It’s a quiet day here in the kitchen, a good time to clear out a few things and be ready for a new year of cooking and hospitality. Sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving, I bought a lovely little pie pumpkin for $1.88 and had used it as the center of a harvest time arrangement on…

Here’s a good meal for a snowy winter evening, a contrast to the many rich foods so common during this season. If you have leftover turkey from a Christmas dinner or turkey in the freezer from Thanksgiving, use that instead of the turkey thighs. Southwestern Style Turkey Stew Canola oil 2 turkey thighs, about 2…

I had decided on a vegetarian lasagna for dinner before realizing that I had a lot of spaghetti and no lasagna pasta. Never fear. We would just have a hybrid dish that would need some kind of new name. Whatever it would be called, it went together quickly and packed a great nutrition punch. The…

Occasionally one of the local chains may feature tomatoes even in these winter months at a “bargain” price, and I give into the temptation to buy one to make a nice fresh salad. And almost always, I am disappointed by even the reddest, sweetest looking tomatoes because of the lack of flavor. Over the years…

There was a time when I would often arrive home from the train well after 7:30, ready to eat without spending much time in the kitchen. Add in inviting friends over to share a late dinner, and I became adept at finding ways to make lots of foods in the microwave. The following recipe proved…

This is a recipe I have been using for over a decade. It’s great to make when time is short, using the microwave for the full preparation. The recipe makes two main dish servings, though it could be doubled easily (adding a little more time at each step in the microwave). I have liked it…

The following recipe is a great one to keep available when you need to make a better than average dessert, either for the family or for drop in guests. I have made it with raspberries frozen from my garden, but it should work as well with frozen strawberries or peaches–the plain fruit, not sweetened or…

Just days before the blizzard hit, I went out to Sekapp Orchard one more time, ready for another couple of bags of “deer apples.” Alas, with December’s very cold weather and their limited storage space, the only bags of these mixed windfalls and smalls had frozen. Still okay for the deer, but no longer good…

Yesterday we started decorating Christmas cookies, even though the weather altered the plans a little. In the middle of a blizzard, only my two youngest grandsons, ages 4 1/2 and 6, along with their parents, were here to enjoy the fun. I had planned to make cookies ahead so that there would only be decorating…