I had trouble coming up with a title for this post. If you google “pumpkin pasta” a pile of recipes will pop up for pumpkin sauces to toss with cooked pasta—and those do look delicious. But in this recipe, the pasta itself contains the pumpkin—and quite a bit of it. A Pumpkin by Any Other […]
All Recipes
Tomato Paste from Scratch
I finally made tomato paste and it tastes amazing. This has been on my to-do, to-cook, to-blog list since I started blogging. Like many things I now make from scratch, I will never be able to eat store-bought tomato paste again because homemade tastes incredible. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I followed the recipe […]
Coconut Milk Made from Dried Coconut
I make my own coconut milk for several reasons: Store-bought coconut milk is packaged in either wasteful cans lined with plastic or hard-to-recycle and even more wasteful Tetra-Paks that contain plastic Many of these plastics contain BPA or a replacement that is just as harmful Store-bought often contains food-like and suspect ingredients Homemade contains only […]
Refried Beans
Homemade refried beans taste delicious, fill you up, cost little money to make and contain only a handful of ingredients. The taste of canned refried beans pales in comparison and I prefer that my food not come into contact with plastic. The epoxy that lines cans contains either BPA or a just-as-bad-if-not-worse replacement, such as […]
Use-It-Up Vegan Apple Crumble
Writing this blog has forced me to figure out how to use up everything. In the old days, had I spied ugly apples at the grocery store—I rarely shopped at the farmers’ market—I likely wouldn’t have bought them. “Ewww, they have blemishes!” Not that the store would have provided the option. Only within the last […]
Waste Nothing Beet Pickles
How can I possibly be so excited about something as lowly as beet pickles, besides the fact that they taste delicious? My daughter MK has loved these since she was little. I ate most of the pickles I made for this post though…I had to do quality control…sorry MK… Nothing goes to waste To make […]
Charlotte’s Granola Bars
Click here to jump to the recipe I’ve filed these granola bars under cookies and cakes in my recipe index. From Merriam-Webster cookie noun cook·ie \ ˈku̇-kē \ cookie : a small flat or slightly raised cake These are cookies. Bar cookies to be more precise. Unlike Big Food I will not market these as energy bars, meal replacements, […]
The Lemon Sorbet of Compromise
My daughter Charlotte started feeling sick Friday. As I left for the grocery store to fill up on supplies for my sourdough bread boot camp workshop, she asked me to bring her back sorbet, or sherbet or some other frozen dessert other than ice cream to soothe her throat. I said I would look. In […]
Lemon Curd
If you glance at my Instagram feed at the moment, you can easily surmise that lemons have come back in season here in Northern California. So far, I’ve started a few jars of preserved lemons, made fermented lemonade, started lemon extract, and last night—at 2am—made the lemon curd in this post. And took the pictures. […]
Good Food from Fresh Ingredients: Roasted Squash
In my recipe index, you’ll find foods that most people buy processed and packaged today: crackers, bread, broths, nut milk, hummus, ginger beer, yogurt, ketchup, vinegar, tahini, pickles, pickled peppers, pasta—those difficult-to-find foods for anyone trying to reduce their plastic footprint. I also include many recipes for ingredients that would otherwise go to waste—scrap vinegar […]
Quick and Easy Peanut Sauce
This post is not at all festive—I’m writing it on the evening of December 23rd while listening to Christmas music. However, if you are about to eat piles of sugary treats like I am (my mom has stuffed her freezer with homemade cookies, brownies, tarts, dream squares, date squares…), you can balance some of that […]