This dip goes great with crackers and chips. For a beautiful presentation, cut out a five-inch diameter circle in the top of a sourdough wheat boule. Hollow out a hole to form a bowl. Fill the center with dip and enjoy! Creamy Spinach Dip Makes about 1 ½ cups 1 10-oz. package chopped frozen spinach ½ cup sour cream ½ cup mayonnaise 2 Tbsp. thinly sliced scallions, white parts only, from 3 scallions 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh dill leaves (or 1 tsp. dried dill) 1/3 cup packed p

Next weekend, my family will be celebrating the holidays with my parents in Philadelphia, where they bought a condo last year. They used to live in the quaint village of Milanville, about eight miles east of Beach Lake. Whenever we’d go over to their place for any major occasion, be it a birthday celebration or a Wimbledon championship, Peggy, my stepmother, would prepare a wonderful menu that would always end with her famous rum cake. Since I know I can’t compete with Peggy’

“Thank God you’re only open on Saturdays!” I was told this morning. We normally don’t hear this kind of remark from customers, many of whom can’t understand how we can possibly operate a retail business being open just one day a week. My philosophy is: if you can get something whenever you want it, then it is no longer special.

Today marks the official two-month anniversary of leaving my job in NJ and moving back up to Beach Lake full-time to run our bakery in, what is hoped, a less crazed manner. I can’t say I miss the weekly commute or the dreaded alarm bell that forces us out of bed at 5:00am on Monday mornings, bleary-eyed, so we can load up the car with clean clothes, the weekend’s dinner leftovers (along with a few loaves of bread to get us through the next week), and make the two-hour trek ba