Food Friday is on the road this weekend, so you Gentle Readers will have to put up with a re-run of my favorite Easter lemon cheesecake. Mr. Sanders and I are heading to a family Easter gathering in Florida, and Luke the wonder dog is off for a much deserved vacay of his own with his dog pals at the spa. Please indulge me and enjoy our making our favorite Easter dessert. Play nicely at your Easter egg hunts, and let the little ones find the eggs. You can sip on a Bloody Mary or two.

At Easter I like to haul out my dear friend’s lemon cheesecake recipe, and reminisce, ruefully, about the year I decorated one using nasturtiums plucked fresh from the nascent garden, which unfortunately sheltered a couple of frisky spiders. Easter was late that year and tensions were already high at the table, because a guest had taken it upon herself to bring her version of dessert – a 1950s (or perhaps it was a British World War II lesson in ersatz ingredients recipe) involving saltines, sugar-free lime Jell-O, and a tub of Lite Cool Whip. The children were divided on which was more terrifying: ingesting spiders, or many petro chemicals?

I am also loath to remember the year we hosted an Easter egg hunt, and it was so hot that the chocolate bunnies melted, the many children squabbled, and the adults couldn’t drink enough Bloody Marys. The celery and asparagus were limp, the ham was hot, and the sugar in all those Peeps brought out the criminal potential in even the most decorous of little girls. There was no Miss Manners solution to that pickle.

Since our children did not like hard-boiled eggs, I am happy to say that we were never a family that hid real eggs for them to discover. Because then we would have been the family whose dog discovered real nuclear waste hidden behind a bookcase or deep down in the sofa a few weeks later. We mostly stuck to jelly beans and the odd Sacajawea gold dollar in our plastic Easter eggs. It was a truly a treat when I stepped on a pink plastic egg shell in the front garden one year when I was hanging Christmas lights on the bushes. There weren’t any jelly beans left, thank goodness, but there was a nice sugar-crusty gold dollar nestled inside it. Good things come to those who wait.

We won’t be hiding any eggs (real or man-made) this year. Instead we will have a nice decorous finger food brunch, with ham biscuits, asparagus, celery, carrots, tiny pea pods, Prosecco (of course) and a couple of slices of lemon cheesecake, sans the spiders, sans the lime Jell-O and Cool Whip. And we will feel sadly bereft because there will be no jelly beans, no melting chocolate and no childish fisticuffs.

Chris’s Cheesecake Deluxe
Serves 12

Crust:
1 cup sifted flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Filling:
2 1/2 pounds cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400°F
Crust: combine flour, sugar and lemon rind. Cut in butter until crumbly. Add yolk and vanilla. Mix. Pat 1/3 of the dough over the bottom of a 9″ spring form pan, with the sides removed. Bake for 6 minutes or until golden. Cool. Butter the sides of the pan and attach to the bottom.

Pat remaining dough around the sides to 2″ high.
 Increase the oven temp to 475°F. Beat the cream cheese until it is fluffy. Add vanilla and lemon rind. Combine the sugar, flour and salt. Gradually blend into the cream cheese. Beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time, and then the cream. Beat well. Pour into the pan. Bake 8-10 minutes.

Reduce oven heat to 200° F. Bake for 1 1/2 hours or until set. Turn off the heat. Allow the cake to remain in the oven with the door ajar for 30 minutes. Cool the cake on a rack, and then pop into the fridge to chill. This is the best Easter dessert ever. This recipe makes a HUGE cheesecake! You will be eating it for a week. At least.

Perfect Bloody Marys

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

It is quite definitely spring. Our trees are leafing out, the dogwood is starting to flower, and tulips are bouncing in the cool April breeze. Everything is looking green and tender – although I was worried about frost overnight because I have planted four stout young tomato plants in the raised garden bed.Our summer tomato sandwiches depend on spring weather. Luke the wonder dog has a spring in his creaky step these mornings – the bushes along our walking route smell extra delicious this spring. Everything is fresh and new, ripe for discovery. We rescued a tiny green turtle the other day, doing a good deed as we got in our daily steps.

Mr. Sanders has been doing yeoman’s work out back – weeding the pachysandra bed, trimming the hedges, fertilizing the lawn – any excuse to be outside in the fresh air. I wander through and pluck violets before he reaches them. I have been replanting the window boxes with hot pink geraniums, vivid clusters of cobalt lobelia and white clouds of sweet alyssum. I’ve stuffed draperies of hot pink petunias in the planters on the front porch. And sadly, I have picked the last of this season’s daffodils.

