Parmesan Mashed Potato Casserole
Serves 12

5 pounds potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 stick butter
1 cup milk
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1. Heat the oven to 350°. Lightly grease a 3-quart baking dish.
2. Cook the potatoes in a large pot of boiling water for 15-20 minutes, or until tender when tested with a fork. Drain and return the potatoes to the pot.
3. Add the butter to the potatoes and mash until he butter melts. Add the milk, eggs, cheese, parsley, salt and pepper. Mash until smooth – some small lumps are okay. Put the potatoes in the prepared dish. (The potatoes can be refrigerated at this point and baked the next day. Bring to room temperature before baking.)
4. Bake uncovered for 45-50 minutes, or until the top is puffed and golden. Serve immediately.

Nevertheless, I made really cute cookies and I photographed the process so I want to show you want I did. I used the recipe and directions from Bake at 350 and, while it’s definitely time consuming, it’s really pretty fun and also fairly simple once you’ve got the right tools.

I used the Wilton Football Cookie set and made cookies in the shapes of footballs, pennants and jerseys. They were all outlined first with a #2 tip .

And then they were flooded in appropriate colors. I used squeeze bottles for the flooding and this worked much better than using pastry bags like I have in the past. It was less messy and definitely faster.

Once that icing had set up – and that takes a while – I started decorating with words and letters. This is the truly fun and creative part.

I made cookies for Vince Wilfork and Tom Brady.

I made footballs and pennants with slogans for Myra Kraft and the Pats.

And I made cookies for Benjarvus Green Ellis – we call him The Law Firm because it’s shorter – and Rob Gronkowski – we call him Gronk.

I let them set up over night and then I piled them all on a plate and brought them to our friend’s house. They really did look great and I think my friends were impressed with my mad decorating skillz. They tasted great, too!

Sadly, delicious cookies do not ensure a victory, even when you do put your heart and soul into them. At the end of the game I grabbed that Tom Brady cookie and used it to express how I felt about the game results.

(pardon the crappy iPhone photo)

Oh well. There’s always next year.

Do you make your own spaghetti sauce? I do and I follow a recipe that was my mom’s. Now. My mom was English without a drop of Italian blood to her name. Nevertheless, she made damn fine spaghetti sauce. Authentically Italian? Of course not. But truly delicious? You know it.

When I was newly married I told my mom I wanted to make sauce and I wanted her recipe. There was a long pause on the phone and she finally said, “I don’t have a recipe.” I thought she was being secretive and didn’t want to share but what she really meant was that she didn’t have a written recipe because, like most good cooks, it was all stored in her head. We made a plan that I would go and watch the next time she made sauce and that’s what I did. I wrote everything, and I mean everything, down, from the type of hamburger she bought to the brand of tomatoes she used. Of course she didn’t actually measure any of the seasonings but she guesstimated for me and I wrote down those amounts for the garlic, basil, oregano and parsley. In the end, I cobbled together a pretty good recipe for my mom’s sauce.

That was almost 25 years ago and I’ve been making it ever since. Of course, my written notes are long gone and now I have it all stored in my head. I got to thinking, though, that Hannah might want to make her nana’s (and her mom’s) sauce one day so I decided a blog post was in order. Plus, I had a picture of the big vat of sauce I made that I wanted to show you. Ahhh, a blog post is born.

The ratio of ingredients is 1 lb burger, 1 onion, 1 pepper, 8 oz mushrooms, a 29 oz can of tomato sauce and a 29 oz can of tomato puree, plus garlic (preferably fresh), basil, oregano and parsley. The technique is simple: saute the vegetables and garlic in one pan and the meat (with plenty of salt and pepper) in another, mix them together and add in the other spices and the cans of tomato sauce and tomato puree. I usually add a can of tomato paste and a bit of sugar, too. Now, you can make a small batch for one meal but honestly, if you’re going to go to all the trouble to make homemade sauce you might as well make a big pot and that’s just what I did last Sunday.

I like to let the sauce sit for a day so we had spaghetti on Monday night. I shared some with my father-in-law and then froze 12 additional bags of sauce for us to eat over the coming months.

And you know that I will think of my mom every time I pull one of those bags out of the freezer.

Delicious!

The recipe is from The Curvy Carrot and you can find it here. They look just like Peanut Butter Blossoms but the flavors are completely different from anything else I make and that’s the main reason I wanted to try them.

They are pretty and delicious and I am very glad that I made them.

I saw this recipe and new immediately that I had to give this a shot. I’m so glad I did. It’s quick, it’s simple and delicious. A trifecta.

You start by pulsing cranberries in a food processor. Pulse, pulse, pulse and you wind up with pulverized cranberries.

Then you put those cranberries in a sauce pan with some sugar and a teeny bit of butter. Turn on the heat, stir it around, and wait for it to boil. Once it’s boiling you add a bit of liquid pectin and turn off the heat.

Next you fill up your jars. I had these small bar jars and I didn’t have any fresh lids so I just filled them and stuck them in the fridge. If you want to can the jam then you need to go through the process of sterilizing the jars and all that jazz – no big deal at all but I just didn’t bother this time.

The jars of jam are beautiful and you can just see those antioxidants glowing in the sunshine from my kitchen window.

So far I have had some on toasted challah bread and Dale has had some on a turkey sandwich. We both agree that it’s amazingly delicious.

It’s so simple – grated sharp cheese, grated extra sharp cheese, a jar of pimentos, a little mayo and some cream cheese. It’s not healthy but it sure is gooooood.

We’ve been getting lots of awesome vegetables in our CSA share each week. We’ve had sweet corn and lettuce, beets and peas, green beans and zucchini, potatoes, blueberries, summer squash and much much more. Picking up these vegetables each week makes meal planning fast and easy – I just add some sort of meat or fish cooked on the grill and we are good to go.

Fresh vegetables from our CSA is just another reason why I love summer.

Strawberries were on special this week at my grocery store so I stocked up.

I made my regular pie crust Friday morning and I cut up the strawberries in the afternoon. The brown sugar mixed with the juice from the berries and made a wonderful thick syrup.

The recipe calls for 5 cups of strawberries but my pie plate is extra deep so I had closer to 6 cups, I think. I could have shoved a few more in there but I was worried about them being too juicy so I left it alone.

Usually when I make a lattice crust I cut my pieces very narrow. I think it looks fancier that way but this time I wanted a really rustic looking pie so I went for wider pieces for the lattice. I just love the way it looks.

The smell as it baked was a heavenly mixture of crust and strawberries and spices. I was drooling by the time I pulled it out of the oven. And it wasn’t too juicy at all. The strawberries held up nicely and the pie sliced up beautifully.

Looking good and smelling good is all well and good but, let’s face it, the most important thing is tasting good.

I think you can see, from the smile on Hannah’s face, that it tasted as good as it looked and smelled. It was truly delicious and we all enjoyed it. Hannah had the last piece for breakfast on Monday morning and said it was just as good as on Friday.

I’ll definitely be making this pie again soon. After all, it’s strawberry season.