Dungeness Crab: Selecting and Reheating

One Half (1 lb. plus) Crab Per Person

Recipe for New Year's

The very last day of 2011, a time to reflect on the past year and contemplate the New Year ahead. On the central CA coast, New Year’s is also a traditional time to enjoy crab. This year is particularly good, as the Dungeness crab population is booming and crab season opened almost a month early. The Dungeness crab fishery is sustainable, with very little bycatch. Crab pots are designed to catch only legal-size individuals, and have little impact upon the surrounding environment. So crab is an environmentally friendly as well as delicious choice.

Cooking Dried Garbanzo (and other) Beans

Cooked Garbanzos Ready for Hummus

Recipe from Frugal Living & other sources

Fast away the old year passes! It’s been a busy December, with lots of good cheer, friends, and family. As I take a short pause before New Year’s, here’s a simple end-of-the-year how-to guide for cooking beans when time is short.

Golden Raisin and Carrot Salad with Peanuts

Winter Perk-Me-Up

Recipe by Yankee Magazine

I love when an old friend surprises me. As a former New Englander, I’ve enjoyed Yankee Magazine for years, finding it a great source for traditional recipes that use seasonal ingredients. Yankee isn't the first place I’d think to look for a nutty, nontraditional, vegan salad, and yet their  Fruits of Fall magazine supplement, published in 2000, contains just such a recipe.

Ginger Spiced Cranberry Sauce

Classic Ginger Maple Cranberry Sauce

Recipe by Yankee Magazine

Ever notice how the leftover cranberry sauce runs out before the turkey? Here’s a zippy recipe that’s perfect for Christmas leftovers. Quick and easy to prepare, it’s surprisingly zingy and creates a fresh new cranberry sauce experience. Maybe you’ll like this so well that you’ll serve it as your standard cranberry sauce next year.

Low-fat Appetizers

Christmas-Colored Veggies for Dipping

Menu by Robin, Recipes by Weight Watchers and Cooking by Moonlight

“Simple, low-fat appetizers,” Bruce’s cousin Elizabeth responded when I asked if there was anything particular we could bring for Christmas. “If not possible, just let me know,” she continued, but I love a culinary challenge that requires creative thinking. I also love the idea of beginning a lavish meal with light fare, casually served in the living room as holiday revelers arrive. This menu can also be employed on the week after Christmas when kids are on vacation, as a healthy alternative to the sweets we’ve either made or received as gifts. Next year I’m going to also try this idea for holiday parties and potlucks.

Date Nut Bread

Date Nut Bread with Cream Cheese

Adapted from 19^th Century Recipe

I love cookbooks compiled by church women’s groups, especially if they are more than two decades old, preferably three or four. These books of family recipes, put together by volunteers as church fundraisers, are excellent sources for old school cooking in modern times. For sure, many recipes use canned soups and other processed foods, or are very high in fat, but the creative cook can make substitutions, like fresh mushrooms for canned, whole wheat noodles for refined elbow macaroni, lean ground turkey for ground beef, real celery in white sauce for cream of celery soup, etc. And there are always a few recipe gems, things that I remember from eras past.

Sautéed Chanterelles

Chanterelles: A Colorful Side Dish

Recipe Inspired by New Leaf Market

Happy Solstice, All! Tonight is the longest night of the year here in the northern hemisphere, and the last of the golden sunlight left the tops of the redwoods before 5 pm. It’s cold, dark, and damp in the woods, urging us to spend more time indoors, preferably in front of a fireplace, keeping warmth and light within ourselves as winter begins.

Winter Veggie Frittata

Winter Veggie Frittata

Recipe by Robin

I confess that I have never made a frittata before. The word intrigued me, and when I won a raffle prize of 6 fresh eggs from the office manager’s chickens, I thought “frittata.” Frittatas, it turns out, are quite similar to “veggies and scrambled eggs,” which I used to make every Sunday morning when I was single, paired with whole grain toast and homemade jam. Back in those days I used zucchini, bell peppers, and sometimes tomatoes, in other words summer veggies. To honor where we are in the yearly cycle (and to use veggies on hand), I winterized my old recipe.

