Category: recipes

PA Dutch Pot Pie

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Growing up in Pennsylvania (PA) Dutch country (south central Pennsylvania- York county to be specific) there was probably nothing more confusing to me than “Pot Pie”.  For in that region of the country, what is in the freezer section at the grocery store labeled ‘chicken pot pie’, is in fact, not a true ‘chicken pot pie’ but  ‘chicken pie’.  To PA Dutch, their chicken pot pie is basically chicken soup with big fat homemade egg noodles in it. Being a transplant to the area, it made for some confusion when I saw the school lunch menu or was at a friend’s house. As I soon learned though, it may be confusing to outsiders, but  trust me, their version is even more of a comfort food than that ‘chicken pie’.

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A recommendation.

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It’s January, which means it’s soup weather, as well as cold and flu weather. In order to ward off illnesses threatening to invade our happy home, I made a pot of miso soup the other evening. The larder was rather bare and because the roads were icy, I made due with what I had. The only greens I had were Brussels sprouts, which on first thought, aren’t exactly a good fit for a miso soup. But then I recalled a bowl of soup I had last winter and inspiration struck. Continue reading →

Quick Cherry Tomatoes and Pasta.

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A gardening friend gave me two Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants that have had us swimming in the teeniest, tinest tomatoes this summer.  I’ve been harvesting a few pints of them weekly and in order to keep up with them, I had to get creative.  I was slightly inspired by a recipe my friend Martha used in her cooking class last month, but because these tomatoes are so tiny that cutting them would be a complete pain (and waste of time), I decided to just throw them in the pan whole.

(They also have a slightly annoying habit of splitting upon being picked.)

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Stovetop Granola is totally a thing.

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My go-to summer breakfast is fruit with yogurt and granola. I typically buy my granola in the summer, not because it’s too hot to turn the oven on, but because I’ve fallen in love with a ginger granola that I’ve yet to be able to perfect at home and I find ginger granola to be the perfect complement to any fresh fruit combo I throw together.  That changed last week however, when not only was I out of granola, it was so incredibly hot outside that just the thought of getting in my car to go get granola was out of the realm of possibility. I began to wonder if stovetop granola was a thing and if it wasn’t, then could I make it a thing? Continue reading →

Pickled Cucumbers, every which way.

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Cucumbers are starting to come in and since I have a bit of reputation for pickling everything in sight, I’ve already started fielding requests for my favorite cucumber preserving recipes.  I thought I’d go ahead and put all my favorites into one post, so from here on out, I can just send this link in response to “What are your favorite cucumber pickle recipes?”

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Greens, it’s what’s for dinner.

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The farmer’s market is overflowing with greens these days  – cabbage, chard, kale, arugula, lettuces galore – as well as with lovely root vegetables with their greenery still attached – beets, radishes, carrots, turnips. How to use it all without wasting it? I am often asked how I go about doing that this time of year.

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Lemon cake and berries.

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A few years ago now, we were at a Memorial Day BBQ at a neighbor’s, when one of the guests showed up with this wonderful lemon cake. The rest of us brought  various forms of strawberries, as they were gloriously in season. The resulting pairing of fresh strawberries with strawberry ice cream and lemon cake was a nice twist on the idea of strawberry shortcake.

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Homemade eggrolls.

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Ever since I was a kid, egg rolls have been one of my favorite things about Chinese food.  We’d eat Chinese takout regularly and I was always quite content to try and make a meal out of just egg rolls ( I was never allowed to succeed though, which is why I still to this day make a meal out of hot & sour soup and eggrolls). When my mother discovered egg roll wrappers at the grocery store, complete with a recipe on back, home made egg rolls became a regular in the dinner rotation and I finally was able to realize the dream of nothing but egg rolls for dinner.  Continue reading →

DIY Chili

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I made a really great pot of chili last week totally off the cuff, right down to the chili powder mix. It was during one of last week’s snow days, so when I realized I was out of chili powder, there was no heading out to grab some. I knew I’d read somewhere chili powder was fairly easy to make, so I did a little googling and a quick hunt through my cookbooks and came up with something. I scribbled myself a note on a scrap of paper and stuck it to the side of my vintage “dispensette” with a Hello Kitty magnet, which is my new favorite way to organize myself.

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Egg nog and Festivus Miracles.

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The subject of eggnog came up the other day when my friend Leni had dropped by – I’m a fan, but my better half is not. She suggested I seek out a recipe that doesn’t call for much sugar, because the premade stuff is loaded with sugar and in her opinion, not very good. So while I said I’d get right on that, I thought hmm, maybe another year, as I knew better than to tack anything else on my to do list for the week. So low and behold, when I woke up to find an email the very next morning from my dear college friend Will with an eggnog recipe attached, I felt like I had just witnessed a Festivus miracle. Continue reading →