We sat down around seven last night for dinner, just as the moon was rising and the sun was setting. The last of the daffodils were stuffed in a jam jar on the table. We didn’t need candles, but still we lighted them, because it is spring, and we could gaze out at the newly weeded pachysandra bed, which was bathed in golden light. I hope someone was enjoying a beauteous sunset, even though we could only see streaks of pink over the neighbor’s roof. The robins strutted across the back lawn, grubbing happily.

And what about the food? Who wants to stand over a stove when the garden beckons? It’s time to bring some springtime to our dinners (also very handy for leftovers for breakfast and lunch). Bring on the quiches.

This is seasonal, and oh, so lovely: Sweet Pea and Ham Quiche

You can trust Martha: Martha’s Quiche

Quiche Lorraine, or however you choose to fill yours…

Preheat oven to 375°F
Ingredients for 1 quiche – serves 4
1 baked pie shell (store-bought is fine and dandy)
1 cup half and half
3 eggs
6 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
One onion, chopped
1 cup grated Gruyère or Swiss cheese, more if you like your quiche stretchy and cheesy
Salt and pepper
1 pinch fresh, ground nutmeg

Brown the chopped onion in a little of the bacon fat that you have reserved. Or butter or olive oil, remember to be loose and enjoy the baking event! Add the onion and the bacon to the pie shell. Scatter the grated cheese with abandon and artistry. Beat the eggs, cream, salt and pepper and the nutmeg until your arm is tired. Pour the mixture into the pie shell. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the top looks pleasingly golden brown. (I like to bake quiches on a baking sheet, because I have a tendency to spill.)
When you re-heat the quiches, bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes.

Other ingredients to consider adding to the mix: fresh thyme, ham, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, goat cheese, leeks, sausage, salmon, shrimp or good Maryland crab! Also consider this dish as a breakfast possibility.

Quiche has been much maligned for the wimp factor and for impugning American manhood. Pshaw. Quiche is quick, easy, delicious and is a four seasons kind of food. Quiche is as welcome as the New Year’s Day hangover breakfast pick-me-up, as it is at a warm summer evening’s supper, with a salad, and a little cheap white wine. It will go in someone’s lunchbox, and is a reassuring friend to find sitting in the fridge at 3:00 in the morning, when you are driven from bed with tariff anxieties. Quiche.

Quiche Lorraine has long been a WASPy luncheon speciality, mostly because those WASPs are looking for something delicious and easy to prepare. Who doesn’t love bacon, cheese, and cream? I do apologize, vegans, but that heady combo is a religion unto itself. There are vegan alternatives…
Vegan Quiche

The quiche recipe I followed called for a mere 4 pieces of bacon. I am sorry, but that is not enough bacon. I used 8, crunchy, aromatic slices, which I had baked on a cookie sheet at 425° F for 10 minutes. I also used half and half, and not full-on heavy cream, just because I’d like to make it to 2026 without a major cardiac incident befalling any of us. I also used cubes of cheese from a block of grocery store brand Swiss. The way prices are soaring, Gruyére and Jarlsberg have become a just too expensive. Tariffs. And, because no one will ever notice, I used a store-bought pie shell. I know my limitations, and I just can’t bake an attractive pie crust. They always look like the bad pots I threw during my pitiful college year in ceramics; sad, lopsided, mangled pieces. Here is a gift recipe from the New York Times:

Here is a good compendium of quiches, which will encourage you to explore the inner recesses of your fridge, and use up the trace amounts of spinach, broccoli, taco meat, asparagus, feta cheese and bits of potato lurking there: Leftovers for Quiche And key to the quiche’s attraction is its ability to be reheated. Please, do not use the microwave! Reheating Quiche

Go outside and roll on the grass, like Luke the wonder dog. Spring has sprung, the grass is riz.

“The first day of spring is one thing and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”
― Henry Van Dyke

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Hello, spring! The snow has melted, the flowers are blooming and the sun is rising earlier every morning. Birds are singing show tunes. Here we have been watching clouds of pine pollen dredging every surface with yellow dust. It’s almost April and we are springing with joy for asparagus!
Asparagus tart

Humans have been gobbling up asparagus for ages. 20,000 year-old wild asparagus seeds have been found at archeological digs in Egypt. There is an image of asparagus in an Egyptian frieze that was painted before 3000 BC. Queen Nefertiti decreed asparagus to be the food of the Gods. In the first century AD Emperor Augustus quipped, “Velocius quam asparagi conquantur,” which every clever Latin wag knows means, “As quick as cooking asparagus”. A recipe for cooking asparagus even appears in the oldest known cookbook: Apicius’s Third-century AD De re coquinaria, Book III.

