I love planting herbs in my flower beds, and now I get to start to reap the rewards: it’s pesto season!
The basil needed a bit of a haircut, so that’s what’s for dinner, pesto. Olive oil from A Taste of Olive in West Chester, and fresh garlic from the farmers market. It doesn’t any get easier than that!
I must admit, my kitchen smells marvelous right now with the scent of the basil!
Fresh pesto and homemade salsa is yet another reason why people should garden more!
When the wether gets warm I like things like simple and fresh pasta salads for supper. So that’s what I’m having this evening and it couldn’t have been easier to make.
I got some beautiful vegetables at the Thornbury Farm CSA Saturday including what I like to call lollipop, or large spring onions and fresh snap peas. I already had some beautiful bright sweet bell peppers in the refrigerator at home and a lot of herbs in my garden and some celery.
All I did was cook a bag of regular frozen cheese tortellini, boil up a couple boneless skinless chicken breasts, steamed my snap peas, chopped up the other vegetables, and tossed together with a honey-herb-mustard vinaigrette that I made. The main herb in the vinaigrette (which also had garlic and a shallot in it ) was fresh dill, but I also to the salad added chopped fresh fennel tops, fresh flat leaf Italian parsley, and basil.
Summer dinners are meant to be easy!
The humble roast chicken. A backbone of American cuisine. I am one of those people that loves roasted chicken. But I need to spice it up a little and not just roast it in the style of Julia Child all of the time.
So I have been experimenting with marinades that use plain Greek yogurt as a base. My favorite plain Greek yogurt is the Fage brand.
As I am especially pleased with today’s marinade so I thought I would share the approximate ingredients:
1 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1 tablespoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon hot Hungarian paprika
Salt to taste (kosher is best in my opinion)
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
Dash or two of hot sauce/Tabasco
Combine marinade a greedy ingredients in a small bowl whisk well, taste for salt and set aside.
Take a 4 1/2 to 5 pound roasting chicken and butterfly it – basically you are cutting it in half and spreading it open so it lies flat.
Take butterflied chicken, put it in a large Ziploc freezer bag and dump the marinade on top. Squeeze all the air out of the bag and seal the bag and smoosh the marinade around. I then put this bag in a bowl and put it in the refrigerator for anywhere from five hours to overnight. I periodically smoosh the marinade around in the bag and turn the bag over so it coats evenly.
When ready to cook bring your chicken out of the refrigerator and remove from marinade and lay out flat in a roasting pan lined with onion slices. Discard the rest of the marinade. It has had raw poultry and it so you can’t use marinade for anything else.
The chicken goes into a preheated 350° oven skin side up and flat out for approximately 15 minutes per pound at 350° . I actually use a meat thermometer to check for proper doneness with poultry.
The chicken is delicious when you use a yogurt marinade. I will serve this with something like roasted carrots and a salad, or a wild rice mixture and a salad, or oven roasted potatoes and a salad.
Enjoy!
My Chicken Enchiladas:
Two full boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into small chunks.
(Two full boneless breasts weigh about a pound – I buy the family packs at the grocery store and plunk them two at a time in quart freezer bags)
Goya Tomato Sofrito
El Pato Mexican hot style tomato sauce (7 3/4 oz can)
La Morena sliced red jalapeños in Morena sauce (7 oz can)
Can of refried beans- either red pinto or black beans
Soft fajita sized white flour tortillas
Crema Mexicano ( Mexican sour cream)
One bunch fresh cilantro
One lime
Goya adobo spice mix
New Mexico Style Chili Powder
Smoked Spanish paprika
Salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano
Shredded Quesos La Ricura
La Costena Taquiera Salsa Hot
La Costena Green Mexican Salsa Verde
One Vidalia or sweet onion cut into thin slices, then cut slices in half
Olive oil
Cut the raw chicken into small chunks. Place in a large sauté pan that has had some olive oil in the bottom warming. Just a few tablespoons of olive oil. Dust the chicken with Goya Adobo seasoning to taste, a few dashes of garlic powder, a few dashes of oregano, and about a teaspoon and a half of smoked paprika.
Add in your onion slices and about a third of a cup of Goya Tomato Softito. Add a couple of dashes of New Mexico style chili powder. (you can order that from Whole Spice in California on Amazon).
