Elena Pons Craig

Making soup is such a perfect way to slow down and enjoy adding a little witchcraft to your everyday cooking. Ingredients go into the pot one way, alone and maybe simple, and come out changed, bonded to others, and often elevated. The options are endless, the basics are simple, and the time is fluid. Many come together quickly but the real magic is when you let them simmer. You’ll enjoy the benefits of passive cooking time, the knowledge that dinner (never ending house guest that they are) is...

A LITTLE BACKGROUND Before I get to the epic tale, with its ups and downs, warnings, and eventually happy ending, let me give you a little background. At heart I have always loved rules: processes, catch phrases, figuring out who, what, and why they were made, and of course sometimes whether or not I thought they applied to me! So many, many, many, many, more than 30 years ago when I met my soon-to-be military husband, BOOM! I was introduced to a ton of new rules, processes, acronyms, and...

First of all, you can do hard things and second, it’s not that hard! Both things can be true. When I talk to people about cooking and baking, the SKILL it takes to do something often gets confused with the TIME it takes to do something. Most things we need for holiday baking don’t take special skills; they just take some patience and setting aside the the time. So let’s treat pie and pie crust like a yoga class, a walk in the woods, or a meditation session. Set aside the time, commit to it,...