If you were at the Chicago Green Festival Sunday afternoon, welcome to my blog! {waving wildly} And if you weren't there, well, you still get to check out the French bread recipe that I demonstrated. This is a super easy bread and one of my favorites! For each baguette, you need the following ingredients: 1 cup warm water (bath temperature) 1/2 tablespoon yeast 1 teaspoon … [Read more...]
Green smoothies
by Debra Garner Guest blogger The holiday season is upon us. For many the calendars are already filling up with dinner parties, office parties, family gatherings, lunch dates after shopping trips. How do you stay healthy during this busy season? My answer . . . Green Smoothies. I believe that green smoothies should be an addition to everyone's diet. I start my day with one … [Read more...]
What to do with dark turkey meat?
If you are like most Americans, you are not crazy about dark turkey meat. In fact, you don't like it at all, which is why Big Ag figured out how to grow turkeys with breasts so big that they can't fly or mate naturally. (Yes, that means supermarket turkeys are the result of artificial insemination.) And I was right there with the majority, only eating white turkey meat for so … [Read more...]
What to do with all that pumpkin?
The following recipe is adapted from the Farmstead Chef cookbook by Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko, just in time for Thanksgiving and an abundant pumpkin harvest. Farmstead Chef offers stories and recipes to nourish and inspire. Kivirist and Ivanko's 150 recipes are based on their quest to eat what they call “farmsteadtarian”: eating as much as possible from our own … [Read more...]
Pumpkin spice cookies
This is one of my favorite holiday cookie recipes for so many reasons -- convenience, taste, and nutrition, to name only three. They're easy to make and actually have some pretty nutritious ingredients in them. It might seem like you're making a lot of cookies when you first look at the recipe, but that's what I love about it. You can freeze them in a single layer on a … [Read more...]
Spiced pear butter
Last year was the first year we ever made pear butter, and it was the first time I ever ate pear butter, which I discovered is delicious. I especially like a couple tablespoons added to a bowl of oatmeal. In fact, I'm not a big fan of jams and butters on toast or biscuits, so the vast majority of our canned fruits find themselves in oatmeal or yogurt. 6 to 7 pounds pears 4 … [Read more...]
Homegrown Tamale Pie
For about 20 years, we've been making a tamale pie out of the cookbook, Tofu Cookery, but recently it occurred to me that this time of year we could make our own version of this recipe using produce straight from our garden and substituting our own queso blanco for the tofu. First, make a batch of queso blanco with a gallon of milk and cut it into cubes. One-inch cubes will … [Read more...]
Zucchini here, there, everywhere
Patty pan, lemon squash, golden zucchini, and scalloped squash Although we are not drowning in zucchini and summer squash this year -- the picture is from last year -- I know a lot of people have been blessed with an abundance of summer squash of all varieties, so here is what I would be doing if the borers had not visited my garden a few too many times this … [Read more...]
Goat cheese and cucumber spread
We picked our first cucumbers of the season a few weeks ago, and I immediately remembered this excellent sandwich spread that I discovered last fall towards the end of the cucumber harvest. We've already had it six or seven times. This is a twist on the cucumber dip recipe that is all over the Internet. Most of those recipes call for cream cheese, but I use chevre, which is a … [Read more...]
Extreme bread pudding
I've been searching for a good bread pudding recipe for my whole life, and I finally figured it out myself. My husband and I took his mother out to eat for Mother's Day. I like to go to locally owned restaurants that make their food from scratch, partly so that I can get ideas for cooking at home. When it was time for dessert, the waiter described this bread pudding that … [Read more...]