The weather’s turned chilly and I’m in my kitchen making soup. That’s very common around here: colder weather means soups, stews, and freshly baked bread or muffins. Last night’s supper was no exception: it was a quick scallop bisque.
As summer comes to an end, my kitchen moves into cooler weather mode. This means baking: in the fall and winter I make most of my family’s bread here at home. Cooler weather means bread!
Think about how people lived through hot summers before air conditioning was common: cold suppers, supper on the porch, cooling salads, and lots of lemonade and iced tea. This still sounds good, right? Try this old-fashioned cucumber & tomato salad – a summer classic.
Once in a while, I get a complete surprise in the kitchen. As I’ve accumulated experience, this happens less often, but it does happen, and so it was this week. Against all my expectations, I learned how to produce rare roast beef from the Instant Pot!
Why did “pantry cooking” ever become associated with deprivation? There are lots of wonderful foods you can make from simple pantry ingredients: these English muffins are a fine example.
Hash is an old-fashioned dish. You can make hash from leftover roast of any kind, and cooks like my grandmother never needed a recipe: just cook onions, potatoes, leftover meat in a pan, moisten with gravy, milk, or cream, season,
While it hasn’t been an especially cold winter, so far, it’s often been dank and grey. In my kitchen, the best remedy for the winter blahs is a pot of soup. Recently I experimented with a Polish dill pickle soup –
This blog focuses on what’s local and in season. I do make some exceptions, though: my wheat and flour do not come from local growers. I like bananas, avocados, and ginger, none of which grow anywhere nearby. And I love peaches from the Peach Truck –
It’s been cold, cold, COLD! During the frigid polar vortex days I wanted to bake all the things, all day long, so I could hang out in a warm kitchen. I made soup; I made stew; I made oat and wheat bread.
So far this month, we’ve had cold & grey weather – gloomy, but no rain or snow. According to the weather forecasters, that’s about to change. We’ll have a chance to put on our snow boots, test out the new electric snow thrower,
January is a time when I return to the simple in my kitchen. After 6 weeks of feasts, cookies, pies, more feasts, and all the glitter of the holidays, it’s time to simplify. This month I want to eat down the freezer,