Some years ago, I had the great pleasure to spend a few weeks in New York City, Brooklyn to be exact. It’s ironic because my Dad is a Brooklyn boy, born and raised on Coney Island. I remember going there as a little girl and seeing the boardwalk with its loop-de-loop rides, eating Coney Island hot dogs and my home made pickles at my grandparents’ tenement home with its grapevines growing over the arbor that covered the sidewalk.

It had been several decades since I’d last visited. My grandfather died when I was in grade school and my grandmother moved to Florida. Here I was slated for a two week stint in the Big Apple piloting a train-the-trainer class for bank employees, in Brooklyn no less. My partner in crime was my colleague and friend Susan who loved to cook and eat good food. Lucky me! We poured through guide books and plotted our strategy to check out as many restaurants as we could.

Brooklyn was, and still is, a fascinating cultural melting pot. Jews, blacks, Italians, Russians and many diverse ethnic groups call this borough home. What this also means is that you can find amazing food on just about every corner.

While Susan and I enjoyed our gourmand scouting adventures in Manhattan as we dined our way from mid-town to the Village, the stand-our meal for us was dinner at Al Di La in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we went back again.

That was about six years ago and I still remember the home made ravioli filled with winter squash and softly coated with brown butter sage sauce, the beet salad so juicy and fresh…and the honey ice cream we enjoyed for dessert, a kiss of honey, light and airy, creamy goodness filling your mouth. I dreamt about that ice cream. It was good enough to bathe in.

So when I got an email a few years later from another friend, Alice, who had moved from Seattle and was ironically now living in Brooklyn, with a link to a cooking blog and a post about ‘Honey Ice Cream’,” I practically fell over my own footsteps as I flew across the kitchen to break out my ice cream machine. “I thought about you when I saw this,” she wrote. Oh dear friend, how well you know me!

This particular ice cream recipe is quite simple: four ingredients; no eggs. No heating and then reheating. I’ve made this recipe a few times, trying out different honeys: Tupelo from Georgia, Knotweed from Seattle (poor Big Papa as our neighbor’s invasive Knotweed was the bane of his existence for the first couple years we were together) and Mille Fleur honey. I was always a bit reluctant to follow the recipe’s suggestion to “use an aromatic honey like chestnut,” thinking it might be overpowering.

Then, last September, Big Papa and I made a three-day stop in Paris on our way to Armenia. I picked up a jar of French chestnut honey or, as they call it, “Meil de Chataignier.” When we were there, chestnut trees were dropping their fruit and carts with roasted chestnuts dotted the city. The French spread this strong amber-colored honey over toast or drizzle it over figs and a ripe blue cheese.

Mine sat in our cupboard for nearly a year, until this past weekend, when I decided it was time to give the honey ice cream recipe another whirl. I was looking for a sweet treat to pair with four Greengage plums – the only plums on our tree this year that Twitchy (our pain in the neck resident squirrel) left for us to eat. I chopped them up and mixed in a teaspoon of fresh French thyme from the garden, a squeeze of lemon and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Then I made the ice cream.

Wow! The flavors were mysterious and complex. Big Papa tasted “smoke” and I picked up “malt” and “caramel.” This is definitely not milquetoast honey. It’s all at once assertive and sublime. Big Papa and I liked it so much we both went back for seconds!

“”That buzzing-noise means something. If there’s a buzzing noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a bee….
And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey…..
And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it. So he began to climb the tree.”

~Winnie the Pooh

Maison du Miel’s Heather Honey Ice Cream Recipe (borrowed from 101 Cookbooks)

• 2 plump, moist vanilla beans


• 2 cups heavy cream


• 1 cup whole milk


• 1/2 cup aromatic honey (chestnut, heather or eucalyptus)

Flatten the vanilla beans and cut them in half lengthwise. With a small spoon, scrape out the seeds. Place the seeds and pods in a large saucepan. Add the cream, milk, and honey. Stir to dissolve the honey. Heat over moderate heat, stirring from time to time, just until tiny bubbles form around the edges of the pan, 3 to 4 minutes.

Flatten the vanilla beans and cut them in half lengthwise. With a small spoon, scrape out the seeds. Place the seeds and pods in a large saucepan. Add the cream, milk, and honey. Stir to dissolve the honey. Heat over moderate heat, stirring from time to time, just until tiny bubbles form around the edges of the pan, 3 to 4 minutes.

Remove from the heat and let steep, covered, for 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Remove the vanilla pods, and stir the mixture again to blend. Transfer it to an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions.
From The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells (Harper Collins, 2001)

Want more sweetness? Check out Wanderfood Wednesday!

“One tablespoon, taken at bedtime,” said Mrs. Rabbit pouring a Peter a bit of chamomile tea. Peter rabbit was feeling rather poorly after dining on too much lettuce, French beans and radishes in Mr. McGregor’s garden.

Mrs. Rabbit was one smart mama bunny. She knew her medicinal herbs. Chamomile has been used for thousands of years for numerous ailments, including sleep disorders, anxiety, digestion and intestinal conditions, skin infections and inflammation (such as eczema), wound healing, infantile colic, teething pains, and diaper rash. Chamomile is an uber-herb, a veritable one-stop cure all. It’s even the national flower of Russia!

In the U.S., chamomile is best known as an ingredient in herbal tea preparations advertised for mild sedating effects.  There are two plants known as chamomile. One is the more popular German chamomile (Matricaria recutita), while the other is called the Roman, or English, chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile). Although they belong to different species, they are used to treat similar conditions. I know I’m not the only one who has sipped on chamomile tea hoping I’d soon feel sleepy or at least less stressed.

