Tomorrow is the winter solstice and shortest day of the year. I hope you are all bundled up and ready for the holidays. We left Luke the wonder dog home with another Kong-ful of peanut butter as we took the last packages off to the post office on Wednesday, mailing our love tokens of books, and socks, and Christmas cookies. We stood in the conga line of similarly festive folks, patiently waiting, and smiling, watching the clock tick. It’s almost time to settle in for a long winter’s retreat to the living room. We have books, and movies, and popcorn, and some of the remaining homemade Christmas cookies. There is a turkey thawing in the fridge, potatoes in the larder, and the ingredients for a family fave of flourless chocolate cake. Cue the snow, please.

I like to have a little pot of something boiling away on the stovetop during the Christmas holidays. It fills the house with cozy, childhood aromas. Wafting clouds of orange, cloves, and cinnamon linger in corners, reminding me of homey scenes from Little Women, or the Little House books. Remember the year that Laura and Mary found oranges in their stockings? The snow was deep out there in the vast, lonely Dakota Territory, but Santa still located the deserving Ingalls girls. What a wonderful Christmas that was.

Christmas movies and old television specials easily toy with our vulnerable, sentimental hearts. There are Christmas commercials that make me cry. All these holiday feelings are easily triggered by singing about the Who Hash and the rare Who roast beast. Listen to that squeaking as the Grinch easily separates little Whos from their candy canes. What an outrageous, Grinchy thing to do!

I love The Bishop’s Wife, with its chaste romance and its debonair angel-in-business-suit. No Christmas tree since has been covered by that much tinsel, and so quickly. Oh, for Dudley to keep my glass full with warming, inspiring – though never inebriating – sherry. I’d love to have luncheon with Dudley and Julia at Michel’s, without the paprika.

Clarence, the endearingly clumsy angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, is more my speed. I, too, would stumble into Nick’s rough Pottersville joint and attempt to order something inappropriately fey, like hot mulled wine. And could I have some tasty nibbles, too, please?

In honor of Clarence, and the whole Christmas season, the Spy Test Kitchen researched hot, mulled wine. And considering we are about to spend lots of time on the sofa, it’s nice to have choices. Let’s start simmering with the queen, Ina Garten: Hot Mulled Wine

Martha has a white wine version: and a red wine version – which she says is, “like Christmas in a glass.” I wonder what Snoop thinks? As much as I like a cheap white wine, I think mulled wine calls for a nice red. It’s winter, and Christmas, and it’s cold outside. Give me something that is full-bodied and heart-warming.
Like this: Erin Clark’s Mulled Wine

Even Reddit has an opinion about the best wines to use for mulled wine: Reddit Mulled Wine

And the young folk on TikTok have a genius approach – to use a slow cooker! Finally, we can pull ours out of the pantry and use it for something other than beef stew or chili! Tiktok slow cooker recipe

Our stockings are draped on the back of the desk chair in hopes that St. Nick finds them there, despite us not having a fireplace. Oranges are welcome, but I would like some new mechanical pencils, too. Cheers!

“He took the Who’s feast, he took the Who pudding, he took the roast beast. He cleaned out that ice box as quick as a flash. Why, the Grinch even took their last can of Who hash.”
—Dr. Seuss

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.

The holidays are upon us, and I don’t feel as if we are quite ready, or even in the mood yet. There are cookies to bake! Boxes to mail! Candy canes and gum drops to buy. Christmas cards to address. Ho, ho, ho. How can I feel glum when I spent 22 minutes in line at the post office, to mail a card to a sweet friend in the UK? Joy to the world.

