A beautiful peach jam with the tropical flavors of lime and ginger. Last week, I returned home to find a box of softball-sized white and yellow peaches on my doorstep. Can you imagine how exciting that is? This year, once again, I am serving as a Canbassador for the Washington State Stone Fruit Growers. which means that every so often, I ...
How to Freeze and Use Cherries
July is peak cherry season! If your family loves cherries as much as mine does, why not freeze some of these beauties while they are in season and enjoy your favorite fruit all year long? If you enjoy eating or baking with sweet cherries, you know that these diminutve stone fruits are at their peak in July and August. While you can ...
Pear Cranberry Relish
Combine fall favorites pear and cranberries with spicy ginger for a sweet-tart relish that will add zing to your Thanksgiving turkey. It is officially November and that means it is time to start planning your Thanksgiving menu. I will be here to help all month long. So, let's dive in! Not much of the Thanksgiving feast can be prepared in ...
Quick Pickled Cranberries
Fall for fresh cranberries this holiday season! This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #FallforFresh #CollectiveBias. November is the season for Ocean Spray® Fresh Cranberries in the store, as I did at my local Walmart this week, I always buy at least two bags: one to use ...
Queen’s Jam (Raspberry and Blueberry)
Queen's Jam, a combination of raspberries and blueberries, is a classic Swedish preserve. It is also the perfect way to use the best summer berries. I write a lot about my Jewish heritage and how it influences my cooking. What I perhaps do not mention enough is that I am also part Swedish on my mother's side. My maternal grandmother was the ...
Stone Fruit Ketchup
Ketchup isn't just for tomatoes anymore. Try this sweet-and-sour peach and nectarine ketchup on chicken, turkey burgers and, my favorite, sweet potato fries! Last week, I returned home to find a box of softball-sized peaches and nectarines on my doorstep courtesy of the Washington State Stone Fruit Growers. This year I am serving as a ...
Entertaining: Holiday Cheese and Pickle Plate
A cheese board is a staple of holiday parties. And why not? It's an easy and economical way to feed a crowd. Even folks who don't cook can put together a killer cheese plate by hitting a good cheese shop and asking the cheesemonger for help. Plus, who doesn't love cheese? This year, however, may I humbly suggest that you forego an ordinary ...
Thanksgiving Cranberry Relish
Fall is the season for cranberries and they are available now at the farmers’ market. Cranberries freeze like a dream, so buy them while they are in season to enjoy all winter long. I adore baking with cranberries because they retain their shape so well. The tart flavor of these scarlet-hued berries pairs well with oranges and another great fall ...
Review of Naturally Sweet Food in Jars
Home food preservation expert, Marisa McClellan, whom I am delighted to call my friend, has once again revolutionized the field, this time with her latest book, Naturally Sweet Food in Jars. Featuring over 100 recipes for jams, jellies, sauces and more, all sweetened with natural sweeteners such as honey, maple syrup, agave, coconut sugar and dried ...
Blood Orange Curd
It's not blood-curdling, it's blood orange curd. And, in fact, it is rich, sweet and delicious. Pretty too, no? In a lovely shade of Creamsicle orange. I can't get enough blood oranges at this time of year. They are the sexiest of the citrus fruits with their mottled exteriors and screaming scarlet flesh. There is even an erotic film called ...
Apple Cranberry Mincemeat
Today’s recipe post is sponsored by Sun-Maid in conjunction with my work as part of Kitchen-PLAY‘s #TeamFreshSummit. As always, all opinions are entirely my own. Doesn't the word "mincemeat" make you think of Christmas in Victorian novels? I'm sure there was a mincemeat pie at Bob Cratchit's family Christmas or at least at the Christmas ...
Five Ways to Preserve the Harvest
I recently gave a talk to a local garden club about different ways to preserve the harvest for gardeners who find themselves with too many tomatoes/green beans/peppers/zucchini ripening at once. It occurred to me that some of my readers might find this information useful as well. So, here it is! An overview of home food preservation ...
