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My readers surely know by now that it gives me great joy to cook for those I love. It is especially fun to cook for my granddaughter, Naomi, who eagerly eats whatever I make for her! Her dads love this recipe as it includes a vegetable and is easy for her to feed to herself. In fact, she loves it so much that the day before this column appeared in the Berkshire Eagle, Ben sent us a video of her finding and eating every last bit, and after each bite she let out a dramatic and satisfied “Aaahhh!” 

Maybe your leftovers are gone. Maybe you are tired of your leftovers. (If so, put cut up turkey and gravy in the freezer. Defrost later and put together in a baking dish with frozen peas and carrots, and top with store-bought puff pastry for a quick turkey pot pie!)

The Monday after the long weekend (for most of us) it’s back to a full week in the busiest season of the year, both because of holiday events and activities and because of any year-end items on the agenda. With this in mind, I felt that last week’s Berkshire Eagle column had to include an easy recipe!

Although I have not seen the movie, we here in Lenox, MA have a connection to The Cider House Rules because a local landmark, Ventfort Hall, a gilded era “cottage,” served as the exterior set for the movie.

In any event, the column I wrote for this past week’s Berkshire Eagle offered three recipes using hard cider. I have long enjoyed cooking with hard cider, and it’s becoming much easier to find with more and more producers of fermented beverages.

Tahini adds great flavor to so many recipes, and lately I’ve been adding it to quick breads. I often have some shredded zucchini in the freezer, and so began a series of baking efforts (from fresh zucchini, from frozen, with regular flour, with gluten-free flour) that made everyone quite happy!

This recipe was in the Berkshire Eagle this past Wednesday, and I’ve already heard from a few people who have made it! One friend even used a Turkish tahini-molasses blend because that’s what she had in the house, and now I have to explore that product!

Not too long ago, I had a student who wrote about the Maurice Sendak poem Chicken Soup with Rice, and it brought back so many memories of singing Carole King’s version with my kids when they were little!

Though delicious, rice is not my personal favorite addition to chicken soup, but I love serving roasted chicken or chicken pieces with a side that can soak up all the good juices. Then I came up with the idea of roasting the chicken right on top of the rice and wrote about it for last week’s Berkshire Eagle column, a perfect cozy meal as the weather gets cooler!

For years and years I resisted making homemade mac & cheese. As much as I love cooking projects, I hated having to boil the elbows and make a roux and then a cheese sauce before putting the casserole dish in the oven. Then people started cooking pasta in just enough liquid (such as with the pasta cooked in red wine I wrote about previously).

Now, this recipe from last week’s Berkshire Eagle column is our to-go with ribs, with fried chicken, with so many different dinner possibilities!

I know it’s so easy to open a jar of sauce for pasta. But if you have an onion and a can of tomatoes (both of which we always have in the house), you can make easily make something far better than what you can buy in the store! In my Berkshire Eagle column this past week, I wrote about a family staple which can be adapted to create myriad versions.

As I wrote below for my most recent Berkshire Eagle column, Lola was tremendously special to our family when we were young. And like me, her love language was cooking. I learned years later I could have been making bank if I had been more stubborn, because she used to give my sister, Linda, a quarter every time to get her to take a bath!

My fried chicken will never taste the same to me as Lola’s did, because there is something special about knowing someone cooked something for you with love. I hope people feel the same love from me when I cook for them.

When I was a kid, my grandmother had this gadget with a row of “teeth” that she would scrape along an ear of corn to open up all the kernels. She would say that she and my grandfather needed this because their teeth could no longer handle the skin of the kernels, but this way they could still enjoy corn on the cob. In this recipe from last week’s Berkshire Eagle column, I devised a different way to minimize this problem, cooking corn cut from the cob as if it were risotto.

Well, it’s easy as long as you have a cherry pitter! When ripe summer fruit is available, I try to make pie fairly often, and my most recent Berkshire Eagle column celebrates this seasonal treat.

Sometimes I even make enough pie crust dough for several pies, and keep it in the freezer to streamline the process. On the other hand, refrigerated or frozen store-bought crusts are quite good, and there are even gluten-free pie crusts available! This recipe adapts well to other summer fruit, so enjoy while you can!

Although I have often made quiche and other similar recipes with many combinations of produce and/or protein, I wanted to make something a bit more striking for a change. Thinking about the visual effect of Hasselback potatoes, I created a recipe for this past week’s Berkshire Eagle, that looks dramatic. Getting the squash slices to stand on end took a bit of finagling (and, of course, that’s not at all necessary for a delicious dish), but if you have company coming, arranging the slices Hasselback-style makes for a pretty presentation.

Q: How many forms of the same ingredient can I use in a single recipe?

A: My most recent Berkshire Eagle column uses peach yogurt as the base of a marinade for chicken, peach jam to make a glaze, and grilled peach halves as garnish (although this last part is optional if you want to make things easier).

While root vegetables have risen in stature over the years, sometimes it’s tough to know what to do with them, and with radishes there are fewer ideas for cooking them. Add to that the sharper flavors of this family of plants, and I like to temper that with some sweetness. In last week’s Berkshire Eagle column, I shared a couple ideas for glazing these roots to provide a contrast of flavors.

Although you do have to turn on the oven for part of this recipe from last week’s Berkshire Eagle column, after you’ve made it, you’ll have enough for several meals or snacks, or something to share at a picnic on the lawn at Tanglewood. It’s great on toasted bread, tossed with pasta, or just eaten with a fork, and makes a great addition to an antipasti platter.

This week’s Berkshire Eagle column featured a mango cake – really a mango banana-cake – that was modeled on a banana bread-type batter, but with mango plus one banana because it was too ripe and I needed to use it! It’s a big hit with our granddaughter, and, of course, she matters most of all!

I know it’s early – and I hope the recent frosts didn’t cause too much damage – but just about every other day I am checking to see if any pick-your-own strawberry farms have opened yet! Last year’s bumper crop inspired the salad I wrote about this past week in the Berkshire Eagle, and I am looking forward to enjoying it again this year, along with other berry good treats!

And again tonight we enjoyed ramps! I love adding them to pasta carbonara – coincidentally, the New York Times Cooking front page recipe today was artichoke carbonara! I wrote about ramp carbonara previously, and you can use the search feature to find other things I’ve made with ramps.

This past week I wanted to highlight this seasonal treat, so for my Berkshire Eagle column, I simplified my scallion pancake recipe to use store-bought pizza dough, with ramps (when in season) in place of scallions.

As much as I love it when Hank grills fish – or anything for that matter – because of both the flavor imparted by the grill and the easy clean-up, there are times cooking inside is the way to go. Thicker cuts of fish do well in the oven, so I modified a favorite sauce into more of a topping for a roasting a piece of swordfish, and this became a recent Berkshire Eagle column. This method will surely garner compliments for your fish!

I made this recipe again today! After making it umpteen times, I realized it would be worth writing up for a Berkshire Eagle column. I love how this template of sorts makes leftovers just a bit more special, and with minimal effort! We have more leftovers in the fridge from a dinner out last night, some red chile braised pork, and I’m already imagining how good it’ll be when I put that in another tortilla for lunch tomorrow!