You will love the flavor in this Fresh Tomato Vinaigrette! As I've mentioned in a few recent posts, we've not had the best gardening summer. Regardless, we have plenty of veggies making their way into the house still. It makes for busy days, getting everything preserved for the winter, so that nothing goes to waste. This Fresh Tomato Vinaigrette is the result of a few extra tomatoes lying on the kitchen counter at dinner time. It just makes sense - a vinaigrette is mainly an ... Read More about Fresh Tomato Vinaigrette
Sauces, Dips and Spreads
Easy Tomato Sauce for Canning & Freezing
An Easy Tomato Sauce is a must if you garden It's that time of year with which I have a love/hate relationship. The tomatoes are starting to come in the back door in multiple 5-gallon buckets now. That means that no matter what else is going on, I have to deal with them. Mostly because we only have so many buckets, and there are plenty more tomatoes where those came from. This easy sauce method helps me get through a lot of tomatoes quickly. It's been a challenging year in the ... Read More about Easy Tomato Sauce for Canning & Freezing
Garlic Scape Chimichurri Sauce
This is a refreshed post, brought up from the archives because the garlic scapes are ready to harvest just now and this is an amazing way to use them. I hope everyone enjoys it this time too. While I was away, constantly inhaling that unmatchable perfume that is only found at the top of a newborn baby's head, Larry had to cut all of the garlic scapes from our over 200 heads of garlic. Garlic scapes are the flower of a garlic plant, and leaving them in place robs the garlic bulb of ... Read More about Garlic Scape Chimichurri Sauce
Lemony Dill Hummus
...with Cucumber Dippers! Hi there! I am picking my head up from the pails that contain our farmer's market produce to put this fantastic recipe together for you! Farmer's Market is a lot of fun, but I am not sure we could handle more than one market a week - getting everything looking good and ready to sell is a lot of work. There are people who do a market just about every day of the week, and they must be exhausted all the time! Or maybe they are a lot younger than we are. Yeah - that last ... Read More about Lemony Dill Hummus
Asiago Herb Spread
How was your Christmas this year? I hope it was as happy as our own, with lots of family around, fun times, and wonderful food. All of the kids and grandkids made it home to our house this year, which packs our house pretty tight, but we managed. A few more folding chairs, an air mattress or two [or 3!], and an extra trip or two to the grocery store for vital supplies like eggnog and salsa. There is nothing like a 6 month old baby to make a Christmas feel merry, and the older grands really love ... Read More about Asiago Herb Spread
The Best Turkey Gravy
A nice dark roux is the secret! As I've mentioned in a few other posts recently, we've updated some of our Thanksgiving recipes in the last few years. We have all become better cooks over the years, plus our tastes have changed somewhat and of course there is always that food blogger gene that can never let well enough alone. There's always a better recipe around the corner, right? In the case of this turkey gravy that was 100% true. For years, I used a slurry to thicken any gravy I was making. ... Read More about The Best Turkey Gravy
Goat Cheese Spread with Tomatoes
We have just wrapped a few weeks of family visits, and it was, as always, a blast! My Mom was here for a couple weeks, and though we were sorry that my Dad didn't feel up to it, we were glad that she was able to come. It was her first time seeing her latest great grandchild, Evelyn, and it has been a few years since she was able to see Mark & Anna, so they are like whole new people almost. And in addition to Mom, both the girls and their families, my sister and brother in law were also able ... Read More about Goat Cheese Spread with Tomatoes
Kale Walnut Pesto
One thing that enjoys a cool summer is kale. Man, do we have kale! Usually, we have a lot of kale early in the summer, and then again in the fall, but this summer the spring kale never tried to go to seed, so it is still going strong. Every morning, when I go down to tend to the chickens, I make a detour through the garden to grab a handful of kale for my breakfast smoothie. Often we have it for dinner as well, and we are still overloaded. So, I wanted to find a way to use up a lot of kale - and ... Read More about Kale Walnut Pesto
Chive Bacon Ranch Dressing
And Preparing for a New Part of Our Lives Things are really going to be changing here at Creekside at the end of the summer. After working since he was 14 years old, Larry is finally going to retire. Well, he's retiring from carpentry at least. As you will see, we have some big plans ahead - some things that we are really looking forward to. Retirement is not going to be what I would have thought it would be if you had asked me 20 years ago. Then I would have said that we would likely not ... Read More about Chive Bacon Ranch Dressing
Creamy Feta Cheese Salad Dressing
We eat a lot of salad all year, but this time of year it seems especially good. Not because we have our own homegrown veggies yet, but we know they are coming, so all salads have some anticipation added, which seems to make them taste even better. Obviously, we don't have a whole lot of local produce this time of year. There is some around, and I think the nearest big Farmer's Market in Ithaca opened this past weekend, but the local stuff available is hard to grow in these colder months, so it's ... Read More about Creamy Feta Cheese Salad Dressing
Roasted Garlic Hummus
One of Larry's favorite things to grow is garlic. Once you get the basics down, garlic is quite easy to grow. And you plant it in October for harvesting in July of the following year, so it's out of the way as a chore when there is so much else that needs doing in the springtime. Consequently, we usually end up with something like 125 gigantic heads of of garlic every year. We grow more than that, but you have to save your seed garlic heads for the next year, and we give away or sell some of ... Read More about Roasted Garlic Hummus
Spicy Avocado Dip
There are very few things that ever make me think of moving from Upstate NY. We both grew up here, and despite the rough winter we're having this year, we enjoy all of the seasons in their turn. But then there are avocados. If you are trying to grow or raise as much of your own food as you can, avocados can be a bit of a brick wall when you live where we do. Along with citrus, shrimp and Shiraz, it's never going to happen here - we live far from the ocean and our climate is never going to ... Read More about Spicy Avocado Dip