We have been going through all the ritual motions for Christmas. We got the Tupperware boxes of ornaments, lights, stockings, baubles, and treasured gewgaws down from the attic over the weekend, much to Luke the wonder dog’s consternation. Life isn’t so exciting for him now, after Thanksgiving. He doesn’t have a 4-year-old sidekick stealthily palming him dog biscuits all day long. He follows Mr. Sanders around the house as closely as he can, and yet he wasn’t prepared for the ladder that suddenly descended in the hall, or for the dusty boxes stacked on his favorite sunning spots on the living room rug. Luke sat sentinel on the front porch, watching as we strung ropes of lights in the Japanese maple tree in the front yard, and draped swags of red-ribboned greenery from the front porch lights. The Christmas tree in the living room doesn’t smell quite right to Luke. There is no eau de chat that he can detect; no squirrel, no deer, no opossum. And the tree is blocking Luke’s view of the street: he can’t see when the life-threatening UPS truck comes to call. He is a little put out by these changes.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t getting underfoot at every possible turn. In our little house Luke has several carefully chosen observation points which maximize his enjoyment of our daily activities: he likes lying under the kitchen table, where he can keep one eye on the cook, and another on the squirrels raiding the bird feeder. Luke inches closer to the action when actual cooking is taking place, because he understands gravity, and the tendency of cheese and other delicious bits of food to fall unbidden to the kitchen floor. He selflessly rushes to hoover up all dropped food without being asked. Though he does not care for lettuce, or raw gingersnap dough, as we have discovered this week.

We left Luke home for a few hours last weekend, with a Kong-ful of peanut butter, so we could do a little local shopping downtown and visit the library. Our library has just re-opened after being closed for almost a year, to repair foundation damage sustained during the hurricane a few years ago. We ventured downtown to wander through the familiar stacks now standing firmly on spanking new floors. And it was delightful. The smell of new paint was heady. The books were still orderly. I had a good wallow in the cook books and through the new acquisitions. One book that I snatched up was The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sara B. Franklin. Judith Jones edited novels and poems by John Cheever, cookbooks by Julia Child and most famously, Anne Frank’s diary. I hadn’t heard of her until I watched the delightful series about Julia Child, about her time in Boston, at WGBH. Julia And now I am looking forward to spending some quality time with Judith Jones.

I found some new cookbooks to bring home, to get some ideas, and to just soak up the sunshine of other cooks. It is quieter after Thanksgiving, after all. There aren’t any sweet little boys offering up dog treats. I will avoid the post office as much as I can, and I’ll find more time to visit the library. And I’ll be sure that a nice hunk of cheese will drop in Luke’s periphery, so he starts to get in the mood for the holidays, too.

Go wander through your library and revisit some old friends, make some new ones, too. Smell the paper and the glue, chat with the reference librarian, smile at the kiddos. Imagine all the stories in that building, just minutes from home.

These are the other books we brought home: Milk Street by Christopher Kimball, Simply Genius by our friends at Food52, and The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook by America’s Test Kitchen.

“At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.”
― Thomas Tusser

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.

We are edging toward Thanksgiving. Carefully. Warily. What else can happen? What else can go wrong? More importantly, when do turkeys go on sale? Has the 2024 Beaujolais Nouveau been released yet? (Non! Beaujolais Nouveau Day is November 21st!) Apple pie, or pumpkin? What about Boston Cream? One of the young ‘uns has suggested a purple sweet potato pie. Really? Purple Sweet Potato Pie

I have made Mr. Sanders promise that we will stop at the very first Trader Joe’s we encounter on our 5-hour drive to the rental house where we will be celebrating Thanksgiving this year. I just watched a video of Hope Walz emptying holiday goodies from her TJ’s shopping bags. She had snagged three packages of the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peppermint Joe-Joes that I loved so much last year. I had FORGOTTEN about those divine cookies. Hope Walz on Tik Tok I just love holidays with food expectations. Now I feel up to the challenge of herding the cats and going away for Thanksgiving. Gobble, gobble indeed!

Some of my bravado comes from the notion that this year I have the ultimate pie crust recipe. It is uncomplicated, and almost as easy as passing off a store-bought pie as something I personally rolled out, fluted, crimped, washed with egg, and blind baked with professional finesse. You have to understand that my signature pie consists of a cumulus cloud of whipped cream resting on a delicious base of Jell-O chocolate pudding, in a darkly-satisfying, crunchy (store-bought ) chocolate cookie pie shell — just so you have a basis for comparison. I have just never been able to crimp a pie crust neatly, or even roll out a circle of pie dough. My mother’s major disappointment with me – that I knew about – was that I bought pie crusts. That I didn’t have the emotional backbone to learn how to roll out homemade dough. Well, this year, I will not be lurking in the pastry shell section of the frozen foods at the grocery store. I will be baking homemade pies.

