Here we are again—on the cusp of summer, on the eve of grilling season, keeping watch for fireflies, swatting early mosquitoes, and planning the Memorial Day cookout. I’m looking forward to a gathering of old friends on the back porch, with songs from college playing in the background as we laugh and scarf bowls of chips like it was still the good old days of few consequences.

As we catch up with our merry band, hearing about new babies, new homes, young lives in big cities, I wonder, as one does, if we made the right choices along the way. Maybe we would have been happier with an urban life. And then I read magazine articles and feel smug about our life decisions. I was never destined to be a West Village Girl – looking for frozen espresso martinis while posting influencer content to TikTok. I was never going to be someone who worked in finance, and I never would have strolled into the short-lived Brooklyn Mischa restaurant this Memorial Day Weekend, and plunked down $29 for a hot dog. Nope. I think I plunked down about $29 for our entire cookout. For that kind of money, I’d rather learn to love caviar.

Instead meeting at an au courant bistro in the West Village in NYC, we will gather on the back porch, where we have a few Adirondack chairs (which are never as comfortable as they look). I love these al fresco nights, as we elude those pesky mosquitoes and enjoy fluttering candles and swaying strings of white lights. We can watch the last of the sun’s rays gilding the tops of the pecan trees, and the bellies of the robins as they squabble in the back yard. There is time to slow down and the enjoy the lengthening navy shadows. There is no television news in the background. It is a pleasantly warm and humid summer evening. Far away you might hear a hint of distant thunder growling.

We aren’t going to serve anything extravagant this weekend, just our old reliable favorites: hamburgers, hot dogs, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad, green salad, and strawberry short cake. Also, chips and classic 1950s French onion dip, with WASPy bowls of radishes, cucumber spears, celery and carrots for karmic balance. There will be beer. No Aperol spritzes or frozen espresso martinis. Welcome to summer. Welcome to ordinary America— no fancy pants West Village girls here!

This is the best sort of holiday meal, one that doesn’t require numerous trips to the grocery store for elusive exotic ingredients, or perusing cookbooks. Jacques Pepin and Alice Waters can sit sullenly on the bookshelf – these are tried and true dishes that vary little from year to year, or really from family to family. I sometimes miss the dry, charred, hockey-puck-hamburgers of my childhood, but I must say that Mr. Sanders can flip a mean burger. And I still make my mother’s potato salad. Maybe you’ll grill brats, or have a watermelon or lemon meringue pie. Maybe your family always grills chicken. Be sure to enjoy yourselves!
We will be trying one new dish as Mr. Sanders does love a challenge: grilled artichokes. In preparation, he has even cleaned the grill for the new season. Bring on summer! We’ll see you at the farmers’ market!

Food52 Grilled Artichokes

Food and Wine Grilled Artichokes

The Schmidty Wife Artichokes

We will be sticking close to home this weekend – we are painting a bathroom for a well-intentioned family project – so we will be flipping our burgers and watching the fireflies dance here. Heat up your charcoal briquets, enjoy your crab feast, fry up a batch of chicken, spike a cold watermelon, melt a batch of s’mores, enjoy the Chestertown Tea Party, wave your flags at the parades, and remember the brave souls who gave their all.

“Summertime is always the best of what might be.”
― Charles Bowden

Hints from the New York Times for effective grill cleaning.

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.

Ah, late spring. It is a beautiful time of the year. The fireflies are beginning to sparkle in the blue twilight of the back yard. A bunny is enjoying chowing down on the new grass in the front yard. There are even more wondrous smells these days for Luke the wonder dog on our daily tours of the neighborhood’s hedges and flower beds. The long days stretch slowly toward the last day of school. There are too many awards nights, school field trips, graduation parties and political protests to attend – who has time for normal, sit-down family dinners? For that matter, who has time to plan those meals? Maybe Martha, but don’t forget, she has staff on hand. The rest of us, running our own tiny on-a-shoestring-enterprises, need to plan on the fly. Which is why I am suggesting deelish Sammies for every occasion. They can be made ahead, they are portable, they are economical, and they are filling. And they are easy to accessorize.

