Fluffy pumpkin pancakes topped with sweet, caramelized apples is the perfect holiday breakfast - whether you are celebrating Thanksgiving weekend, Hanukkah or just having guests for brunch! Thanks to WhatsGood for sponsoring this recipe post featuring seasonal ingredients from local farmers delivered right to my doorstep. Get $25 off your first ...
Spelt Sour Cherry Pie for Mark
A classic sour cherry pie recipe updated with nutty, whole grain spelt flour. My extended family suffered a terrible tragedy recently when my cousin-in-law, Mark, passed away suddenly at the age of 60. I had known Mark for over thirty-five years. He was, without a doubt, one of the kindest, most thoughtful men I have ever met and he was ...
Award-Winning Apple Blackberry Pie
This is the perfect time of year to make my apple-blackberry pie. I won second place in a pie bake-off with this recipe, so you know it's good! This fall I tried something new: I entered a pie-baking contest. The contest was at my local farmers' market and was designed to showcase the bounty of the market. Pies were judged on looks, taste ...
Chershi Kara’a (Libyan Pumpkin Spread)
Shake up your pumpkin with chershi kara'a, a tangy, spicy pumpkin spread that comes from Libyan Jews and is now a favorite among Israelis. So easy to make! After making pumpkin pie last week, I had approximately three cups of pumpkin purée left over. I debated about what to do with it. Pumpkin bread? Pumpkin pancakes? Pumpkin whoopie pies? ...
How to Make Pumpkin Pie with Fresh Pumpkin
Curious about making pumpkin pie, a fall favorite, with fresh pumpkin instead of canned? It's easy and worth the extra effort! It's October, so we can talk about pumpkin pie, right? I didn't want to jump the gun, but once October hits, I think that all things fall are fair game. Thankfully, the unseasonal heat wave Chicago experienced at the ...
Edamame Succotash
Sweet, crunchy succotash made with late-summer corn and a new twist: edamame instead of lima beans! It's "my supper dish/My succotash wish." Sing it, baby! Summer corn is a short-lived, seasonal treat. So while it lasts, I make the most of it. I never buy fewer than a dozen ears at the farmers market. At $5 a dozen, there is truly no reason ...
Roasted Carrots with Pomegranate Molasses for Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year celebration, begins at sundown on October 2. All over the country, Jewish families, including mine, will gather with friends and family to recite the holiday blessings, break bread and wish one another “L’shana tovah:” a sweet new year! With less than a month to go, it is not too early to start planning your Rosh ...
Sweet Potato Pie
When your CSA hands you sweet potatoes, make sweet potato pie. Believe it or not, I'm a CSA newbie. For years, I had wanted to join a CSA, which stands for community-supported agriculture. You know how it works: you pay upfront for a share of the fruit or vegetable (or meat or dairy) harvest from a local farm and every week, or every other week, ...
Fall Vegetable Soup
It is such a bountiful time of year at the farmers market! I come home every Saturday laden down with red and yellow peppers, purple eggplant, green zucchini, orange carrots, scarlet beets, tan butternut squash, and even coal-black radishes. Somehow I still spend less than I did in July when I could easily blow a quarter of my walking-around money ...
End of Summer Peach Pie
It's hard to deny that summer is over and fall is upon us. The kids have all gone back to school. The pool is closed for another year. In some places, the warm weather lingers, but it is no longer welcome. Sweaters and boots, that's what we want now as September settles in and August is dismissed. But here in Illinois, the farmers market ...
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Chocolate zucchini cake may sound weird, but it is delicious and fun way to eat your vegetables! It is so zucchini season, is it not? Whether you are a gardener overrun with the stuff or a savvy farmers' market shopper buying 6 zucchini for $4, these green squash are everywhere. In fact, I'm going to be on WGN's Midday News Lunch Break ...
Apricot Tea Cake
My family's lack of enthusiasm for apricots frustrates me. Peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries - all the other stone fruits they will eat with gusto. (Stone Fruit, by the way, is the name of my rock band.) Apricots, on the other hand, will sit in the fruit drawer until I come along and turn them into a dessert. (You might ask why, in that case, ...
