So you don’t like beets but you’ve heard of all the wonderful antioxidants and other nutrients they provide? Well, here is a salad that even non-beet eaters have been known to praise, and even have seconds and third servings. This is best made with beets you have roasted, but you can improvise with canned beets–just…

Sometimes in this season of rich desserts, we may still crave something a little sweet to top off a meal. One very seasonal approach is to make your favorite pumpkin pie filling but then just put it in a heavy glass casserole dish and bake it without a crust. While there is still a significant…

The colors of fall are deep and rich, golds and bronzes and deep russet reds. And then there are the rich purple colors of Concord grapes. Throughout my childhood, baskets of these grapes were part of the fall harves, and the smell of my mother’s simmering grape juice often met us as we burst home…

  With an extended Indian Summer season this year, it is hard to believe that we are well into the last half of October. But the leaves–more brilliant than even the beautiful normal here in the upper Midwest this year–are quickly showering down, glowing in the sun, making colorful confetti against the clouds of the…

This has been a busy week, with two large batches of raspberry apple jam and one even larger batch of apple butter finished and ready for winter. While apple butter is wonderful on toast, French toast, and pancakes, I wanted to try using it in some baking as well. The following bread has a lot…

As the end of the raspberry season approaches, I wanted to use some of the last pickings to make some Apple Raspberry Jam. I have been making No Pectin Raspberry Apple Jam for several years, but this time I wanted to up the ratio of apple to raspberry, in part to see if I could…

Don’t laugh at this really long name for today’s cake. I often end up with a few bananas at the end of the bunch that get too soft to eat, and applesauce and peanut butter are staples in my pantry, so the ingredients are all right here for a relatively healthy dessert. Another advantage? If…

Why mess with success? That was the initial comment from a friend when I shared my testing of some snickerdoodle variations. Then, she tasted the “experiments.” Ah, that’s why. New taste sensations are always good for variety. Yes, snickerdoodles may be a favorite cookie for just about any sweets lover, but how can you grow…

If you are a gardener, you probably know that most greens grow best in cool weather. Why, then, does it seem as though these wonderful vegetables have long been most prevalent on the tables of Southerners? Growing up in the upper Midwest, we mostly knew of spinach from Popeye –and it would take more than…

The green beans in my garden got off to a late start, but now that September has arrived, they are producing beautifully. One of our family’s favorite ways to eat green beans is roasting in the oven, but the same results can easily be obtained by grilling and, I have discovered, by using my old…