Winter Week 3 Veggie List & Menu

Christmas Pippins from Dan's tree

I won a raffle prize yesterday at the staff meeting at my day job: ½ dozen eggs fresh from the office manager’s chickens! I could use them for seasonal baking, but decided to feature the delicious fresh taste in some variation of frittata instead. It’s been many years since I’ve had eggs this fresh. It was enlightening to learn that our manager cleans up after the chickens every morning, taking care of ”the sh*ttiest job I’ll have to do all day” before she even gets to work…now how many of us can say that? Thank you, Maureen!

Oven Braised Parsnips and Carrots

Braised and Garnished Parnsips and Carrots

Recipe adapted from Joy of Cooking

“I love your cooking, Robin,” said my friend Joy at dinner a week before Christmas last year. She was specifically talking about this dish, which Bruce and I served with roast turkey, coleslaw, and cranberry sauce. “You know how to make healthy things taste good.”  Sadly, this was the last meal we shared. A chronic illness put her into sudden decline the next week, and she passed away shortly afterwards. I will always cherish my memory of our last dinner, and how we attended the Christmas carol singalong with Boomeria’s 2500-pipe organ afterwards. Let’s join in celebration with our friends, while we have the opportunity.

Simply Baked Yams

Fix Your Own: Butter, Maple Syrup, Cinnamon

Recipe by Robin

In December, food media tends to emphasize complicated recipes for sweet and buttery treats and desserts. I’m all for holiday baking (and will post some recipes that contain seasonal fruits later), but wanted to offer the alternative of a simple baked yam, naturally colorful and sweet. Although my recipe contains sweetener (maple syrup) and butter, the amount compared with the vegetable is low. Since butter and syrup are served as “add your own” condiments, each diner can add the amount they like.

Top 10 Gifts for Seasonal Cooks

Romanesco Cauliflower Dressed for the Season

Seasons and available foods change, but some kitchen tools get used in all seasons, year after year. ‘Tis the season to be gifting, and I’ve come up with a list of 10 tools that seasonal cooks will appreciate and use year-round. I’ve received many of these as gifts myself. I invite you to comment and add your own favorites. And yes, if you click on a link and buy something (anything) at Amazon, I get a little referral fee, so I’ll be able to retire a little sooner and blog more. *Grin*

Winter Week 2 Veggie List & Menu

I've never seen parsnip greens before.
Have you?

Today we received our first winter CSA share here in central coastal California. Last week actually began the season, but we were visiting family, like many of us do around this time of year. Returning from Idaho, I feel fortunate to live in a county where food can be grown year-round. Moving on towards the darkest time of year, we’ll be eating plenty of root veggies, onions, and apples, and someday soon I will have to make use of the giant pumpkin from the Live Earth Farm harvest festival in October.

While it’s tempting to post lots of treat recipes this month, I’ll find some nutritious main and side dishes too. For starters, check out my friend Mira’s curried cauliflower, which I’ll be making tomorrow night with the delicate green Romanesco.

Pumpkin Cranberry Bars

Pumpkin Cranberry Bar Closeup

Adapted from Weight Watchers Recipe

December, one of my favorite months, is here to conclude 2011. Late fall turns to winter, and the darkest day of the year arrives along with celebrations of family, food, and return of the light to the world--in the northern hemisphere. Our friends in Australia and Africa celebrate quite differently as daylight approaches its yearly maximum. It can be hard for those of us in darkness to imagine the light, nor should we try. Short, dark days have a beauty of their own as we retreat indoors, rest more, and find sustenance in light from within.

Mom’s Applesauce

Mom's Applesauce, Smooth Texture

Recipe by Mom

“Dull November brings the blast, then the leaves are whirling fast.”

Sara Coleridge, only daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote these words in 1834, part of her poem “The Months.” I remember reading this in my childhood almanac, and it inspired my lifelong interest in changing seasons throughout the annual cycle. Indeed, November has stripped our fruit trees and even weeping willows of their leaves. Cloudy, cool, and grey, today is what my sister Chris calls an Applesauce Day. November is usually full of these, as is February.

