Banana and peanut butter just must be one of the great food romances. But then stir in a little chocolate? Oh heaven. The recipe for these whole-wheat muffins was recommended by my mother-daughter friends, Margie and Kirsten from Maryland – and here in Missouri, they sure bring smiles to two-year old twins and their best-ever-big-brother too. The joke is, “If ever there’s a hurricane named Jackson or Jerome, take cover. NOW.” That’s because the havoc wreaked by two-year old twins is matched only by – well, moms, YOU know how much disorder is created by one toddler, let alone two, both so curious about the world flowering before their eyes, so energized by the world beneath their swift-scissor legs. It’s quite amazing for me, never a mother, to watch these little tykes grow up, moving from too-many scary weeks in the NICU to can’t-hold-‘em-down toddlers. The older one is cerebral and intense. He is wiry and eats with fervor. The younger one – born just minutes later but on the next d…

A simple recipe for cornmeal pancakes with a blueberry compote and my favorite “syrup” with the combination of cornmeal and blueberries, sour cream. Will Shrove Tuesday's supper be pancakes at your house, too? To every thing (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven.
- From Ecclesiastes,
music by Pete Seeger.
It was Judy Collins who introduced me to the seasons. Over and over, I played that 45 record. Winter-spring-summer-fall, all you have to do is call. (Oh wait. That’s Carole King.) For as long as I can remember, if it's the Tuesday before Lent, the supper menu is the same, year after year. Making pancakes on Shrove Tuesday is an old Christian tradition, a last gluttonous meal before the self-denial of Lent. It fits a modern-day sensibility, even if our lives are now so rich that the egg and butter and flour and sugar in pancakes are no long worthy of Lenten fasting. Really, when was the last time you heard, "I'…