About six weeks ago, we went to a restaurant to celebrate my father’s birthday.  They had “shrimp and crab au gratin” on the menu, and I had to try it.  It was so good!  I decided that I would need to make it at home.  I looked up various recipes and none looked quite right, so I set out on my own.  I omitted the crab, even though I love it, because it is very expensive! This is what I came up with.

Today we have a guest post from one of our readers, Anna Drozdova!  She mentioned in a recent comment that she makes ginger beer and I just had to know how.  I thought all of you would want to know too.  So here she is!

I decided that this year, I wanted to make my own pumpkin puree.  I usually buy a can or two each winter to make pumpkin bread, but of course there are issues with BPA in the can liners.  Making my own seemed to be the best solution!

Tomato sauce wasn’t even my first project, but it was the one that weighed most heavily on my mind. While friends were gathering up strawberries and other earlier crops to make jellies and jams and all sorts of things, I was just waiting. My family won’t eat jellies and jams so there was no reason to make any. But tomato sauce! We go through that like crazy! It was one of the biggest things I’ve planned to can and no, I am STILL not done! But I actually did this one in a few different stages so I “perfected” my technique a bit. I’ll share with you the way that I did it, and explain why some of the other ways are not my preferred way. Here we go…be prepared to get messy!

Written by Kate Tietje I came up with this recipe when a friend visited. It was delicious. She said, “I …

As I was roasting a chicken to make the week’s meals (gravy, stock, etc.) I thought…I bet some yummy herb-roasted potatoes would be great with this. I’d just gotten some very delicate, organic Yukon gold potatoes from our CSA so I was dying to try it. Ben wasn’t a fan, but the kids loved them and so did I. So here they are:

It had been on my plan to make lemon-poppy-seed bread anyway when I started getting lots of zucchini from my CSA.  So I thought, I ought to make some zucchini bread too!  However, I didn’t have a recipe for either that really worked for me yet.  Then I got the brilliant idea to combine them into one delicious, healthy bread.  I had also sampled some cheesecake that had nutmeg in it and the flavor had reminded me of lemon zest, so I thought, I bet that will be the perfect spice for this bread.  I probably could have even added more than I did.  The result was fabulous — moist on the inside and chewy-crunchy on the outside!

Okay, this is the post I promised awhile ago!  The one that I was trying to get to work out but that wasn’t going well?  But now I figured it out!

The other day I got a craving for peach tea, and decided to see what happened if I mixed some things together. This is what I came up with.

hen I was almost 10, we went to Disney World.  But on the way, we stopped to visit my mom’s sister’s family.  My Uncle Jim is a mailman, but in his younger days, he was a waiter at a very upscale restaurant.  Many waiters at such establishments learn to make their own versions of Caesar salad, so they can prepare it right at the table to the delight of their customers.  My Uncle Jim had learned to do this and still prepared it from time to time for his family.  The night we visited, he prepared it for us.  I loved it!  I’ve never had a Caesar salad as good as his, but that doesn’t stop me from constantly trying to find it again.  Today I’m bringing you the version I’ve recently made.  I’m not 100% happy with it, but it’s pretty good!  It’s also very healthy!