Winter

One of my new year's resolutions is to use more of the food stored in my pantry. My shelves are overflowing with packages of grains, heirloom beans, dried pasta, Asian sauces, jams, mustards, sardines, cans of tomatoes and more. My goal is to cook with something that is languishing in the pantry or my equally stuffed-to-capacity freezer, every single day. Yesterday I chose some Christmas lima beans to transform into a vegetarian main dish. Eat less meat and more vegetarian food! That is yet another new year's resolution.

Christmas lima beans are sometimes called chestnut lima beans. When uncooked they are beautifully speckled like a calico horse, and when cooked they are more uniformly brown like chestnuts--but they really don't taste like chestnuts, despite what you may have heard. They have a texture a bit like russet potatoes and a mild earthy flavor but none of the characteristic sweetness or dry crumbly texture of chestnuts.

There was a wicker basket filled with pink grapefruit sitting on my counter. In the background, my kitchen window was like a snow globe, showcasing big flakes falling thickly in the woods.

Scones were baking in the oven, sending off curls of cinnamon aroma, and they were almost done. Now was the time to definitely decide what to make to serve with them, and the quickest recipe I could think of was to make curd. It's one of the most asked for recipes from the students in my cooking classes so I could do it with my eyes closed, but the problem was, no lemons. Thank goodness! The pink grapefruit made the most luscious, tart, sweet, amazing curd. And it only took minutes.

Requiring only 4 ingredients, I was able to whip this up and cool it in time to serve with the scones, which also needed a few minutes to cool down to room temperature.

If you don’t think salad is a hearty enough meal for the dead of winter, this one will certainly change your mind… With a warm duck breast sliced atop a flavor packed mix of greens, vegetables, nuts and cheese, it’s a dish that’s rich and satisfying but also pretty skinny.

I only recently stumbled upon this fabulous combination of flavors at The Waterfront Restaurant in our favorite home away from home, Camden, Maine. It was Christmastime and there was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground…but the sun was bright, the sky a vivid blue and the outside temperature was an almost balmy 34 degrees. Somehow, I didn’t feel like a cold seafood salad but didn’t really want a hot chowder either.

I ended up ordering this dish instead and, by the time lunch was finished–and everyone at the table had sampled my plate–we all decided that this warm salad would be perfect any time of year.

I came home from the market the other day and I had bags of acorn squash, butternut squash, parsnips and obviously the sweet potatoes and yams you see here.

When Fall hits, I immediately go into squash and root vegetable mode.  It's hard not to.  But there is something about yams and sweet potatoes that float my boat.  I wonder what it is...oh yeah, it's a potato...my kryptonite. 

So I wanted to roast these potatoes, which I could happily eat plain, but the family would want a dipping sauce.  I wanted smoke, I wanted sweet and I wanted tang. So I started playing around and came up with something we loved.  It had such a good flavor.  We had some the next day and it was even better. The flavors had melded together.

This is going to be a staple dish through the Fall.