This year I have stolen quite boldly from the New York Times’ test kitchens.

Shortcut Pie Crust
By Clare de Boer

INGREDIENTS
1 ½ cups/190 grams all-purpose flour
½ cup/60 grams confectioners’ sugar, passed through a sieve
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
9 tablespoons/130 grams cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2 large egg yolks

PREPARATION
Combine the flour, confectioners’ sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Add the cubed butter and blitz until the flour mixture has a sandy texture with some pea-size butter bits.

Add the egg yolks and blitz then pulse just until the pastry begins to come together.
Tip the pastry out onto a rectangle of plastic wrap. Using your hands, form it into a 6-inch log. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill, at least 3 hours or up to 3 days, or wrap and freeze for up to 3 months. If using frozen dough, allow to soften slightly in the fridge for an hour before using.

Using the large holes on a box grater, grate 3/4 of the chilled pastry directly into your pie dish or tart pan. Working quickly by hand, press the grated pastry into the dish, starting with the sides then covering the bottom, grating more of the chilled pastry into the dish as needed to cover evenly. Pay attention to the seam between the sides and the base, making sure it is the same thickness as the rest of the pastry: The crust should form an even layer that is about 1/4-inch thick. (Save any leftover pastry for another use.) Chill, at least 30 minutes or up to 2 days. (This can be done ahead.)
The crust can take various routes from here; refer to whichever pie or tart recipe you’re using for guidance. If blind-baking this crust, it cooks best at 350°F.
NYT Shortcut Pie Crust

Our friends at Food52 understand that we need shortcuts, and crimping an attractive pie crust isn’t vital to the meaning of Thanksgiving. Food52 Apple Pie

They further understand that when you are ready for pumpkin pie you don’t care about the pie crust. Pumpkins are bold; a gingersnap pie crust enhances the pumpkin experience. Be prepared to have seconds. Food52 Pumpkin Pie

We had friends in Florida who celebrated family birthdays with pies instead of cakes. Be daring. Try some homemade apple pie. Or even a purple sweet potato pie.

“So learn about life. Cut yourself a big slice with the silver server, a big slice of pie.
Open your eyes. Let life happen.”
—Sylvia Plath

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.

“Planning Ahead,” Jean Sanders

I read someplace on the internet that whoever scheduled Halloween, the clock change, and the presidential election all in the same week has some explaining to do. We have had too much of sugar highs, a dog who keeps waking up an hour earlier than the humans, and emotional swings that cannot be regulated by cheap white wine. And yesterday I ate the very last Halloween Snickers bar, so I am all out of sources of instant gratification.

I’ve decided instead to use the energy produced by my anxiety for good! We are looking forward to our mini family reunion at Thanksgiving with our children, their spouses, and two grandchildren at a rented lake house. Luke the wonder dog is coming along with us, just to add to the fun – I hope he doesn’t meet his match with the energetic 4-year-old.

Holiday cooking at rental houses can be fraught with complications because you never know what to bring, and how close the nearest grocery store is. I tend to over prepare and I bring it all: the KitchenAid stand mixer, the cookie sheets, the roasting pan, the rolling pin, the gravy separator, the electric knife, a few platters, rolls of aluminum foil, parchment paper and Saran Wrap for the leftovers, mayonnaise for the leftovers turkey sandwiches, candles, tablecloths, you name it, it will be packed in the back of the car along with Luke’s crate. A case of wine. Diet Coke. Half and half, heavy cream, oat milk, 2% milk. We never travel light.

I have been reading all manner of helpful holiday hints: what can we make ahead of time so we don’t need to cook every single menu item on the actual day of Thanksgiving. Without giving folks ptomaine poisoning. I need to formulate an actual meal plan instead relying on my normal tendency of just winging it – there will be the expectations of 7 other people to meet, after all. It makes sense to keep a list, and smugly tick off each dish as the preparations proceed.

