Smashed Potatoes – Easy and So Good

I realize that smashed potatoes are not a completely “new” thing in the food world. However, they only recently came to be a staple in our house. We are pretty staunch mashed-potato-people but we do welcome all potato dishes! It just seems so easy to make either baked or mashed….why go the extra step to make them smashed?

Oh, because they are AMAZING and they are actually less work than making so many other potato dishes! If you love the crispy crunch of a french fry or are the person that steals everyone’s baked potato jacket – this recipe is for you. If an oven-roasted potato and a french fry had a love child, this would be it. By smashing the potatoes, you increase the surface area and contact with the pan and the result is a super crunchy, yet soft in the center, potato chip you can just about pick up in your fingers. Now that I’m writing this…..think a cross between a waffle fry and a baked potato chip!

While the recipe does have two steps, the first can be done in a quicker way to save you time and effort.

Family Favorite: Dennis’s Summer Slaw

We might not be having lots of friends and family over, but darn it, it is still BBQ season! That means meat on the grill and lots of wonderful summer side recipes that we all have come to love. Besides potato salad and cucumber salad, our next biggest family favorite is our very good friends “Summer Slaw” recipe. Dennis has been making this homemade coleslaw for years and I was lucky enough to get his super easy recipe. It is a sweet yet zippy coleslaw that goes perfect with all things summer.

This goes together so quickly and is yummy right out of the bowl, though if you ask me, it gets better and better as it sits. I make a HUGE bowl and this is our side

Home Grown Broccoli Salad

For the first time in years, we have a successful broccoli crop! I have always had beautiful plants in the past but then the head of broccoli would be sparse and tough. No idea why, but this year is different. While picking out my plants at our local greenhouse this spring, there were only two 6-packs of broccoli on one of her tables.

Buying my usual cucumber, squash, and tomato plants, she thrust a pack of this cruciferous vegetable into my tray and said here, take this as I want to move them. Great. Another section of my garden taken up to veggies that will be unsuccessful. Well, these six plants have proven me wrong (and of course are doing much better than some of my more favorite plants).

It’s Rhubarb Season!

It is rhubarb season here in Vermont and that means endless possibilities. I love the versatility of this fruit and the tart fresh flavor that can do both sweet and savory. From jams and desserts to marinades and sauces for the grill. Pork chops with a slightly spicy rhubarb sauce are perfect for these slightly warmer evenings. Ever tried rhubarb poached in maple syrup? You should try it over pancakes – amazing! The ruby red color is just such a calling to make all things pretty in this early season.

While I have been having lots of fun developing different rhubarb jam combinations (classic strawberry-rhubarb to sweet chili rhubarb to habanero rhubarb), we have also been absolutely in love with a particular cake. I have made this cake at least six times already and it is only the start of June. We have eaten our fair share but this cake has been so easy and delicious that we have been giving it to friends and family.

 

The “hardest” part of making this cake is taking the time to chop the rhubarb. That’s it. Everything else goes together so quick

COVID-19 – Staying Busy At Home

It’s been a while since my last post and a lot has happened in the world. Since Mary 17th, my husband and I have been lucky enough to have been working from home. The first few weeks were tough as we moved furniture, set up desks and office spaces, and began to figure out new routines. It took a bit to figure out how to work around each other, like checking in with each other’s schedules to see who needed the phone when and realizing we needed a printer at home to do more than just print. Who knew I’d miss our office fax machine? Setting up “home office rules” was also something we discovered as necessary pretty quickly so we didn’t catch ourselves showing up in the background of a ZOOM video meeting. Doors closed to his “office” mean I now need to circumvent the entire house just to get to the bathroom on the other side as he has his client calls and staff meetings. At least that means counting extra steps throughout my weekdays!

Trips to the grocery stores, I’m sure as everyone else has discovered, now means a mask and in our case, a much shorter and quicker list to try and get in and get out faster. One thing I can honestly say is that we have indeed cut down on “unnecessary” grocery store items, thus we are seeing savings in our bank accounts. No more wandering the isles and seeing

Molasses Oat Energy Balls

One of my favorite cookies are anything molasses – molasses chews, molasses crackle cookies and of course gingerbread cookies with a good strong molasses flavor. I love that spice and tang that molasses has. Sweet but almost mineral taste, I can (and have) eat a spoonful right out of the jar.

Molasses has some pretty good stuff in it too, including potassium, iron and calcium. Unlike other refined sugarcane products, it has nutritional value so it can actually be a healthy sugar to use. So besides the spoon, one of my favorite ways to use molasses is in raw balls. Raw “energy” balls have become more popular recently and no-bake bites are always a welcome recipe when you need something quick or don’t feel like turning on the oven.

These energy balls are packed full of good stuff and taste like chocolate gingersnap cookie dough! They are super easy to

Bourbon Pecan Biscotti

Our household loves bourbon. So naturally, anything that has bourbon in the recipe is a favorite. I don’t know why I don’t make homemade biscotti all the time. It is easy, pretty quick, and makes the perfect cookie to go with your tea or coffee (or I suppose, a glass of bourbon). Some biscotti cookies are super hard due to the twice-baking, but these stay softer and are a nice cookie to eat without having to dunk.

Pumpkin Praline Pie with Coconut Milk

I have to admit that I often take the short-cut to make pumpkin pie at our house. I realize it isn’t that much more to add your own spices but I love the spice balance that is already in Libby’s canned pumpkin pie mix. When the holidays are here and you need to quickly throw in a pie, this is my go-to recipe. My addition is using coconut milk instead of evaporated milk as we have some lactose-free family members.

Since changing this recipe up with the coconut milk, everyone has agreed they like the taste better! It doesn’t taste like coconut but it gives the pie a rich and creamy taste that is just different from evaporated milk. To add some pizzaz, this pie is topped

Food Network’s Black Chocolate Cake – THE BEST

I saw this black cake in the Food Network October magazine and was starstruck and just had to make this. I had never heard of black cocoa powder but am now obsessed with it! It gives recipes that call for regular or even dark cocoa powder an amazingly rich and deep, yet mellow flavor. Perhaps it has a bit of a personality crisis but it really is mellow yet rich at the same time. Want amazing brownies, just use this cocoa powder! Combine that with a little espresso powder and WOW – talk about a party in your mouth! Chocolate lovers unite! THIS IS YOUR CAKE.

Now that I got that off my chest, seriously, this cake is amazing. Put away your “favorite” chocolate cake recipes and make room for this one to become the star. Your friends and family will thank you.

I admit I am terrible at following a recipe. I tend to take short cuts and make things as easy as possible. I know many people say that baking is a science and you need to follow the recipe. Nope. Not me. I do my own thing. Sometimes that is a mistake and other times, it works out just fine. Lucky for me (and now you), this worked out just fine NOT following all of the tedious steps

Fall Butternut Squash Soup

One of the best things about fall? Squash! We LOVE all kinds of squash in our household….from butternut to acorn to delicata. There are so many amazing things you can do with squash (and pumpkin) and it is a power-packed vegetable with lots of vitamins, antioxidants and fiber. Nothing says fall like a baked acorn squash with maple syrup and butter or a dinner of spaghetti squash and garlic bread! The farmers markets and local farm stands are overflowing with squash, some I’ve never even heard of, and we can’t get enough of it all. We toasted up some delicata with Parmesan the other night – love how