Here’s to Apples: Ice Cider and Vermont’s Second Annual Ice Wine Festival

When Eleanor and Albert Leger’s kids went off to college, the duo bought a dairy farm in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and set about making a relatively new drink: ice cider. Unlike it’s cousins ice wine and applejack, ice cider has been around fewer than two decades. The sweet, apple-based drink was invented in Canada, where frigid temperatures make easy work of freezing the apple juice that serves as the base for the cider.

EDIBLE GLIMPSES: Robert Burns Night

Robert Burns Night—held each January 25 in honor of the 1759 birth of Scotland’s most famous poet–is a spirited celebration filled with whiskey, haggis, kilts and poetry. Read more about the annual fest here in our current issue.

EDIBLE GLIMPSES: Cake Fit for Three Kings

In Latin America, the peak of Christmas celebrating takes place this Sunday, aka El dia de los reyes (day of the kings). Known in English as Epiphany, January 6th commemorates the day the Three Kings arrived in Bethlehem bearing gifts for baby Jesus. But the part that gets us all giddy is the food, obviously.

FROM OUR RECIPE ARCHIVES: The White Manhattan

After all the holiday feasting and feting, who couldn’t use a little pick-me-up to get through the work week? Here’s a cocktail from the folks at Kings County Distillery and Marlow & Sons restaurant in Williamsburg that’s just right for our we’d-rather-be-baking-cookies-than-sitting-at-this-desk mood.

Cooking in the Digital Age: Sara Jenkins’ New Italian Pantry

Our former photo editor Michael Harlan Turkell spent the past year photographing rustic Italian dishes with the wonderfully talented Sara Jenkins, chef/owner of both Porchetta and Porsena restaurants in NYC. The result is a gorgeous app for iPad packed with recipes for simple, delicious food that’s easy to make based on 16 basic pantry items, plus loads of beautiful photography (why are we not surprised?).