Cider Braised Cabbage and Apples

Braised Kapusta & Apples in Cider

Adapted from Bon Appetit Recipe

In the beginning of the 2011 CSA season, I set a goal of exploring my Polish roots through cooking. Kapusta (cabbage) is a Polish staple food, and I know that my ancestors cooked kapusta and onions with caraway seeds. The triple apple addition in this recipe (apples, cider, and vinegar) compliments the cabbage by adding sweetness, texture, and a bit of tartness.

Cranberry Sauce with Wine & Spice

Cranberry-Cabernet Sauce

Recipe by Robin

“This is the worst cranberry sauce I’ve ever eaten in my life!” exclaimed my (former) brother-in-law about the first cranberry sauce I ever made. “Dear, we MADE that!” said my sister, using “we” diplomatically even though it was my idea, my recipe, my cooking. He made it clear that he preferred the canned jelly pillar to anything involving whole cranberries and oranges. He'd thought my sauce was store-bought because I had served it out of a recycled brown Ovaltine jar. I never got too creative with cranberry sauce again…until now.

Mom’s Apricot Yams with Spice

Apricot Yams

Recipe by Mom and Robin

Happy Thanksgiving, All! The first thing that I do every Thanksgiving, before I’m even out of bed, is to think of 10 things for which to give thanks. Top of the list is always my husband, friends, family, home, and having plenty to eat. It’s everyday things--like a bountiful harvest that puts food on the table--that Thanksgiving celebrates.

Healthy Polish Carrot Cake

Carrot Cake with Double Frosting Recipe

Recipe from Healing Foods by Miriam Polunin

I’ve wanted to try this recipe for ages. What’s not to like when “a large slice of this super-moist cake has a food value similar to that of a main course” according to Miriam Polunin, who created the recipe in 1990 when carbo-loading was in style. Actually, this is healthier than most cakes. One serving has 190 calories and most cakes have at least twice that. It is sweetened with honey, and only a small amount. Though not really high fiber, the whole wheat flour, raisins, poppy seeds, and carrots do contribute 2 fiber grams per serving.

Week 33 Veggie List & Menu

Whimsical Apple

This week marks the end of our CSA’s regular share season. Thank you, Live Earth Farm, for the tasty organic veggies, fun community events, and the easy system for donating our share to food banks when we’re out of town. We’ve signed up for a LEF winter share as well, and pick-ups will start December 1. Next week is Thanksgiving, and although I won’t post formal menus, I’ll continue posting recipes, particularly whatever I make for the Thanksgiving potluck. Hopefully I’ll get an inspiration for that soon. A third large green cabbage in as many weeks means you’ll likely see some sort of cabbage recipe/s as well.

Roasted Beets with Apple Cider Glaze

Apple Cider Glazed Beets

Recipe Adapted from Various Sources

I’ve tried roasting root vegetables many times and have always come to the same conclusion about turnips and rutabagas: DON’T! Unless they are very small, they are just too fibrous for the dry heat of the oven. Moist heat cooking suits them better. On the other hand, even large beets these days are tender enough for roasting, and this naturally sweet cider glaze plays up the beets’  sweetness.

Applesauce Cake

Slice of a Classic

Recipe Inspired by the Boston Cooking School Cookbook

Applesauce cake has been around for years. I remember my grandmother making it back in the 1950s, but it's been baked since the 19th century. I was nostalgic for this classic seasonal recipe, especially since I had a huge amount of homemade applesauce after the apple u-pick a couple weeks back. I began with a recipe from the 1942 edition of the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, but wanted to make it lighter and moister. I borrowed an idea from the 1975 Joy of Cooking, and added an egg. I also used more applesauce, baking soda, and raisins.

