Simple Creamed Spinach from Scratch

A vintage recipe for creamed spinach using just 6 ingredients and a bit of time on the stove. Make this while you've got other pots-needing-stirring on the fire, and you'll have a fresh green side dish to add to your holiday table in 15 minutes or so.

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Forrest Gump had the way of it. Life--with a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share--is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. Some things are a given--you won't get tomatoes in May. You won't get corn in October. You will get turnips and beets . . .

Yesterday I learned what would be delivered in the Thanksgiving farm share box. On Tuesday I'll get my fresh turkey and a bunch of veggies. Now that I have a clue what I'll be working with, I can finalize my menu. Of course we'll have potatoes. My kids ask for MA's Make Ahead Irish Mashed Potato Casserole year round. No green beans this year--my spouse and I are the primary eaters of Alanna's World's Best Green Bean Casserole and I just don't have it in me to eat an entire batch alone.

I will make a corn pudding--dairy free and vegetarian--to share with a neighbor who is hosting folks with a variety of special diets. I will use a bag of Multigrain Sourdough Bread cubes from the freezer to make a small batch of stuffing. I've already made a half batch of Apple Cider Beet Cranberry Sauce--substituting dried pineapple for the dried apricots and grated raw beet for the roasted beets--and updated the photos for that post.

I'll need something green, though, and as a salad probably won't happen I plan to make creamed spinach. This recipe, from my 1950 edition of Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook, listed as Spinach (French method) "makes most anyone enjoy spinach". It's easy to make if you're already at the stove for something else. Last year, when my spouse took the action shots below, I was making Alanna's World's Best Green Bean Casserole and my Apple Sausage Cornbread Stuffing. Why not add a third recipe while I'm multitasking?

A Beet, Blue Cheese and Cherries Appetizer

Roasted beets, apple cider-soaked dried cherries, creamy blue cheese and crunchy pecans. This beet appetizer is hearty enough to stave off hunger and intriguing enough to satisfy curious appetites.

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I don't have enough beet appetizers in my life. You probably don't, either. You may think you've got plenty, but I'm going to try and change your mind.

You know about the Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks Board, right? It's my place to gather all the vegetable-centric [though not all vegetarian or vegan] starters I come across on the web. There are several beet recipes scattered amongst the hundreds of pins. [I am still figuring out this whole Pinterest thing, so it's rare that you'd find a repeat on that board--keep scrolling down for more ideas.]

I've also got 60 beet recipes from generous food bloggers in my Beet Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This index is for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share or farmer's market. The kind of folks who have a pile of fresh beets in the crisper 2 weeks after the last farm share delivery. The kind of folks who always have roasted beets in the freezer. The kind of folks who encourage their kids to use beets in their next school project [and then take photos of the results for a future blog post].

In my defense, the project was to prepare a dish using a vegetable, so it's not like he needed to build a molecule with toothpicks and marshmallows and I wanted him to substitute beets for the . . . . toothpicks [you thought I was going to say marshmallows].

Caramel Pumpkin Butter Cheesecake

Caramel pumpkin butter swirled in a cheesecake, baked in an Oreo cookie crust covered with caramel. A deliciously festive Fall or holiday dessert.

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Do you want something different for your holiday dessert spread? [Want a holiday dessert spread? Hmmm . . . just thinking about a plate of sides followed by a plate of desserts . . .] Well hold onto your forks, because next month I'll be participating in a week long HashtagChristmasWeekPalooza and I'm working on my cookies as we speak. [Kidding. I'm sitting typing and doing the mental prep of cookie baking--and I've stocked up on flour (KAF is on sale!), butter and eggs.]

While I like the occasional trip to the Cheesecake Factory to pick up a slice in celebration, I'm not much on making cheesecakes. A springform pan-full is too much for our family. I opted to make a cheesecake in an Oreo cookie crust [no sponsorship implied, just labeling the specific brand so you can have success in your recipe like I did] since it's smaller, giving me less servings we need to eat.

I figured my Easy Spiced Caramel Pumpkin Butter would be wonderful in a cheesecake, and I was not disappointed. Caramel on the bottom, swirls of caramel pumpkin butter along the top--this cheesecake rocked. If you haven't made your own Caramel Pumpkin Butter you have my blessing to buy a jar of pumpkin butter and give that a try.

I'm not reinventing the wheel here--the basic cheesecake ingredients came from the Oreo website and I just removed the cookies and added caramel, and my caramel pumpkin butter.

For more recipes using pumpkins, please see my Pumpkin Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me whose compost overrunneth with pumpkins . . . or maybe that's just me. Maybe other folks just feel like getting pumpkins in the farm share or stocking up on cans of puree. 

