Garlic Mashed Potatoes The Way That Mom Never Made Them

No one in my family ever made garlic mashed potatoes. No one had ever even heard of them until I started making them over a decade ago.
Mashed potatoes were simple things in my childhood: russet (or all purpose white) potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks, boiled until they were soft, then drained, then mashed […]

Local (And Slow) All the Way: Rabbit And Horticultural Bean Stew

Every ingredient to this particular dish was local: the beans, the onions, garlic, carrots, celery, leeks, mushrooms, rosemary, thyme, sage and oh, yeah, the rabbit.
Oh, wait a minute: the white wine isn’t from Athens, but it is from Ohio, and the salt–well, it is from the ocean, which is not local to Ohio.
At […]

A Seasonal Spring Comfort Food: Ramped-Up Spaghetti and Meatballs

I love me my ramps and green garlic.
All year long, I anticipate with gustatory delight the spring season which not only brings morels, asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries, but also pungent-sweet, spicy-hot ramps and green garlic. I use them in cooking just as I would scallions and garlic, but in even more copious amounts than […]

Evil Genius Food Porn: Bacon-Filled Waffles With Chili-Fried Apples

This dish is so good, yet so bad for you.
There really ought to be a law against this kind of cooking.
In fact, I reckon that there used to be a law against such things, back in the day when churchmen were so worried about the status of everyone’s mortal souls that laws were made […]

Baby Beets With Balsamic Honey Glaze and Garam Masala

When I was a little girl growing up on my grandparent’s farm, my least favorite vegetable was beets.
I loathed and despised them–I thought that they tasted like dirt.
Paradoxically, I used to love helping Grandma can and freeze the bounty of our gardens (every year we grew two one-acre plots–enough to feed the entire […]