In this complicated, overly-scheduled, anxiety-fraught, spread sheet-specific life, don’t be a Stanley Tucci. I know, Stanley Tucci is sweet and winsome. He has sparkling eyes, and tasteful scarves, and the jovial air of bonhomie. He is a foodie. He got us through COVID with his videos of nice, stiff homemade Negronis. We loved him in Julie and Julia. He helped us understand the mysterious ways of the Vatican in the timely film Conclave. If I see him passionately swallow one more obscure regional Italian delicacy on yet another travel show, I will surely puke. I have maxed out on the ubiquity of Stanley. He was quoted in a recent Food and Drink Magazine about the most delicious sandwich he has ever eaten. He didn’t wax poetical or nostalgic about his mother’s homemade tuna salad sandwiches, or the prosaic turkey sandwich he could have had at his local London pub. He didn’t mention even the legendarily expensive burger from Balthazar in New York City. No. Stanley Tucci’s best sandwich was street food in Rome. It was a smoked cow tongue, with Romaine lettuce, and homemade mayonnaise, on local bread. Surely, without a doubt, it was the best he has ever tasted. We cannot top that. We cannot possible compare our own boring, drab, suburban life with his glittering world.

But we can try. Luke, Mr. Sanders, and I are not going to Italy any time soon. In fact, cooking has been a challenge this week, because we have been painting the kitchen cabinets, and the long pine table is crammed with boxes of silverware, plates, bowls, cookie sheets, wooden spoons, measuring cups and boxes of foil, Saran Wrap, and parchment paper. It’s hard to find anything. But there is a cutting board around here, someplace, and a good bread knife. We don’t need homemade mayo. Bring on the tomatoes and the fresh mozzarella, Stanley.

When you are driving home from a graduation, or get stuck in traffic going to the beach, you can pull over along the way, and reach inside your souvenir Trader Joe’s insulated bag, and pull out a homemade burrata caprese sandwich. You won’t need homemade mayo. In fact, some Utz Sour Cream & Onion chips and a Diet Coke can only enhance your foodie experience. Go ahead – you can be an Eastern Shore original, and have Utz Crab Chip seasoned chips. (Stanley will probably opt for Italian chips: San Carlo – PiùGusto Porchetta. Ewwww. )

The Spy Test Kitchen Caprese Sandwich.

Don’t take my word for it – here are some more Deelish Italian sandwiches for your own armchair travel experience.

Here is the interview with our worldly, movie star pal, Stanley Tucci:

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.”
― Douglas Adams

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.

There are many issues that can drive us nuts here in the Spy Test Kitchens. We are only human, after all, except for Luke the wonder dog, who is sanguine and tolerant of almost anything but a knock on the door, or a passing UPS truck. We like simple, reliable, and tasty. We do not like recipes that call for extraordinary ingredients that can only be found in exotic Middle Earth market stalls one week out of the year, or in haute organic Brooklyn food co-ops. Our time is valuable, and who wants to waste it searching for obscure and expensive ingredients? Not us. We have books to read, streamers to watch, and garden weeds to ignore. Please – be sure that the ingredients are easily found.

As you wander through the farmers’ market, or the more prosaic grocery store produce department, these warm spring days, you will see piles of lovely, gleaming, jewel-like fruits and vegetables, and you can channel the excitement of all the fancy pants food editors: suddenly, you can see why Bon Appétit has a page about the beauty of rhubarb. Or why Felicity Cloake of The Guardian is practically waxing poetical about Rhubarb Crumble

Just look at that rhubarb! Look at the chartreuse greens – the shocking rosy pinks! Rhubarb could be a charming vintage Lilly Pulitzer print, without all the cumbersome Palm Beach pretenses. Rhubarb, that coy herbaceous perennial, is here, but it isn’t going to last forever, so get out your thinking caps and pre-heat your ovens.

I was super pleased to find this recipe for rhubarb scones on the Food52 website. Rhubarb Scones I had gone off on an internet stroll, looking for something timely and spring-y for this week’s column. I like rhubarb. It reminds me of spring, and makes me think about strawberries and cream and picnics and garden parties I have only read about. Which leads to clotted cream and scones and a long ago tea I had with a dear chum in a churchyard in England. So much of food enjoyment is thinking of connections, and remembering ideal meals and happy times.

What is best about this recipe is that it is highly adaptable. What? Your grocery store doesn’t have rhubarb? Rhubarb hasn’t ripened yet in your area, so there isn’t any at the farmers’ market? Don’t panic – substitute! The comments on this recipe in Food52 are loaded with helpful suggestions. Use strawberries! Use peaches! Use strawberry jam! Try frozen rhubarb. We are baking the scones, after all, which transforms the fruit. We can wait until June to decorate these scones with tiny fresh strawberries and raspberries. Right now we need some comfort food, and we need it fast.

