Comfort Food: Vegetable Beef Soup

One of my favorite winter treats is a good, thick vegetable beef soup. My recipe varies depending on what ingredients I have, but this is generally how I make it:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, diced
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups of carrots, diced
2 cups of celery, diced
about 1 tablespoon total of herbs (I used 2 bay leaves, 1t oregano, 1t thyme, and 1 t rosemary this time. Sometimes I use herb blends like Penzy's Mural of Flavor or Tuscan Sunset.)
2-3 cups of tomatoes, diced
1-1 1/2 lbs of chuck roast, cut into small pieces, fat cut off and discarded
beef neck bone pieces
2 cups of corn
2 cups of green beans
1 cup of red wine (whatever I have leftover, usually a Cabernet)
3 cups of beef stock (add more if you like a brothier soup)
salt and pepper to taste

First, I saute the onions over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes until they start to turn a little golden. Then I add the garlic and continue to saute them until the onions and garlic are a little more golden, about 8 minutes. Then I stir in the celery, carrots, and herbs and gently saute them for about 5 minutes. Then I add the remaining ingredients. I turn the heat up to medium high until the soup begins to boil.  Then I turn down the heat to medium low again and simmer the soup for a couple of hours.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Pie

Another one of my favorite summer recipes is strawberry cream cheese pie. This recipe came from my grandmother and my mom made it all through the summer.


1 baked pie shell
1 package cream cheese
1 quart fresh strawberries
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup powdered sugar

Spread cream cheese softened with a little cream (or in the microwave) over the bottom of the crust. Place half of the strawberries over the cream cheese. Mash half of the berries until they are really juicy. Bring to a boil and slowly add sugar and cornstarch stirring constantly. Cook slowly for 10 minutes. Cool and pour into pie shell. Chill. Top with sweetened whipped cream.

Mmmm, zucchini blossoms...

Eric and I picked some zucchini blossoms at the community garden and we bought some more at the Lexington Farmer's Market. I thought that it would be lovely to make fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with herbed goat cheese.

So I stuffed each zucchini blossom with about a tablespoon of herbed goat cheese. The blossoms that we picked at the community garden were very fresh, so I was able to open the blossoms and spoon in the goat cheese. The farmer's market blossoms were a little older, so I had to slit their sides open to spoon in the goat cheese.

I dipped the stuffed blossoms in beaten egg and then in a mixture of Italian herbs, sea salt, and panko.  I fried them on each side in medium hot canola oil until they turned golden brown. They were delicious!

Spinach Salad with Peaches and Blueberries

I made a delicious spinach salad for Yoli and Eric over the weekend using the fruit that we bought at the farmer's market and the yummy blueberry balsamic vinegar.

I rinsed and picked them stems off of some spinach.  Then I pitted and sliced some peaches and tossed them in blueberry balsamic vinegar to keep them from turning brown. I placed the peaches and some blueberries over the top of the spinach with some feta cheese.  I drizzled some extra virgin olive oil and more blueberry vinegar over the top.

Grandma's Peach Cream Pie

This pie, more than any other, reminds me of summer and my childhood. My mom used to make it every summer during peach season.  It was her mother's recipe. I made the pie this weekend for Yoli and Eric with peaches Yoli and I bought at a farm stand. It's important to used only fresh, tasty peaches.  Frozen peaches are too watery and the pie will never set. Tasteless peaches make a tasteless pie.


1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup cream
3-4 fresh peaches, peeled and halved

Mix first 3 ingredients together. Pour half into unbaked pie shell. Fill with fresh peach halves. Cover with the rest of the mixture. Pour cream over the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until set.

Making Pesto

Eric and I made pesto this weekend while Yoli sat on the sofa reading a book. We harvested two bags full of pesto that was starting to flower from the community garden. I left enough lower leaves and stems that the plants should send up a new burst of growth within the next couple of weeks. I cleaned the pesto and removed the leaves and small stems from the larger, tougher stems while Eric made the pesto.  My thumbnails are still stained from using them to cut the basil stems.

To make the pesto, we stuffed a food processor bowl with basil and added about a tablespoon of salt, 1 cup of olive oil, 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup of walnuts (because the one store in their town didn't have pine nuts), 2 tablespoons of minced fresh garlic, and 1/2 tablespoon of sea salt. These measurements are approximations because we eyeballed the amounts of ingredients that we added. We processed the ingredients on high until they were fairly smooth. We spooned the pesto into 1 cup containers and froze all of them except for what we ate over the weekend.  We made a gallon and a half of pesto. Stupidly, I left mine at Yoli's house and will have to pick them up next time I visit her. This weekend, we made crostini and roasted potatoes with the pesto.

