Dairy Free Corn & Maple Crème Brûlée

Corn. Maple Sugar. A candy top? What is she thinking? We only had crème brûlée once when I was a kid. My mom did a great job of preparing and baking the little custards, and carefully covering the top with sugar. She commandeered my father’s blow torch to do the brûlée part, and promptly set…

Delicata Squash: Simple and Fancy

Delicata Squash: A seasonal favorite from our local farms The farm stands and farmers markets are loaded with winter squash of just about every shape, size, and color right now. One might find a giant Blue Hubbard squash that could feed an army, or maybe a small Sweet Dumpling squash, just right for tonight’s supper…

Smoked Haddock Cakes with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce

You can use any smoked fish here, they are all delightful. Pan- or oven-fried cakes of any sort are an economical way to stretch a pound of smoked fish, which can be on the pricy side these days. When I was growing up, smoked and salted fish of any type was cheap food to feed…

Mushroom and Miso Noodle Soup

Note: Some of you may not be able to comment because the Like and Comment boxes are missing, but not all of you. Happiness Engineers have yet to fix the problem. We changed the clocks this past weekend and that means sunset at 4:34 p.m. This is never happy news in my book. There had…

Grilled Butternut Squash with Smoked Poblano Chili Sauce

Great finds this week at the farm stand including beautiful butternut squash and fat poblano peppers. The heart of autumn treasures, with a few summer peppers tossed in for good measure. Our seasons always have a few stragglers from the previous. Made for each other Poblano peppers have lovely flavor and medium heat. Grilled, roasted,…

Rosemary and Goat Cheese Scones

The weather has turned, and with a chill in the air and a fire in the hearth there might be the urge to take a bit more time cooking, or bake something tasty. Bread baking is always satisfying, whether yeasted or a quick bread. Sometimes as we prepare a meal there’s a feeling a little…

So when did they start growing watermelons the size of grapes?

Don’t you love it when you discover a new fruit or vegetable? When I picked up our CSA this week, I spied a bin of what looked like the world’s smallest watermelons, grape sized! I was handed one to taste and was absolutely astonished. The first moment was just like biting into a fresh watermelon,…

Whipped Feta with Roasted Beets & Radishes

It is definitely beet season, and color abounds! Some of the prettiest side dishes are made with beets and radishes. Vibrant reds and pinks and golds, all invite you to eat that rainbow everyone is always talking about. However, as much as others in my family adore beets, I don’t really care for them, and…

Baked Sole with Grapes and an Herb Stuffing

You never know what twists and turns a recipe will take. Rarely do I make a recipe exactly same as the last. Even my favorite dishes morph until I sometimes don’t recognize them from the original. Many of the meals we have started out in some way from a recipe of my mother, aunt, grandmother,…

Brown Butter Broccoli Rabe with Macadamia Nuts

Save that butter wrapper! One of my first lessons in kitchen frugality was watching my mother unwrap her stick of butter for the butter dish, setting the wrapper aside. Once the green beans were cooked and drained, she placed them in the serving dish and topped them with the butter wrapper, to act as a…

So, What to do with all that fennel…

Stuffed Squash. 1/2 gallon Fennel Stock. Tomato Fennel Soup. Fennel Pesto. Toasted Fennel Au Gratin. I came home from this week’s CSA with two massive fennel bulbs complete with long stalks and the biggest toppings of frilly fronds I’ve ever seen. This was going to take a little work, and I suspected there would be…

Hearty Tofu with Apples & Sage

Vegetarians and meat eaters alike will enjoy this taste of the season! Autumn arrived officially last week, and many of us in the north country feel more than a little cheated by the weather this year. Our summer consisted of rain, rain, rain, flooding, cold, and one exquisite week (well five days in a row)…

Roasted Ratatouille with Red Lentil Pasta

All of a sudden, you have too much of everything! This time of year, when the peppers, squash, eggplant, and tomatoes are staging their grand finale, and we feel like we have more than we can deal with, the urge to mix them all together is strong. Thoughts often turn to ratatouille. A humble peasant…

Creamy Corn, Cauliflower & Crab Chowder

A simple classic dish with just a little taste of the sea to liven it up Corn season cannot go by without some more chowder, and it is going fast. As corn season progresses, this native treasure gets sweeter, and the price gets lower, so this is the time of year we pull out those…

Let’s go to the fair, they have blooming onions!

The solution to Wordle on Saturday was onion. How could we not got to the fair and get a blooming one? Of course, I have an alternative. We try to eat healthy most of the time. However, when the fair opens, all bets are off the table and I plan my appetite around the sharing…

Fresh Ginger and Marmalade Glazed Cod

A tropical crop in the the north country? Why not? The fresh ginger harvest is starting in the Northeast, and it’s a delightful addition to our meals. For the last five years or so, fresh ginger has appeared at our farm stands in late summer and fall. Until then, I had never seen or tasted…

Super Corny Polenta with Roasted Heirloom Tomatoes

Some of the best flavors of summer combine for a memorable dish. Tomatoes and the sweetest corn imaginable are everywhere right now. Red tomatoes, green, purple, yellow, orange, striped and tie-dye too. All sizes, shapes, and flavors, and so many recipes to make! It was really hard to make my choice at the farmers market…

6 Chilled Summer Soups

We have a dilemma – with all the wonderful vegetables available right now, it’s just too hot to cook! Chilled summer soups solve the problem, and can take only moments to prepare.