(The following post is from 2017 but still captures a bit of the story of a very traditional part of our year end holiday meals–all of them!) This year, work conflicts meant that all of our immediate family couldn’t gather on Thanksgiving day for the usual feast, so we would need to celebrate the holiday…

While my diet leans heavily toward the vegetarian side, I am not a vegan and don’t generally stock some of the foods that show up in so many vegan recipes–no vegan chocolate chips, vegan Worcestershire sauce, etc. I am also still pretty wary about the “health benefits” of coconut products, so the only form of…

Now that killing frosts have finished off our northern gardens for another year, some of us have access to a lot of green tomatoes. Perhaps my southern friends think immediately of frying ups these end of the season beauties, but, for me, green tomatoes in the fall mean just one thing: green tomato mincemeat.  I…

Sometimes, a slight adaptation of a recipe yields an entirely new end product.  Today, I wanted to use the now abundant apples and raspberries for a cake, but I also didn’t have a lot of time so would probably do better with cupcakes. I didn’t have exactly what I was looking for in my files,…

Lots of bananas that suddenly turned very ripe in the late, unexpected, September heat. A big box of Grape-Nuts still to be used. Walnuts at a better price than they have been for years. Time for Banana Grape-Nuts bread. This is a recipe I started making years ago, with just a few tweaks here and…

. This is an old-fashioned cake that is just right for a chilly autumn evening or weekend dessert. It goes together pretty quickly, all in one saucepan, and the fragrance it will bring to your house–amazing! As I’ve noted before, I like to keep orange juice concentrate in the freezer for recipes like this. The…

Much of what I do in the kitchen depends on seasonal produce or what has been on sale lately. Recently, there were some really good sales on store brand peanut butter and bananas, so of course, I stocked up on both.  While the peanut butter has a nice long shelf life, the bananas have been…

In my continuing quest to find uses for lentils, I couldn’t miss out on a curried main dish. This one is especially fast if you have the lentils pre-cooked. Just chop some vegetables and saute long enough to get them cooked through while you are getting the table set and putting a little fruit together…

As much as possible, I try to post only “original” recipes here, those dishes that I have created from scratch or have changed significantly enough to call them my own. Today, I am bringing you a recipe so simple you can find hundreds of copies in any basic web search. I think I have even…

Cookbooks from a century or so ago usually included “icebox cookies” in their desserts section. These were generally quite rich cookies that could be stirred up in the evening, formed into a roll, and chilled until the next day–probably when the woodstove was being heated up to bake the day’s bread as well. Today of…