Growing up, we had a couple of rhubarb plants growing in the lower garden, near the compost pile by the barn. We never ate the rhubarb. My mother was never going to serve Rhubarb Spritzers, so I think it they were plants she inherited from the original owners of the house. Like the Jack-in-the-Pulpit by the back steps and the bank of Lilies of the Valley by the stone wall. I have to use store-bought (or farmers’ market-bought) rhubarb, as yet tariff-free.

Every spring there are cascades of recipes for rhubarb and strawberry pies, cakes, jams, lemon bars, tarts, crumbles and fools. Which are all wonderful and delicious, but this year I want to try a couple of new recipes; where rhubarb isn’t just a novelty ingredient, but is included as a subtle and unusual spring flavor.

Martha has a very posh rhubarb dessert, if you stumble upon a great stash of rhubarb: Rhubarb Pavlova

Maybe you want to have coffee instead of tea? Here is a Brooklyn coffee cake recipe that you can try. There is nothing in it that can’t be found at our less-than-fancy corner grocery store: Rhubarb Coffee Cake

And you can re-visit the 1950s with a rhubarb upside down cake, with help from Betty Crocker. Sometimes a cake mix is worth it! Rhubarb Upside Down Cake

More modern is a Rhubarb Pound Cake

But I am saving the best for last – a Rhubarb Collins. This is the way to enjoy spring, a nice tall Collins glass in hand as you sit on the back porch, watching the cardinals dart from the bird feeder, while that bunny sits calmly in the back yard, nibbling the grass that you had no intention of mowing today. Pour some more Champagne, please! Let there be fireflies!

Rhubarb Collins
1 stalk rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1/2 -inch pieces (about 3/4 cup)
1/2 cup sugar
2 ounces gin
1 ounce lemon juice
2 to 4 ounces Champagne

Make a simple syrup with the rhubarb and sugar: combine the rhubarb and sugar with 3/4 cup water in a small pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to moderately low and simmer until slightly thickened and bright pink in color, about 20 minutes. Let the syrup cool then pour through a colander set over a bowl. Press down gently and toss the solids. (The rhubarb simple syrup can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.)

Combine one ounce of the rhubarb simple syrup in a cocktail shaker with the gin and lemon juice. Fill the shaker with ice and shake vigorously until completely mixed. Strain into a chilled highball glass and top with Champagne or Prosecco. Add a straw, and a strawberry for decoration. Drink. Repeat. Enjoy. Spring is fleeting!

“Well, art is art, isn’t it?
Still, on the other hand, water is water!
And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” —Groucho Marx

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.

Cinco de Mayo is coming already. There will be tacos, and maybe some good Mexican beer. I have to confess that I came to the taco party late. When I was growing up our cooking spices were limited to Christmas egg nog nutmeg, cinnamon for cinnamon toast, black pepper and baking powder. Garlic was an exotic commodity. Red pepper was on the tables at Italian restaurants. I doubt if my mother was acquainted with cumin. We never had Mexican food. My mother’s idea of adventurous ethnic cooking was preparing corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day. And so my indoctrination came from my peers, as do so many seminal youthful experiences.

The first tacos I ever had were at my friend Sheila’s older sister’s house, down near the beach. Margo was sophisticated and modern. We adored her and the string of characters who wandered through her tiny house. She made tacos with regularity, and we mooched often. From her I learned how to shred the cheese and the lettuce and chop the onions that went on top of the taco meat, which we browned in a frying pan and then covered with a packet of Old El Paso Taco Seasoning Mix and a cup of water. I thought it couldn’t get any better than that.

Like Tim Walz, my introduction to Mexican cuisine came via “white guy tacos” which are “pretty much ground beef and cheese.” We must have had similar upbringings: “Here’s the deal… black pepper is the top spice level in Minnesota.”

Sheila and I graduated to platters of nachos and tacos at the Viva Zapata restaurant. (I think we were actually more attracted to the cheap pitchers of sangria, which we drank, sitting outside in dappled shade under leafy trees, enjoying languid summer vacations.) And then we wandered into Mama Vicky’s Old El Acapulco Restaurant, with its dodgy sanitation, but exquisitely flaming jalapeños on the lard-infused refried beans. Ah, youth.

True confession: my children were raised on tacos made with Old El Paso Taco Seasoning, but they always had vegetarian or fat-free refried beans. None of that deelish, heart-health-threatening lard.

Beef Tacos
45 minutes, serves 4

½ cup vegetable oil
12 small 5-inch corn tortillas
1 pound ground beef
Salt & pepper
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 fresh hot chile (like jalapeño) seeded & minced, optional
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup roughly chopped radishes for garnish
2 limes, quartered, for serving

Crumble the ground beef into a frying pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, breaking up the meat as it cooks, until it starts to brown – about 5 or 10 minutes. Add the onion and cook, until it softens and begins to color. 5 or 10 minutes more.

