a vintage recipe: cream of chicken soup

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Cream of chicken soup, real cream of chicken soup, doesn’t come from a red and white can, folks. Real cream of chicken soup is homemade, from scratch and lovingly tended as it simmers.  Buttery, rich with the flavor of chicken, and irrepressibly smooth, it’s a nourishing dish with an old-fashioned, and almost timeless charm (skip straight to [...]

a recipe: miso soup with clams

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Miso Soup with Clams is one of those special foods – simple and quiet and humble, but also elegant in its simplicity.   Sometimes the best dishes are the simplest.  In our home, broths and stocks form the foundation of many of our meals, and with good reason.  Broths and stocks are potently rich sources of trace [...]

Tomato & Cucumber Salad

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Tomato and cucumber salad, sparkling with the bright flavors of parsley, fresh lemon juice and a subdued and earthy olive oil, finds its way to our supper table several times a week during the height of the tomato season from early August through mid-September.  Our family loves the simple combination of some of summer’s best [...]

a recipe: wild mushroom butter

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Wild mushroom butter.  There’s something about wild mushrooms and dishes made from them like wild mushroom butter, something faintly alarming and decidedly adventuresome.  It’s a disquieting food, like raw milk, and it takes a certain amount of culinary fortitude to walk into the woods, scratch your way through the pine needles, the brush and slowly rotting [...]

A Recipe: Fresh Herb Frittata

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Herb Fritattas, fluffy and light, are remarkably versatile and when hens in the valley are producing at their height and the farmers market is chugging along, we often find four dozen (or more!) eggs in the kitchen each week.  And, as the season progresses, that number dwindles until the darkest days of winter when we’ve [...]

A Recipe: Potato Leek Soup with Dill

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Potato Leek Soup, dotted with dill and pasture-raised bacon, may seem like an odd addition to a June post. I mean, really now, summer’s less than a week away – and I imagine all of you sipping away at icy tomato gazpachos and spooning sweet cherry sorbet into your mouths. It’s hot. It’s humid and the night air is sultry and warm where you are, isn’t it? Don’t lie to me now – I know it’s true. While you’re lounging by the grill, sending your kids to run naked through the sprinklers and collect raspberries on tall, leafy canes, I’m shivering and considering turning out the heat though it’s the middle of June dammitall.

A Recipe: Preserved Lemon & Mint Allioli

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Allioli. Allioli. Allioli. I love how the vowels and lulling Ls roll off the tongue – softly and whimsically – almost like a child’s nonsense word. all-ee-oh-lee. It’s a melodic sound. Allioli is a Catalan version of classic aioli, and it differs fundamentally from Provençal aiolis in that it is made without egg yolk – offering just a combination of good quality olive oil, fragrant garlic and unrefined sea salt.

Recipe: Mangoes and Sticky Rice

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Mangoes and sticky rice – oh how my heart swoons!  After a heated meal of Thai food – heightened by the bright flavors of kaffir lime, lemongrass and painfully hot chili peppers – nothing soothes the palate quite like a warm bowl of gently sweet and slightly salty mangoes and sticky rice. I like to [...]

A Recipe: Kale & Potato Soup with Chorizo

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Caldo verde – a Portuguese soup classically featuring kale, potatoes and chorizo swimming in a nourishing, mineral-rich stock – is a remarkable dish.  Richly flavored and deeply satisfying in a way only traditional peasant foods can manage, caldo verde is simple to prepare and a truly delightful addition to the supper table.  Like all dishes [...]

10 Healthy, Nourishing School Lunches

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Looking for healthy school lunch ideas? School lunch has quickly become one of the most deplorable American meals – comprised of low-cost, commodity items like CAFO-raised beef, canned fruit and vegetables. Standard lunches of chocolate milk, overcooked peas and mealy french fries lack versatility in nutrients, flavor and, most importantly, they lack inspiration.  So, per [...]