Carol

One of my favorite products, frozen, cooked, pureed squash, is no longer on grocery shelves. An integral ingredient in several favorite recipes for decades, as it was for my mother, somebody in the Birds Eye. frozen food land has chosen to remove it from its inventory. It turns out that I am not the only one bereft. The company’s website features scores of protests from disappointed customers. “Please bring it back!” they say. Is the company reading the posts? Will they return this beloved squash to its rightful place?

As if that decision hadn’t squashed my hopes for a holiday souffle, we recently discovered that one of our favorite cookies is no longer available (granted, we hadn’t purchased them in a while). On the new season of The Great British Baking Show, contestants were challenged to prepare Garibaldi biscuits. Under the name Golden Raisin Biscuits, the Sunshine Biscuit Company produced these delicious, raisin-filled delights all through my childhood and beyond. Alas, after take-over by Keebler and then Kellogg, the cookies are no longer.

Perhaps GBBS enthusiasts could join forces with other cookie lovers and start an online petition. After all, petitions saved the Clark Bar.

Just before COVID became a worldwide pandemic, I had offered to prepare a Moroccan dinner for a charity fundraiser. And last week, almost three years later, it finally happened — outdoors, on our patio —and it was amazing. That was because all the recipes I used came from native Moroccan cooks. The warm spices, the colors, and the textures all made the menu a sensual delight. All we needed was a palm tree to complete the picture since we certainly had the heat this summer.

But life is short, so let’s start with dessert. Of course, there had to be mint tea and Medjool dates, but among the prepared offerings were two classics of the Moroccan menu. Orange slices with orange blossom water and cinnamon s

ugar were super easy to make, and so refreshing. I was worried that the orange blossom water would be too perfume-y, but it just added a hint of North Africa nights.

And then there were the almond crescent cookies. Made with both all-purpose flour and almond flour, vanilla and almond extract, and all rolled in confectioner’s sugar, these little moon-shaped, melt-in-the-mouth goodies were undeniably among the most delicious things I had ever tasted.

Here is the cookie recipe. Please let me know how you like them!

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup almond flour (not almond meal!)

1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar

Water

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Beat the butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy.

Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix.

Add the flour and almond flour. Mix thoroughly.

Add enough water, a tablespoon at a time, so that you can form a ball with the dough.

Form the dough into crescent shapes:

Take generous tablespoons of the dough \ and roll it into a small ball, about an inch in diameter, and then shape into a crescent shape.

Place onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet.

Bake at 350°F for 20 minutes or until bottoms are a light golden brown.

While still hot, roll each cookie in confectioner’s sugar.

Cool completely, then roll each cookie again in the sugar.

Come spring and summer, our neighborhood is a showplace, with myriad multi-colored blossoms decorating front yards and back. Aside from the crocuses, tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths, our yards bloom with magnolia, azalea, rhododendron. And dogwood.

And of all the flowering trees, it turns out that the dogwood produces edible berries, a fact I only learned about ten years ago. As an avid wild food forager, I feel stymied every year that I can’t get enough berries to do anything constructive with that knowledge. Now I can’t tell if, up ’til now, birds have been eating the berries or if the trees just don’t feel like delivering every year. But for the first time ever, this year the dogwoods on my little street have produced a bumper crop of these bright red spiky orbs that resemble — sorry, folks — big coronaviruses.

So, this past bright and sunny Sunday morning, neighbor Dale (a really good sport) and I brought out our buckets and loaded up a couple of gallons from the tree in her front yard.

We did all this with the intention of making jam. I had found a recipe online and was thrilled to know I had all the ingredients on hand, including pectin. But the recipe called for seven — SEVEN — cups of sugar. I cut it down to four.

The jam turned out tasty, but way too sweet. And it was not jam. It was syrup.

So, back to the internet I went. Apparently, pectin needs lots of sugar. But SEVEN cups?? Not gonna happen.

Then I had a hunch.

I just happened to have some clear, unflavored gelatin in the house. So, as an experiment, I poured the runny stuff from one jar into a pot and added some gelatin powder, heated, and stirred until the gelatin dissolved. I then poured it into a clean jar and said a little prayer.

The next morning, it was actually jam.

It’s still far too sweet, but if we ever do get dogwood berries again, I’ll be all set — as will the jam.

Photo by Dale Valena