Cherry clafoutis recipe, on the lighter side

• 

Clafoutis is the easiest classic French dessert recipe in existence. You whisk together eggs, milk, flour, sugar and a little melted butter into what's fundamentally a thin, eggy pancake batter. And then you pour it over fruit and stick it in the oven. There's nothing to it. In fact, the only dreary part of making a cherry clafoutis is pitting the cherries. (Which is why I sometimes use apricots. Way easier.)

Are raw eggs safe? How salmonella almost killed my baby (also, recipe for homemade mayonnaise with basil)

• 

Homemade mayonnaise with fresh basil

 Today, for the first time, I made mayonnaise. And then I cried.

Seven years ago this weekend, my younger son, Weston, got sick. Really sick. He was two years old. Days of violent diarrhea took us to the emergency room - not the best place to be on a holiday weekend. On Memorial Day, the tests came back showing salmonella. The salmonella bacteria had entered his bloodstream. Salmonella sepsis is life-threatening, especially in the very old, the immunocompromised, and the very young. Weston was very, very young.

Bread pudding recipe with cherries and chocolate

• 

Cherries, hand-picked in southern California's Leona Valley (photo by Carolin Shining)

There's only one thing to do with leftover bread, and that's to make bread pudding. This combination - dark chocolate, sweet cherries, and a slug of spirits - wins rave reviews every time. If fresh cherries aren't available yet in your area, dried cherries work too. Or just wait a few weeks. They're coming.

Pinto beans with Saag's sausage

• 

About once a week I make rice and beans for dinner. I wish I could say that it's part of a "more plants" menu plan. I'd be fine with that, but I live with three men (one large, one medium-sized, one smaller) who are ardent carnivores. Rice and beans may be plants, but in our house they are generally decorated with meat: bacon, sausage, ground beef or turkey, leftover steak or pork chops, whatever.

Bacon pizza recipe with green garlic

• 

When I think back to the first times my kids and I cooked together, I always think about pizza.

I remember both kids as toddlers, standing on a chair at the kitchen counter, poking their sticky fingers into a wad of pizza dough and rolling their little pieces into odd shapes.

I remember little hands holding big spoons as they spread tomato sauce around on the uncooked pies.

I remember cringing when more shredded cheese ended up on the tray and the floor than on the pizza.

But most of all I remember their delight when the hot pizzas came out of the oven and they took the first bite of their pizza, the dinner they created and decorated all on their own (more or less).