kitchen adventures
This past weekend, I indulged myself with a lazy Sunday morning brunch, including a pot of tea and a batch of freshly-baked muffins. Great muffins with dried cherries, that I want to share with you. They’re both easy and delicious, and I expect they’ll become a standard around here. Don’t have dried cherries? Use
At times, I fear that I give the wrong impression. I put up lots of good things, including jar after jar of jam and fruit butter. But think beyond toast – these jars of fruity goodness are good for much more. Open jars flavor ice cream, smoothies, and cake frostings; spike salad
In the spring of 2018, I embarked on a vacation voyage with Viking River Cruises. The food they served was simply marvelous, and I’ve been trying to recreate some of those flavors ever since. This carrot ginger soup is an example. It’s a simple soup: just carrots and onions with
I’m sure there are people who don’t like chocolate chip cookies – it’s just that none of those people are in my family. By popular demand, when I bake cookies, about half the time it’ll be chocolate chip. We’ve become quite picky about our cookies, and these are perfect chocolate chip cookies.
When you think of potato salad, do you think of the typical mayonnaise-based same old stuff? If that doesn’t appeal, go Greek: try a potato salad without mayonnaise at all. This Greek potato salad is one of my secret weapons in the summertime: it’s simple to make, doesn’t heat up
A note: I was sent, free of charge, a tub of ChefShamy Honey Butter with Vanilla as a participant in #CookoutWeek 2018. It was my own decision to make pie crust with honey butter: an experiment that I call a success. I wanted to do something a bit beyond the
Here in SE Michigan, Spring is an iffy season. One day the temperatures will hit the 80s, and the next, will sulk somewhere in the 50s. Springtime is hot and cold and wet and dry and we get all kinds of weather. This makes meal planning a challenge. Will we want something hot or cool? Light or hearty?
I grew up in Michigan, and my mom was an A&P shopper. Sure, there were other grocery stores in town, but it was the A&P for staples. Every so often a little treat would find its way home in the grocery bags, and my favorite was a little snack cake
Today I made the simplest rhubarb compote. Winter has been hanging on forever. It seems like it’s January 115th, rather than more than halfway through April. Some of the plants know that springtime is almost here – there are buds, some flowers are pushing up their stalks – but we
Why did “pantry cooking” ever become associated with deprivation? There are lots of wonderful foods you can make from simple pantry ingredients: these overnight English muffins are a fine example. They are not only easy (stir, let rise, stir, cook) but they use only flour, yeast, salt, water, and a bit
Hash is an old-fashioned dish. You can make hash from leftover roast of any kind, and cooks like my grandmother never needed a recipe: just cook onions, potatoes, leftover meat in a pan, moisten with gravy, milk, or cream, season, and ta-da! dinner. So what’s Provençal sausage hash? It’s hash,
This week, I found blueberries in the grocery store. Plump, glossy, beautiful blueberries, on sale! Of course I bought them. Without any hesitation at all, I pulled out butter, eggs, and flour, to make quick and easy blueberry muffins. When you live in an area that has distinct seasons, as I do, there
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.