Author Archives: Tasha

[38] Butter and Tomato Sauce

Cover of The Complete Book of Italian Cooking, edited by Anne Hildyard

Confession time: I picked this recipe after the tomatoes were already peeled and seeded.

I had been trying to find a recipe for a tomato sauce that used fresh tomatoes, preferably one that could easily be frozen or canned. Mostly, though, I’d been trying via a new website I’m a member of called “Eat Your Books”:http://www.eatyourbooks.com/ and not having any real luck.

Eat Your Books is pretty awesome in a lot of ways, but most of my cookbooks are not yet indexed on the site. So when I do a search, I end up with a lot of suggestions for recipes out of the two Bittman books I have. Of course, I love my two Bittman books, but I already look to them fairly often if I don’t know what to do.… Continue reading →

Slow Cooker Peach Compote

My final act of peach food making was to make a buttload of peach compote to eat and freeze.

I had this crazy idea, the other day, that we’d have pancakes with peach compote on top. Only, we got up fairly late and I had somewhere to be at 2:00 pm. In and of itself, this isn’t necessarily an issue, but pancakes take a long time at our house and we had already planned to grab lunch together near my 2:00 pm commitment. So, instead we each had a fast bowl of cereal while the slow cooker did it’s thing.

The recipe for this compote is “here.”:http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/07/crockpot-peach-compote-recipe.html

We actually tripled the recipe, based on the number (14) of peaches we had ripe (where “ripe” = I thought they were ripe and some proved me wrong because they were naughty peaches).… Continue reading →

Recipe inspirations and other ponderings

Yesterday I made a fairly quick and straightforward non-challenge recipe for dinner. I wanted to share it with you because it’s tasty and easy, but also to demonstrate how even someone who is not the strongest cook can have a lovely and fast meal made via inspiration.

I’ll undoubtedly post on this again. After all, somewhere in this house there’s a recipe for “Blueberry Hopeful” and that’s all about the disasters and the inspiration. Also, waiting in the wings is a post about peach compote, but this post got very long. So I’ve edited it and will post about peaches (again) later today or tomorrow.

All in all, I imagine folks who read this blog have picked up that I’m not the greatest cook, no matter how much I like food.… Continue reading →

My love/hate relationship with peaches (and other fruits of their ilk).

I’m beginning to think it’s time to get a category beyond “other” for non-recipe posts. We’ll see.

Peaches!

So, I didn’t go to the farmers’ market on Saturday (or Sunday). I’m not going today, and the one I go to tomorrow is fairly small, and the one farm which sold peaches has been out for a week or two already. I could, conceivably, get to another market tomorrow where my favorite peach seller sells, but it’s highly unlikely. So, from the sounds of it, I am done buying peaches for the season. This should save me some money (except that pears and apples are hitting the farm stands).

Here’s my problem. I love peaches, but they don’t love me back. Not that they make me sick, because they don’t.… Continue reading →

Another rules question

Well, it was bound to happen that we’d have another question to throw out to our readers. (We’ve discussed amongst ourselves, but wanted to throw it out to any readers we have as well.)

We have both “_How to Cook Everything_”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764578650?ie=UTF8&tag=metaco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0764578650 and “_How to Cook Everything Vegetarian_”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764524836?ie=UTF8&tag=metaco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0764524836, and it’s beginning to look like there’s a not insignificant amount of overlap in the two books. I suspect more recipes are not overlapping than are, but there’s definite overlap.

So, is it cheating to use the same recipe twice, if it’s out of two different books? What if we take anything we learned from the last time around/last book and apply it to the new time around?

Basically, I want pancakes, and to eventually buy another cookbook. What if I make Bittman’s “Everyday Pancakes” again out of “_How to Cook Everything Vegetarian_”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764524836?ie=UTF8&tag=metaco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0764524836?… Continue reading →