re cooking our food in? Using the proper cooking surface for the task at hand means you can brown meat handily, cook fish without half of it remaining in the pan and stir up a Mornay sauce that is a warm, creamy color, not dull gray.

Not to put down anyone’s collection of All-Clad or Chantal–I certainly wouldn’t refuse it if someone offered it–but for me there’s something pleasant about cooking in a pot that doesn’t look like it’s part of a uniformed regiment.

Cosmo stepped in as art director

Mismatched is just the way I like it!

steampunk ice bucket!

As Himself and I prepared for a party, we discovered that the old canner made the perfect ice bucket. Most ice buckets are too small to be practical, because someone has to keep refilling them throughout the evening. But this big ol’ steampunk monstrosity needed no refilling, and the pressure gauge on the lid made a good handle. It was an awesome conversation piece as well as a nifty bit of repurposing.

Oh yeah, you can see from those empty bottles that our premixed cocktails vanished pretty quickly. They are a great way to simplify the bar. We made two, one with clear spirits and one with amber, to please more tastes. They were a big hit–in fact, the beer and wine got really lonely that night.

If you want to give this a try, I’d suggest filling a couple of interesting bottles like these and then having refills mixed and at the ready in pitchers. We labeled the bottles with the ingredients as well as the names and had bowls of garnishes to the side, thin orange slices for the Negroni and Luxardo cherries for the Manhattan. This way, guests could help themselves, and no one was tied to bartending.

The Negroni is a particularly easy cocktail to make in quantity, for the measurements are all the same: equal parts gin, sweet vermouth and Campari. It’s a good party cocktail, for it aids in digestion–a welcome thing, what with all that grazing!

today’s CSA delivery

I have a confession to make: I keep letting things go bad in my vegetable bins.

In the fruits and veggies go, all lush and perky, tucked away into those drawers with all the optimism I have each time I open a new CSA box. But then they sit in there, out of sight, out of mind, while I get busy with other things. And a couple of weeks later I take a peek inside, and what do I see? Bewhiskered onion halves. Carrots you can tie into knots. Kale fatigued to unflattering shades of yellow and brown. Radishes from four deliveries ago that look like sunburnt, shrunken heads. Celery that….oh well, you get the idea.

I absolutely hate wasting food. It’s not just a waste of money. To let food go bad so you have to throw it away, in my opinion, is to spit in the face of every hungry person on this planet. And don’t even get me started on how guilty I feel when I have to chuck out a piece of spoiled meat!

Others make this complaint, too, so I know I’m not alone. We all have methods for trying to prevent waste, including immediately wrapping greens and herbs in moist paper towels to keep them in good shape, and putting fresh fruit in a bowl on the kitchen counter so we’ll notice it when we’re on the way for a cookie. But still I manage to forget what I’ve squirreled away in the bottom of the fridge.

So here’s my new bid to try and stop the waste.

I’m going to take the packing list that’s always in the top of the CSA box and map out how I’ll use each item in the coming week (two weeks for root vegetables), pulling recipes and noting both what I’ll make and when we’ll have it. And I’ll check the calendar as I do this. If it looks like a busy week, I’ll find recipes for things that freeze well.

If I have an abundance of items that will make a great vegetable stock, then I’ll make and freeze some stock–I’m roasting mirepoix even as I write this, and I just snipped some fresh thyme and a bay leaf from the backyard.

Beets are hearty and can last a long time. Usually I’ll roast them whole and serve them sliced over a green salad with goat cheese and toasted walnuts. But in a couple of days I’ll make borscht instead, because it’s definitely hearty soup season. The greens are attached, so those will go into a braise with kale and garbanzo beans on Sunday afternoon. I’ll trim the greens off the carrots this afternoon and feed them to the peckish red worms in my compost box. At this point, those worms are just well-fed pets, but that’s a subject for another blog entry, maybe in the spring…

planning out the week’s meals

Usually I toss the packing list into the trash as soon as I’ve pulled everything out of the box. But I’m going to start keeping those lists in a file folder, so I can go back and review my progress and see which dishes we liked enough to repeat. I’ll make notes on the backs of these sheets as I go, so I know what works for us and what doesn’t.

Admittedly, I’m not the best at following through with my resolutions. But next year if I throw out half of what I threw out this year, then that’s progress, right?

I’d like to think so.