Asparagus, (or asparagi) named by the Romans, means “the first sprig or sprout of every plant, especially when it be tender”. There are four popular types consumed here in the twenty-first century: green, white, purple and wild. Green is what we usually find at the grocery store or farm stand. The new asparagus crops will be coming to market soon.

But I am wasting time inside here at the computer. It is spring, and time to enjoy the great outdoors and the bounty of asparagus that is rolling our way. Carpe asparagi! Seize your lively and persistent asparagus by the lapels, and cook it with abandon! I have nattered on before about our favorite way, which is to roast it on a cookie sheet under the broiler, with a scattering of salt, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. We also like to roll it up in aluminum foil and toss it on the grill for a few minutes. You can celebrate Friday Night Pizza and add a handful to the pizza just as it goes in the oven. Or stick a few tender shoots on a piece of baguette with a schmeer of goat cheese. Don’t waste a minute, or a morsel. (Mr. Sanders has just acquired an air fryer, and has been blasting batches of broccoli, so I imagine he will be experimenting with asparagus soon enough. Updates to follow…)

Penne and Asparagus
1 pound penne or other short pasta
1 pound slender asparagus spears, trimmed, cut into one-inch pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon melted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
1 5-ounce log soft fresh goat cheese

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Arrange asparagus spears in a single layer on a baking
sheet. Combine olive oil and butter and pour over asparagus. Season liberally with salt and
pepper and toss to combine. Roast, tossing as needed, for 15 minutes or until spears are
browned and tender.
2. Meanwhile, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until al dente, stirring
occasionally.
3. While pasta is cooking, in a large bowl, combine lemon peel and goat cheese. Stir until
smooth.
4. Drain pasta, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid. Add hot pasta, asparagus, and 1/4 cup
reserved cooking liquid to bowl with cheese mixture. Toss to coat, adding more reserved
liquid as needed to make the sauce creamy. Season pasta to taste with salt and pepper.
4 minutes (cooking time, add some more for prep)
Asparagus

I still don’t like vegetables that have been stewed beyond recognition. And I resist kale on principal. Aren’t we lucky there are so many ways to enjoy asparagus? Lightly roasted, gently steamed, broiled, wrapped with bacon, folded into pasta, trembling on the edge of ancestral china, lightly dusted with grated egg yolks, rolled in sesame seeds, on top of pizza, in a quiche …
This might be too messy to eat with your fingers, but it is worth a try: Asparagus, Goat Cheese and Tarragon Tart I love the fact that there is no shame in using a store-bought puff pastry – life is short and pastry can be tricky.

Mass quantities of farm-fresh spring fruits and vegetables are ready for you to gobble up: The farmers’ market will be a delight! BTW – The St. Michaels Farmers Market opens for the season April 12: SMFM

Enjoy springtime!

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
—Margaret Atwood

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

“Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit!” They say that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, so you had best fortify yourself for the long, festive day ahead, starting early, with a full Irish breakfast. You will need to prepare yourself for the onslaught of green beer, corned beef and cabbage, chocolate Guinness cake and Irish coffee, not to mention marching for miles in the nearest St. Patrick’s Day parade. There will be lots to do and see, and you can’t let your energy flag.

Breakfast is too early in the day for a celebratory pint of Guinness, I must emphasize, without scolding. We are not in college. This is not Key West. There are rules. But otherwise you can revel in a hearty full Irish fry up: sausages and bacon, eggs, fried soda bread, good Irish butter, tomatoes, mushrooms, and maybe throw in some beans. With tea, lots of tea. To the unsuspecting, this looks very similar to a full English breakfast. Try to keep your countries and traditions straight.

Here is a guide Traditional Irish Breakfast

Epicurious also has options about a proper Irish fry up

Read More

I still recoil with horror at the notion of corned beef. The memory of cooked cabbage odor haunts me all these years since I last smelled it, wafting up the stairway from my mother’s kitchen to my lair at the back of the house. I will NEVER cook a cabbage. As always, we will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with chocolate and Guinness, as God intended.

