Winter Recipes
Slow Cooker Gingerbread Steel Cut Oats (with easy day before method)
Easy prep-ahead method and slow cooker tip results in ready-to-eat oats with toothsome texture and easy cleanup. The classic spice combination is holiday worthy! The best part of this recipe? Lift the bowl of perfectly cooked oatmeal out of the slow cooker, cover and refrigerate for a wholesome breakfast at-the-ready. Done! As…
Roasted Winter Squash
This seasonal family favorite is so easy and so good. For added ease, I like to use Kabocha, Delicata, or another variety of winter squash that doesn’t require peeling. Without the intent of overselling this simple, seasonal side dish, I will mention that my husband recently purchased some winter squash so that I would…
Farmhouse Roasted Chestnuts
Lightly salted, these chestnuts are delicious served warm and straight from the shell. They’re perfect for Thanksgiving stuffing and soups too! Autumn is the time of year when the American Chestnut Trees in the northeast drop the nuts from their prickly burrs. As an interesting bit of trivia, there are typically three chestnuts per…
Apple Crisp Baked Oatmeal
By now, my love of baked oatmeal has been well established. Truth be told, I hold back some of my variations because I don’t want to over-oatmeal people. I think the time has come, however, to release another! My sister-in-law, Melissa, is to thank for this delicious creation. She is a nurse who leaves…
No Bake Butterscotch Haystacks
Three ingredients are all you need for this salty-sweet, crunchy treat that takes mere minutes to make. No baking required! Butterscotch Haystacks are, without a doubt, my younger son’s favorite cookie. I always make them over the holidays and he frequently requests them throughout the year. When his science class organized a nature-themed bake…
Sausage, Mushroom & Pasta Bake (gluten-free option)
Possibly a bigger challenge than creating recipes is naming them! Sometimes, there are lots of delicious ingredients in one recipe, so I feel a need to include as many of them in the name, knowing that different people are grabbed by different ingredients. But then, a recipe name can get rather wordy! Sometimes, I go…
Almond Bark with Sea Salt
Salty-sweet almond bark is the ultimate treat and takes mere minutes to make with three simple ingredients. Every year before Easter, I find myself up to my elbows in chocolate. For as long as I can remember, making homemade chocolates has been part of my family’s holiday tradition. I have so many fond memories…
Maple Cinnamon Roasted Garbanzos
Recently, I posted my new and improved technique for roasting garbanzo beans–also known as chickpeas. Additionally, I had fun experimenting with roasting various other types of beans lurking in my pantry. (To see the details, click here.) Somewhere between the black eyed peas and the butter beans, My Whole Food Life shared her sweeter version of this…
Braised Chicken with Rice and Spinach
This Greek-inspired, one-pot meal requires a slow braise but is largely hands-off and rewards you with exceptional flavor. Wholesome comfort food at its best! Recipes that are easy to tinker with and easily adapt are often my favorites. They also tend to make for happier diners. We all like choices, right? This is why I’ve…
Spinach Salad with Citrus, Avocado and Balsamic Reduction
A few weeks ago, a friend emailed me, saying that grapefruit is one of his favorite fruits, and wondered if I had any recipes using this fruit. On one of those aforementioned evenings, when the refrigerator was looking rather bare, I did happen to have a bag of baby spinach, a grapefruit, and a red…
White Bean Soup with Kale and Cheese Toast (Slow Cooker)
This is one of those meals I have been cooking for years and I look forward to a warm bowl of it when the nights are cold. The aroma wafting from the kitchen takes me right back to my grandmother’s kitchen. It’s the ham hock. The good smell it produces is matched only by the…
Santa Cookies
Santa Claus Christmas cookies are festive and fun to make and eat. Perfect for holiday gifting and Santa’s Christmas Eve treat! In my recent snickerdoodle biscotti post, I mentioned my talented friend, Lisa. Every December, Lisa spends countless hours mixing, rolling and baking hundreds upon hundreds of cookies for the most amazingly delicious and…
