This is not quite your mother’s carrot salad! Every holiday, mom made a little side salad of carrots. Sometimes, all it included was carrots, mayonnaise, a bit of sugar, salt, and pepper. Often, she would add dried cranberries or raisins, and sometimes cabbage as well. A change here and there I’ve changed her salad many…
Mushroom Croquettes with Saffron Lemon Sauce
We need to please a wide range of dietary needs in our family and friends circle, so I thought a special redux of the traditional croquettes recipe was in order. I swapped out lightly cooked shiitake mushrooms for the cooked turkey in this recipe, and bumped up some of the seasoning.
Sourdough Whole Wheat Sesame Crackers
These crackers make use of sourdough discard, with sesame flavor coming from three sources! Homemade crackers are remarkably simple to make, delicious, and can be modified in many ways to create flavor combinations you’ll love. On Saturday, I try to remember to feed “Ginny Junior,” my sourdough starter of 11 years. I often forget in…
Vermont Cheddar and Rosemary Scones
Tender, moist, and packed with flavor, these cheddar and rosemary scones are a perfect little afternoon snack or brunch favorite. Do you need a little pick-me-up in the middle of the afternoon? A cup of tea, or perhaps an iced coffee, along with a nibble of something sweet or savory, and you’re set to go…
Butternut Squash and Purple Cabbage Stir-Fry
Two of the prettiest Autumn vegetables taste and look great together! This is definitely the season for both squash and cabbage, and the combination of beautiful orange butternut squash and vibrant purple cabbage are a match made in heaven. Weekly routine We have a stir-fry at least once a week at our house, often twice!…
Nantucket Cranberry Pie
Tart and tangy, sweet and satisfying. This pie is easy to make, and can easily move from everyday to holiday dinner dessert. We love our cranberries in New England. Their pop of tartness and vibrant red color move from sweet to savory with ease. What would the Thanksgiving table be without cranberry sauce or relish?…
Artichoke Bottoms with Scallops and Mushrooms
Artichoke bottoms are perfect little vessels to hold countless fillings. One of my favorite culinary gifts from my late Mother-in-Law Pat, was the discovery of canned artichoke bottoms. Pat was not just a great cook, but a chef in her two high-end restaurants in the Manchester and Londonderry Vermont area, the heart of ski country….
Toasted Jack O’ Lantern Seeds
Pumpkin seeds! We have a ton when we carve a Jack O’ Lantern. Don’t throw them away, we can turn them into a delicious snack! You don’t want to waste those delicious and nutritious seeds! It’s so much fun to take those guts, separate the seeds, and make a little treat for after Halloween. But…
Moroccan Spiced Vegetable and Wild Rice Soup
What’s more warming at this time of year than a big pot of flavorful soup? The weather definitely turned this week from last week’s balmy 70 degrees to snow predicted for tomorrow! That’s New England! There’s nothing I like better than to make a big pot of soup and let it gently simmer to perfection…
Spaghetti Squash with Fennel, Chard, and Potatoes
Fall vegetables combine to add flavor and texture to the lovely little winter squash that disguises itself as pasta. It’s a funny vegetable. A squash that thinks it’s pasta, offering up spaghetti-like strands when scraped with a fork, or, a plastic pumpkin scraper. As winter squashes go, this one has a mild flavor, almost bland…
Silly Dilly Piccalilli
Green tomatoes carry the promise of ripened fruit if one is patient, but with a lot of them to use up, a few traditional recipes are called into action. Piccalilli is a sweet relish we make in the fall when frosts force us to strip the tomato plants and there are lots of green fruits…
New England Haddock (or tofu) in Curry Sauce served with Autumn Delights!
A little spicy, a little sweet, and a lot of the flavor of New England, and you can easily swap out the fish for tofu! October! This year most of the fall foliage turned a little early, but here, by the Connecticut River, we’re just catching up. What a vibrant, colorful year it has been!…
Yankee Skillet Cornbread
This is a job for your grandmother’s cast-iron frying pan! Talk to a southern cook about cornbread, and a New Englander like me may well end up in a verbal disagreement over two aspects: the addition of flour and the addition of sugar. The southern cook will probably tell you that neither has a place…
Vermont Cranberry Shell Beans with Shiitake Mushrooms
This is the time of year when you’ll find fresh shelling beans at the farm stands. A quicker cook than dried beans, makes comfort food fast! New Englanders love their beans! Baked beans were the traditional Saturday night supper for decades, still are in many households, and most cooks had their own special recipe. I…
Fall Farm Market Finds
So many wonderful vegetables! I tried three new (to me) winter squashes this season, two modern and one really ancient. You never know what you’ll find at the farmers market these days. Our farmers are stretching the limits of what one would expect to find in a cold northern climate. But we now have reliable…
Autumn Stuffed Delicata Squash
The farm stands are full of every imaginable squash right now, and they beg to be stuffed! Sweet Delicata winter squash are among my favorites. These little gems have a mildly delightful squash flavor and are loaded with nutrition. Every inch of these fruits is edible from the seeds to the peelings, so one little…
