Although I couldn’t get blood oranges in the market, I used navel oranges to make a red onion and orange salad with cumin.

The salad, along with a bowl of hummus and a basket of toasted pita bread reminded me of a dinner I was served on a trip to Turkey. Here’s how I made it: … read more

The salad  made with a combination of red cabbage and mango brightened the table with the colors of India.

I served it with a roasted chicken from the market. Here’s how I did it: … read more

My Nana could grow flowers anywhere; she was a skilled seamstress and a modest carpenter. Her hands were never idle.

Nana gave me my first tools – a hammer, a saw, screwdrivers and a hand-crank drill. I drilled and hammered beside her at the workbench. Although she was an enthusiastic cook, she was not a good cook. For Nana, speed and efficiency in the kitchen were most important. Her version of a pancake dinner was literally ‘a pan cake’ – a twelve-inch disc, an inch thick that was cut in quarters to serve four. The pancake was always served with a salad and the salad was always the same, the only salad she ever made, a wedge of iceberg lettuce with a puddle of bright orange French dressing poured from a bottle.

I am like my Nana in many ways. I can fix almost anything. I still have my own toolbox and my hands are rarely idle, but for me, neither speed nor efficiency in the kitchen are nearly as important as flavor and beauty. Color is important but rather than resorting to bright orange, bottled salad dressing, I use fruit to add a splash of color to a salad. In the past few weeks I have been making savory salads that combine fruits and vegetables.

I love the combination of blue and yellow whether I am setting a table, painting a still life, decorating a room or making a salad. When a friend told me about a salad she had made that combined corn and blueberries I knew I had to try it. Here’s how I made it: … read more

In 1980, our friend Tom went on a trip to China. Tom was an architect who loved adventure, and in those days, going to South America was exotic but a trip China was unimaginable. Tom had a wonderful time and, as an intrepid cook, he brought back exotic recipes and memories of extraordinary meals.

Soon after his return, he invited us to dinner. When we arrived, he was emptying the wood shavings from his pencil sharpener into the wok. We watched as he added the contents of two tea bags to the wood shavings. He explained that he was going to make tea smoked chicken for dinner. He put a bamboo steamer filled with raw chicken over the tea and wood shavings, covered everything with aluminum foil, put it on the stove and turned on the heat. The tea and wood smoldered and I worried about the yellow paint from the pencils, but Tom explained that it wasn’t a problem and that the smoke imparted a wonderful flavor to the chicken.

While we waited for the chicken to smoke, we enjoyed a cucumber salad that Tom had learned to make in China, and he described the all-duck banquet in Beijing that marked the end of his trip. He described, in detail, dishes made from duck innards, head, wings and webs. We neglected the wok and concentrated on the salad that was spicy, loaded with garlic, Szechuan peppers and peanuts. Unfortunately, the bamboo steamer that held the chicken above the smoke caught fire and so did the chicken. Our dinner was a bit meager, steamed rice and cucumber salad, but we laughed a lot and I went home with a great recipe for Szechuan Chinese pickles. We call it Tom’s Chinese Cucumber Salad and the recipe is my souvenir from his trip.

On a steamy evening a couple of weeks ago, I made Szechuan Cucumber salad and sesame noodles for dinner and we drank a toast in memory of our friend Tom and his love of exotic food. Here’s how I made it:

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Lynda was our first houseguest when Charles and I moved to Vermont. It was our first November in Vermont and we were naïve flatlanders learning about wood stoves, wells and cows everywhere.

Lynda had been living in the Northeast Kingdom for ten years and was an old Vermont hand. At breakfast on Saturday morning, she suggested that we go to the Red Flannel Hash supper at the Woodstock Unitarian Universalist Church that evening. I assumed that red flannel was the dress code because I had been told that it was important to be visible to hunters when walking in the woods and I was pretty sure that it was hunting season. Lynda patiently explained that red flannel was a type of hash and that I could wear whatever I chose. It was at that dinner that I learned how important pickles could be.

We sat at a long table with seven strangers and were served plates piled high with hash and a scoop of baked beans. Red flannel hash, an amazing magenta really, is a mixture of ground beets, potatoes, cabbage and corned beef. Along with bread and butter, there was a bowl of pickles in the center of our table. Red flannel hash is an acquired taste – one I hadn’t acquired. I did my best with it and used a chunk of crispy, sweet/sour pickle as a chaser after each forkful. I soon gave up on the hash and focused on the pickles, commenting with delight on their flavor each time that I asked that the (much too small) bowl be refilled. As pie was served I was introduced to the woman sitting at the end of the table. Her name was Alice and her hazel eyes sparkled as she told me that she had made all of the pickles for the supper.

You can download a label for your pickles here.

Although I don’t make red flannel hash, I make pickles of all sorts. Rather than preserving quarts of cucumbers with vinegar and dill, I make small quantities of refrigerator pickles with vegetables and fruits that are in season. Refrigerator pickles are ready to eat in six hours, require no cooking, do not need to be heat processed and the possible combinations are limited only by the varieties of vinegar, sugar, herbs and spices in the pantry. I made four different kinds of pickles to take to a fourth of July picnic. Here’s how I did it:

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