This looks like my kind of condiment. I’m tempted to try to make some. Any clues as to the ingredients-besides lemons and onions, that is?

Not to worry- you have a theme- you are the “mother and son” blog! Not that I think a theme is either good, or bad.

Would you rather go to a tiki bar or Joe’s Bar and Grill? Depends on which one is better at what it does, I guess.

PS Rhubard crumble in oven. Added pear as did not have enough rhubarb. Used a different recipe, the one I generally use, but melted the butter as you suggested. Eagerly awaiting results.

I can tell you exactly what’s in it, Lindy, but you may want to check out their own website; it’s very attractive. They seem to sell their products through Amazon, though, and not themselves. Anyway, the marmalade is made from Meyer lemons, sugar, caramelized onion, lemon juice, and sea salt. Not a drop of high fructose corn syrup in the ingredient list!

I’ll be interested to see what the addition of pears does to your crisp. I know poached pears and pear tart are really good, but once I put some pears in with the apples when I was making applesauce and they added a graininess to the texture that I found really unpleasant, and I never did that again. They would also add quite a bit of sweetness, so I’m guessing you adjusted the sugar accordingly.

Oh, and in general I would probably rather go to Joe’s Bar and Grill than a tiki bar, assuming Joe’s has anything at all in the way of good pub grub.

Rebecca,

I think your blog is lovely as it is!

Great sandwich!

A mother and son cooking together gives your blog a unique viewpoint and is what makes your blog charming. I enjoy the conversations between you and Leland.

IMO, at their best, blogs are conversations with others about things we’re interested in – what we cook, what we think, what’s happening in our lives – and we create a sense of community with them.

I read the blogs I do because I like the writer’s voice and they’re writing about a subject that interests me. I am not drawn in because they have a “purpose.” I read the Wednesday Chef because I think Luisa’s a good writer, I like the way she looks at things, and I’m interested in a lot of what she cooks. The fact that she’s writing about recipes she’s tried from the New York Times or the LA Times is beside the point for me. She could flirt with generalism full-time and I’d still read her.

Again, IMO, you and Leland are doing just fine without a mission statement for your blog.

(Wow! This went on a lot longer than I meant to. It would have been much faster to just say, Pete Wells has his head up his ass is not the ultimate authority on what makes a good blog. Ignore him.)

Rebecca,

Check out Cheese Sandwich Day, inspired by that article: http://somethingsoclever.typepad.com/something_so_clever/2006/02/welcome_to_chee.html

The marmalade looks good, by the way!

Thanks for all the support, girls—I guess that’s what I was looking for! My husband says blogs are self-selecting, in that the ones that are boring or poorly-written just won’t get any readers and the bloggers will eventually get tired of writing them and stop posting. There sure are a lot of them out there, though!

Great sandwich post, Yulinka; now I have another blog that looks interesting to read.

I always thought that article got far more attention than it deserved. So I’m not going to deign it with any more, but I have to say that your blog is charming and lovely and unique, and I quite like the fact that you and Leland write it together. And that’s not the only thing that makes it one of my favorites. (And Julie, thank you!)

Thanks, Luisa! And thanks for the link.

BTW, by “a lot of them out there”, I mean food blogs in general, not poorly written food blogs. I wish I had the time to read more of them on a regular basis, because there is a lot of great cooking and writing about it being posted on the web.