Food & Wine says that we can make lots of the meal beforehand: stuffing, casseroles, all the veggies, gravy, turkey stock, desserts, and in theory, we could prepare the Brussels sprouts, though I think not. No Brussels sprouts for us! Give us green beans, but hold the mushroom soup. Note to self: remember to buy the cranberries this year. Last year we inadvertently went cranberry-free – but no one else noticed. I hope. Food & Wine

Food & Wine discourages making rolls, mashed potatoes or cornbread before the big day. But other food experts offer different opinions. The Pioneer Woman suggests that a huge time saver is making the potatoes ahead of time. Personally, I love peeling 5 pounds of potatoes in a strange kitchen, all by myself, every year, while the others are off enjoying child-oriented activities and photo ops while the meal clock ticks. Sorry Food & Wine, this year I am mashing the potatoes early. Pioneer Woman

The Food Network espouses their theory that the entire meal can be made ahead of time and then frozen. My deep-seated fear of food poisoning comes into play here – we have a 5-hour drive on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I imagine that our Yeti-adjacent cooler will not keep everything frozen rock hard and germ resistant, but maybe this would work for you. You can be fresh as a daisy on Thanksgiving, having done the yeoman’s work a couple of days ahead, and you can focus on passing hors d’oeuvres and watching touch football in the front yard. I envy your panache. Food Network And personally – if you ever freeze whipped cream instead of serving it fresh, right out of the mixing bowl, you should be ashamed of yourself. You might as well use Cool Whip on top of your pumpkin pie. Shocking!

What started me down this particular garden path was a 4-page recipe I found from America’s Test Kitchens for “Make Way Ahead Dinner Rolls”. I am always interested in irresistible carbs, which is why Thanksgiving is my favorite meal. I am sure that these dinner rolls are divinely tasty, warm and yeasty, dripping with good, salted Irish butter. Make-Way-Ahead Dinner Rolls But I know for a fact that the Pepperidge Farm dinner rolls that I will pick up Tuesday night at the Food Lion that is just 5 miles from our rental house are going to be delicious, too. Which will leave me plenty of leisure time for family photo ops and whipping the cream. Use your time wisely. Life is short. Gobble, gobble.

More from Ina Garten, who knows her way around a kitchen:Ina Garten Thanksgiving

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

I mind that it was 83°F yesterday. The Halloween Snickers bars got a little gooey, but at least the trick-or- treating children didn’t have to wear snow jackets over their Halloween costumes. They were full of giggles and energy, and they sported vivid green hair dye jobs and homemade costumes as they tripped merrily along the sidewalks of our neighborhood, stockpiling their goodies. Halloween came and went, as per the calendar. Which means that today, November 1, should be cool and autumnal: sweater and soup season.

Yes, indeed.

So I am going to stop my belly-aching and make some soup. We have a drawerful of vegetables, and a chicken carcass and an agenda. We will eat dinner tonight, and the leftovers will make a fine weekend lunch. Waste not, want not. My favorite chicken soup will fill the air in the house with the aroma of home. It can cure almost anything, including Election Day jitters.

Words to the wise: you are going to need chicken soup sooner or later this winter. And, no, it will never taste as good as your mother’s, or your abuelita’s, or anything from some mythical Lower East Side Jewish deli, with containers of chicken schmaltz on all the tables. And that’s OK. You are making new memories, (and dinner) and it is your homemade creation. It will ward off the flu, and you will feel talented and virtuous for boiling up a huge stockpot of your own soup! Maurice Sendak will hover behind you, proudly, as you measure out the rice. And soon you will be sipping your own chicken soup with rice.

Homemade Chicken Stock
1 deboned chicken carcass, including skin OR 1 whole chicken (you could even cheat and buy a rotisserie chicken!)
6 quarts water
6 garlic cloves, smashed
2 carrots, roughly chopped
3 celery stalks, roughly chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
4 black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
Salt (optional!)
1.Use a large stock pot, and add butter and chicken over medium heat. Brown them a little bit.
2.Add all the rest of the ingredients, and bring to a boil.
3.Boil for 3 minutes, then turn heat down to low.
4.Cover, and simmer for about 3-4 hours, stirring every once in a while.
5.Once it’s a golden color, strain and let cool. Put in the refrigerator overnight, then skim the fat off the top.