Beginner Peach Jam
We have all had the experience of watching our farmers' market or CSA fruits and vegetables start to get a bit long in the tooth as the week wears on. Maybe you bought two quarts of peaches thinking you would make a cobbler and then time got away from you. Maybe the member of your household who you can usually count on to eat all those cherries ...
Rhubarb Syrup
I've been cheating on my favorite spring fruit, rhubarb, with all these strawberry posts. Sure, it is easy to love sweet, juicy, photogenic strawberries. No one looks at a quart of strawberries at the farmers' market and thinks: "But what will I do with them?" You know exactly what to do with them: eat them out of hand. Slice them on your cereal. ...
March 2015 Food Swap at The Chopping Block
What a difference a month makes! While we all had to trudge through a blizzard to make it to the February swap, it was sunny and mild in downtown Chicago the day of the March Chicago Food Swap. For this event, we returned to The Chopping Block, Chicago's premier recreational cooking school, located in the iconic Merchandise Mart. This was the ...
Homemade Cranberry Sauce for National Cranberry Day
Did you know that November 23 is National Cranberry Day? I suppose it makes sense, being so close to Thanksgiving, which is cranberries time to shine. But I love to cook and bake with cranberries all winter long. In fact, I stock up on cranberries during the last few weeks of the Oak Park Farmers Market because these babies freeze like a dream. I ...
Can-It-Forward Day August 16
This Saturday August 16, Jarden Home Brands will host the first annual International Can-It-Forward Day with special guest, renowned chef and Bravo’s Top Chef judge, Hugh Acheson! I ate at Chef Acheson's Atlanta restaurant Empire State South last year and it was one of the more memorable meals of my adult life. Being a southern guy, Hugh knows all ...
Farmers Market Find: Red Currants
Perhaps you have noticed red currants, glossy and ruby-red, at the farmers market lately. If so, consider yourself lucky. It can be hard to find these members of the Ribes family. Even if you noticed them, I bet you did not buy them. They were expensive, right? And you weren't sure what to do with them. Red currants are shockingly expensive, but I ...
Scenes from the Farmers Market
At least once every year, I like to bring my camera with me on one of my early Saturday morning trips to the Oak Park Farmers Market to capture the abundance. Mid-July is a heady time at the farmers market. The tables are groaning with fruit from the Michigan orchards. Stone fruits of all kinds, from cherries to apricots to peaches and plum, ...
Farmers Market Find: Gooseberries
I freely admit that I am a sucker for the most unusual item at the market or on a menu. Sometimes my instinct to try that new-to-me food can backfire, such as the bitter and grassy corn shoots in my salad at the Zingerman's Roadhouse. (Some things are just not for eating, folks.) But nevertheless, I press on. So it was that I passed by all the ...
May Chicago Food Swap Recap
The Chicago Food Swap had its May event this past Sunday, May 18, at Green Home Experts, a "green" lifestyle boutique in Oak Park. This was the third time that owner Maria Moran opened her store's doors to the Chicago Food Swap and, just as before, it was a perfect location for a swap. On a sunny spring afternoon, Maria's garden center was a ...
Review of Preserving by the Pint
My friend Marisa McClellan changed the way Americans think about water-bath canning with her iconic blog Food in Jars. Writing from her apartment in downtown Philadelphia, Marisa showed a new generation of cooks that preserving fruits and vegetables food was the logical extension of their interest in local, seasonal produce from CSAs and farmers ...
Low-Fat Holiday Treat: Chocolate Mint Meringues
This is a recipe and post from a few years back, but the story is so classically me and the cookies are so tasty and seasonal, I just had to bring it up from the archives. Enjoy! It all started with the Meyer lemons. I was doing my just-buy-the-necessities-because-we-are-leaving-town shopping trip last week when a display of vibrant yellow ...
Farmers’ Market Find: Currants
I stood in front of the table of fruit deep in thought: three kinds of currants -- white, red and black -- plus gooseberries! Another vendor a few tables over had four or five small boxes of hard-to-find tayberries. What to get? It was an embarrassment of riches. So much fruit! So many unusual and old-fashioned crops that you never see at the ...