Cherimoya Ambrosia Fruit Salad

An exotic variation on the traditional Ambrosia or Five Cup Salad--using Cherimoya in place of pineapple makes this fruit salad extra special for your holiday table.

Disclosure--I received the cherimoya used in this salad from Melissa's Produce.

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The fruit salad known as Ambrosia (in my childhood) or Five Cup Salad (in the deli down the street) is a staple in a side dish spread. While we seem to eat it year round, it often appears on our holiday table. Sometimes we dress it up with maraschino cherries, sometimes we add pecan halves for crunch.

When I got a box of FreakyFruits from Melissa's Produce last year [yes, I am still sharing recipes from this. I am slow--in the kitchen and on the computer] I consulted my Melissa's Great Book of Produce: Everything You Need to Know about Fresh Fruits and Vegetables (Amazon Affiliate link) for advice with all of the unfamiliar-to-me fruits. The book describes cherimoya like "lizard-green pine cones", with "a leathery skin embossed with scalelike scallops". Yep, that's a freaky fruit.

When I read, "an alluring sweet blend of pineapple, papaya, vanilla and banana flavors" I decided to give the cherimoya a try in our ambrosia recipe, in place of pineapple. Because cherimoya discolors quickly after cutting, I use my favorite trick for keeping fruit looking fresh, pineapple juice (instructions in my Cream Cheese Toffee Dip for Apples).

Deep Dish Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizza

Thanksgiving leftovers (turkey, cranberry, stuffing and sides) tucked under a blanket of colby jack cheese for a deep dish pizza version of the traditional leftover bake.

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I've been sharing Thanksgiving recipes lately, including my Round Up of Thanksgiving Recipe Round Ups (that is a mouthful, in oh so many ways). As much as I adore a table full of side dishes, that means there are inevitably leftovers.

My favorite way to have Thanksgiving is to enjoy the main meal midday, then let everyone fix a plate of leftovers for dinner. Subsequent days bring turkey sandwiches, perhaps on a Multigrain Cereal Bun spread with Cranberry Salsa. But my current favorite way to enjoy leftovers the day after Thanksgiving is in a deep dish pizza.

Even though I suck at planning out weekly menus, having a routine Friday Night Pizza Night means I know what's coming up at least. After I learned How Not To Make Lou Malnati's Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza I got creative trying other methods. My deep dish pizza confidence grew to the point that I made 2 versions of post-Thanksgiving deep dish pizzas. Here's the first one.

This pizza has a bit of nearly every Thanksgiving side, in small spoonfuls scattered across a base of mashed potato-spread pizza dough. As I'm glad to eat everything together, this is a fun way to do that while making the most of the veggies that our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers put their heart and soul into producing.

Best Thanksgiving Recipe Round Ups

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Since I grew up with a mom who said 'let's make it look like a great plenty', I decided to have a monster round up of Thanksgiving Recipe Round Ups. I asked my blogger friends for their best round ups, and boy did they deliver! There are hundreds of recipes aggregated below. To help find what you're looking for, I've broken them into category. You'll find sides, mains, desserts. You'll find low carb, vegetarian, and healthy. You'll find slow cooker, pressure cooker, and no bake. I hope there is something for everyone. I'm going to start with my newest clickable collage. Please feel free to click on the image to go to the link.  Now dive right in!

Carrot, Celeriac, and Potato Mash

A comfort food side dish of root vegetables simply simmered and mashed with butter and cream.

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One of my favorite subjects is food. No surprise there. When I meet someone new, especially someone whose people did not grow up a stove's throw from where we are chatting, I like to ask about favorite foods. 

If you've lived in places far different from where you grew up, I'll ask you about what foods you  remember from your time away. I'm deliberately avoiding use of the term 'exotic' here, because Arkansas and Louisiana are as exotic to me as British Columbia and Nepal.

As I chat with folks about food, I find I am more interested in those comfort foods that we crave, not Your Most Memorable Meal [unless it was memorable because of the warm feelings evoked of good company and good flavors--not dramatic showmanship].

This comforting side dish came about because of a conversation with the guy doing routine maintenance on my furnace. He's from England, living and working as an HVAC technician in the US, and when I brought up what foods he misses most, he said his mom's celeriac mash. He described it as a simple dish of celeriac, potatoes, and carrots. Mashed together with a bit of butter and cream.

