A gathering for a holiday or a family celebration that centers on a meal provides the perfect opportunity for a food fight.

I don’t mean the kind that involves a cream pie in the face, champagne sprayed around the table or peas slingshot across the room. I mean friendly, family disagreements about the best cranberry sauce. Should dessert be apple or pumpkin pie? Are creamed onions or a green bean casserole mandatory? Will there be chestnuts in the stuffing? Most picture perfect holiday meals exist only in magazines and movies, with a group of strangers presented as family, dressed by stylists, sitting at a perfectly decorated holiday table. Real holiday meals are an opportunity to share a favorite recipe and no one will complain that the second version of cranberry sauce has spoiled the symmetry of the table.

My favorite cranberry relish was inspired by a recipe from my friend Lynda. I added a chili pepper when I made it last year. Here’s how I did it: … read more

I found a container of tomato sauce in the freezer and I had enough leeks left to make Charles favorite vegetarian pasta for dinner.

I made a second sauce with three small leeks, cream and rosemary. It transformed the leftover tomato sauce and linguini into an elegant dinner. Here’s how I did it:

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A jar of caramel sauce is an investment in a sweet future.

It’s great on vanilla ice cream, luxurious on apple crisp, divine on top of chocolate ice cream and under whipped cream, and irresistible on a spoon right out of the jar. Here’s how I made it: … read more

Two summers ago, when I had more tomatoes than we could eat, I preserved jars of oven-roasted tomatoes for the pantry.

I used them as a base for pasta sauce and for grilled pizza during the gray days of the following winter.

Whether I added them to pasta sauce, used them to top pizza or on toasted bread for brushetta, I always began by pureeing the tomatoes with either a food processor or an immersion blender. The intense flavor of the roasted tomatoes satisfied my tomato desire until I emptied the last jar on Town Meeting Day.

Here how I did it: … read more

I followed the recipe for Garlic Scallion Almond Pesto that came in my first CSA bag.

Made with garlic scallions, almonds, parmesan cheese and olive oil – it’s versatile quick and tasty. In an effort to overcome my habit of expanding work to fill every available second, I bought a package of fresh cheese and spinach ravioli at the market rather than making fresh pasta. I made the pesto in a mini food processor. The garlic scallions imparted a delicious and not overwhelming flavor of spring garlic.  I modified the recipe a bit. Here’s how I did it:  … read more

After I had decided to make egg salad to serve with tomato soup for a simple dinner, I discovered that there was no mayo in the fridge. Rather than hopping in the car and driving to the market, I decided that I had what I needed to make both mayonnaise and egg salad.

I had a dozen eggs from Thymless Herbs, a nearby farm in Bridgewater, Vermont. I could use one to make mayo and four to make egg salad. The egg shells ranged in color from creamy white to warm brown and shades of pale blue and soft gray green, more beautiful than eggs dyed for an Easter basket. Aracauna hens laid the blue and green eggs. It had never occurred to me that chickens had ears until Suzy Krawczyk, the farmer, explained that the color of each hen’s eggs matched the color of that hen’s ears. I find it nearly impossible to put the empty shells on the compost pile.

Mayo is an emulsion of oil suspended in the liquid of an egg, stabilized by lecithin in both mustard and egg yolks, and flavored with vinegar, salt and cayenne pepper.

With all of the ingredients in place, all I needed was a fork and a dinner plate to make mayonnaise.

Here’s how I made it:

… read more