Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Maple-Bacon Vinaigrette

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…

Top 10 Reasons to Bring Leek Dishes to a Memorial Day Picnic

10. Leeks are versatile and can easily swap with onions in any recipe, but their flavor is mild, earthy and unique.  Leeks are in the same family as garlic and onions (and, for that matter, lilies!), so they have a bulb shape that might look familiar, even if you’ve never prepared leeks before. 9.  Leeks…

Splendid Thanksgiving Sides: New Twists and Old Traditions

Thanksgiving is a day when many pots are bubbling on the stove, cutting boards are strewn across counter tops, the fragrance of herbs lingers on the cook’s hands, and a tasting spoon always produces delicious samples.  This creative chaos itself is an occasion for gratitude.  As we boil, chop, grate, and mash, we partake in…

Heirloom Tomatoes Make for Great Salsa

  Jillian Prout of Prout’s Jollyview Farm in the Oley Valley of Berks County enjoys the heirloom tomatoes she grows, but it might be fair to say she enjoys a good salsa from them even more. Heirloom tomatoes, known as heritage tomatoes in the U.K., are the ancient tomatoes of those who came decades and…

The Glory of Greens

Greens deserve a lot more credit in our dietary lineup than they often receive. Not only do they go swimmingly with many summer meals, but they are some the most nutrition-savvy add-ons we can join into our munching minutes. With a European origin, Swiss Chard is in the family of beets. Red, green, and the…

Time for a Tall Glass of Lemonade

During my summer in Provence, France, I’ve been learning to make use of the many abundant herbs, some that grow wild, and some that grow well in our gardens. It’s very hot and dry here, so not everything grows easily in this climate. Since it’s so hot and dry, naturally, one of the first things…

Soup’s On: 4 Soup Recipes

In my apartment’s tiny kitchen, the whole room warms up when a pot simmers on the stove top.   This is one reason I love to simmer soup and stew this time of year.  The other reasons are more universal:  the chance to load a bowl full of vegetables, the frugality of re-purposing odds and ends…