I had a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share celeriac in the crisper and decided to make this for my family. It is simple, homey, humble, unassuming--an excellent addition to a plate of food. Taken by itself it could be considered boring to some, but I don't need my food to be always in my face. This was a nice companion to roasted chicken. It would be terrific in an array of Thanksgiving sides. Leftovers would make a nice crust for an egg casserole, like my Hatch Chile, Egg and Potato Casserole.

For more recipes using carrots, please see my Carrot Recipes Collection. For more recipes using Celeriac, please see my Celeriac Recipes Collection. For more recipes using potatoes, please see my Potato Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, and garden abundance. I'm sharing more side dishes on Pinterest and my FB page. For more information on How to Use This Blog, click here.

Semi Homemade Cranberry Pineapple Pecan Salad

A quick and easy 3 ingredient side dish that tastes fresh, sweet, cool and crunchy all at once. Jazz up a can of whole berry cranberry sauce and perk up your holiday table.

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Two things contributed to this cranberry sauce. Neither of them involve beets. Rejoice!

First, I swung by my closest Kroger grocery store during their pre-holiday free sample palooza and tried a taste of cranberry celebration salad. Second, my mom read this post on my make ahead slow cooker cranberry orange and beet salad and suggested I offer up a recipe for doctored up cranberry sauce that starts with a can, not a bag.

To be honest, I'm cool with the can of whole berry cranberry sauce [though the jellied kind icks me out as I did not grow up with it]. I'm game to start out with a bag of cranberries too--though if we're a small amount around the table I don't need that much sauce. I just require demand a small amount of sweet red salad to mix with my mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey and gravy. [In the same way, I need that dab of lingonberry jam with my meatballs and potatoes at IKEA.]

If you're not into beets yoga using a slow cooker or stove top to make your cranberry sauce but you've got a knife and the ability to toast pecans for a couple of minutes, this is a fast way to dress up a perfectly fine side dish into something even better.

For more dishes using cranberries, fresh or dried, please see my Cranberry Recipes Collection. This is part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for those of us who can't walk past all the bountiful displays at the grocery store this time of year without picking up a little something 'just in case'. I'm pinning tasty looking sides to my Pinterest boards and sharing them on my FB page.

Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Overnight Sweet Potato Pecan Monkey Bread

A colorful brunch bread using purple and orange sweet potatoes in an enriched dough. This bread is made in short sessions--make the dough and assemble the bread one day, bake when you're ready.

Apologies to Esther Dean** but, . . . na na na come on. Na nana nana come on, come on, come on

Cause I rarely bake, but I'm perfectly good at it

Yeast in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it

Baking stones make break, so Ode, but preferments excite me

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I'm much happier when my kitchen sessions happen in small chunks--make the pesto one day, freeze it, use it throughout the winter. Caramelize onions in the crock pot, use them in quick meals. Make pizza dough when I have time earlier in the week, enjoy a homemade pizza on Friday night. An entire book devoted to this method, Make Ahead Bread by Donna Currie, is a great idea. I've ordered my copy--to donate to my local library so more folks get to play than just me. You can see more info about the book via this Amazon affiliate link.

There is just something soul-warming about tearing off a hunk of sweet bread and stuffing it into your mouth. The way it seems to melt on your tongue as you begin to chew is so satisfying. I imagine all of the recipe testing involved in writing a book about bread would be an interesting mix of pleasure and chore, and kudos to Donna Currie for slogging through the chore aspect to create this achievement.

As we most often eat Multigrain Sourdough bread, I relegate the chore of preparing our standard loaf to my bread machine. I consider our daily bread to be more utilitarian in nature and don't really think about the craft of baking bread. When I heard about the movement to mark the first anniversary of Make Ahead Bread, (Amazon affiliate link) with a virtual book party, I knew I wanted in.

To drum up interest in a newly-released book, publishers will encourage bloggers to choose from a carefully-selected group of recipes for their posts. When I saw Donna's Sweet Potato Monkey Bread on the list I figured I'd use my purple farm share sweet potatoes in it. At the next Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share pick up I was describing my plans and Cara of fairly simple suggested making the monkey bread with a mixture of orange and purple sweet potatoes. Great idea!

Because I was making 2 doughs at the same time, I figured I'd use my mixer for one and the dough cycle of the bread machine for the other. Since the temperature of my kitchen ranges from really cold in the winter to really hot in the summer, using the bread machine year round provides a nice climate controlled environment each and every time. The dough in the machine rose twice as fast as the dough in my straight sided bucket.

[Note for new bread bakers--if you've got a straight sided bucket it makes the whole 'rise until double' thing easy to see. Simply dump in the dough, grab a ruler, and stick a piece of tape where 'double' should be. Then keep an eye on the dough until it hits the tape mark.]