Add the garlic and the chile (be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after handling the chile – I didn’t and rubbed my eye and wept for a good while afterward) and cook about 3 minutes, until they soften. Add the cumin and tomato paste and cook and stir until fragrant. I added a little water, perhaps a throw back from my Old El Paso training, but the mixture just seemed too dry. Experiment for yourself.

Warm the oil in another frying pan over a medium-high heat. Lay a tortilla shell in the oil, and let it bubble for about 15 seconds before turning it over, carefully, with tongs. Let that side bubble away for another 15 seconds or so and then fold the shell in half. Turn it back and forth until it is as crisp as you want. Mr. Sanders likes a softer shell, I like explosively brittle.

Divide the meat into the lovely, crunchy shells and top with cilantro and radishes. Squeeze some lime on top. Good-bye to grated cheese. Good-bye to too much sodium. (There are 370mg of sodium in a 1 ounce packet of Old El Paso. [I still have a packet in the spice cabinet, obviously.] Plus it costs about $2.59, so just imagine how much better this recipe is for you, sodium-wise and financially.)

Open beer, pour beer, drink beer.
Other topping suggestions:
 guacamole, chopped tomatoes, shredded cabbage, chopped scallions, black beans, salsa, shredded lettuce, chopped peppers, sliced radishes, sour cream.

When my children were little, I used spinach for their tacos instead of lettuce. I don’t think they have forgiven me yet. To keep up with current trends, you could try using kale for your healthy tacos.
But don’t trust my word for it, try these excellent healthy taco recipes: Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

How to turn leftover roast lamb into mouthwatering tacos – recipe

Happy Cinco de Mayo!
“On the subject of spinach: divide into little piles. Rearrange again into new piles. After five of six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full.”
—Delia Ephron

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.

May Day is upon us— that should put a spring in your step. I want to retire the crockpot, stash the Dutch oven, put the lasagna pan out to pasture and start digging into light, healthy, crispy fresh green salads. With crusty French bread and sweet butter and a glass or two of cool Chardonnay. In my bare feet. In shorts.
Now is a good time to get outside – whether in your own garden, or wandering around the farmers’ market. Lots of fruits and vegetables are in season again – and we should be supporting our local farmers!
In Season

We have bought four humble tomato plants, and have planted them in the raised garden bed in our side yard. There are a couple of blossoms already, which is nature’s clever way of encouraging us to believe that we will have a bountiful harvest of tomato sandwiches later this summer.

That is always the best part of gardening, seeing everything in my mind’s eye in the gauzy Technicolor future. Somehow there I am always wearing a float-y white outfit as I drop my bountiful harvest into my antique English garden trug, clipping merrily (and with surgical precision) with the vintage secateurs sourced from an obscure French flea market. Reality won’t elbow that fantasy out of my malleable brain for a couple of months…

But back to the matter at hand – salad: as usual, we are hoping that the basil container farm will be busy and bushy this summer, as well as the annual tomato exercise, which I hope won’t wither on their burgeoning vines. We are also considered trying to make our own fresh mozzarella cheese. Maybe it would be easier to just move to Italy. But that depends on the lottery officials, and I am sad to say that we don’t know anyone at the Texas Lottery Commission. Texas Lottery Scandal https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/23/us/texas-lottery-ryan-mindell-resignation/index.html We are just homegrowns.
Tender Green Salad ideas!

This will be perfect for the Friday nights when Chef Tomasso doesn’t want to fire up the oven for our weekly pizza night:

Pizza Salad
Exactly the same way you would choose your pizza toppings, free to add in your favorite toppings INTO the salad to recreate the classic flavors. Use all the extra toppings you love: olives, tuna, capers, meatballs, Nduja, onions, peppers: whatever your go-to pizza order is.

Single serving — you can do the math for more

1/2 small eggplant, diced
Handful of cherry tomatoes
1/2 red pepper
1/2 teaspoon oregano and 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Sliced pepperoni – your call
2 slices sourdough bread or day-old French bread, cut into cubes
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
Handful of torn basil leaves
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella
3 ounces shredded chicken breast (if you are concerned about protein)

Garlic herb dressing
2 tablespoons Greek yogurt
Pinch oregano
Pinch garlic powder
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
Preheat your oven to 400°F.
Toss the diced eggplant, cherry tomatoes, red pepper and pepperoni with oregano, garlic powder and salt. Spread on a baking tray. Roast for 12–15 minutes, until softened, sticky and slightly caramelized.