Parsley Root Puree
My latest obsession is parsley root, a long, skinny root vegetable that resembles a white carrot or a parsnip. You will always be able to recognize parsley root however: just look for the bunches of -- you guessed it -- parsley growing out of the top. Yes, parsley root is the root of the ubiquitous herb. While admittedly root vegetables are more ...
How to Make Corn Broth
It is so corn season around here. Corn is one of my absolute favorite vegetables to buy at the farmers' market. Why? First, freshly picked corn is worlds better than grocery store corn. The sweetness and crunch of local corn-on-the-cob picked the same day, or at most a day before, is incomparable. I am a corn snob, plain and simple, and I won't ...
Panzanella (Tuscan Bread Salad)
This recipe is everything summer cooking should be. It uses the bounty of the season. It is made ahead of time. And it's best served room temperature. Easy, fresh and beautiful to look at -- what is this amazing recipe you ask? It's panzanella, an Italian bread salad. So many cuisines have ways to use up leftover bread -- from French toast ...
Penne with Pesto and Peas
In one of her early books, Ina Garten of the Barefoot Contessa fame, has a recipe for pasta with pesto and peas. Now don't get me wrong: I love Ina as much as the next girl. To this day, I am holding out for an invitation to spend the day cooking with her in the Hamptons. But her recipe for pasta with pesto and peas is all kinds of wrong. ...
Cold Strawberry Soup
Did you happen to catch me on Fox-32's morning program, "Good Day Chicago," discussing ways to preserve the strawberry harvest? You will recognize many of the projects I mentioned from last week's strawberry posts. It was such a fun segment to film and I always love talking about the Chicago Food Swap. I have one last strawberry recipe to give ...
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. ...
How to Use a Flat of Strawberries: Strawberry Mango Fruit Leather
Another day, another strawberry post. I'm still working off that same flat of strawberries I bought at the farmers' market last week. Today's project is homemade strawberry fruit leather. You may recall that I tried my hand at mango fruit leather a few months ago. That project was fun and easy and everyone enjoyed the results. So when faced with ...
How to Use a Flat of Strawberries: Strawberry Vanilla Syrup
This is my second post in a series on how to use a flat of strawberries in five days. Every year at this time I remind you guys that at many farmers’ markets the price for a flat of strawberries, which is eight quarts, is the same as the price for six individual quarts. That is a great deal, but only if you actually use all the berries before ...
How to Use a Flat of Strawberries: Strawberry Maple Granola
It is time for my annual post on how to use a flat of strawberries in five days or less. Every year I remind you that at many farmers' markets the price for a flat of strawberries, which is eight quarts, is the same as the price for six individual quarts. That's like getting two free quarts! But buying a flat of strawberries is only a ...
Rhubarb Buttermilk Mini Bundt Cakes
Maybe I should start calling this blog West of the Rhubarb. I'm clearly obsessed with this old-fashioned fruit-that-is-really-a-vegetable. It's tart! It's pink! It's versatile! Rhubarb is bae. (My eleven year old me that I couldn't write that. So naturally I did.) The other week, I arrived at the farmers' market late, something that I hate to ...
Green Garlic Chimichurri
I almost hesitate to call this sauce chimichurri because it deviates in a few key ways from the traditional Argentinian recipe. You know how the food police can be! But then again, any condiment with this much parsley and garlic and that goes as well as this one does with grilled meat deserves to be called a chimichurri. Chimichurri is simply a ...
Cold Asparagus Soup
It is definitely asparagus season and although I won't be seeing any local asparagus for a few more weeks, if you live somewhere south of me, you may already have them at your farmers' market. Lucky. Meanwhile, I will content myself with fat, prosperous-looking, organic asparagus flown in from California. I gravitate towards thicker asparagus ...
How to Shop at a Farmers Market
With May right around the corner, farmers' markets are starting to open up all around the country. Sadly, I still have a few more weeks until my beloved Oak Park Farmers' Market, home of delicious, freshly made doughnuts, begins. I can hardly contain my excitement. For those of you in warmer climes, the wait may be much shorter. As a home ...