Make Your Own Salad Dressing

 Homemade salad dressing is an often-overlooked addition to a home-cooked meal.  For years I always kept Good Seasons salad dressing packets in the larder and opened one up when I needed it.  We got so used to the flavor that we would lug a dozen packets back to London after visiting family.

Surprise!

 

Grocery shopping can be a chore or an adventure. I prefer the adventure part, even if it is 6 am, and I am one of only three shoppers in the store.  At the back of my supermarket there is a small piece of furniture filled with mesh bags full of overripe fruit and vegetables, Every bag is 99 cents, even the bag that held these colorful, stripy bell peppers. I couldn’t resist. I used them in a Chinese stir-fry, but they would be equally good raw.

I wonder what will be on sale next weekend.

             For more easy recipes, order "Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen!"

Revisiting an Unliked Vegetable

I like bargains, so when I saw a 1-pound package of fresh okra on sale for 99 cents, I immediately bought it.  I didn’t begin salivating because a few minutes later I remembered that I wasn’t very fond of okra.

Mom Cooking Tip 179

 

Can you help?  I made a stand-alone stuffing in a casserole dish instead of inside the turkey at Thanksgiving, and the stuffing turned out mushy.  I want to try again during the Christmas holidays, but this time I'd like the stuffing to be crisp.  What do you suggest? --Ellen S.

I can offer two thoughts.  

1) When you are baking the stuffing in the casserole dish, remove the lid or aluminum foil covering the stuffing about 20 minutes before it's fully cooked.  This will allow the steam to escape and the stuffing to crisp up.

2) If you are cooking onions and celery to combine with the stuffing before baking, add the dry stuffing to the vegetable mixture before adding any broth or water.  Gently stir.  This way only a small amount of stuffing will be inundated with liquid, and the rest will have a chance to crisp up.  For extra flavor, dot the top layer of stuffing with a few spoonfuls of butter before baking.

         For more easy recipes, order "Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen!"

Potatoes Are Not All the Same

I grew up eating Idaho potatoes (aka russet potatoes) and loving them, whether they be mashed, baked or fried.  Only later when I began to do my own shopping did I notice other potatoes on sale that were red, white and yellow.  I especially liked the yellow potatoes, known as Yukon Gold.  They make excellent baked potatoes as well as French fries and mashed.

Orzo: What Is It and How Do I Use It?

 

The first time I saw orzo, I thought it was rice.  I was confused because the color was that of spaghetti, not white like normal rice.  The packaging talked about ‘al dente perfection in 9-10 minutes.’

I quickly realized that I had discovered a new kind of pasta.  Some people use orzo in soup.  I tried it in a casserole, mixed together with fresh spinach, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese.  I cooked the orzo first and then baked it for 30 minutes with the other ingredients mixed in.

I have often wished for a different pasta shape, and now I’ve found it.

                 For easy-to-make recipes, order "Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen!"

Get Your Vitamin D from Stuffed Mushrooms!

 

My friend Ilene was recently researching how to get more Vitamin D from food, and she discovered that mushrooms have quite a bit of it. And if they are left out in a place where they are bathed in sunlight for a day or two, the mushrooms make more vitamin D!

An Alternative Way to Cook Rice!

Rice always seemed the easiest side dish to make, but sometimes things can go wrong when cooking it. So I was not surprised when my friend Ilene asked me how I cook rice.

Pinto Beans: What Are They and How Do I Use Them?

Dried Pinto Beans (left), Cooked Pinto Beans (right)

Anyone who has eaten refried beans has eaten pinto beans.  They are brown—sometimes light brown, sometimes dark brown—and are often speckled.  They are available cooked in cans and uncooked in plastic bags.

Purple Peruvian Potatoes: What Are They and How Do I Cook with Them?

Purple Peruvian Potatoes, a popular potato in South America, are available year-round in many American specialty grocery stores.  Considered a variety of fingerling potato, they are small and sometimes oval or knobby.  They don’t look like much, and their dark purplish-black skin seems out of place when sitting next to red or golden-skin potatoes.

Too Many Baked Potatoes?

During this virus pandemic, I forgot about a 10-pound bag of red potatoes I bought and stored under the sink.  By the time I remembered them, mold had struck, and there was a puddle of ick at the bottom of the storage basket.

New Look at Traditional Coleslaw

My sister-in-law Sue is a very creative cook and enjoys experimenting.  This is her version of that old standby Coleslaw.

Chard: What Is It and How Do I Cook It?

  

Chard, also known as Swiss Chard or Red Chard, is a leafy green vegetable with prominent veins and ribs as thick as celery.  Sometimes Chard is sold with the ribs still attached to the base, like celery.  Other times the stalks have been trimmed slightly so that the leaves are separate, and they are bundled together with a twisty tie.  Choose a bundle that is shiny and firm, not limp with a lot of brown spots.

Red chard has large, dark green leaves with red veins and a red stalk.  Swiss chard has similar large, dark green leaves, but its veins and stalks are white.

Sick of Your Vegetable Side Dishes?

Long ago I became dis-enamoured of that old standard veggie—frozen peas.  I can’t remember when I stopped eating them, but I do keep a bag in the freezer.  I use it for sports injuries, to reduce the swelling.

Turn Green Beans into an Athenian Delicacy

Years ago I spent a summer in Greece as a high school exchange student and learned a lot about Greek cooking.  I didn’t put it into practice, though, until I finished college and moved into my own apartment.

My first attempt was making Spanakopita, which are small pastries stuffed with spinach and cheese. I liked eating them, but making them was a disaster because I had no clue how to handle phyllo dough.  I still can’t do it well, so I order them at a restaurant.

Side Dish or Pasta Sauce – You Choose!

I was making Shakshuka for dinner the other night and miscalculated how many vegetables I needed.

Enjoy Summer’s Last Tomatoes

I think I remember what a real tomato tastes like.  However, it’s been so long since I had one that maybe it’s a dream.  My father occasionally came home from work with a bag of freshly picked tomatoes he’d bought at a roadside stand.  We would eat them like apples.  But those days are long gone.

Too Hot to Cook? Try Ratatouille!

Ratatouille with Brown Rice and Corn

Sometimes I forget that that I know how to make colorful vegetables dishes. It’s been awhile since I last prepared Ratatouille, an easy-to-eat French mixture of cooked eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes.

My friend Ilene found the recipe in our second book, “Help! My Apartment Has a Dining Room!” and cooked it for dinner the other night.  She wanted a vegetarian alternative to the hamburgers and fries she and her husband planned to eat the following night.

Pearl Onions: What Are They and How Do I Use Them?

Pearl onions are the size of marbles and have a gentle onion taste.  They are excellent additions to soups, salads, pasta and casserole dishes.  Fully cooked, they also make a good side dish on their own.

The big drawback of pearl onions is peeling, which can take quite a while if you don’t cook them in boiling water for about 30 seconds and then soak them briefly in cold water to loosen their skins. Trim off the root end. Then grab the other end and squeeze gently so the skin and top layer of onion pops off.

If Speed to the Table Is the Issue...

When I need to get dinner on the table in 20 minutes, the biggest question is what part of the meal is going to suffer.  Most pastas and white rice are ready in 20 minutes.  Grilled, pan-fried or stir-fried meat and fish can go from raw to cooked in 10 minutes, although you can forget about roasts—unless you are just reheating them.

The big challenge is the fresh vegetable.  The absolute easiest is broccoli.  Prep time is quick.