Scatter the diced bread cubes and a little grating of parmesan over the top, then return to roast for another 4–5 minutes until the croutons are crisp and golden.

While that’s roasting, stir together the yogurt, garlic powder, oregano, vinegar, salt and pepper for the garlic and herb dressing. Add a splash of water if you want a looser consistency.

Once everything is out of the oven, toss with the basil, shredded mozzarella and cooked chicken so the warmth starts to melt everything together. Serve warm with a generous drizzle of dressing. Take a plate, with your glass of Chardonnay, out onto the back porch, and plant yourself in the plastic Adirondack chair. Enjoy a cool Friday night, eating your veggies, smelling the breeze, and enjoying a tasty al fresco meal. Have fun streaking on May Day!

Here is an air fryer version: Pizza Salad with Garlic Herb Dressing

Fancier Salad

“A salad is not a meal. It is a style.”
—Fran Lebowitz

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.

Food Friday is on the road this weekend, so you Gentle Readers will have to put up with a re-run of my favorite Easter lemon cheesecake. Mr. Sanders and I are heading to a family Easter gathering in Florida, and Luke the wonder dog is off for a much deserved vacay of his own with his dog pals at the spa. Please indulge me and enjoy our making our favorite Easter dessert. Play nicely at your Easter egg hunts, and let the little ones find the eggs. You can sip on a Bloody Mary or two.

At Easter I like to haul out my dear friend’s lemon cheesecake recipe, and reminisce, ruefully, about the year I decorated one using nasturtiums plucked fresh from the nascent garden, which unfortunately sheltered a couple of frisky spiders. Easter was late that year and tensions were already high at the table, because a guest had taken it upon herself to bring her version of dessert – a 1950s (or perhaps it was a British World War II lesson in ersatz ingredients recipe) involving saltines, sugar-free lime Jell-O, and a tub of Lite Cool Whip. The children were divided on which was more terrifying: ingesting spiders, or many petro chemicals?

I am also loath to remember the year we hosted an Easter egg hunt, and it was so hot that the chocolate bunnies melted, the many children squabbled, and the adults couldn’t drink enough Bloody Marys. The celery and asparagus were limp, the ham was hot, and the sugar in all those Peeps brought out the criminal potential in even the most decorous of little girls. There was no Miss Manners solution to that pickle.

Since our children did not like hard-boiled eggs, I am happy to say that we were never a family that hid real eggs for them to discover. Because then we would have been the family whose dog discovered real nuclear waste hidden behind a bookcase or deep down in the sofa a few weeks later. We mostly stuck to jelly beans and the odd Sacajawea gold dollar in our plastic Easter eggs. It was a truly a treat when I stepped on a pink plastic egg shell in the front garden one year when I was hanging Christmas lights on the bushes. There weren’t any jelly beans left, thank goodness, but there was a nice sugar-crusty gold dollar nestled inside it. Good things come to those who wait.

We won’t be hiding any eggs (real or man-made) this year. Instead we will have a nice decorous finger food brunch, with ham biscuits, asparagus, celery, carrots, tiny pea pods, Prosecco (of course) and a couple of slices of lemon cheesecake, sans the spiders, sans the lime Jell-O and Cool Whip. And we will feel sadly bereft because there will be no jelly beans, no melting chocolate and no childish fisticuffs.

Chris’s Cheesecake Deluxe
Serves 12

Crust:
1 cup sifted flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Filling:
2 1/2 pounds cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400°F
Crust: combine flour, sugar and lemon rind. Cut in butter until crumbly. Add yolk and vanilla. Mix. Pat 1/3 of the dough over the bottom of a 9″ spring form pan, with the sides removed. Bake for 6 minutes or until golden. Cool. Butter the sides of the pan and attach to the bottom.

Pat remaining dough around the sides to 2″ high.
 Increase the oven temp to 475°F. Beat the cream cheese until it is fluffy. Add vanilla and lemon rind. Combine the sugar, flour and salt. Gradually blend into the cream cheese. Beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time, and then the cream. Beat well. Pour into the pan. Bake 8-10 minutes.

Reduce oven heat to 200° F. Bake for 1 1/2 hours or until set. Turn off the heat. Allow the cake to remain in the oven with the door ajar for 30 minutes. Cool the cake on a rack, and then pop into the fridge to chill. This is the best Easter dessert ever. This recipe makes a HUGE cheesecake! You will be eating it for a week. At least.

Perfect Bloody Marys

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

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.