Breakfast Crepes

One of my favorite summer breakfasts is fruit crepes. They're healthful, delicious, and easy to make.

To make the crepes, I just throw a cup of flour, 2 eggs, a cup of skim milk, a dash of salt, and 2 tablespoons of melted butter into a blender and blend them until they are well mixed. Then I spray a small skillet with cooking oil.  I heat the skillet to a medium-high heat.   Then I pour about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of batter into the skillet and swirl the batter so that it covers the bottom of the pan.  I cook the crepe until the sides start to curl up, flip it over, and cook it for about 30 more seconds.  I place the cooked crepes on a large dinner plate and cover it with a kitchen towel to keep the crepes warm until I finish making all the crepes.

I make the filling by sweetening some yogurt with stevia powder or honey. Sometimes I add other favorings like high quality flavored balsamic vinegars or spices. I added cinnamon and blueberry balsamic vinegar to the filling in the crepes that I made this weekend. I fill and top the crepes with the filling and fresh fruit. I used mango and blueberries in the crepe shown above.

My Favorite Summer Salad

As soon as I get my first cucumbers in the summer, I start making my favorite summer salad and I don't finish making it until the last tomatoes have ripened in the fall. I almost always have tomato, corn & cucumber salad in my refrigerator. I made this salad for the first time this year last night using cucumber and basil from my garden.

To make this salad I used fresh tomatoes, cucumber, corn (fresh when I can get Indiana corn), garlic, basil, sea salt, a very good balsamic vinegar, and a decent olive oil.

First, I saute minced garlic in a small skillet in 1 tablespoon or so of olive oil at a medium heat until it turns golden brown. If I am using fresh corn, I saute the corn for a few minutes in the skillet right as the garlic starts to show a little golden color.

While the garlic is browning, I cut up the tomatoes and cucumber into bite-sized pieces and add them to a salad bowl.

Then I add the browned garlic and some chopped basil leaves to the bowl.

Finally, I toss the salad with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and sea salt.

Amish Produce Auction

[Note: I purposely did not take any photos of the Amish out of respect for their beliefs about graven images.]

Last Friday, my sister, her friend Jerry (and now my new friend), and I went to the Amish produce auction in Greens Fork, Indiana. We went as a group because at these auctions, the produce is sold in lots. We agree on a lot of produce that we want to buy and then we split the lot after the auction. After the auction we went to a berry farm and bought some fresh strawberries.  Friday night, we had a barbecue and ate some of our purchases.

We bought some potatoes.  For our barbecue, we grilled the potatoes in foil with olive oil, garlic, sea salt, and rosemary.

We also bought zucchini, spring onions, and asparagus.  Jerry lived in Japan for several years and made us some decadent Japanese bar food-asparagus wrapped in bacon and grilled.

To make the bacon-wraped asparagus:
Rinse the asparagus, cut off the fibrous bottom, and cut the spears in half. Dip the half spears in a mixture of olive oil, black pepper, and sea salt.  Wrap each dipped spear in a half a strip of bacon and secure the bacon to the asparagus with a toothpick.  Grill the bacon-wrapped asparagus spears until the bacon becomes crispy.

Harvest Monday

I finally got to harvest something that I planted this year. My volunteer lettuces were ready to cut today.

I filled a colander with an assortment of lettuces. I also pinched off some basil and flat leaf parsley from plants that I bought at a farmer's market this weekend.

I used the lettuce to make a salad to share with my neighbor, Gaynell, and her husband, Ken. I rinsed and dried the lettuce. On top of the lettuce, I placed avocado, tomatoes, and crumbled goat cheese. To finish the salad off, I sprinkled the fresh chopped flat leafed parsley and basil. I made a dressing out of pomegranate balsamic vinegar and blood orange olive oil. We ate the salad with pork loin that was marinated in a Hawaiian barbecue sauce.

First harvest of the year

I harvested some kale today from the alley garden.  My neighbor planted it last fall and it looks fantastic. We share the alley garden, so it's fine if I harvest some of the produce that she has planted.

I decided to make toasted kale with my first harvest.

 First, I chopped the thick stems off of the kale and tore the clump into individual leaves.

Then I rinsed them off and I gently patted them try with a clean dish towel.

Next I put the leaves into a bowl and tossed them with 1 teaspoon of olive oil, spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet, and LIGHTLY sprinkled seasoning salt over them.  Kale will shrink considerably in the oven, so a tiny bit of salt is enough.

Finally, I baked the kale in a preheated oven at 350F for 12 minutes. They came out crunchy with a sweet/salty twist.