Inside Special Fork: Taking a Look at our Free Cookbook

By Sandy Hu

If you follow Special Fork, you know that we blog from Monday through Friday to bring fresh stories and recipe ideas to you every weekday.

I post every Monday, with a general blog directed at the entire Special Fork community. On Tuesdays, Katie focuses on cooking newbies; on Wednesdays, Lori advises singles and couples; on Thursdays, Marilyn and Andrew reach out to busy parents; and on Fridays, we do a video blog, demonstrating a recipe from the Special Fork database.

When you type www.specialfork.com in your Internet browser, the website will recognize whether you are coming from a smartphone, such as an iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone; or a computer and will serve up the right website (mobile or conventional) to you.

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In Love with Lavender

By Katie Barreira

Your immediate associations with lavender may include eye pillows, scented dresser drawers and massage oil. But the fragrant buds are also a standard culinary herb most commonly known for its starring role in the classic French spice blend, herbes de Provence.

It dawned on me during a recent visit to the Lavender by the Bay farm in Long Island, NY, where the violet stalks are in bloom, that lavender buds are a versatile and underutilized ingredient. So I picked up a sack of dried culinary lavender to tinker with at home…my suitcase still smells fabulous, but that’s nothing compared to the warm, sweet scent wafting from the oven.

Now, no matter how inspired you might be to cook with these fragrant florets, don’t run to your dresser drawer and rip open the sachet perfuming your skivvies. There are specific varieties of lavender that are good for cooking, sold as “culinary lavender.”

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