Cook the onion and chicken down on a medium to low heat until you can basically shred the chicken and the onion is starting to almost dissolve it’s so soft. Turn off the heat and to that at the zest of one lime and the juice of one lime and as much fresh chopped cilantro as you want. Adjust with salt and pepper if needed.
Set aside and let the flavors meld together for about 45 minutes on the stove with no heat under it.
Heat up your can of refried beans over low heat in a small sauce pan with a little of olive oil in the bottom to keep the beans from sticking. To the beans add a little dash of the Goya Adobo Seasoning (I buy the real Mexican refried beans from my local Latino market), and add about 1/3 of a can of the pickled red jalapeños mentioned in the ingredients minced up and the Morena sauce it came in. Stir it up well, add a little fresh cilantro, and once the beans are heated through turn the stove off under this pot as well.
Go do something else for 45 minutes total for both. Set the table, clean up your prep with the chicken, empty the dishwasher, whatever.
After you have let the sauté pan and the sauce pan and the various contents set, come back to your kitchen and preheat your oven to 345°.
Line a baking pan that you would use for a sheet cake or brownies with aluminum foil. The pan I use is actually a vintage aluminum rectangular pan came from the kitchen supply house.
Take out six flour tortillas and one at a time first on the bottom of the tortilla layer refried bean mixture, and then put the chicken and onion mixture on top of that. Add a little shredded queso and roll your tortilla into a tube.
Repeat this six times. I made six enchiladas from this recipe.
When you have the tortillas now enchiladas with all their stuffing rolled up like little tubes and lined up next to each other in the foil lined pan like neat little soldiers you’re almost ready to put in the oven.
Take your can of spicy Mexican tomato sauce and pour evenly over your enchiladas. Generously layer shredded Queso to taste over the sauce and enchiladas. Cover your pan tightly with aluminum foil and put in your preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Everything is already cooked, so it truly just needs to heat through and melt. But you must do this with a pan that is covered with aluminum foil or the enchiladas will dry out.
When you bring them out of the oven let them sit for a couple of minutes before you take the foil top off.
Serve the enchiladas with Mexican sour cream,chopped fresh cilantro, a salsa Verde, and a spicy red salsa. I suggest the brand I list above specifically in the ingredients.
There are no leftovers when I make this. Ever.
And FYI if you are in Chester County and reading this recipe, I use the little Mexican market at the bottom of where Route 352 meets Route 30 in Frazer. They have a small Taquiera attached called El Jalapeño .
This little market has several kinds of Latin American sour cream, Quesos and so on. They basically so all the supplies the grocery store should if you want to do a Latin inspired meal but don’t.
I was told I had to write down this recipe, so I have. It is something that started in my head as I scanned the shelves of this little market. I also do this with leftover pork roast instead of chicken.
I believe in living life caffeinated. I love coffee and have a definite attachment to my French Press and Nespresso machine.
Although I love my Nespresso machine I am less than enchanted with Nespresso capsule prices. Which is why a few months ago I ordered from HiLine Coffee for the first time. And I just keep going back for more.
Why? Good, small batch coffee. And the guys that started this company went to Penn. So there is that Philadelphia-area connection too!
Like myself, these fine gents (Ted and Gene) eventually discovered Nespresso machines. Like me they found the capsule price points a source of irritation. So these enterprising guys decided to build a better bread box….err coffee capsule.
Voila! HiLine Coffee was born!
The prices on the capsules are so reasonable and the coffee is amazing. I just received my box of new flavors and I am like a kid in the proverbial candy store.
Their new collection is named after different parts of New York City, so how fun is that? I had Wall Street Dark Roast today and it is strong and bold, but has no burnt taste like many dark roast coffees can have. Next up to try is the Chelsea Light Brown Roast.
Seriously, give this company a try. If you love coffee, and own a Nespresso machine, this company gives you more choices. I will *note* that there are other companies introducing Nespresso compatible capsules but HiLine does the best job price-wise and with being truly Nespresso machine compatible.
I have tested other capsules and they are too small, and the capsules just don’t dispense coffee correctly. HiLine has spent the time to really do a good job. So if you want coffee that is so good you wonder if you are sitting at Bubby’s in Tribeca for brunch or want espresso good enough to make you wish you were sitting in Café Reggio in Greenwich Village, then this is your company. And they have excellent customer service, so no Soup Nazis there!
HiLine can be found on the web on Facebook, their own website, and on Twitter at @HiLineCoffee .
Tell them you heard about their product on Chester County Ramblings. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter for the occasional money-saving secret code!
