Rutabaga Carrot Ginger Soup

By SusanEdelmanFebruary 25, 2015April 21, 2023 Farm-to-Table, Featured, Main-Dishes, Recipes, Root Vegetables, Seasonal, Soup

The rutabaga is new to me. It’s one of those vegetables I walk on past when I’m shopping at the market. Maybe it’s the funny looks. Maybe it’s the silly name. I don’t know. The closest I ever came is turnips, the rutabaga’s smaller, more attractive relative. My grandmother served mashed turnips as a holiday…

Another Kind of Art – Winter Flower Arrangements

By JenniferHetrickFebruary 18, 2015February 19, 2015 Crafts, Featured, Seasonal

A few weeks ago while outside with my dog as he enjoyed a piddle break, I found myself standing close to my garden, suddenly compelled to cut off pieces of my Trumpet Vine plant’s branches. It was the dried, broken open seedpods on them which had my brain stirring. I quickly understood that an art…

A Simple Valentine’s Meal: Making Your Own Picnic at Home

By rebeccatalbotFebruary 12, 2015November 2, 2017 Featured, Holiday, Recipes

It’s a Valentine’s Day dilemma: restaurants are packed to the max, and yet not going out for a meal means that somebody is going to have to do a lot of work in the kitchen to prepare a special meal. As city dwellers, my husband and I have learned to avoid restaurants on Valentine’s Day, but we’ve solved…

Talking in the Language of Flowers

By JenniferHetrickFebruary 5, 2015February 5, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Flowers, Holiday

Speaking is often something done without words, though we sometimes don’t realize it. The same can be said for the Victorian language of flowers, which lets us communicate to those in our lives through something as simple as flowers we hand to someone we care about. Symbolic meanings of flowers are said to date back…

Bevan’s Own Make Candies Keeps Traditions Alive

By rebeccatalbotJanuary 29, 2015 Featured, Vendors

If you ask Randy Bevan what processes and traditions have stayed the same in the 56 years Bevan’s Own Make has been delighting the Delaware Valley with handmade candies, he will tell you, “Everything.” In a time when the new, shiny next big thing lures many businesses, Randy Bevan is a small business owner who believes…

Creamy Cabbage and Fresh Apples for the Winter

By rebeccatalbotJanuary 21, 2015April 21, 2023 Featured, Hardy Vegetables, Locally Grown, Recipes, Sides

As a child of the 1980’s, I have been familiar with cabbage from a young age. After all, as a three-year-old, what did I want more than a Cabbage Patch Kid? My great-aunt Lynne, a professional ballet dancer who wore sequined jackets and kept an eye out for trends, tracked down this hot item…

Savoring Southern Collard Greens

By rebeccatalbotJanuary 14, 2015April 21, 2023 Featured, Hardy Vegetables, Leafy Greens, Recipes, Sides

I keep a mental map with pins that mark favorite restaurants. The Collegeville, PA deli where I first introduced my husband to Philly-style hoagies. The ice cream stand by Lake Wallenpaupack that churns the creamiest ice cream this side of heaven. The tiny Filipino restaurant in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood that bakes soft, savory-sweet empanadas….

Start the Year off Right with Fresh Juice

By rebeccatalbotJanuary 7, 2015April 21, 2023 Beverages, Featured, Recipes

After my parents came for Christmas, they left half a cheesecake in our fridge. This cheesecake was not only delicious, it was made from scratch. Since this is not the sort of thing to waste, my husband and I have been eating it, usually in moderately sized pieces, ever since the day after Christmas. For…

Gratin Dauphinois (Scalloped Potatoes) for Comfort in Winter

By rachelvanduzerJanuary 1, 2015April 21, 2023 Featured, Main-Dishes, Recipes, Root Vegetables

In winter, there is something so comforting about, well, comfort foods. Last week, my husband was getting over a cold. Coincidentally I had just found the first cheddar cheese here in France, so I decided to make some good old fashioned mac and cheese like my grandma used to make. I served it…

Honey Mustard Baked Brie Appetizer

By rachelvanduzerDecember 26, 2014April 21, 2023 Appetizers, Apples, Featured, Recipes

Christmas has come and gone, but the season of celebration isn’t quite over yet. In less than a week, we’ll be ringing in 2015. Can you believe it? My favorite part of the Christmas season is the many excuses to get together with good friends over delicious food. The week before Christmas, I cooked for…

Brambleberry Almond Pie for the Holidays

By rebeccatalbotDecember 18, 2014April 21, 2023 Apples, Berries, Desserts, Featured, Recipes almonds, pie