Borscht

Borscht is one of those soups that are open to dozens of interpretations. Some include meat and an array of vegetables, so that it seems more like a veggie-beef soup than anything else. To me, borscht is about the beets and the balance of sweet, sour and salt. I like this recipe because it’s simple, very “beet forward” and good either hot or cold. Roast the beets whole and unpeeled, and you get a deep, rich flavor. Dice or grate them (wear red or black while you’re doing this!) and simmer them, and you’ll get a lighter flavor that’s especially refreshing in a cold summer soup. My version is a take on Mimi Sheraton’s cold borscht recipe from From My Mother’s Kitchen.

This recipe makes 4-6 servings.

3 or 4 medium-sized beets

5 cups of water

juice of 1 to 1 1/2 lemons

4 egg yolks

salt, sugar and white pepper to taste

sour cream & fresh dill for garnish (other garnishes can include cooked tiny whole potatoes)

Wash and peel the beets, then cut into small dice or coarsely grate. Combine in a large pot with water, the juice of half a lemon, and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook until tender, about 35-40 minutes. Add the juice of another half a lemon, stir well, and remove from the heat.

Beat egg yolks in a medium bowl with a whisk or fork. Slowly ladle in some of the beet liquid, whisking constantly, to gradually bring up the temperature of the yolks without cooking them. After you’ve whisked in about four ladles, pour the mixture very slowly back into the pot, whisking constantly to blend. (You won’t really taste the eggs in the finished product–they’re more about producing a rich, velvety texture.)

Now–here’s the fun part–pour the pot of soup into a large bowl or pitcher; then pour it back into the pot. Pour it back and forth between the pot and the bowl or pitcher about 10 to 15 times. About halfway through, stop and taste the borscht. Season with salt and white pepper, and adjust the flavor with more lemon juice and a bit of sugar if you want. Then finish the back-and-forth pour. All of this pouring will give the borscht a smooth, creamy texture.

At this point you can either chill it thoroughly and serve it cold or heat it a bit–just don’t recook it. Whether you’re serving it hot or cold, garnish with a dollop of sour cream and a snipping of fresh dill.

(You can make this with canned beets, but it won’t have the full flavor you get from fresh beets. You can also whisk in two large, whole eggs, rather than just yolks, but if you do, be sure your whisking arm is up for the challenge. Unless you’re dedicated to a vigorous whisking session, the result will be a funky looking crimson egg-drop soup!)

Christmas Fruit Salad: two ingredients, no fuss!

It seems like I go into so many things tush-first.

I didn’t set out to devise a Christmas dish yesterday, but it happened. My lunch included a fruit salad made of only two ingredients, kiwi and pomegranate, because that’s what I had on hand, courtesy of the most recent CSA delivery. It was not my intention to go all rah-rah-holiday with it, but after I tossed the two fruits into a bowl together, I realized that there was some serious Christmas potential in front of me.

If you want to make this salad, you need only these two ingredients, in whatever amount and proportion you desire. It really doesn’t need anything else. It’s an easy do-ahead and a fresh, welcome contrast to all those rich, wintery dishes.

This salad is for my cousin, Deb, who is a brilliant litigator, scholar and equestrienne, but who once cooked a holiday ham with the wrapper on. So she doesn’t take a hammer to the pomegranate and make her brother’s kitchen look like a scene in a third-rate horror flick come dinnertime on Christmas Day. So no one does this in anyone’s kitchen, here’s the fast, easy and tidy way to get the seeds out of a pomegranate.

If you’re not too well acquainted with kiwi, just remember that if it’s rock-solid, it will be sour. It needs a little pliability, a soft give when you lightly squeeze it. Peel it with a vegetable peeler instead of a knife, so you take away only the skin.

Here’s yesterday’s lunch fruit salad. I like this photo much better. The kiwis are a little soft and smoodgy, but they’re sweeter at this stage.

the prototype, the inspiration…

Pretty.

Yummy.

In-season.

It’s a keeper!

TURKEY REMAINS AND HOW TO INTER THEM WITH NUMEROUS SCARCE RECIPES

At this post holiday season, the refrigerators of the nation are overstuffed with large masses of turkey, the sight of which is calculated to give an adult an attack of dizziness. It seems, therefore, an appropriate time to give the owners the benefit of my experience as an old gourmet, in using this surplus material. Some of the recipes have been in my family for generations. (This usually occurs when rigor mortis sets in.) They were collected over years, from old cook books, yellowed diaries of the Pilgrim Fathers, mail order catalogues, golf-bags and trash cans. Not one but has been tried and proven—there are headstones all over America to testify to the fact.

Very well then. Here goes:

Turkey Cocktail: To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of angostura bitters. Shake.