This photo shows the Whole Wheat and Parmesan pizza crust as well as the monkey bread doughs.

For more recipes using sweet potatoes, please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This page is a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, or garden abundance. Organizing by produce type appeals to my "I've got _______, what can I do with it?" mentality. I've got a board devoted to potatoes on Pinterest, and I'm sharing the latest from the kitchen and garden on my FB page. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Whole Wheat & Parmesan Pizza Crust from Make Ahead Bread

Trigger warning: carbs. Lots of them. In oh so delicious ways. (insert Homer Simpson noises)

A pizza crust chock full of flavor from parmesan cheese, with a great chewy texture thanks to the addition of whole wheat flour. This recipe is made in stages, so when you've got a couple small chunks of time you'll end up with easy homemade pizza.

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When I am invited to spread the word about a new cookbook I am not encouraged to randomly share any old recipe that strikes my fancy from the book. Instead, publishers give us bloggers an approved selection of recipes and ask us to pick from that list. If there's a recipe using a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share-sourced ingredient, or something that fits with my blog and appeals to my family, I'm glad to participate.

Last time I shared a brand new cookbook all about macaroni and cheese called Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese (Amazon affiliate link). I did so because I could use a farm share pumpkin, filled with macaroni and cheese, as a recipe. That was a fun challenge and amazingly delicious. The flavor combo was so inspiring I went on to share 2 more variations on that theme, Macaroni and Cheese with Beet Greens, Ham and Manchego and Macaroni and Cheese with Roasted Winter Squash.

Today, and for my next post, I am sharing recipes from Donna Currie's book Make Ahead Bread: 100 Recipes for Melt-in-Your-Mouth Fresh Bread Every Day(Amazon affiliate link) in honor of the first anniversary of publication.

Looking through the assortment of publisher-selected recipes it was hard to narrow it down to one. So I didn't. Today, being a Friday and a traditional Pizza Night for our family I am sharing Donna's Whole Wheat & Parmesan Pizza Crust. Monday I've got a photogenic brunch treat with bicolor Sweet Potato and Pecan Monkey Bread. Again I've found recipes that use farm share-sourced ingredients as well as recipes that fit in with my blog and boy do they appeal to my family!

As I noted at the top, there's a trigger warning about carbs on this post. Looking through the recipes from Donna's book made me want to BAKE ALL THE THINGS! In fact, as I mentioned on my FB page, I weighed out more than 3 pounds of flour while baking on Saturday. And more on Sunday. I gave away bread to my neighbors, friends, and even my son's ACT test proctor because the kids and I were getting swamped with all of these yummy goodies and I am inspired to try more variations.

I'm baking like a fiend [do fiends bake? Maybe they'd be less fiendish if they did] so that on Tuesday, the one year anniversary of publication of Make Ahead Bread (Amazon affiliate link, still) my recipes will be added to a round up of recipes shared on Mother Would Know. Then we hope you buy a copy for yourself, for your local library, or for someone who will bake for you!

Needs a bit more kneading--this is when I added the salt and cheese.

For more pizzas ideas, since I fix one for my family nearly every Friday night, please see my Visual Pizza Recipe Index. I've got it broken down into pizza doughs (where this recipe will land), savory pizzas using fruit, vegetarian pizzas, and pizzas with meat toppings. I've got a Pinterest board of pizza ideas from around the web. On my FB page I often share what's going on in the kitchen as well as recipes and round ups that catch my eye. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Chicken, Pumpkin, and White Bean Chili

A hearty white chili with cubes of roasted pumpkin and spicy Hatch chiles, chunks of chicken breast, and creamy white beans in a beer-spiked broth.

Subtitle: Pumpkin Chunk'n Chicken White Bean Chili

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Would you like another change-of-pace chili using abundant seasonal produce? One that does not use tomatoes, green or otherwise? I would. So I made this one. I'm all about using the available veggies in new and creative ways. While I adore the simplicity of a Summer Tomato Sandwich [and in fact have been enjoying several each week with the final tomatoes of the year] when life give me lots . . . and lots and lots . . . of pumpkins I get inspired.

Since what I'm blogging about is what we're eating, primarily I focus on savory foods. While Tasty Pumpkin Treats and Pumpkin Eggnog Chocolate Chip Waffles are fun ways to eat the pumpkins that volunteer in the back yard, reality is I just can't eat like that all the time. Nor do I want to! We need a foundation of wholesome meals underneath the treats. Like this chili. It uses up the copious pumpkin in a healthy and flavorful way.

