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I know this week’s recipe highlights a product from a local bakery, but let it serve as inspiration! Even if you are not in the Berkshires, find a local, artisanal bakery and try making bread pudding with similar proportions.

Follow this link for this week’s column in the Berkshire Eagle, or just scroll down!

My kids have a fail-safe option when looking for gift ideas for me. They can always get a newly-published cookbook and I will be happy! This week, for my birthday, I got Melissa Clark’s new book, Dinner in One, offering recipes that only require one cooking vessel. Hank looked at it and said, “That’s just what you did with your last column!”

We have never before had a year with so many tomatoes from our two, small raised beds! Our home sits on a hill of solid rock, and in many spots there is hardly any soil, which precludes a big garden. So we limit ourselves to tomatoes and basil, belong to Woven Roots, a CSA, and frequent farmers markets for other fruits and vegetables.

Soon after this recipe appeared in the paper this past week, I got a comment from a friend about how she adapted it! Yay! I love hearing how readers get ideas from my columns, or even get reminded of forgotten favorites.

I went blueberry picking this morning with my former student now friend, Kim. She and I realized today that we’ve certainly been picking blueberries together for at least a decade! We were able to meet at her family’s property at 8am with half of the bushes still in the shade as the heat has been oppressive lately.

Well, I’m a bit later than usual to post last week’s Berkshire Eagle column here on my blog! We headed off on vacation on Saturday and so, out of my usual routine, I didn’t think of it! I did get a lot of great responses on Facebook about it, and happily many folks took my suggestion about adapting this recipe to suit what you like and what you have in the house!

Most of the time for my Berkshire Eagle column I like to offer recipes that are easy, approachable, and adaptable. But sometimes there is a dish so special that I really want to share! As long as they are available, I simply cannot resist cooking with zucchini blossoms. This recipe, which appeared in the paper this past week (link here), is the most elaborate, but I’ve also folded them into quesadillas, tossed them with pasta, and put them on pizza. Seek out those squash blossoms and give them a try!

For many of us, long weekends in the summer mean cookouts with family and friends. Perhaps you already have your menus planned for this weekend, but if you’re still looking for a side, or something to bring to a potluck, this week I wrote a “centerpiece” for the Berkshire Eagle (link here), offering some ideas. Of course they need not only be summer sides – we make the coleslaw all the time year-round because it’s so quick and easy.

Sometimes it surprises me when I get a lot of remarks about a column, as happened last week. I mostly try to write pieces that fit in with the season or what is going on in life these days, and when I was writing for last week’s Berkshire Eagle (link here), I was just so overwhelmingly busy that I decided to write about this easy recipe. My parents loved to make this pasta dish when they would get home late because they always had a can of beans, a can of tuna, pasta, and a lemon in the house. I like to add capers which I buy in a large jar so they are truly a staple in my kitchen, but the recipe is fine without.

I very clearly remember the marketing slogan “The incredible edible egg!” And it’s true – there are so many things you can do with eggs, and if you can get fresh local eggs, you’re really in for a treat. While I know it’s not always so common to have leftover pasta (and it’s certainly not going to happen when my kids are home for a visit), if you ever can’t quite finish what you’re made for dinner, a pasta frittata makes a wonderful lunch the next day.

I think sometimes I just figure out dinner as I go along. I’m sure I’ve made this before, and most recently I realized it would be a great option for anyone trying to diversify how they make chicken! Although the recipe mentions fennel and figs (optional – they just happened to be in the store), you can try other combinations. Let me know if you happen upon a great combo!

I am sure it’s no surprise that I love getting edible gifts! And two such gifts this month – pears and cheese –inspired the column that was in the Berkshire Eagle this past week. (Click here for link.) This savory bread pudding was such a success that I’m already thinking of other versions. Of course, I also loved putting some of the cheese I got as a gift on a juicy burger, and cutting it small pieces to put on a salad. With the pears, I also made a pear upside-down cake and a pear yogurt cake with chocolate chunks. For me these are gifts that bring many joys: the joy of cooking something interesting, of enjoying fantastic ingredients, and of sharing what I’ve made with family and friends.

While my columns in the Berkshire Eagle always appear in the printed edition on a Wednesday, the online version usually goes up the day before, on Tuesday. So I try to remember to take a look online, and today there was a piece listing the 10 most popular recipes that have appeared in the Berkshire Eagle in 2021. I clicked on it and was blown away to find that four of my columns made it into the top 10! Not only that, my columns also held the #1, #2, and #3 spots!

We have been enjoying the local peaches lately, so I knew I wanted to do something with them for one of my columns. The Berkshire Eagle column link is here, or scroll down. It’s an easy tart, especially if you buy a pre-made crust. (It’ll be fine!) In addition to this treat, we’ve been making frozen peach coladas (piña coladas with peaches instead of pineapple), or just enjoying our peaches on cereal!

This past week I shared something I’ve made more times than I can count. Roasted cauliflower was the most frequent vegetable when my kids were growing up, and Wilson especially loved the ‘secondary’ dish with pasta that he always referred to as a ‘sauté.’ The column itself can be found at this link, or scroll down to read it here.

For my column this past Wednesday in The Berkshire Eagle, I wrote about an easy gratin that combines potato, butternut squash, and celery root.

Sometimes I really think I should say that I write non-recipes, because almost every time I make a recipe, I try some variation or another, and I like to encourage people to do the same. For this recipe, it need not be these specific vegetables – you could use turnips or rutabagas or fennel, just to name a few possibilities! As long as you follow the general idea, it should turn out great!