Please note in spite of what the Diva of Domesticity known as Martha Stewart says, I am as a blogger qualified to review coffee capsules. No, my palette wasn’t trained in Paris but I know what I like!
Well now that I spent a full weekend running around junking, barn picking, and antiquing with friends I actually have to clean the stuff up!
The old large depression glass era bowls that I snapped up at the Smithfield Barn for $6 and $8 cleaned up in a jiffy and will get put away until I need them at Christmas. 
I have a thing about people who talk about setting a beautiful holiday table and then use plastic bowls, mismatched and plastic cutlery, and either paper or plastic plates. And yes, I get the lament that you have kids, it takes more time and so on and so forth.
Guess what? My mother and most of my friends’ mothers used real silverware, linens, and dishes and so on for the holidays and we did not destroy the stuff. Yes it requires more effort, but it looks so much better. And why go to the trouble of cooking up a storm of fabulous in your holiday kitchen to have it look like a Wawa?
I have probably just insulted a whole slew of people, but I can’t help it. To me it is like an insult to what comes out of the kitchen. A woman I used to know used to do that. She would half-set her table with aluminum foil pans just plunked on the table at Thanksgiving and never met a paper plate she did not love. But her “good” dishes were brown crockery and they looked like mud so there is no accounting for taste. Seriously though? Paper tablecloths are for picnics and kid birthday parties, and even then I prefer real table linens.
So now all my vintage Christmas linens are soaking in Woolite. I generally use that or liquid Ivory Snow now. I used to have these soap flakes that came in a blue and white box but I can’t remember what they were called, nor do I see them in the grocery stores now. I will carefully rinse them and hang them up to dry and then iron them. I know a lot of people send their linens out to be laundered by the dry cleaner but with vintage linens that often leads to yellowing.
And let us get into the cost of things. I am a bargain hunter. I might love good old linens and dishes and so on but if I am at a Flea Market or garage sale or something similar I will walk away from things I know are overpriced for what they are and more importantly WHERE they are. Whether it is an old tablecloth, a platter, or even vintage Christmas décor do not be afraid to ask for a best price or bundled price if you are buying a few things.
I have found everything I need for this Christmas as far as how I want my table to look, and the things I wish to decorate with. It will be slightly retro Christmas, but there is something to be said about that simple and pretty look.
Of course now I will spend the next few weeks agonizing over menus. Am thinking of doing a country pâté since I scored that cool commercial loaf pan. And of course lots of cookies!
Taking the time to set your holiday tables with real dishes and linens pays off. Another thing – if you are having a crowd a buffet is fine if you don’t really have the space for sit down. I would rather my guests be comfortable than knocking elbows at the table because they are crammed in like
What are you all planning for the holidays? Do we want to do a cookie recipe exchange on this blog? As in send your favorite cookie recipe in via a comment and so on? Let me know!
I love good coffee. Good coffee to me is not Starbucks which always tastes bitter and burnt. Folgers simply never passes my lips and Keurig machines are o.k.
But if you are really interested, what I prefer is a French Press, an old school stove top espresso machine, and a Nespresso machine. Truthfully I am so picky about my coffee I only order it out at certain places, because the brown water so many people pass off as coffee is just gross.
I have a Nespresso Pixie- my sister gave it to me as a Christmas present and we (the Nespresso machine and I) have been inseparable ever since.
Now the thing about Nespresso is it is controlled by Nestlé and you can only buy their coffee capsules which are do not misunderstand me, excellent. But they are going up in price and I would like to be able to get capsules that are sometimes a little less expensive and a different brand of coffee – preferably small batch hand roasted kinds. Not flavored. Flavored coffee is simply gagalicious and I don’t mean that as a compliment – it is right up there with flavored or any kind of non-dairy creamer.
Well I was cruising around on Amazon.com looking and came across this company in NYC that was new called HiLine Coffee Company. So I went to their website to read about them
Our mission is to sell high quality coffee in Nespresso compatible capsules while offering great value and more choice to our customers. We believe Nespresso manufactures the best single-serve coffee machines and we like their espresso too; however, we feel it’s time to offer consumers a new choice of capsules to use with their Nespresso machines…We’re Gene and Ted, the founders of HiLine Coffee. We share a love of coffee going back more than a decade, when as undergraduates and best friends at Penn we stumbled upon La Colombe, a café near Rittenhouse Square. Just like many remember their first great wine, we remember our first great coffee.
