Shaina Olmanson

A recipe for galete – slightly sweet, lemon- and cardamom-spiced waffle cookies topped with a sweet-tart lemon glaze. All you need is a bowl, a few ingredients, and a waffle iron. “Do you like waffles?” “Yeah we like waffles!” So goes the chanting from the kitchen the minute the waffle iron appears. There are cheers. There are wide eyes. There are squeals of delight. Now imagine when you’ve offered them up as a cookie snack.

A recipe for creamy, indulgent roasted blueberry cheesecake ice cream both churn and no-churn. Plus, a bonus recipe for graham cracker waffle cones because, why not? This recipe is a desire to find that piece of myself lost to childhood. It’s a search for the blueberry cheesecake ice cream I remember eating from the canteen at camp. Overly indulgent and still refreshing, the creaminess offset by pungent blueberries.

A northerner’s take on a recipe for pimento cheese, a southern staple, complete with pickled green garlic, pickled radishes, and pickled rhubarb. I’m watching the dappled sunlight come through the branches of our neighbors’ trees as I stand at the kitchen window scrubbing dried bits of this and that from the inside of the sink. Lene sits at the back patio. She’s painted a set of rocks to look like dragons and baby chicks—two things she’s decidedly “in” to lately.