Anjuli, poor girl, has, of all things, pneumonia. She and Matt have been staying in Connecticut while they get ready for their travels. They’re going to be outside of the US for a while, so their planning and packing involves millions of little details. The last thing Anjuli needed was to come down with pneumonia. I wanted to make something that would lift her spirits in this never-ending winter. It was Valentine’s Day, so I thought she would love it if I made some nut brittle and backed it with chocolate.

Pancakes, the limp dicks of the bread world… er… the carb darlings of the American breakfast. I’ll admit, I never liked ‘em. Pancakes always seemed like a sucker punch – refined flour and maple syrup taking turns until you were forced to go curl up in a corner and take a nap. Of course I always loved making them – they were the first food I learned to cook when I was about two. Mom would turn around the kitchen chair (so I didn’t tumble over onto the stove top) and let me (slowly now) ladle the batter onto the griddle. I’m sure there was a lot going through my kid brain at the time, but all I remember was making little dinosaurs and A, B, Cs.

During the winter as kids my brother and I would make little pine cone feeders so the birds would have some fat to tide them over until spring. We’d have already collected and dried the cones. Mom would give us a jar of peanut butter and a bunch of bird seed. We’d rub peanut butter in the little crevices of the cones. Smelling of roasted nuts and dripping all over the place, I’d want to lick them. Then we’d sprinkle them all over with sunflowers seeds and maybe some cracked corn, tie them with little ribbons and hang the cones around in the yard. The chickadees would invariably come. With their melodic chicka-dee-dee-dee singsong, little black heads and puffed out bellies, the chickadees were a family favorite. While everyone else was blanketed in a snowstorm, the chickadees would happily hop around, foraging and taking advantage of the quiet. They’d hop right along on those ice-coated tree branches to visit our cone feeders.

I’ve had the urge lately to make a bite size piece of something fluffy, sweet, and totally unnatural. I am told this requires gelatin. I also happen to have a totally unhealthy relationship with marshmallows. I will indulge in campfire when I have to, but much prefer the pillowy, melty, homemade style from City Bakery. We’re on a baker’s schedule lately, so at 10:30pm on Wednesday it was go time. We needed gelatin and molasses (for an anadama sweet bread), which we guessed was a mission impossible. These once typical ingredients are not generally in high demand at the Manhattan supermarket/market/$8 peanut butter bodgea, and especially not in the stiletto and cobblestone nether region of the Meatpacking District. Besides, why would you buy ingredients for bread and marshmallows when you can just purchase the products for under $5 with money left over for a couple of beers? Because I am the master of my belly and homemade is more delicious.