So I figured how bad could coffee be from a couple of guys from Wharton? After all, a few years ago there was a coffee company I was crazy about that was also created by a guy from Wharton whose coffee I missed as the stores went away – New World Coffee.
I ordered a few sleeves and oh my I tried it today.
One word: fabulous.
The flavor was bold and rich and not the least burnt. It had that great espresso taste I love. You see that is what hooks people on Nespresso machines: they can actually produce consistently good cups of coffee and espresso.
So look if you are a coffee junky like me and you own a Nespresso machine for $5 a sleeve for coffee produced in small batches, why not try it? The coffee is good, and trust me I am picky about my coffee.
Read about the HiLine Coffee team by CLICKING HERE. They are on Twitter @hilinecoffee and on Facebook too.
Seriously? If they keep producing a product this good they will be the next hot thing sooner rather than later and you read it here first.
If you do not own a Nespresso machine but want amazing coffee for your French Press or stove top espresso pot or whatever I buy from a place called Handsome Coffee Roasters from Los Angeles – like HiLine their coffee is super fresh and flavorful and roasted in small batches – all of their coffees are good but I recommend trying their “Roaster’s Choice”. I was introduced to Handsome by a friend who designed their webpage whose girlfriend is a barista.
And if you want to check out one of the best coffee houses anywhere which is also steeped in tradition, check out Cafe Reggio in New York City in the Village around the corner from The Blue Note at 119 MacDougal Street. They are the first place to ever make a cappuccino in the US and have been doing it right since 1927.
Preheat oven to 375°
I have given you basic pie dough recipes before, and they are on the blog.
Sometimes even I take a shortcut- If I do not feel like rolling my own dough out, I purchase Marie Callender deep dish pie crusts. They are in the frozen section of your grocery store. I did that this time.
Filling:
Ingredients:
5 1/2 cups of fresh blueberries washed and drained
1 1/4 cups of Florida Crystals Demerara Sugar
6 tablespoons of flour
1 generous teaspoon of cinnamon
2 teaspoons of grated fresh ginger
The zest of one medium-size lemon and the juice of half of that lemon
In a large mixing bowl mix all the filling ingredients listed above together. Fold gently and thoroughly you’re not mashing anything.
Set bowl to the side
Crumble topping:
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup Florida Crystals Demerara Sugar
1 cup Quaker quick oats (plain not flavored)
1 cup chopped hazelnuts
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 stick unsalted butter cut into little bitty squares
1 1/2 f teaspoons of cinnamon
1 scant teaspoon of cardamom
Use a pastry cutter or pair of forks to blend the topping ingredients together until soft crumbles form- Crumbles should be relatively uniform in size. Put the topping in the refrigerator for half an hour to 45 minutes.
Before you put the pie together, if you are using a fresh or frozen pie crust now is the time that you use a little softened butter In a light coat and spread gently on the bottom of the crust in the pan. It keeps the crust from getting soft. It is a tip I picked up from watching Chef Robert Irvine on TV- used to use the Martha Stewart egg white painted along the bottom of the crust, but I like this better.
Fold your berries into your deep dish pie crust and spread the crumble topping evenly on top – I tend to be slightly mounded in the middle of the pie crust. Do not overfill your pie crust or your oven will hate you later.
I make a light tinfoil piecrust covering edge for my pies before I put them in the oven, or you can use one of those pie baking rings .
Another tip: Because this is a fruit pie I generally cook it on a cookie sheet Or a shallow pan like a jellyroll pan in the oven- That way it saves on spills later
Bake the pie at 375° for approximately 50 to 55 minutes, depending on your oven.
Pie will smell delicious and you’ll see some of the blueberries bubbling through the crunchy topping when it is ready.
When the pie is finished put it on a baking rack to cool, which ideally should be at least four hours so the filling sets.
Pie is best served the day it is made I think, and should be served at room temperature. You can serve plain or with good vanilla ice cream or fresh whipped cream.
I will note that this organic Florida Crystals Demerara sugar is exceptionally good for baking fruit pies with – I tried it on a whim once because they said so on heir packaging, and guess what? They were right.
The final note is I have never written this pie recipe down before, so I hope the proportions are correct. To me baking fruit pies is like making homemade pasta – have done it for so long it is sort of instinctive – I grew up around people who cooked and baked – so from trial an error I just sort of learned if stuff felt right and so on.
