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 … [Read more...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

It's June, and you know what that means? Strawberry harvest time! Even if you don't grow strawberries, you can visit farmer's markets or u-pick farms, and after you've had your fill of fresh strawberries, you can save the harvest by making strawberry jam. This was the very first thing I ever canned, and I bought the strawberries at a roadside stand in Florida more than 20 years … [Read more...]

Truffles (left) and chocolate dipped pretzels. Not only are these the most amazingly delicious truffles in the history of the kitchen, they are also ridiculously simple to make. It uses one bowl, and there is no cooking, so they are great to make in the middle of summer when you don’t want to heat up the kitchen.8 ounces chevre8 ounces melted semi-sweet baker's chocolate½ cup … [Read more...]

Who would have thought that I would need more than 80,000 words to say everything I wanted to say about growing your own food and fiber? That's the length of the book, and unfortunately, I ran out of space. But I didn't know I was running out of space until I ran out of words and still had more to say! So, some of the stuff in the middle had to get cut to leave enough space at … [Read more...]