Winter

As the New Year begins, it only seems right to offer a recipe for a soup that is chock full of vegetables and even a little bit of fruit. The creamy soup will incorporate nicely into a regime of healthful menus.

I’ve been making this soup for years. A long time ago, much longer than I’d like to admit, I joined a group of women once a month for a Sunday afternoon meal. We called it our Recipe Exchange Group. We would each prepare a part of the meal and bring along the recipe to share. Elsa, our friend from Argentina, brought this soup to one of those long-ago meals where we’d not only eat, but also chat about our kids, our husbands, and food. It was an appreciated outlet for all of us in this small group of moms who liked to cook.

If you have made a resolution to eat more fruits and vegetables each day, this soup will make it easy. There is a fair amount of chopping involved, but once that task has been accomplished, the soup will be ready to eat in no time.

I can't think of a better food for the cold days upon us than a big bowl of comforting chili. There is something special about the heat of chile peppers that has a rightful place in this stew. Chili is a great dish for bringing people together and it can feed a crowd very easily. This recipe can be doubled or tripled. It's perfect for when you have group of friends over for game-watching on Super Bowl Sunday. The best part about a recipe like this is that it can be prepared in advance and simply reheated when it's time to serve. No one needs to slave away at the stove and miss watching the game.

Chiles, specifically chile powder or dried chiles, are the key ingredients in making a robust and flavorful chili. But I go further than that and jazz things up with a combination of fresh peppers in varying stages of hotness. I like poblanos for their grassy flavor, red bell for their sweetness, cubanelle for their mild fresh flavor, and jalapeños for the kick. I broil the peppers until their skins blacken and blister. Not only does this step add flavor, it's nicer to eat the chili once the peppers have had their papery skins removed. The hotness of the jalapeños is also tamed by broiling, so the chili doesn't scream hot, but instead it hums.

What are chilly winter days without comfort foods to soothe our weary souls and hungry stomachs? One of the best examples of comfort food is the stew. In it's basic form, a stew is relatively inexpensive meat stewed with vegetables in flavorful liquid. It takes simple preparation to put together, then it's just a matter of waiting for it cook. But the most important part about a stew is that it be hearty enough to keep hunger at bay for a long time. Beef stew is the remedy! And who knows beef stew better than the French?

Boeuf Bourguignon, the dish made famous by Julia Child, is the best example of French country cuisine. An entire bottle of Burgundy separates this champion from the contenders. But each region has its own famous stew. Provençe has beef daube, a Mediterranean-style stew with bright flavors influenced by surrounding Italy and north Africa. This stew might not be as well known as beef Burgundy but it's amazing in it's own right.

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.