Or, if you are pressed for time, Chicken Soup (not completely homemade – but you feel a cold coming on)
Olive oil
Half an onion, minced
2 carrots, finely diced
Bay leaf
A sprig of fresh thyme, or a few shakes of dried
2 quarts chicken stock (or canned broth – this is for the few of us who tossed out the chicken carcass early, never thinking of the soup possibilities. Shamefully, I have done this many times.)
1 cup uncooked, long grain rice (or, if you are a noodle family, have your wicked way with them)
2 cups shredded, cooked chicken

1.Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a large, heavy-bottomed skillet.
2.Add onion and carrot, and sauté till soft, 5-7 minutes.
3.Add bay leaf, thyme, and chicken broth, and bring to a boil.
4.Reduce to a simmer and add rice and chicken.
5.Let soup bubble, stirring occasionally, till rice is cooked through, about 15-20 minutes.

This will be much better than Lipton’s Chicken Noodle dried-powder and freeze-dried chicken bits. And certainly better than Campbell’s. Have you ever seen those pinkish chicken nubbins in the bottom of a Campbell’s can? Ick!

Soup is the most versatile of foods. It reminds us of the security of our childhoods, it stretches to feed unexpected company, it is easy to make and is always well received. It smells of holidays past. Make a batch of turkey soup after Thanksgiving, and in a single sniff you can relive the whole meal – without having to iron the tablecloth or to watch a single moment of football.

Don’t take my word for it: Food52 has hot and cold soup recipes. You can be ready with soup, whatever the weather: Food52 Soups

Remember to vote on Tuesday!

“There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.”
—Laurie Colwin

The Spy Test Kitchens have been enjoying a breath of fresh fall air. We have flown the coop for a few days, so this is a column from our own Way Back Machine.

The days have been beautiful with bright azure skies, brisk zephyrs, and a touch of frost on the windshield in the morning. It is a good time for walks with Luke the wonder dog, who was heartily tired of the hot summer. The brown, fallen leaves make poking his nose in every bush an even more intriguing activity from his point of view, while more annoying to my end of the leash. I do enjoy trailing a curious, buoyant dog, happily trotting ahead of me, than the pokey puppy I was hauling around the neighborhood all summer long.

Luke is also fond of taking car rides. He likes going along on short excursions to the farm stand for various seasonal purchases. In the past few weeks we’ve taken trips to buy chrysanthemum plants for the front porch, pumpkins that we will never carve, and the most recent visit was to acquire more than enough apple cider to make a batch of apple cider doughnuts. There is nothing more tempting than a clutch of home-made doughnuts over a weekend. We have no steely resolve in this house as we prepare for our annual doughnut nosh.

At least we aren’t frying the doughnuts, so we can enjoy the first tastes of fall without worrying about fats and all of the cardiac dangers associated with fried foods. I love the silicone doughnut molds we have, which are bright Lego colors. These molds are doughnut-shaped so we don’t have the added temptation of orphan doughnut holes, sitting sadly on the kitchen counter, singing their alluring siren songs. I love the genius of reducing the cider on top of the stove to concentrate its flavor. This is why we like to read recipes, to wallow in the vast and varied experiences of the home cooks who have cooked before! These doughnuts taste like a visit to the farm stand, without all the car windows wide open to give Luke the cheap breezy thrills of a car ride to the country: Baked Apple Cider Donuts

If you do want the experience of frying doughnuts, à la Homer Price , please take a look at Mark Bittman’s recipe for fried apple cider doughnuts. I haven’t tried this recipe, but I bet it is deelish: Apple Cider Doughnuts

Apple cider doughnuts only require about a cup and a half of cider. Whatever should we do with the rest of the half gallon? We are concerned about food waste, and apple cider is so delicious! Naturally our thoughts first turn to cocktails: Apple Cider Smash

Spiked Hot Apple Cider Punch

And you can kill many trendy birds with this stone: Apple Cider Spritz

But life is not a big cocktail party, sadly. We do need to eat dinner and be civilized for the greater part of the day. This is an ingenious way to use up some cider, and do something different with sausage: Sausage and Apple pie

And here is a handy dandy list of recipes, for when you are tired of apple cider, but don’t want to waste a drop: Extra Cider Recipes

It is a good time for change. It’s nice to wear sweaters again. Socks! What a novelty! I even had to pull on gloves for this morning’s trot through the neighborhood. I know in January that a 46°F morning will seem balmy, but today I watched mist rising from the grass where the sun was burning off the dew, and it felt good to bundle up a little bit. It will be divine to sink our teeth into warm, sweet apple cider doughnuts, too. Welcome, fall!