While other families are preparing corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day, we will be digging through our cookbooks for another chocolate stout cake recipe. We will honor the blessed saint, the foe of snakes, in our own sweet way: with chocolate stout cupcakes. I love a good cupcake – perfectly proportioned with an ideal ratio of icing to cake. Food52’s Chocolate Stout Cupcakes I still have bottles of Guinness in the pantry from last year’s celebrations – I think I might have to buy some fresh, just to be sure that everything is perfect.

If you’d rather have cake, be my guest. Please, just save us a couple of slices. 
Chocolate Stout Cake

Recently I chatted with one of our neighbors when I was out for a morning walk with Luke the wonder dog. This fellow always carries a mug and I have assumed he was taking his coffee for his early morning strolls. (I cannot walk the dog, listen to Slate Gabfest podcasts AND carry a Diet Coke and a dog poop bag in the mornings. I have a limited skill set, I’m afraid.)

Luke wanted to get acquainted. While going through all of the usual dog rituals of sniffing and leash dancing, I found out that the neighbor’s dog is named “Guinness.” I asked if there was a good story about the dog’s name. Maybe he had a secret Lulu Guinness handbag collection, or was noted in the Book of World Records for some perilous feat? Sadly, no. His dog was named after the Irish stout. He is a very dark, very tiny, yapper of a dog. Perhaps he has his own fantasies of a more picturesque neighborhood, one where he is strolled along the cobbles down to the pub late on a golden summer afternoon, to lift a pint with his human. A nice little daydream that Guinness entertains, instead of resigning himself the prosaic suburban reality of the early morning stroll down our street, only to endure the indignity of Luke getting sniffy and overly familiar. And now I wonder what our neighbor is really drinking…

St. Patrick’s Day is Monday. “Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit!” Luke is looking forward to another sidewalk encounter with our neighbor’s dog. We can stage an exclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade through the neighborhood. We’ll even bring a mug of Guinness. Shhh.

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy,
which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
—William Butler Yeats

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

It’s another cold and bleak midwinter day and I am holed up wearing a turtleneck, a sturdy L.L. Bean sweater, wool socks, and lined legging – and I am still cold. I think a lesson to be learned is that one should not visit Florida in February, because re-entry to the real world is rude indeed.

Mr. Sanders and I drove to Jacksonville Beach, Florida for a few days of R&R with our daughter, and her family of whirling dervishes over the long Valentine’s Day weekend. The weather wasn’t approved by the Florida tourism board – it was cool and breezy – so we never unpacked shorts, or bathing suits. But it was warmer than it is here, and there were sunrises and sunsets like nothing we get to see normally. There were congregations of white cattle egrets stalking through drainage ditches, and squadrons of pelicans flying in precision formations along the waterline. There were crowds of sandy, barefooted beachgoers waiting in lines for healthy green smoothies and açaí bowls for breakfast. Later we sat in folding chairs on the sidelines of a flag football game, shivering in a light drizzle, watching parents buzzing after their children. The Floridian version of winter clothing entails hoodies, and maybe socks. No one is holed up at home wearing L.L. Bean, or wool.

The dervishes, boys aged 4 and 10, needed to be re-fueled constantly, like sharks on patrol: pancakes, strawberries, carrots, pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, apples, blueberries, mac and cheese, smoothies, organic chickpea flour cheese snacks, organic seaweed snacks, crackers, celery, avocado, lemonade, Triscuits, cookies, bananas, and more grilled cheese. We thought about grilled cheese a lot.

Why does grilled cheese belong to the young? It is just as tasty now as when I walked home for lunch in elementary school, when my mother would fry up an American cheese-based sandwich in the smallest Revere Ware frying pan and crank open a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. Ah, those childhood hot lunches! I did the same for my children, except I used store brand cheese product, whereas my mother bought sliced American cheese by the pound from Benny’s Butcher Shop around the corner on Belltown Road. Benny would stand behind the marble counter, rhythmically slapping a square of waxy paper between each piece of cheese as he sliced it, before wrapping it all in crackling white butcher’s paper, and tying the bundle with a neat red and white string bow.

Usually, for wintery Sunday lunches, Mr. Sanders will make his grilled cheese with Swiss cheese, and I still prefer the oozy store brand. Last night we needed warmth, and ventured into adult territory. We upped our grilled cheese game: posh bread, upscale cheese, and opulent add-ons.

