We've answered all your questions in 20 money-saving, stress-reducing tips, organized into five categories to help answer all your wine questions. Bonus: Linda Murphy shares her favorite reds, whites, and sparklers.
I've taken to walking around town staring at my feet - or more specifically, the ground a short distance in front of my feet. This is my way of searching for fruit. The first time I saw a bright red cherry alone in an alley gutter, I stood over it and thought to myself - hmmm, someone lost some fruit when they got out of their car. Then I looked up, and saw an entire tree full of cherries. Now I look for fruit on the ground, and then turn my sights skyward - it's a pretty good system. The fruit I used in today's cherry cobbler recipe was gathered just a short walk from my house, and as you all know I live nowhere near any farms or orchards.
In just the past few weeks I've stumbled on blackberries, blueberries, plums, cherries, figs, lemons and limes. All growing wild, all within walking distance of my front door - ten minutes or less. I convinced Wayne to come with me the other morning to gather cherries - or what we thought were cherries. I brought along a broomstick and a bowl and you can see what we were able to harvest. There are dozens of trees nearby producing fruit, and I think they are a mix of tiny sweet plums and a medley of different cherries. Most of the blackberries are still green, but I suspect they'll come around in the next week or two.
Using my free fruit as inspiration, I did a remix of the buttermilk cake we liked so much, essentially just turning things upside down, creating a cobbler.
Fruit on the bottom, sweet buttermilk dumplings crowning the top. The thing I like least about this whole process is the pitting of the fruit, I have no patience for it - particularly with the tiny plums. They taste lovely, but I've decided berries, or most cherries are much easier to deal with. Feel free to use whatever juicy, ripe fruit you like here.
I opened my sister's freezer the other day and was greeted by stacks of individually portioned, vacuum sealed lasagnas. My sister is seventeen months pregnant right now - kidding, but that's how she feels. She told me they've been stock-piling easy, meals they can simply reheat or pop in the oven once the baby arrives. This got me thinking about healthy, baked, single-pan recipes. I threw this together the other night using a bunch of things I had on hand - brown rice, spinach, black olives, crumbled tofu, a bit of cheese, pine nuts, and a few eggs. It's the kind of thing you could prep in advance and pop in the oven anytime it's convenient. In short, I tossed all the ingredients together in a big bowl, turned them out into a baking dish, and after a thirty minute stint in the oven sat down to a hearty plate of baked rice flecked with spinach. The top bakes into a golden cheese crust made even better with a generous sprinkling of black olives, red onions, and toasted pine nuts.
Come to think of it - you could bake portions of the rice mixture in individual ramekins - that might be cute. And using the rice/egg/tofu ratio you can certainly remix this based on whatever accent ingredients you prefer or have on hand.
Update: Look who made his appearance yesterday. :)
This is another one of my clean-out-the-fridge recipes. Actually, I should rephrase that. This is a take-apart-the-entire-refrigerator, wipe-down-every-surface, throw-away-90% - of-the-condiments-crammed-in-the-door, and- figure -out-how-to-use-up-the-rest recipe. Tonight grilled tempeh was on the menu made with a marinade I cobbled together from a few of my surviving condiments and pantry items - maple syrup, soy sauce, garlic and ground chipotle pepper.
So good, so easy! I've failed too many tempeh attempts to count - part of the reason you never see tempeh recipes here. But not this time. The salty sweet marinade really worked its way into the tempeh. The heat from the grill added a nice touch of caramelization. It worked beautifully alongside the grilled mushroom, served on top of the earthy quinoa.
For those of you looking for variations - this flavorful, salty-sweet marinade would work nicely on tofu as well. The marinade would also make a nice sauce for say, a soba noodle dish, or over pan-fried rice - just keep in mind it is fairly strong. Start with a drizzle and go from there.
