Strawberry Balsamic Jam

My parents and a couple of their friends had a huge garden back when I was a kid.  They all canned, froze, or pickled what they could from the garden, and even though then I didn't enjoy some of my jobs related to preserving the food, I miss them now.

One thing my mother didn't make was jam or jelly, though.  She did try a small batch of grape jelly once.  It took her all day, and she was displeased with how it came out in the end.  I think the term "wallpaper paste" was used more than once.

Easy Pizza Sauce

Before I went gluten free, we used to have homemade pizza a couple times a month.  To help us eat as healthy as we can and to save money, I decided I should start making my own pizza sauce.  After all, I'm making my own marinara, pizza sauce couldn't be difficult either.  And it isn't.

I found a good sauce we liked from Kitchen Treaty.  This recipe had everything we wanted in a pizza sauce.  Full of tomato flavor? Check. Just a hint of heat? Check.  Super simple? Check.  Easy to adapt? Check.  Freezes well? Check.  I adapted this sauce slightly to accommodate our tastes and my cooking style.

Gluten Free Roux and White Sauce

One of my very first posts on this blog was how to make a roux and a white sauce.  It's such a basic thing to know in cooking if you want to really cook rather than just open cans of cream soup and dump it in a casserole dish with a few other basic ingredients.  I make a roux or a white sauce at least once a week.  In my original post I wrote that a basic white sauce is only 3 ingredients - butter or oil. flour, and milk (or cream).  It's super simple and extraordinarily inexpensive.  Once you get the hang of it, you'll wonder why you ever bothered with processed ingredients.

Peach Blueberry Garden Salad with Honey Balsamic Vinegrette

Okay, I have a small confession.  While I do love vegetables (I was that crazy kid who at age 5 would gobble up a plate of steamed broccoli and ask for more), I sometimes prefer fruit even more.  So if I can find a way to combine them into one meal, that's just about the closest thing to perfection I can get.

Strawberry Butter

Do you all remember the cranberry butter I made back around Thanksgiving?  Oh my was it good!  I made that several times during cranberry season to enjoy on toast, bagels, and english muffins for breakfast.  But alas, cranberry season ended.  Enter strawberry season and a new fruit to add to my butter.

Two Super Easy Sauces

Ever have one of those nights when you've got to get supper in the table in a hurry and you're not feeling inspired, so you pull out a tried and true meal?  For me that's usually breaded chicken with rice or angel hair pasta.  Sometimes I'll manage broiled salmon if I've found some on managers special.  But then...there's that look on your family's faces.  That look of resignation that you've just phoned it in for dinner tonight.

Chicken of the Woods and Asparagus with Vodka Sauce

I love chicken of the woods.  It's a type of mushroom called a sulfur shelf that generally grow on hardwoods.  My favorite farmer at the local farmers market and his wife are fantastic mushroom foragers.  Anytime we have a day or two of heavy rains, they are out looking for oyster mushrooms, chicken of the woods, and morals. 

Bolognese Sauce with Linguine

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I keep the 8 year old's best friend after school until right at supper time.  On Tuesdays we go to our house, and on Thursdays we give the boy an opportunity to be at his house.  Unfortunately on Thursdays this means the 8 year old, and I don't get home until almost 6:00p.m.  So Thursdays are almost always "slow cooker night."  That way when I get home all I have to do is set the table, do some last minute prep, and put dinner on the table.  

Salisbury Steak

One of my goals this year is to clean out my cookbook collection and get rid of cookbooks that I am never going to realistically use.  While I've been working on this process one book at a time, I've realized that most of the cookbooks I'm keeping are the ones that have simple, wholesome, time tested recipes.  The ones that generally get the boot are the ones with fancier, trendy recipes.

Cream of... Soup Mix

I admit, there are some things that are just not the same without a can of cream of "something" soup.  My momma's meatloaf calls for a can of cream of celery soup for the gravy, and I'm just not sure it would be her meatloaf without it.

Fruit or Berry Syrup

This recipe is so simple, it's more method than recipe.  In the picture above, I've used a mix of frozen blueberries, raspberries and blackberries.  You can also do this with one berry or cherries.  Whatever floats your boat. 

Wednesday Recipe Reivew - Cranberry Butter

Because I don't cook Thanksgiving dinner, I don't really do a lot of holiday foods.  However, I saw this recipe for cranberry butter at The Chic Geek that looked so good I really had to give it a shot.  I'll be taking this to my parents' house on Friday to see what they think of it too.

Cranberry Relish

When I was growing up my mom would make this awesome cranberry relish.  There really was no recipe.  She'd just chop up some apples and oranges and push them through her meat grinder with cranberries until her taste testers (my brother and me) said it was perfect.  There may have been some lemon juice and sugar involved, but 30-some years later, I don't really remember.  Every Thanksgiving for years I've wanted that cranberry relish again.

Nana's Sausage Gravy - Recipe

The 8 year old's two favorite meals in the world are anything that has refried beans and "gravy."  What he means when he asks for that is biscuits and sausage gravy.  He doesn't really care about the biscuits, so I get away with using pre-made biscuits from the store.  I like the home style ones over the flaky ones for "gravy."

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa with Avocado

A few weeks ago, I ran across a recipe from A Spicy Perspective for creamy roasted tomatillo salsa and bookmarked it because it looked so delicious.  The very next day at the community market I found some beautiful tomatillos at one of our favorite booths.  I knew we were having Beef and Bean Taquitos for supper that week, so I thought I'd give the creamy roasted tomatillo salsa a try to go with it.

Working Ahead - Marinara Sauce

More often than not, I use jarred marinara sauce.  It's a lot easier to open a jar than to cook it myself, right?  But then I ran across a recipe for marinara sauce by The Naptime Chef and featured by Recipe Girl.  It's oh so good and simple enough that it can be "doctored" to your own tastes.  I generally just follow the recipe on Recipe Girl's site.  

Fourth of July Round-Up

To make things easier for you to find, here is a round up of recipes for your Independence Day celebration.

Cilantro Cream Sauce

I served this on Memorial Day, and my husband declared "You outdid yourself tonight."  It's nice to hear praise like that and even nicer to hear it for a meal that was so simple to prepare, it was ridiculous.  This sauce only has four ingredients, is incredibly simple and very versatile.  You could switch out the herbs to basil, oregano, tarragon, dill....  (I've made this with basil before as well).  The important thing is to make this with fresh herbs, not dried.

Baby Back Barbeque Ribs - Recipe

My dad loves ribs.  Unfortunately my dad was never successful at grilling ribs.  (Sorry, Dad.)  He attempted them once a year or so and would burn them to a crisp every.single.time.  My husband also loves ribs, but growing up with crispy char-ribs, I had no interest in cooking them at home.

Fettuccine Alfredo

One of my husband's favorite dishes is Fettuccine Alfredo.  For years I was afraid to even attempt making Alfredo sauce, thinking it was much too complicated and I would screw it up for sure.  Fortunately for my husband, he traveled frequently and often had a pretty decent expense plan.  So he made sure to get Fettuccine Alfredo while he was on the road.