"Sausage" Cranberry Pecan Cornbread Stuffing

This year, for Thanksgiving, we're having my Cranberry Pecan Cornbread Stuffing as our main dish. I've added soy "sausages" for protein so it's more of a stuffing casserole.  

"No turkeys will be harmed in the making of this dinner",

so if you've got family members coming for Thanksgiving that don't eat turkey, this is what you can make for them.  

Caramel Apple Bread Pudding

I've been working on this recipe for Caramel Apple Bread Pudding for over a month.  I almost gave up twice, and we've eaten more pans of bread pudding than I care to admit. Some were too soggy and some were too dry.  I wouldn't have thought that an egg and dairy free bread pudding would be such a challenge, but I finally feel good enough about this recipe to post it.

Squash & Tomato Au Gratin

By the end of summer, like most gardeners, I have an over abundance of tomatoes and squash.  I came up with this recipe to use those veggies that were piling up in my fridge. Veggies Au Gratin seemed like the way to go.

Summer Veggie Butter Bean Salad

This time of year, summer vegetables are plentiful, generally affordable, as well as readily available, either from your garden, your farmer's market or your local grocery store.  If you have a small garden plot, like I do, you probably have an abundance of tomatoes and zucchini right now, so I developed this recipe with a pile of both sitting on my kitchen counter. 

Marmalade Cake

I made this Scottish marmalade cake for the premier of Outlander, a new series on Starz, that begins tomorrow night. It's adapted from a series of books by Diana Gabaldon.  I'm a big fan of this historical fiction/love story, and have been eagerly waiting to see these characters come to life.  It's the story of an ex WWII combat nurse, on a second honeymoon in Scotland with her husband, who finds herself swept back in time to 1743 Scotland after touching some standing stones. Here's a link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnaqypyJDHs

Apricot Almond Coconut Bars

Apricot Season is over for us, we have about 5 lbs of dried fruit and 30 lbs of frozen fruit put away.  For the two weeks that is took to harvest them, we ate apricots morning, noon and night.  One of my favorite new apricot recipes is this one for Apricot Almond Coconut Bars. They were so good, I made them twice.

Apricot Honey BBQ Sauce

A really good BBQ sauce is an essential ingredient of 4th of July grilling, so when I went searching the web for a starting place, I typed "award winning BBQ sauce" to begin my search. This recipe by Kevin from Extraordinary BBQ popped up.  He suggested that we take his award winning recipe and make it our own, so that's exactly what I did.  

Apricot Season

June is my favorite month in the garden because it means we get to eat these amazing, giant, juicy apricots.  They're our favorite thing that we grow and we can barely wait for them to ripen.  This is the largest crop of apricots we've ever had, I guessing that we will harvest at least 100 pounds.  I picked a second basket this morning and Mr RK weighed it out at 22 lbs.

Memorial Weekend Entertaining

The first holiday weekend of summer is upon us and we've been busy planting the garden so I don't have any new recipes to share with you but I thought I'd post some of my past favorites to help you plan any events you may be hosting or attending.  One of my all time favorites is this Roasted Asparagus Salad with fresh tomatoes, figs and pine nuts.

Maple Almond Quinoa Granola

I love granola for breakfast, but I must admit that I don't eat it very often.  Most of the packaged varieties that you find in stores are loaded with fat and sugar. I wanted a granola that I wouldn't feel bad about eating in the morning, one that is higher in protein but low in sugar and fat, so I took my classic Maple Almond Granola, and gave it a make over.  

Lemon White Chocolate Blondies

When I think about baking for Easter, I keep coming back to lemon flavored something.  Lemon cakes, lemon quick breads, lemon bundts... I'm not sure why it is, but I associate lemon flavored treats with spring. This year, I'm making lemon white chocolate blondies.

Italian Bean and Pasta Soup

We're actually getting some winter rains here in California, so I've switched our dinners back from salads to soups.  When it's raining, soup is my preferred dinner.  This Italian pasta e fagioli (fah-zhool) is a creamy blended version of the more traditional chunky vegetarian soup.  

Multigrain Irish Soda Bread

I love to learn about the history of food so when I decided to make some soda bread, I went looking for it's origins and a traditional recipe.  Soda bread, as it quickly became apparent, was not invented by the Irish.  Using soda as a leavening agent in bread was most likely originated with the American Indians.  They used pearl ash, also known as potash, from wood ash to leaven their breads.  

Cauliflower & Kale Gratin

A gratin, by definition, is a dish covered with a crumb crust and baked in the oven, cheese is usually involved.  I wanted that warming comfort food feeling that you get from cheese but without the dairy so I substituted the milk and cheese with a cashew sauce.  

Spring Garden 2014

It seems like a very long time since I've done a gardening post.  There usually isn't much to post about in the winter months except for rain drops on leaves, however, this year things are different.  Since Mother Nature decided to skip winter altogether in California and go directly to spring, so I've decided to start my spring planting as well.  

Cincinnati Style Vegetable Chili

Like most people this time of year, I've been eating simple low calorie meals, in reaction to the carb loaded diet I found myself eating in November and December.  I made a big one pot meal of chili beans the other night adding a sweet potato and some kale.  This is the first meal I felt inspired to blog about all month, I've mostly been making soup.