This week our toddler Madeline added the word 'brrr' (accompanied by exaggerated shivers) to her vocabulary. What frigid chill inspired this? When we got up yesterday morning in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, it was 69 °F (21 °C)...serious cold in her Caribbean world. In the spirit of enjoying this cooler weather, Rebecca requested a hearty lentil stew with the local sausage we had on hand. This Rustic Sausage Lentil Stew is straightforward to make and easy to adapt. This stew avoids the thick heaviness of many traditional lentil stews by using green French lentils that remain whole and al dente during cooking. While hearty, the stew is surprisingly light and bright. 

The smell of roasting potatoes makes my mouth water every time. These golden brown orbs of puffed potato deliciousness have been my dish of choice this past month. And I think the addition of rosemary and lemon makes the house smell like Sunday dinner. Happy roasting!

It’s the first day of September, an in-between season, with one foot in summer and the other inching towards fall. We created these Bison Bacon Burgers for this time of year, a last hurrah to warm summer grilling, with a nod towards cooler evenings. These are woodsy bison and beef burgers with hints of rosemary, smoky bacon and heaps of sweet caramelized onions. Honestly, these are fantastic burgers, bison lover or not, this burger will captivate your taste buds. And for the labor day weekend, celebrate with a last round of homemade burgers; Smokey Ancho Cheddar Burgers, Portobello Burgers with Green Olive Tapenade, or, my favorite, Turkey Feta Burgers with Yogurt Curry Sauce.  

Cooking delicious food for guests with dietary preferences calls for creative use of the season's bounty. Our goal for a weeknight dinner with friends was a vegetarian, gluten-free main dish, using seasonal vegetables, ready in 30 minutes. After a visit to our local famers’ market, we set to work creating a vegetable based pasta dish with flavor and texture that would appeal to a wide range of eaters. To make Grilled Vegetable Soba Noodles with Rosemary Garlic Sauce, we grilled up fresh broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and zucchini. With a roasted garlic sauce in mind, we added whole garlic cloves to the grill, to see if we couldn’t achieve a roasted garlic flavor without turning on the oven. It worked brilliantly. While the vegetables and garlic grilled, we cooked up a quick batch of buckwheat soba noodles, a toothsome noodle that is also gluten free and cooks in 4 minutes. For a subtle sauce that would accompany the dish without overpowering the fresh flavors, we clipped some rosemary from our garden, added our grill-roasted garlic, a flurry of nutty parmesan cheese, and bright lemon for contrast. Enjoy summer vegetables and homespun food shared with the ones you love.    

I always associate beets with the Borscht Soup that my Oma used to make in the fall and winter months.  At the time, I don't recall being all that enamored with either the soup, or beets. But now I love them both. We have found that beets are not a vegetable that generates a mild response.  Whenever we plan to serve them, we like to first test out the waters to see if our guests are beet-friend or -foe.  Beets have a strong earthy flavor that needs some assistance. In their unvarnished form, they are a dusty and lumpy root vegetable, with little to commend by their exterior. But peel a beet and you will find a vibrant, sweet and minerally vegetable, happy to lend color and flavor to drab dishes.   Beets and their greens are chock full of vitamins, among them A, B1, B2, B6 and C and are high in calcium, iron and magnesium. Beets respond well to many cooking applications and are delicious in everything from hummus to pickles to juice.  I first made these roasted beet chips when I was hankering for some root chips (those incredibly overpriced bags of beet and sweet potato chips at the grocery). It occurred to me that I could make them on my own and instead of deep frying, I thought I’d give beet chips in the oven a go. While Paul was skeptical of my oven technique, it worked beautifully and he sneakily polished off the first batch before our guests arrived!

Tuscan Potato Salad is not your average picnic side. The punchy combination of rosemary, roasted red pepper, and Parmesan makes Tuscan Potato Salad a robust and lively dish.  This is one of our most requested recipes, particularly for those looking for a healthy and flavorful alternative to mayonnaise-based potato salads. Honestly, we like this potato salad so much that it often serves as a summer dinner all on its own.  One thing we have learned in Rebecca's relentless potato obsession, is that a a great potato salad is nothing without outstanding spuds. This salad is built on a foundation of creamy new potatoes and fragrant basil, both of which came in our weekly CSA (farm box) from Penn's Corner Farm Alliance.  

This past weekend we had our first outdoor dinner party of the season and I had an edible centerpiece in mind while concocting this marinated feta with rosemary and juniper. This dish captures the soft light and open skies of an evening in early spring.  Marinated feta is a fresh take on a cheese course that delivers a surprising burst of lemon and woodsy flavor to salty cubes of feta.  We served marinated feta as an accompaniment to Paul's grilled Greek chicken and vegetables.  The leftover feta, which grows more flavorful as it sits, can be added to grain dishes, mixed into omelets, pureed into dips or stuffed into veggies.  The olive oil and herb mixture made a tasty addition to a salad vinaigrette, and would be delicious on pasta or used to sop up with crusty bread.