Normally I don't share a photo of what I looked like while fixing this dish, but it just happened that I was interviewed for the local paper the day I made this. You can read the article here.

For more recipes using pumpkins, please see my Pumpkin Recipes Collection. For more recipes including beans, please see my Beans (Legumes) Recipes Collection. For more recipes using Hatch chiles, please see my Hatch Chile Recipe Collection. For more recipes using chicken, use the search function on the blog because I haven't gone that far in my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. It's a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, and right now my farm share doesn't give me chicken. I've got boards on Pinterest devoted to piles of chicken, though. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Asian Pear & Cardamom Cream Muffins #MuffinMonday

Cardamom-spiced Asian pear chunks fill this rich-with-cream whole wheat muffin. It's a wonderfully sweet treat to celebrate Fall and serve to your favorite book group!

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These muffins are a mouthful to describe, but once you get it all out there should be no further need for description. I'll tell ya how I came up with them, though, and share where I served them.
The common thread is BOOKS.

My mom went to college in Canada and learned Home Ec [or whatever they called it back in the 50s that became Home Ec in the 80s that has become Family and Consumer Science these days].
Two of my mom's college friends wrote a couple of cookbooks, including one on muffins: Muffins: A Cookbook by Joan Bidinosti and Marilyn Wearring (Amazon Affiliate link). My copy, handed down from my mom, is covered with her scribbles "too sweet" "make 10 next time" etc. It's where I turn when I have an idea for a muffin but want some back up that it will work.

I picked up some Asian pears because they looked interesting, and this is the time of year I'm getting a handle on the farm share produce and can actually lift my head up in the grocery store and look around [instead of making a head-down beeline for yet another gallon of milk]. We enjoyed a few Asian pears fresh, but I wanted to play.  I really don't know why I turned a Whole Wheat Applesauce muffin into these Asian Pear & Cardamom Cream muffins, but that's what happened.

I served these muffins to the women of my book group. We are a diverse bunch--united by a love of reading, a love of someone who at some point was in the military, and a possibly temporary geographic location of SW Ohio. Aside from that we're all different, and I love how varied our discussions become with each person sharing her perspective. It's good to hang out with people who are a different age than you, or don't have kids the same age as yours/don't have kids, or who don't hold the same job as you. And they are wonderful guinea pigs!

This is the last recipe I'm sharing from that one meeting at my house. Considering I'm hosting next month (we're reading Our Souls at Night and if my mom sends me the book in time I'll join in), I think I'm going to have future blog fodder (I'm already working up a braided sweet bread recipe). I've already shared my Slow Cooker Apple Chai for a Crowd, Roasted Sweet Potato and Turkey Sausage Breakfast Casserole, Cornbread, Roasted Chile and Sweet Potato Breakfast Casserole, and some other damn muffin that I can't remember right now. I make a lot of muffins, you see.

Beef and Turnip Pot Pie

Ground beef and sautéed turnips topped with pie crust and baked in a skillet. Hearty comfort food from the farm share.

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Can we talk about turnips? Well, it's my blog so I guess the question is rhetorical. Turnips are a cool weather crop that typically grows well for the farmers who've supplied our farm share. What grows well you tend to get in plentiful amounts.

A decade ago, before I'd ever heard of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and when local eating was the tomatoes I'd grow each summer or the fruit we'd get at a 'let's take the kids, it'll be fun' pick your own outing, I rarely ate turnips. I had no recipes that called for turnips--but if rutabagas weren't available in the store when I wanted to make pasties I'd substitute a turnip.

A single turnip, a few times a year.

Now I get a bag of turnips at least a couple times a month at the beginning and the end of the CSA season when the cool weather crops are flourishing. [Let me put it this way--if you're getting tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini you're probably not getting turnips. All other times you're getting turnips.]

Instead of fighting the turnip, I'm embracing it's uniqueness. [Somewhat like my darling Robert Barker's uniqueness.] Sometimes the turnips stand alone, like in turnip pickles and turnip fritters. Most often, though, I combine turnips with meat or other vegetables. Sometimes I have failures, like the watery scalloped turnips and salami I shared on my FB page [I'm intrigued by Cindy's suggestion to brine turnip slices to draw out the moisture before cooking]. Other times I have a success, like this Beef and Turnip Pot Pie. This is a variation on my Beef & Bok Choy Pie, flavored similarly to a pasty but using ground, not cubed, beef.

You can find all of my turnip recipes in the Turnip Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This is a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, or grocery store specials [not that I've ever seen turnips on special but you never know]. I've got turnip recipes pinned on Pinterest--you can follow me here. For more info on how to use this blog, click here.