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…

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…

Meyer Lemon and Herb Hummus with Confit Garlic

So many possibilities! What do you like? Anyone who has been to my kitchen knows there is always a bowl of hummus in my refrigerator. It is often lunch, a snack, sometimes even breakfast or supper. We have it on a salad, offered up with cucumbers or endive leaves, smeared on rye crackers, or dressed…

A Spring Salad of Three Peas and Some Pods

Peas are the star of this delightful spring salad, but the Meyer Lemon and Ginger Vinaigrette is one you’ll surely use again! A large salad can really set the tone for a holiday meal, especially if it is one that is a little different and makes its own statement of the season. Spring salads can…

Cream of Party Platter Soup

First step in recipe: Throw a party There’s one at every party, a crudités platter, beautifully cut-up vegetables, arranged in vibrant color swaths, decorated with herbs and little treats. Sometimes, depending on what else is available, it even gets eaten! Always some left over However, usually there are lots left over, especially if a large…

When you cook together, it’s always a feast

Cooking with friends and family is one of the delights of the kitchen. When you share making a meal with someone, the enjoyment of eating it together is increased. There’s often an extra person in the kitchen with you, at least in memory – a mother or grandmother who gave you the recipe, a friend…

Sweet & Sour Autumn Slaw

Who doesn’t love a nice crunchy slaw? This one is packed with flavor that only gets better with time. Sometimes I find the weirdest things at the farmers market. This week, my eyes spied a cone-shaped cabbage. Yes. Connie Conehead would have snapped it up in a minute. I already had a head of radicchio…

Orzo and Radicchio Salad Cups with Honey Lime Dressing

Summertime, and the living is easy, at least a little longer. We love a chilled salad, something packed with flavor that we can enjoy over a few meals without any additional cooking. Pasta salads are always at the top of the list, whether a humble macaroni salad, or colorful pasta primavera. They feed a lot,…

A little fire, a little smoke, and a few pretty vegetables

Campfire Chioggia Beets with Summer Vegetables, Garlic, and Lemon features a classic technique with a little lively added! Our camping trips with my parents always centered on playing in the water and enjoying the food. When we weren’t boating or eating, it seems like we were talking about what we were going to eat next….

How to stuff a sweet Italian

The sweet Italian frying peppers have hit the farm stands and they beg to be used in many different ways. I’m stuffing mine with smoked trout and chèvre for a delightful treat. A recipe often begins life with a flavor combination found in something totally different. I found the most beautiful sweet Italian frying peppers…

Tomato and Fennel Summer Salad

Here come the tomatoes, and my first fennel! I picked my first cherry tomatoes from my plants this week, and this is what really marks summer’s beginning to me. Of course, the farm stands are full of beautiful heirloom fruits of many colors, tempting me into making Salad Caprese with local fresh mozzarella, Bruschetta with…

Wheat Berry Tabouli

This classic vegetarian salad has traveled well through countless decades! A good while back in my early adult life, my first vegetarian cookbook was the Moosewood Cookbook by Molly Katzen. If you are of my generation, you probably had it on your shelf too. It was certainly my first experience attempting meatless meals beyond baked…

Baked Tofu with Mustard Cream Succotash and Fregula

Heavenly. Creamy. This dish made with veggies tucked in your freezer is good for you too! The garden is offering up a few chives right now, and this weekend I’ll tuck some lettuce in the cold-frame to at least give the illusion of gardening season starting. The squill is blooming, the daffodils are budding, and…

Fresh Mandarin Orange Upside Down Cornmeal Cake

What fun, to cook fruit on the bottom of a cake in a light caramel, then invert it to show it off!             I accidentally ended up with a large sack of fresh Mandarin oranges recently. The oranges were beautiful! Organically grown in the US, I knew they would have lovely flavor and I was right….

Heavenly Deviled Eggs

Sometimes, you just have to make things a little healthier, even a classic you don’t really want to mess with! No matter how elegant the party, the first thing to disappear are the humble deviled eggs. I’m not even talking caviar or truffle topped here, just a basic halved egg filled with the yolks and…

Pat’s Holiday Gravlax

I first received gravlax as a gift from my Mother-in-Law and was amazed that this could be accomplished in a home kitchen I remember getting this gift of home-cured gravlax, a salt-preserved salmon, every year at Christmastime from my mother-in-law Pat, my husband’s father’s second wife. The first time she gave it to us, I…

Seven Roasted Autumn Vegetables and One Exquisite Sauce

Pick a rainbow of autumn vegetables, top a bed of wilted greens, and enhance with a simple Maple, Miso, and Mustard Sauce. It is the perfect time of year to think about a big platter of roasted vegetables, especially the delicious roots of the season. I feel truly blessed to live in a beautiful and…