Three Sisters

Awhile ago I read an incredible book called Braiding Sweetgrass by indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. In it, one of the things she talks about is the Three Sisters – squash, beans, and corn – which when planted together support and nourish each other, but are also very healthy and delicious to eat together. Recently…

Horchata

An ice cold horchata on a hot day is so refreshing! But it’s not available everywhere, so why not make it myself? I started asking my Mexican friends (thank goodness I live in California!), and found that there are many variations in ratios, types of milk, sugar vs sweetened condensed milk, etc. and every family…

Apple Pie Ice Cream

Ben and Jerry’s used to have an apple pie ice cream that I was obsessed with, but apparently I was the only one. When they discontinued it, I went to every store in my area and bought up all the remaining pints. I nursed that stash of ice cream for as long as I could,…

Dan Dan Noodles

Dan Dan Noodles are typically served layered (sauce at the bottom of the bowl, then noodles, meat, and vegetables), and you’re supposed to mix it yourself before eating. But I’ve found that I can cook many of the ingredients together, cutting way down on the number of steps and still resulting in a delicious bowl…

Whipped Ricotta Cream Dessert

Got some more ricotta from my cheese hookup and homegrown persimmons from a neighbor, which turned out to be the makings of a perfect dessert for the season (you could also use different fruit though). I squeezed it into 4 glasses, but they were heaping and people were super full after eating them, so you…

Lavender Lemon Cream Pie

It’s March, and that means my favorite holiday… Pi(e) Day! As the world is figuring out how to live with COVID and slowly opening back up, we were able to do a big Pie Day bonus event for Cookbook Club. Continuing to find fun ways to use lavender in my cooking, I made a Lavender…

Apple-Cinnamon Cereal Snickerdoodles

Cookbook Club – Holiday Cookie Swap As a bonus Cookbook Club event, we did a holiday cookie swap where each person chose a recipe from either BraveTart, The Cookie Collection, or Dorie’s Cookies. Then we all got together and swapped cookies, so you went with one batch of cookies and came home with a variety…

Persimmon Crisp

Our Cookbook Club tradition is to do a Friendsgiving event in November, where instead of using a cookbook everyone makes a dish that’s either a Thanksgiving tradition for them or something new they want to try this year. It’s persimmon season, and my friend recently gave me a bag full from her tree. I make…

Iced Coffee

My dad told me he had been adding cinnamon to his coffee grounds when he makes coffee, and it opened my eyes to the wonders of flavoring coffee before you brew it rather than just adding the flavoring afterward. It better infuses the flavor, plus you don’t get the grittiness of the spices floating around…

Preserved Lemon Chicken and Leeks

I was feeling pretty good about cooking with preserved lemon after successfully making a Moroccan Lemon Chicken. That seems to be the predominant way that people use preserved lemons, but I still had a lot of preserved lemons left and wanted to find other ways to cook with them. My mom mentioned that she’d had…

Moroccan Lemon Chicken

A friend of mine gave me a jar of homemade preserved lemons. I was super excited because I love homemade food stuffs… and then I realized I didn’t know what to do with them. So I asked around and was given several versions of what is apparently a traditional Moroccan Lemon Chicken dish. Using those…

Buttermilk Pie

Can I tell you one of my food pet peeves? I don’t understand why buttermilk comes in quart containers… why Why WHY??? I’ve never seen a recipe that uses more than a cup of buttermilk at a time, and yet I’m forced to buy four times that amount. It makes me crazy and I hate…