kitchen adventures
January is a time when I return to the simple in my kitchen. After 6 weeks of feasts, cookies, pies, more feasts, and all the glitter of the holidays, it’s time to simplify. This month I want to eat down the freezer, use up the pantry supplies, and, in general,
Cold weather and the holiday season mean that my oven’s often in use, baking all kinds of treats. Fancy cookies are all very well, and fun to give as gifts, but sometimes I just want something quick and easy, but still utterly delicious. That’s when I turn to my freezer, and
What’s a quick chasseur sauce? The name translates to Hunters’ Sauce, and it goes with just about anything a hunter would bring home: game birds, rabbits, venison, and boar. It also works very well with our more ordinary food: beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and lamb. This is a sauce that makes
Why stuffed pepper soup? November, here in SE Michigan, brings cold blustery weather, and adds unpredictability. We might have sunshine, sleet, snow, or all of the above in one day. I call it soup weather: this is the time of year when I have great appreciation for a good bowl
I’ve been posting about our CSA boxes since early June. Have I been clear about what the heck a CSA is? CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Think of it as a subscription to a farm. We pay a fee at the beginning of the growing year. In return, every week, we
CSA week 22: it’s the end of this year’s CSA season. The farmers market will still be open, and our farmers will still be there with their great produce, but our weekly boxes will stop. From now until next May, I’ll be an ordinary shopper. The end of the season
You may already be familiar with pickled green tomatoes – they are common in many New York delis. However, if you’re one of those folks whose understanding of pickles is limited to cucumbers, try these! This is the time of year when gardeners race the frosts to harvest every possible
I’m still working to use up the half-bushel of green tomatoes stripped from one single row of dying vines at the farm. This recipe originates with Marisa McClellan’s splendid book Food in Jars I wanted to avoid the hour-and-a-half of stirring, while the mixture reduced, so I decided to try out a
October 20th is CSA week 21 – we have a 22-week season this year, not a 20-week one! Now there’s only one more week for our CSA boxes, and soon, I’ll be very sad – however, this week I’m very happy. Look at the wonderful stuff from this week’s box!
In My Kitchen Year, Ruth Reichl published a recipe for an enormous cake which she called “The Cake That Cures Everything”. What a cake! Made of two gigantic 9×13 layers, it could serve 36 chocolate lovers(!) Her original recipe may be found on her own website, as well as among
Now that cool weather has arrived, it’s time to work on apples. Local orchards have bushels of fruit begging for my attention. I put up applesauce every year: it stores well, can be used in lots of ways, and is surprisingly easy. I like to use a variety of sweet and
CSA week 20, and there was a lovely surprise for me today: our farmer told me I had it all wrong, and we have two more weeks of glorious produce! I’m very excited about this, because, well, glorious produce, and the fall crops are just beautiful. We’re due for a hard
I’m Maurita Plouff, and I write about cooking and preserving the local harvest in Southeast Michigan. Any recipe you find here is something I have cooked myself, and enjoyed, and think you might like too. I invite you to try the recipes, and leave comments.