Coming to the end of July, we are still in a time when some kind of berry can usually be found at a bargain price in the supermarkets, at the farmers’ market or, if you are really lucky, in your own backyard or nearby country roads. Strawberry season may be coming to a close, but…

Summer travel, a crashed hard drive, and suddenly it’s the end of July with only one post since May–not the way to run a blog!! I am in the middle of the first crop of my everbearing raspberries and enjoying the luxury of going out to pick a handful just for snacking. Sometimes I bring…

A crazy month and a lot of catching up to do! There is still time to use the rhubarb in your backyard…or your neighbor’s–here in the upper Midwest, it seems like rhubarb is sometimes like the zucchini of spring, with many gardeners so overly blessed with these ruby red stalks, they are delighted to share…

As you may have noticed in prior posts, one of the ways that I like to keep food costs under control is by reducing the amount of meat in recipes. In addition to the positive effects on the budget, these kinds of adjustments can often make the dish much healthier as well. The following recipe…

Soups have been made since antiquity, most often by people without cookbooks, measuring cups, or modern markets. Still, many people seem to be intimidated by the thought of preparing a pot of homemade soup, so they continue to reach for an overpriced can of some variety or another when the urge for a warming bowl…

Soup is a wonderful food on a cloudy, snowy day in winter, but it can be an equally welcome choice when the sun is shining on an early spring day. As part of my experiment to see how many good meals I could get from one four pound chicken, I had some wonderfully concentrated broth…

So our small group from church was going to be meeting for our biweekly shared meal, and I was in the middle of an experiment: I was trying a series of menus to see how many meals I could get from one four pound ($3.21 on sale) chicken. I had used some of the stock…

I seem to be stuck in the breakfast mode these days, but now a couple of sweet breads to balance yesterday’s savory recipes. The first is a coffee cake I’ve been making for 30 years or more, and the inspiration at that time came from a decades old cookbook. This is one of those lovely…

In my last post, I included both a sweet and a savory brunch dish. While my usual quick morning start is a bowl of mixed cereals topped with fresh or dried fruits and a quarter cup or so of rolled oats, a special breakfast for me always leans toward the savory rather than sweet side….

Eggs are always on special somewhere the week before Easter, so they were an easy choice for the basis of two main dish offerings I would be taking to our congregation’s annual Easter breakfast. Frittatas and French toast are always good budget main dishes, and both can be scaled up or down pretty easily, so…