Sometimes you just want a homemade dessert, even when the thermometer is climbing close to (or beyond) the century mark. Turning on the oven, however, is one of the last things we want to do, both for cost and overall comfort. Spending a lot of time in the kitchen is probably also not high on…
Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chips
Friday was the last day of school for two of my grandsons and included a kindergarten graduation and presentation of the play, Little Red Hen. To celebrate, my granddaughter decided it would be fun to make a batch of cookies to share with all the family. I had not realized that I had never put…
Snickerdoodles Just in Time for the Fourth of July
I guess I’m not a very traditional Grandma, but I don’t often have cookies in the house. Christmas and Valentine’s Day are the most common times when I make cookies, but now my daughter has provided a “new” kind of holiday cookie to add to the repertoire. I put “new” in quotation marks because the…
Rhubarb Banana Muffins
I feel compelled to say this at some point in every rhubarb season: I don’t get the mystique of rhubarb! When young, I absolutely hated it, even as everyone else seemed ecstatic over this advent of spring ingredient for pies, breads, etc. Now, I just mostly avoid it, a fairly easy thing for one not…
Summer Sherbets
Our weekend weather forecast is for some sweltering heat, perfect for some frozen desserts. With the stores featuring a wide variety of fresh fruits, this is a great time to try some easy homemade sherbets and ices, without the long list of unpronounceable ingredients and not as pricey as so many of the “all natural”…
Ten Minutes and Healthy to Boot
With garden tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro available in lots of our gardens or at the farmers markets or roadside stands, now is the time to rely on fresh salsa for some quick meals. We all know that salsas gain from being prepared ahead so the flavors have time to blend, but you can still enjoy…
Zucchini Part IV–Enchiladas too?
One of the things I’ve been trying to learn for this blog has been the art of food photography. Since I only have my simple kitchen and a pretty basic camera, the results I’m sure have been mixed. The photo in this entry shows I still need to work at the process. I have had…
Old Time Fruit and Chocolate Chip Bars
Decades ago, I had the opportunity to watch my kids’ great-grandmother read through a little farm paper, The Farmer’s Friend and Rural Reporter. Every week when it arrived in the mailbox, she would turn to the back, past the updates on crop conditions and market reports, to the pages designed just for farm wives like…
Triple Fruit Upside Down Cake
Looking for a dessert or sweet coffee accompaniment that includes some of the rhubarb and strawberries so common this time of the year? Here is a cake/coffee cake/English style pudding that, along with some added apple, brings out the best of these spring fruits, with a cake layer that ends up being almost like a…
No Pectin Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
Spring in the Midwestern garden seems to just require doing things with rhubarb. It’s a little early for local strawberries up here in Minnesota, but there are still specials that I can’t resist, and my rhubarb seems to peak earlier than that of many of my neighbors, so time to sit on the deck and…