Turkey à la Francais: Take a large ripe turkey, prepare as for basting and stuff with old watches and chains and monkey meat. Proceed as with cottage pudding.

Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the latter to the boiling point and then put in the refrigerator. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In preparing this recipe it is best to have a few ham sandwiches around in case things go wrong.

Turkey Mousse: Seed a large prone turkey, being careful to remove the bones, flesh, fins, gravy, etc. Blow up with a bicycle pump. Mount in becoming style and hang in the front hall.

Stolen Turkey: Walk quickly from the market, and, if accosted, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you hadn’t noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg—well, anyhow, beat it.

Turkey Hash: This is the delight of all connoisseurs of the holiday beast, but few understand how really to prepare it. Like a lobster, it must be plunged alive into boiling water, until it becomes bright red or purple or something, and then before the color fades, placed quickly in a washing machine and allowed to stew in its own gore as it is whirled around. Only then is it ready for hash. To hash, take a large sharp tool like a nail-file or, if none is handy, a bayonet will serve the purpose—and then get at it! Hash it well! Bind the remains with dental floss and serve.

Feathered Turkey: To prepare this, a turkey is necessary and a one pounder cannon to compel anyone to eat it. Broil the feathers and stuff with sage-brush, old clothes, almost anything you can dig up. Then sit down and simmer. The feathers are to be eaten like artichokes (and this is not to be confused with the old Roman custom of tickling the throat.)

Turkey Remnant: This is one of the most useful recipes for, though not, “chic,” it tells what to do with the turkey after the holiday, and how to extract the most value from it. Take the remnants, or, if they have been consumed, take the various plates on which the turkey or its parts have rested and stew them for two hours in milk of magnesia. Stuff with moth-balls.

Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: This recipe is for a party of four. Obtain a gallon of whiskey, and allow it to age for several hours. Then serve, allowing one quart for each guest. The next day the turkey should be added, little by little, constantly stirring and basting.

There I guess that’s enough turkey talk. I hope I’ll never see or hear of another until—well, until next year.

maple sugar candies fresh from Canada

While most people anticipate turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and all the rest when the year’s end rolls around, my favorite autumn food is those maple sugar candies shaped like maple leaves that you find in New England and Canada. Himself was in Toronto recently, so I asked him to bring me back some.

This candy is swoonworthy stuff. Just set a piece on your tongue and let it dissolve and coat your mouth in the rich, autumnal sweetness that comes only from real maple.

Aside from being really good, these simple little candies represent one of the first times I ever noticed–back in my pre-food writing days–how people react to the food of other places. When I was working as a tour guide conducting fall foliage tours in New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces, I’d buy boxes of maple candy and pass them around to the guests on my bus as I described how maple sap is harvested and made into syrup–and candy. It was a wonderfully personal and special way to help them experience the region we were visiting and gave them an extra reason to love those fiery yellow, orange and red landscapes. Plus, for anyone wanting to bring home the maple experience, it’s much easier to slip a box of candy into your carry-on than to wrap and pack bottles of syrup in your checked luggage.

Autumn leaves are stunning, and the air is crisp and refreshing to bask in, but it’s nice to be able to appeal to yet another sense, to share the flavor of a season and of a place. While most sap is collected in the spring, fall is usually when I find myself in New England and eastern Canada, so I connect maple candy with this season. One bite and I’m transported back to those brisk and beautiful golden lit leafscapes. That’s a good thing, too, since it was 94º in Los Angeles earlier this week.

If you can’t get your hands on maple candy right now, you can still have fun with a bottle of maple syrup and substitute it for honey or molasses. And by maple syrup I don’t mean Mrs. Butterworth, Aunt Jemima, Log Cabin or any of those other super-sweet products made of corn syrup and flavored to be reminiscent of maple. Real maple syrup is a little runnier, but you don’t need as much, because the flavor is rich and intense. A little goes a long way.

Drizzle some over vanilla ice cream. Stir it into your oatmeal instead of honey.

Or make a cocktail. This recipe comes from Bar None Drinks, which has a nice array of cocktail recipes that call for maple syrup. I have my eye on several, but right now I’m having a Woodstock.

Woodstock

This one appeals to me because it calls for gin, which I prefer over amber spirits. While I usually connect gin and lemon juice with summery drinks, including maple syrup and orange bitters give this cocktail a nice hint of fall.

Woodstock

1½ oz. gin

1 oz. freshly-squeezed lemon juice

1½ tsp. maple syrup

a dash or two of orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, shake and serve in a cocktail glass garnished with a twist of orange peel.