Peach Pie with Ginger Crumble Topping

Summer peaches nestled under a snappy ginger oat nut topping make a surprising crumb-topped pie.

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I blog about seasonal eating--using the produce from my garden and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share to feed my family.  It's March, it's Pi day, so why am I sharing a recipe featuring peaches?

One of the primary ways I make the most of our seasonal produce is by putting the abundance up for winter use.  Last summer, when our peach tree was laden with vanishing fruit courtesy of the Certified Wildlife who must have read the Habitat sign Carla posted about making--and putting up--peach pie filling.  Since my daughter and I had been over to glean a friend's heavily laden tree, above,  I had a bunch of peaches when I read the post.  I followed Carla's clear and simple directions and put up several peach pies' worth of filling.  In the winter time, we can enjoy a taste of summer (and enjoy the additional heat in the kitchen) while we're continuing to eat locally.

I really wasn't planning on sharing this recipe today.  Even though the weather swings from sunny and 67 degrees Fahrenheit to accumulating snow back to sunny and 50s over a 3 day period, I'm thinking Spring!  I've got a roasted asparagus pizza and a radish pizza on deck for future Friday Night Pizza Nights.  But yesterday morning, when babbling about what to post today, my neighbor Dawn said 'but it's Pi day' and I thought, you know, I *do* have a pie recipe to share.  Besides, I've got so many peach pizza recipes for this summer you'd get bored with another peach recipe in August, right?

If you'd like a more savory pie for Pi Day, I gotcha covered.  Last year I shared the food of my spouse's home** in Pasties, A Meat Pie for Pi Day.  I've also shared a Beef and Bok Choy Pie that we enjoy when we've got Bok Choy from the farm share and beef from the freezer.  I'm still chicken on the concept of homemade crust, though.  My achilles heel.


If you came here looking for a Friday Night Pizza Night, I gotcha covered there as well.  Here's my Visual Pizza Recipe Index, and it's broken up my categories that make sense only to me:  recipes for pizza dough, recipes for pizzas with fruit, recipes for vegetarian pizzas, and recipes for pizzas with me.  Homemade pizza crust?  So NOT my achilles heel.


For more recipes using peaches, please see my Peach Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.


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Avocado Lemon Feta Yogurt Dip

An easy and versatile vegetable dip of creamy avocado, bright lemon, and salty feta in a yogurt base

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One of my New Year's Resolutions, for the second year running, is to add more avocado to my life.  I love in it guacamole.  I love it filled with corn and black bean salsa.  I love it smashed with some salt, spread on toast, and eaten with an over easy egg.

I got that idea off a BBC show about astronomy and the SOFIA project where I saw some German astronomers--working on the Very Large Telescope--who who were being interviewed over breakfast high up in the Atacama desert in Northern Chile. One astronomer was smashing an avocado with his toast and egg.  Try it--it's delicious. 

Avocado is just delightful--and no, I'm not being paid to say it. It's a New Year's Resolution that I'm able to keep, which is the best kind of resolution.

Brighten up a mashed avocado with a splash of lemon, add the salty tang of feta cheese, make it even creamier with yogurt, and you've got yourself a real winner.

This is the first of two avocado dips I'm sharing this spring.  My second is Avocado Feta Hummus. Both use the delightful combination of avocado and feta, first brought to my attention with Maria's Avocado Feta Dip and cemented into my palate with my Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos and Five Layer Mediterranean Chicken Dip.  I like to serve these dips piled with vegetables and sprinkled with additional feta cheese, and we scoop them up with carrot slices, celery sticks, fingers, or pita chips.  I stumbled across this concept last summer, making my supper out of a Layered Vegetable Appetizer, and refined it during January's #AppetizerWeek when I made a week's worth of vegetable appetizers with a talented group of food bloggers.  You can see all our creations on the #AppetizerWeek Pinterest board.


Not into avocado + feta? How about queso? You can find my Avocado Queso Dip here. 

We've had a string of sunny days, which gives me hope that this winter will come to a close.  Amazing how wonderful time spent in a sunbeam can feel.  I think our dogs have it right--follow the path of the sun from East-facing windows to West-facing windows over the course of the day.  [That's when they're not napping on the heat vents.] This dip makes me think that Spring is right around the corner which, looking at the calendar, it is.  Hooray!

Thai Turkey Cold Busting Hot and Sour Egg Drop Soup

Fight colds with this Hot and Sour Thai-seasoned Turkey, Carrot, and Rice Egg Drop Soup

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When I was in nursing school, in a previous life, Hot and Sour Soup became my magical cure-all for any bugs picked up at the hospital that threatened to take me down.  I'd swing by my favorite Chinese restaurant and pick up a quart when I first felt a tickle in my throat, and usually by the time I'd consumed the container I was right as rain.

Of course I've moved far away from that restaurant, and had good and not as good Hot and Sour Soups in the intervening lives years.

This soup is emphatically NOT a traditional version of Chinese Restaurant Hot and Sour Soup.  Instead, it's got the hot and sour-ness that I crave when I'm sick, coupled with the consistency of egg drop soup that soothes my throat, along with carrots and rice that comfort me like a good bowl of chicken soup should.  Except this is made with a turkey carcass.  Yes, part of my Thanksgiving turkey carcass if you must know.

This is an excellent reason to save your Thanksgiving turkey carcass in your freezer until you're ready for it.  No sense wasting it on some day-after-Thanksgiving soup when you've got amazing leftovers still in the fridge.  No, save that turkey carcass, along with the bits and bobs of vegetables collected in your Soup Pack, for a Real Need.

I made this soup while in Real Need for Soup.  While I was sharing sunny orange recipes here during HashtagOrangeWeek recently, I was sneezing and hacking my way around the Disney World Parks in Florida.  As if being sick wasn't enough, we traveled to/from Florida in a plane and my ears went wrong shortly after take off and still weren't right a week after returning home.  Add to all of the above I had a cough that made me gag and, well, if you've had kids then you know there are . . . consequences . . . when you are walking around having coughing attacks.  So there I am at Disney, sneezing, coughing, and consequencing all over the place, and hoping to survive the flight home so I could make soup. /rant

Thanking again my well-stocked pantry, I slept in (love my bed) and started this soup the day after I got home.  I was inspired by Lydia's Quick and Easy Hot and Sour Soup with Tofu, Shiitake Mushrooms and Noodles and Tyler Florence's Hot and Sour Soup. Now, normally I like the hands off approach of slow cooker soup stock, throwing everything into the crock pot for a day/night before straining and using.  And while that technique is awesome, there is one drawback--in a slow cooker you don't get the flavor concentration from evaporation like you do in an uncovered stock pot on the stove top.  I cooked this stock for 4 hours on the stove top, until it was reduced by about half [and took a picture so you could see**] then called it good.  Using mostly fridge and freezer items I threw together the rest of the soup, snapped some more photos, and we enjoyed a late lunch.  I was fortified for the rest of the day. And then a few more thanks to the awesome leftovers.

If you're looking for the cold-busting properties of a bowl of hot and sour soup, the consistency of egg drop soup, the comfort of a poultry-filled carrot and rice soup--this recipe is for you.


I'm sharing more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like a good peek behind the scenes like I do, follow me on Instagram. Need a good read? I'm sharing articles of interest on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?