Jacky Hackett: Cooking, eating, reading, riding my bike that goes nowhere — living my best porch life.
I’ve been intrigued by the food swap movement for the past year. I was so happy when a few local foodies established the Chicago Food Swap, and bonus it was so close to home. I attended the first swap and came home with lots of goodies. Gosh, that was last year, so I was glad…
A delicious introduction. They got along swimmingly. After a few weeks soaking the bourbon took on the color of the cherries and resembled the color of a rich red wine. With the color soaked out of the cherries, they look a bit like Kalamata olives. But believe me the flavor is nothing like an olive. …
The past few summers we have been members of a community supported agriculture (CSA) and have loved getting our vegetables that way. The first one we belonged to stop servicing our area after two summers we tried a new one last summer. The one we used last summer delivered huge quantities, which is great but…
The warm summer days have become those rainy cold fall days, though we did get a nice final summer weekend to put it to rest. The main season of our CSA deliveries have ended and the fall deliveries have begun. Here are some of my favorites from the summer… Summer Squash “Lasagna”. This is an…
This week’s CSA box was a manageable size, thank goodness since I am still playing catchup from last week. Not to mention the tomatoes and peppers coming out of my garden. The goodies in this week’s box won’t last long… Slicing Tomatoes Black Cherry Tomatoes Specialty Tomatoes Tomatillos Hot Peppers Onions Eggplant Lettuce The black…
Things that come in threes — good news, bad news, death. Good eats? Yep, at last that was the case this week in my kitchen anyway. First off, I finally gave into the green monster craze. I had some baby spinach on it’s last leg so the timing was right. There are a bazillion different…
I love garlic, especially roasted garlic on fresh warm bread. This recipe creates a garlic with a similar sweetness to that of roasted garlic, but in less time and with the bonus of the flavored oil. Spreading the garlic on bread is delicious though my favorite use for this oil it on blanched broccoli. Pour…
I hate to see good food go bad. I saved a bunch of basil from a sad death via the garbage disposal. We have either been out of town or eating out and have lots of vegetable eating to catch up. I took inventory of the vegetable crisper and made a plan in an effort…