The Other Woman Cooks

One of America's fondest stories tells about Johnny Appleseed. John Chapman was born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1774. His family moved to Pennsylvania where he left his father's carpentry shop to travel barefoot, using a saucepan for a hat. He preached a simple philosphy of life and lived as a vegetarian. He made it as far as Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he died in 1845 at the age of 71. John Chapman planted about 10,000 square miles of orchards. From the Garden of Eden to Greek Mythology to the discovery of the health benefits of apples, everything you ever wanted to know about apples can be found  here .  Fun reading while this delicious apple cake bakes! APPLE CAKE 2 eggs 1/2 cup olive oil 1 cup white sugar Dash of salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups Bisquick baking mix 1 tablespoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest 2 cups peeled cored sliced apples Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour one round 8 inch cake pan. Beat oil and eggs with a...

Our butternut squash is local as local gets, right out of our backyard. My friend June says, "You sustainable people you!" and I laugh every time. But the truth is that home farmers contribute to a sustainable world with every bite of food grown. Negative environmental impacts are reduced in several ways. We don't use nitrogen based fertilizers the way industrial agricultural operations do. That means less nitrous oxide released in the air and less toxic runoff to damage the water table. The only transportation homegrown foods require is to walk out back and pick the fruits and veggies we grow. The small scale of home farming makes using sustainable practices like composting, crop rotation, and mulching easy to accomplish. Not to mention the benefits of preserving homegrown foods. Jars of applesauce and stewed tomatoes are delicious reminders that once next spring arrives so will another season of fresh wholesome homegrown food! I think everyone should grow at least a s...

Ever wonder where and by whom the first brownie was baked? It's a good question on National Milk Chocolate Day, which happens to be today! Culinary historians have traced the first “brownie” cake recipe to Fanny Farmer in The Boston Cooking School Cook Book circa 1906.  According to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America , the recipe is similar an earlier Fanny Farmer chocolate cookie recipe, but with less flour and baked in a “7-inch square pan.”  The next adaptation came along a year later when another Bostonian named Maria Willet Howard added an extra egg and an extra square of chocolate to the Boston Cooking-School recipe and called it Lowney’s Brownies. But we all know there's no such thing as too many brownie recipes. For her next batch, Maria added yet another square of chocolate and named the recipe Bangor Brownies. Hence came the falsehood that brownies were invented by a housewife in Bangor, Maine.  Not so. Just like the American Revolution a...

From strawberries to raspberries to blueberries and then that second harvest of raspberries, fresh local berries are the belle of the summer season ball here in western Massachusetts. Cobblers, crisps, buckles, crumbles ... no matter what variation of simple fruit filled dessert you make, it is uniquely American.  Early American cooks were extremely talented at improvising. When the ingredients for their favorite recipes were unavailable, they made do with what they had at hand.  Berries grew wild and bountifully in many regions. Fussy English puddings were turned in for slumps, pies, buckles and cobblers filled with fresh-picked juicy fruits of the season. Homemade simplicity reliant on taste not European pastry techniques...just another example of American ingenuity! BLUEBERRY BUCKLE  Cake Batter: 1 cup (130 grams) all purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/8 teaspoon salt 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature 1/3 cup granulated white sugar 1 la...

My first taste of Sheila Lukins came after stumbling across The Silver Palate food shop on Columbus Avenue, NYC in the late 1970s.  It was a short road to discovering chutney wasn’t just a mango and ginger concoction.  Sheila Lukins of Silver Palate Cookbook fame was cutting edge back then.  I was hooked from that first taste all the way to mixing things up with blueberry chutney to glaze Asian style roast chicken . Blueberry chutney was the inspiration for my Spicy Blueberry Barbecue Sauce, an original recipe that made me a national award winner in the Highbush Blueberry Council’s 2008 recipe contest.  Who’da thunk?  Next month will mark two years since Sheila Lukins died -- too young but not without having made her mark on a generation of home cooks like me. This recipe is adapted from an original Silver Palate recipe.  Over the years, I’ve added and subtracted this or that.  Serve with roasted turkey, duck or goose, meat or curries. ...

There’s no butter in this baby and the texture is amazing. Substituting olive oil for butter cuts way down on the bad cholesterol pound cakes are noted for. A sprinkle of powdered sugar finishes off the top nicely before serving.  Add fresh local berries and voila! Heaven on a plate. Like having a diet soda to cut calories, using olive oil takes the sting out of that dollop of rich whipped cream.  LIMONCELLO POUND CAKE 3 cups all-purpose flour 2 tsp baking powder ¼ tsp salt 2 cups sugar 1 cup extra virgin olive oil 2 tsp grated lemon zest 5 large cold eggs 3/4 cup water 1/4 cup Limoncello liqueur Preheat the oven tot 350 °F. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 loaf pans.  Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt thoroughly in a large bowl and sift together. Set aside. In a second large bowl, beat the sugar, oil, and zest on high speed until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; continue to beat until the mixture is thick and pale, ...

Real life friend Roger Fisk passed this recipe along via Facebook. And he attributed the recipe as having been passed along to him from another friend of his. That’s the way it works in today’s world: we keep track of friends near and far electronically. Facebook, Twitter, most recently Google+ (anybody have a spare invitation?).Lots of us post pictures of dinner and share the recipes with each other: especially when local ingredients and backyard garden bounty take center stage. That is exactly the way this morning’s tomatoes became this evening’s summer supper! W ith the exception of using a pre-made frozen crust that was pre-made and frozen by me, I followed Roger's simple instructions. Roger said, “ A purist-I love it. I aspire to this!” I won’t criticize if you choose the store bought pre-made route but the savory crust recipe used here for this quiche is absolute heaven ...for aspiring purists everywhere!   TOMATE PROVENCAL TART ALA ROGER FISK Preheat oven to 400 degr...