Chamomile in our herb garden is plentiful. Their cheery, little yellow faces smile at me, surrounded by a halo of white petals. It’s tempting to pluck them and weave a daisy chain to adorn my neck or sit atop my head. Take me back to my hippie days, bare feet on the grass and ankle-length “granny dresses.”

But this summer I’ve got other plans for our miniature daisies (Chamomile is a member of the daisy family) because I recently found a recipe for Chamomile Cordial. Cordials are sweetened syrups infused with herbs, spices or plants. They are a snap to make (like the lavender syrup I blogged about a few weeks back) and the possibilities of herbs that can be infused is endless.

Fresh (or dried) German chamomile flower heads are used. Chamomile is easy to grow and it makes a fun addition to an herb bed or edging along a walkway. Or, it’s readily purchased at most any grocery store.

For our first round of tasting, we sampled our Chamomile Cordial sans booze with ‘Lavender DRY Soda’ as a spritzy mixer. It was lovely and lightly herby, a drink that was both refreshing and peaceful on the palate.

The next time we enjoyed our flowery cordial, we pulled out the big guns and floated cognac on top as the recipe below instructs. Big Papa and I sat outside on our garden bench enjoying a warm summer’s night. Stress melted away. I felt relaxed, slightly sleepy even. Hmmm…could it be the chamomile or was that the cognac talking?

How the Doctor’s brow should smile, Crown’d with wreaths of camomile.

~Michael Eyquen de Montaigne

Chamomile Cordial

Note: Chamomile is also part of the Asteraceae plant family, which includes ragweed and chrysanthemum, so people with allergies may react when they use chamomile either internally or topically.

Makes about 2 cups/30 minutes start to finish

• 2 tablespoons dried chamomile flowers (or 1 tablespoon fresh chamomile flower heads)


• 2 cups boiled water


• ¼ cup honey

Add chamomile flowers to a muslin steeping bag or fine mesh tea strainer Chamomile seeds are quite small and thin so be sure to use fine mesh so they don’t escape and float in your syrup. Steep in boiled water until liquid is stained yellow and perfumed, about 20 minutes. Press any reserved liquid out from the muslin bag and discard the solids. Add the honey and stir until dissolved. Keep in the refrigerator until cool.

Once cooled completely, add crushed ice to a glass. Pour in about ½ cup of the chamomile cordial and top with equal amounts seltzer water. Garnish with a thin slice of cucumber to fancy it up. If you like, add a float of cognac and serve immediately.

Store cordial in a clean jar or bottle, covered in the fridge where it will last for several weeks.

~recipe by Amy Pennington in Edible Seattle, July/August 2010

Want to sip on some more? Check out Wanderfood Wednesday!

This fall marks twenty-five years of Seattle living for Big Papa and I. I moved here after a three-year stint in the San Francisco Bay area, hitting the dusty trail to head north for a Ph.D. program at the University of Washington. Big Papa, a few years younger than me, was heading across country, from Pittsburgh also to attend the University of Washington, though as an undergraduate.

It still amazes me that the studio apartment I lived in, on the corner of University Parkway and Brooklyn Avenue was literally across the street from the dorm where Big Papa resided. It is certainly possible we passed each other on the street as we hoofed it over to campus. Oh the irony.

Of course, it took us twenty years cavorting around the same streets to find each other. At that time, Big Papa had bought the Urban Cabin in central Seattle and, wouldn’t you know it, my apartment happened to be barely a mile down the road.

That we both hailed from the east coast, me from central New York State and Big Papa from western Pennsylvania just one state to the south and both from small towns just outside former “rust belt” cities (me: Syracuse; Big Papa: Pittsburgh) is another small world coincidence of our history and long journey which finally landed us in the in the same city, in the same house and married to each other.

On a clear day, when I leave our house, I can see mountains to the west and mountains to the east. Mountains! For a girl raised in low rolling hills and expansive meadows dotted with dairy farms, the landscape here is as dramatic as the 3,000 miles I traveled to start my life as an independent adult.

Like a salmon who returns to the stream where it was born, there will always be a bit of the east coast nestled solidly in my soul. In the fall, when the maple trees on our street turn brilliant hues of red, my mind always wanders to memories of upstate New York hillsides covered in color. I do miss the abundance of old 18th century homes, painted white with black shutters and red doors, gentle pastoral views, thunderstorms, small towns steeped in history and the great deals that could be found in some out of the way antique store in the tiny hamlets and villages that are so common where I grew up.

But after twenty-five years, the smell of salt air wafting up from Puget Sound, the looming presence of Mt. Rainier, the mountain-filled vistas, the salmon and the orcas call my name too, and I find it hard to imagine not living here. A part of who I am will always be from where I grew up, and it will rest side-by-side with the part of me that evolved here. Though I may not travel back and forth between two coasts, my heart is decidedly bi-coastal.

A few evenings ago, Big Papa and I sat on our bench in the garden, talking about all that has transpired for each of us in the quarter century we’ve called the Pacific Northwest ‘home.’ For both of us, our time here now exceeds the amount of time we each lived in our birth state.

We reflected on decisions made, roads taken and roads we each could have taken, but didn’t. We shared feelings of fear and regret, accomplishment and pride as we charted our milestones from the past two and a half decades. The two of us have experienced many changes, taken leaps of faith, suffered disappointments and made new discoveries about ourselves.

We talked and talked, until all the light left the sky and a few stars sparkled in darkness. Then we picked ourselves up and, with a kiss, walked up the stairs and into our home.  Home sweet home, Seattle.