I used to think that adding bacon to a grilled cheese sandwich was innovative and fancy. Sometimes including a slice of tomato was an interesting variation. But you can easily expand your repertoire just by rethinking the bread you use. This will elevate your grilled cheese sandwich experience: artisanal sourdough bread. Whoa. But you can also experiment with ciabatta, brioche, Challah bread, Kaiser rolls, or baguettes. Don’t take my word for it: Escoffier Leave the Pepperidge Farm white bread behind. Visit your local artisanal bakery and find something fresh and warm and delicious. Maybe add some fresh pastries to your order for breakfast tomorrow, too. Yumsters.

Then wander through a deli and pick up some Gruyère cheese, and some good cheddar, and invest in a nice wedge of Parmesan cheese. Wander around some more and wonder at the clever packaging and cute containers for sun-dried tomatoes, capers, pesto sauce, pickled jalapeños, chutney, sriracha, and gherkin pickles. Grab some sweet onions, basil, and bacon. Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich includes Romano and Asiago cheese, kimchi, butter, country bread, salt, and olive oil.

The Tasting Table has some great suggestions, too: Tasting Table

Punchfork suggests: Opulent Grilled Cheese

And this is very luxe indeed, with Brie, Gorgonzola, figs and prosciutto: Sugar Love Spices

Chins up! We are almost through February. The daffodils are starting to poke their heads up. I have some crocuses already blooming in the back yard, so spring is on its way. Pull on your hoodie and your wool socks and make a nice hot lunch. You’ll feel better for it. Winter’s not over yet.

“In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone…”
Song by Christina Rossetti and Gustav Holst

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

It’s Friday, the fourteenth of February, and you are reading this at your desk after a nice turkey sandwich, smugly looking forward to the weekend stretching before you. I hope you have done a little planning. It is Valentine’s Day. It is Friday. Fridays require a little flair, a touch of panache, a little extra effort, particularly if you want to enjoy the weekend. I suggest chocolate.

Homemade, store-bought, ordered from the dessert cart, frozen Sara Lee poundcake topped with ice-cream and chocolate sauce, Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, Hershey’s Kisses from the convenience store, a Whitman’s Sampler (for irony) snatched up at grocery store. These are realistic gestures of love and affection and true regard. If you are considering carnations garnered at the gas station – don’t bother. They do not sing of love and inspiration – they signal the impending rueful tales of woe. And don’t go for the over-priced roses that were flown in from gigantic farms in Latin America – they will be dead in under a week. You could use that money to invest in a sizable bower of daffodils. Plan ahead before you head home this afternoon.

Mr. Sanders and I have rarely spent Valentine’s Day together – it might be a major contributing factor to the longevity of our marriage. Most years he has had to attend an annual boat show in sunnier climes, leaving me to my own devices. Though there was the year when he was home, forgot about Valentine’s Day sentiment, and stopped at the grocery store on his way home and snatched up one of the last, limp, cellophane-wrapped bouquets of carnations in the place. You know the ones – already sitting in a shopping cart near the check out lane – not even a full dozen. He arrived home to find happy, scrubbed pajama-clad children, a home-cooked meal, flourless chocolate cake, and a nicely drawn Valentine. It was memorable.

This past Sunday afternoon I assuaged my conscience, and baked a batch of Dorie Greenspan’s Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies for Mr. Sanders’s early Valentine. I am paying the Valentine’s Day love forward. This is the best recipe I have found for chocolate chip cookies. I love it because the oatmeal gives it the appearance of health food and I can freeze more than half of the dough, which feels like money in the bank, knowing there is cookie material waiting for any possible emergency; better than money spent on roses that have an embarrassing carbon footprint.

Dorie Greenspan’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

I use my electronic kitchen scale for this recipe – Dorie calls for 340 grams of semisweet chocolate. I followed the recipe on the back of the Nestlé bag for years, obviously, and just dumped a bag of chocolate chips into the dough. Now I use Ghiradelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate because I am a grownup who prepares for sentimental gestures, but a bag of Ghiradelli weighs only 283 grams. It is a good thing I finally checked. I have been cheating Mr. Sanders and his children for years! Now I weigh out the prescribed amount of chocolate chips. Purists would say that I shouldn’t be using waxy chocolate chips, but should instead be chopping the chocolate – but there are limits to my devotion. But you go ahead and eyeball the amount of chocolate you want to include in your annual show of love. I’m aiming for a little overkill. I also sprinkle a smidge of Maldon salt over the cookies, so they are not cloyingly sweet. This is real life, after all.

Mr. Sanders is home this year. The happy children are off on their own, and it is just us and Luke the wonder dog here tonight. We are going to make pizza, watch No Offence on Britbox, and read for a while before bed. Life is good.

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”
― Alfred Tennyson

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.