I’m not crazy about most pasta salads, but here’s one that emphasizes the flavors of the summer garden. To save time, you can prepare the other ingredients while the pasta cooks.
The flavor of the tomatoes is important, so use garden-fresh tomatoes, not store-bought ones. If they’re not in season, you could substitute sun-dried tomatoes instead.
1 [...]
Posts under ‘Recipes’
Summer Recipe: Garden Pasta Salad
Extra Apricots? Freeze Them, Dry Them!
Our visit to the church farm netted us more apricots than we could eat before they went bad. We made strawberry-rhubarb-apricot pie, apricot-cherry bread, and apricot-cherry-rhubarb pie. We snacked on them, and made smoothies and marinade. Still, we had lots left.
We took some of the apricots and made frozen pied filling. When January comes, we’ll [...]
Summer Recipe: Apricot Chicken
Here’s a marinade I created for barbecued chicken, inspired by the fresh ingredients we had on hand. The amounts are flexible, make it to your own taste. But beware: it’s tasty– People sometimes eat it by the spoonful!
1 cup apricots, pitted
1/2 stalk rhubarb, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, or to taste
1/4 cup apple juice
1-2 Tbs fresh parsley [...]
Summer Smoothies
Summer fruits and summer heat– what better reason to make a smoothie!
I avoid sugar, so ice cream and most flavored yogurts are out. I make mine with ice, fruit, apple juice, milk, and little else. Here’s an example:
1 cup ice cubes
1 cup pitted apricots
1 banana, peeled
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup apple juice
1/2 tsp vanilla
Put it all [...]
More Summer Recipes: Cherry-Apricot Bread
Here’s a fun bread to make! I make it using the dough cycle of the bread machine, then bake the finished loaf in the oven. This time of year, most of the ingredients can be found locally!
Bread:
1 cup warm water
1 egg, beaten lightly
2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup rye flour (or use [...]
Summer Recipe: Roasted Beets
I grew up on canned beets. Yuck. I never tasted a fresh beet until I was in my 30s. What a difference! When small, fresh beets can be as sweet as candy.
Here’s an easy way to cook them, especially if you’re already cooking something in the oven:
Trim the beets and wash them. If they are [...]
Summer Recipe: Strawberry-Rhubarb-Apricot Pie
(Apricot-Cherry-Rhubarb Pie, before baking.)
An innovation born of availability, this pie combines the traditional strawberry-rhubarb with the delicate taste of apricots.
Ingredients:
2 cups fresh strawberries
1/2 cup fresh rhubarb stalks
1-1/2 cups fresh apricots
——————-
1/4 cup dry tapioca
1/4 cup (or more) fructose (or your preferred sweetener)
3/4 cup apple juice
——————–
two pie crusts
Preheat the oven to 450.
Mix the tapioca, fructose, and apple [...]
Easy Brazilian Cheese Bread
After posting the moqueca recipe, several of you asked if I had a recipe for Pão de Queijo, or Brazilian cheese bread, sort of like a chewy cheese puff made with tapioca flour. As a matter of fact, I do. My friend Bill gave me this recipe years ago, a favorite from his [...]
Smaller than a breadbox…Handmade Biscuits
Biscuit. I can’t really think of a more confusing food word. I mean really. Think of it. A biscuit. What comes to mind? Depends on where you’re from it seems.
[...edited for brevity...]
Biscuits are the perfect thing for when you want something homemade, fresh out of the oven, with very little effort involved at all. And the [...]
And more cooking resources
For those not inclined to vegetarianism, Google Books has a multitude of cookbooks available, including Mrs. Hale’s New Cookbook (Philadelphia: Peterson & Brothers, 1857). Check out her recipe for dressing a lamb’s head. (Ick!)
The book is heavy on meat, but also includes churning and curing butter, making two types of cheeses, and cleaning tips for [...]