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable…the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street…by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.”
― Hal Borland

Food Friday: Art by Jean Sanders

Go open your back door this morning and feel the cool air. It’s not quite sweater weather, although I did wear long sleeves walking Luke the wonder dog earlier. The breeze holds the promise of fall. As the sun rose today, wisps of fog wafted through the neighbor’s trees, and the mockingbirds were scolding louder than the blue jays. The wrens complained. The squirrelly boys lept fearlessly from the roof to the pliant arborvitae branches below. Our transition to fall has arrived.

Having cooler temperatures makes more things possible. It doesn’t seem onerous to have the oven chugging away baking potatoes at 450°F when it is cooler outside. It’s not like during the summer, when the oven seems to heat up the whole house. Although it would be more practical to have a compact, shoebox-sized toaster oven for potato baking – we just don’t have any space left for a toaster oven. Instead, our countertop is littered with a curated collection of olive oils, salt boxes, a pepper grinder, a bowl of fruit, Luke’s pills (he’s developed arthritis!), paper towels, dishwashing liquid, a vital Kleenex box (allergies abound in October) and the all-important coffee grinder and electric kettle. There is just no space for a toaster oven. Welcome to our cozy kitchen; warm and toasty from October to March.

Our dinner last night would never work for a typical family – meaning one with adults and school-age children. We had twice-baked potatoes and a salad; adding a protein seemed Herculean and unimaginable. We were glued to the iPad, watching the news about Hurricane Milton and the latest presidential campaign mic drop. Who had time to broil chops, or to roast a chicken? It was all we could do was to eat nice hot, steaming potatoes garnished with sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, bacon, left-over chili, dusted with Penzeys herbs, and green onions. Mr. Sanders added some healthy greeny broccolini and a handful of chopped tomatoes, because he is such a show off. He also made a side salad of cool Romaine and arugula, which was our nod to healthy eating. Plus we had a bowlful of baby carrots in lieu of fatty crunchy cocktail snacks as an appetizer. We ate our veggies, honest. Because there were fresh, home-baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Grown ups, yes, maintaining our priorities, thank you.

Poke around the fridge to be sure you have enough in the way of decorative and tasty garnishes for your potatoes. I had to excavate the freezer, digging through layers of frozen corn and ice cream sandwiches before I finally unearthed the chili from a couple of weeks ago.

Some folks like to rub potato skins with butter or olive oil before roasting. It is important to prick your potatoes to let the steam escape while they are cooking. I use a long cooking fork, and really spear the potatoes. Then I cheat a little, by popping the potatoes into the microwave for about 3 minutes on high for each potato. I also cook them singly, because I find the microwave math daunting. Then I pop them right in the preheated oven, on the oven rack, at 450°F for half an hour. Maybe I don’t need that toaster oven after all. I use Russet potatoes, because that’s what we had growing up, and I am sure Martha says so, too.

J. Kenji López-Alt, who does extensive and exhaustive recipe testing, recommends baking potatoes, preferably Russets, at 375°F for about an hour (the more moderate oven temperature produces a creamy, fluffy interior). Early on I had an art director who scoffed at such niceities. She believed in cooking things FAST. 450°F was her preferred temperature for a lot of foods. Never argue with your art director. And last night she was right, again. Thanks, Pat!

Baked potatoes with cheddar and bacon

Baked potato toppings

Nothing is as good as this, the perfect baked potato: with a knob of Irish butter, crunchy Maldon salt, and a pinch of freshly ground black pepper for a good, quick, hot and homey dinner on a cool night. Everything else you can add as a topping is just deelish window dressing.

“Wherever you come near the human race there’s layers and layers of nonsense. Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.”
—Thornton Wilder

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for 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.