Enjoy!
I just made this up….yesterday. I am sure many people do something similar, but this is all me:
Ragu of Pork and Veal
In a large Dutch oven, sauté one large sweet onion and one medium-sized regular onion cut into very thin rings.
Sauté in a few healthy tablespoons of olive oil and include four cloves of garlic
minced (I just pour oil in the bottom of the pan until it looks right, but not an elephant’s foot bath.)
Add oregano, and basil. A little marjoram. And kosher salt to taste.
When almost at the point of caramelization, add 1/3 cup good balsamic vinegar.
Allow vinegar to mostly cook off, leaving a darkish sauce in the bottom.
Add to this two grated carrots, two fresh bay leaves, and 6 ounces of chopped baby Bella mushrooms.
Next add one package of ground veal.
Add one package of ground pork.
(Both should be no more than a pound.)
As the meat cooks down and browns slightly (ground veal and pork do not brown like ground beef), add one-third of a cup of 2% milk or half-and-half. 
Allow the milk solids to cook off as if you would with a Bolognese sauce, and when all simmered and brown and delicious, add two 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes. One can should contain purée. (And buy good tomatoes – it does make a difference.)
Add one small can of tomato paste. (6 oz)
Cook on medium low for about 15 minutes or until it starts to gently bubble up from bottom
Adjust salt and pepper, add rough chopped fresh basil and Italian flat leaf parsley to taste. (for me that means a fistful – love both)
Simmer on very low for a couple of hours
Cook spiral pasta, as in the spiral shaped pasta that is called cavatappi. You can 
also use ziti.
Cook pasta according to directions and drain. Do not rinse
Get out your giant pasta serving bowl and ladle some of the sauce into the bottom. Next add on top of that sauce a third of the pasta you cooked – I cook the whole 16 ounce box.
On top of pasta add a healthy sprinkling of shredded Italian cheese – I like the six cheese Italian blend
Ladle more sauce on top, and repeat the layers twice more.
Top off with a little more sauce and cheese and some more fresh parsley.
Served with a salad, pasta coma guaranteed.
Cold days are meant for baking, so today I whipped up a couple of loaves of my pumpkin bread – I had a container of Pacific Natural Foods Organic Pumpkin Puree left in the cupboard from Thanksgiving (it really IS the best pumpkin to cook with).
There is just something so homey about the smell of something wonderful baking in the oven, isn’t there? And by the way, one of my secret 
ingredients is Jayshree Spices’ Tea Masala spice blend. It works well when making chai spiced tea, and you can bake with it too. I wanted something fun to accompany tonight’s dinner which is my hybrid cross between black bean and lentil soup and a spinach salad with a tangy apple cider-mustard vinaigrette salad dressing. (And no, I have not written down my soup recipe it is a dash of this, a pinch of that, but I can tell you it is quasi pureed, made with tomatoes and my secret to its smokey fabulous flavor is good ham and minced orange peel.)
Anyway, I thought I thought I would share my recipe, which is a constant evolution. Pardon the haphazard way I list ingredients, but when something comes out of my head sometimes the whole codifying a recipe isn’t perfect…
Pumpkin Bread 
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour two loaf pans and set aside.
1 15 or 16 oz container of pumpkin puree (I have seen both sizes – just pumpkin, no sugar or spice added)
3 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup milled bran (yes that again – love it in baked goods- makes chocolate chip cookies extra yummy too!)
1 cup Smart Balance oil
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups organic white sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2/3 cup of orange juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons buttermilk powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (regular not sea salt)
3 tablespoons Jayshree Tea Masala Spice Blend
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon green cardamom
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon mace
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon allspice
shredded coconut, quick oats, and turbinado sugar for dusting tops of batter in pans before it goes in the oven.
1. Mix pumpkin, eggs, oil, vanilla, orange juice, sugars, spices
2. Mix in all dry ingredients except milled bran. Mix well.
3. Add bran. Stir again
4. Pour batter into prepared pans and dust top with plain quick cooking oats, turbinado sugar, shredded coconut.
Bake at 350 for at least 60 minutes (my oven went 70 minutes on this recipe today). If a wood or stainless steel small skewer comes out of center clean, pumpkin bread is baked.
Cool in pans on baking rack about 20 minutes. Carefully remove loaves from pan and cool completely. This bread does need to sit at least an hour after coming out of over before slicing. (just my opinion)
Enjoy!