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When the ingredients are excellent, there’s little required to make an amazing dish. During so many months of the year we can’t get the freshest, most local produce here in the Northeast, so it’s best to take advantage when we do! Although I won’t hesitate to make this dish from my most recent Berkshire Eagle column even in the winter if I can get small tender zucchini.

Although the holiday weekend is already upon us, there will surely be other summer gatherings at which you might serve the recipe I offered in this week’s Berkshire Eagle column. In fact, I could even see this cornbread bread pudding as a fun riff on Thanksgiving dressing (i.e., stuffing baked in a pan).

The summer issue of Edible Berkshires is out! I wrote a piece with three recipes using beets, great for your farmers’ market haul! Click here for the article. Photos in the magazine by Mark Loader; illustration by Charmaine Koehler-Lodge.

The recipe from this week’s Berkshire Eagle column discusses a very different sort of eating local that what that usually means. Here we’re remembering the Indigenous people who were here first, and considering plants native to the Americas for inspiration. Still, this recipe is well suited to the summer heat since it can be made without turning on the stove if you want, and it’s also vegan and gluten-free!

When I decided to write a column about summer cocktail hour dips, I had to make three so I could use the gilded tripartite serving piece that I remember from all the dinner parties my parents used to host when I was a child! No one was unhappy with that decision when I served them recently, having made them for the photo I took for publication. Last week’s Berkshire Eagle column can be found here, or below.

Even though it was a dreadful winter and the spring has had more chilly days than not, we are looking forward to summer and the Tanglewood picnic season. As I was working on the one-pan Thai-inspired noodle dish that I wrote about for this week’s Berkshire Eagle, I found it works well both hot or at room temperature, making it a great option for a picnic on the lawn at Tanglewood, easy to eat with just a fork.

Sure, meatloaf feels a bit like a utilitarian food, in that adding eggs and bread crumbs has historically been used to stretch a small amount of an expensive protein to feed more mouths. But with so many ground proteins available, the possibilities are endless, and the lamb meatloaf with Mediterranean flavors from this week’s Berkshire Eagle is a great example of the versatility of the “genre!”

I am still smiling from the wonderful food writers’ retreat I attended in the Poconos last month! Not only did I meet and immediately bond with an incredible group of food writers, I also got to eat amazing food! The “recipe” from this week’s Berkshire Eagle column comes from that weekend, although I put the word recipe in quotes because it’s more a set of guidelines and suggestions than a formally-written recipe.

When I made the recipe for this past week’s Berkshire Eagle column, there was no way Hank and I could eat it all in one sitting! Of course the leftovers went in the fridge, and I have to admit, it got better and better every day, and did not suffer from being reheated. It’s a great dish to assemble when things are (relatively) quiet, and then enjoy over several days when you’re too busy to make anything too involved.

In the time since I wrote the Berkshire Eagle column below, we visited the kids in Grand Rapids where I made two more chicken pot pies for my son and daughter-in-law. I had such fun with my two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter who helped roll out the puff pastry and brush the beaten egg on top before wrapping them for the freezer!

I love finding creative ways to make variations on a recipe, and it’s important to practice that skill so as to accommodate different dietary needs. Often when I do so, I come up with a winner, as with this week’s Berkshire Eagle column!

As I wrote in the column that appeared this past Wednesday in the Berkshire Eagle, we aren’t going out to dinner for Valentine’s Day this evening. Instead, we are staying home, enjoying this recipe, along with asparagus, mushrooms, and some homemade ravioli with ricotta and ramps that I have in the freezer from last spring. Whether you make this recipe for Valentine’s Day or another occasion, it will make your dinner something special!

Although I have no song as wonderful as Carole King singing Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice (nor is this recipe even a soup), my variation on the traditional paella, offered below, avoids shellfish due to my husband’s allergy. And it’s fabulous nonetheless, using Spanish flavors in the dish! But if you want to experiment with adding or subbing some shellfish, just be sure to check on cooking times for safety.

I always have plenty of homemade soup in the freezer, and – no surprise – it comes out especially often in the winter months. In this past week’s Berkshire Eagle column, soup and its frequent lunch partner, grilled cheese, come together in a cider-onion soup topped with a slice of hearty bread with melted cheddar. Stay warm and cozy!

I have to confess the first time I made this it was with honeynut squash – the ones that look like little butternut squash – as a side dish for a meat meal, but honeynut squash are not so easy to find, and butternut squash would be too big. So I revised it using sweet potatoes because they are always available, and offered it as a plant-based main course in this week’s Berkshire Eagle column, if that’s part of your New Year’s resolution.

While it does take some time to cut up the fennel for this recipe, it is still pretty quick and easy to toss everything on a sheet pan in this offering from my Berkshire Eagle column this past week!

It’s not really a tale, but if you make this recipe from this past week’s Berkshire Eagle for a party, everyone will think it was a big effort, but it is quick and easy!