Have you had some culinary breakthroughs lately? Was there some process you couldn’t bring yourself to abandon, but couldn’t quite perfect, either? Last week I wrote about how I kept toting dried beans home from the grocery store, even though I wasn’t very good at cooking them, and then finally, I read a cookbook that…

Two Easy Bean Soups for Busy December Evenings

By rebeccatalbotDecember 11, 2014April 21, 2023 Cooking Methods, Featured, Leafy Greens, Recipes, Soup

Last October, the Onion published an article that began, “Immediately after sitting down on the living room couch and covering herself in a large cotton blanket, area girlfriend Amanda Bettman, 28, announced her intentions Monday to remain in this state for the next five calendar months.” This satirical article captured my exact plan. How did they know?! Winter…

The Gift of Homemade (No Sugar Added!) Applesauce

By rebeccatalbotDecember 4, 2014April 21, 2023 Apples, Featured, Recipes

Good food preserves memories. It pins down moments. It brings comfort and cheer. Several years ago, when I happened to be interviewing an Asian woman who worked at Chicago’s South-East Asia Center, she mentioned that one of the first things new Southeast Asian immigrants will usually do is find a restaurant that makes food like…

Repurposing Thanksgiving Leftovers and Searching for the Perfect Fresh Cut Christmas Tree

By rachelvanduzerNovember 25, 2014April 21, 2023 Apples, Featured, Holiday, Main-Dishes, Recipes, Sandwiches

Every Black Friday, my husband’s family had the tradition of going Christmas tree shopping. We’d wake up at a reasonable hour (reasonable, that is, for Black Friday), mosey over to the Christmas tree farm together and each pick out that perfect tree for our family’s Christmas décor. Then afterward, we’d enjoy a delicious lunch of…

Yam Apple Focaccia for Thanksgiving

By rachelvanduzerNovember 20, 2014April 21, 2023 Apples, Featured, Recipes, Root Vegetables, Sides

Last week my husband David offered to do the grocery shopping for us, not knowing that I had tasked him with finding sweet potatoes – not yams, sweet potatoes. He was up for the challenge of doing this (in a foreign country, no less!) and succeeded in finding the biggest sweet potatoes I’ve every seen…

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Maple-Bacon Vinaigrette

By rebeccatalbotNovember 13, 2014April 21, 2023 Featured, Holiday, Recipes, Root Vegetables, Sides

I don’t remember liking sweet potatoes until one year when I was in middle school. Middle school is all about reinventing yourself, right? It’s about wearing layers of friendship bracelets, trying on your friends’ glasses to see how you look in them, getting that atrocious haircut you’d hoped would rocket you to popularity. And so…

‘North American Thanksgiving’ and a Butternut Squash Salad

By rachelvanduzerNovember 6, 2014April 21, 2023 Featured, Leafy Greens, Recipes, Salads, Winter Squash

Next week, I will get to celebrate my first “North American Thanksgiving” celebration across the ocean from North America in France. I have been tasked with bringing a salad and a sweet potato dish, so I began looking over the repertoire of recipes that have already been shared on this blog. I came across this…

Pumpkin Sweet Potato Tacos

By rebeccatalbotOctober 30, 2014April 21, 2023 Featured, Leafy Greens, Main-Dishes, Pumpkin, Recipes

Autumn ushers in a time to indulge in pumpkin desserts, pumpkin lattes, pumpkin ale and all things pumpkin. I’m already craving the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies a friend is making for a party this evening. But even as I feast upon pumpkin everything, I want to make sure I’m still: a) making healthy choices, and…

Hot Corn Dip with Crispy Tortilla Chips: A Wolff Family Favorite

By rebeccatalbotOctober 23, 2014April 21, 2023 Appetizers, Featured, Recipes

Autumn is a time to gather. Summer’s heat lets up but the days remain sunny and energizing. Crisp air calls us outside. The harvest produces some of its tastiest fruits and vegetables. And we know that since winter will soon make us want to hibernate, buried under fleece blankets to match the blankets of snow,…

Pumpkin Pasta with Sausage and Sage

By rebeccatalbotOctober 16, 2014April 21, 2023 Featured, Main-Dishes, Pumpkin, Recipes, Seasonal, Winter Squash

Autumn collects synonyms. It’s already the only season with two interchangeable names, and from there, its monikers multiply. It’s also known as pumpkin season, apple season, cider season and more. But how long has autumn been known as the season for all kinds of pumpkin-spiced food and beverages, from pumpkin lattes to pumpkin ravioli to…