Strawberry Crisp

Strawberry Crisps

Recipe adapted from Weight Watchers & Joy

Happy 11/11/11 at 11:11! I’ve heard a few predictions about what will happen at this time, from 1111 celestial beings helping us humans make our dreams come true to the mouth of hell opening up on earth. I’m going with the former. In any case, something unusual could happen…like baking with fresh strawberries in November!

Week 32 Veggie List & Menu

A Bounty of Butternuts

For days I’ve been making varieties of herbed tomato soup (see bottom of linked page).  With a dozen or two tomatoes left from this season, I’d like to do something special, perhaps a small batch of homemade catsup or just an all-tomato salad. On to the fall veggies: plenty of greens, more cabbage and beets, Brussels sprouts, leeks, onions, potatoes, and winter squash.

11/11/11 is coming this week, a palindromic date that occurs once every 100 years. In numerology, 11 can represent a channel to the subconscious, a doorway to the inner self. Some also say that 11:11 is the symbol of spirit guardians, a group of 1111 celestial beings who look after us earthlings. Perhaps I’ll have an amazing insight, or get zapped by a celestial do-gooder, at 11:11:11 on 11/11/11. Or, maybe I will just have some fun appreciating the number and our lucky space in time.

I’m going to have a second try at recreating my (long deceased) Gram’s applesauce cake this week—I overcooked last week’s batch and it was a little tough to cut (hungry musicians enjoyed it at the potluck anyway). I’d like to try more apple syrup, since we got apple juice in our CSA share, and perhaps roast some root veggies with it. Three small butternut squash are perfect candidates for microwaving. First of the season’s Brussels sprouts are harbingers of winter. But can you believe we got one last basket of strawberries (a bit pale, but strawberries nonetheless)? Live Earth Farm, you are awesome in the true sense of the word!

This week’s veggies:

Gala apples (lots)
Beets

Beet greens

Brussels Sprouts

Cabbage (large green)
Collard greens
Green beans
Kale
Leeks
Onions

Yellow Finn potatoes

Butternut squash

Strawberries

Apple Juice

Leftovers: leeks, rutabagas, beets, large cabbage, cranberry-orange relish, roast turkey thighs, carrots, tomatoes, 1 hot pepper, applesauce, cranberries, butternut squash, herbed tomato soup, oregano, basil

Wednesday

leftover roast turkey

steamed green beans

leftover herbed tomato soup with hot peppers

Thursday

leftover roast turkey

steamed Brussels sprouts

cranberry-orange relish

make applesauce cake

Friday

veggie burgers

potato leek soup

quick Asian-inspired collard greens

steamed butternut squash

strawberry crisp?

Saturday

Lunch: catered after Holt’s urn-filling ceremony

Dinner:

fish with orange ponzu sauce

tomato salad with basil and oregano

steamed beet greens

steamed butternutsquash

Sunday

Lunch:

tacos or veggie burgers

kale “hot salad”

tomato salad

Dinner:

roast turkey thighs

cider-glazed roasted root veggies

baked butternutsquash (large)

cranberry-orange relish

Monday

beet & cabbage borscht

leftover turkey and veggies

Tuesday

leftovers

Cranberry Orange Relish

Three Ingredients, Simple Preparation

Recipe Discovered by Carol

Quite a few years back I worked as a production jeweler for various small and even smaller businesses, meeting many talented and eccentric individuals in the process. One of my favorite such individuals is my friend Carol, for whom I worked on two different occasions throughout the years. An avid reader with an interest in just about everything, she would have been an excellent researcher if art hadn’t been her primary obsession. She also was quite creative in the kitchen, often cooking large quantities and bringing delicious leftovers to work to share.

Cooking Fresh Pinto or Cranberry Beans

Fresh Cranberry (or Pinto?) Beans

Recipe by Robin

Back in September, I found some beautifully patterned beans at the Farmer’s Market in Watsonville, CA. I asked some Mexican-American shoppers about them and they told me that that these were fresh pinto beans. "Pinto" means "painted" in Spanish, referring to the spots on the beans. These painted beans could in fact be the larger cranberry bean, as my rudimentary Spanish skills prevented me from understanding the entire explanation. Both varieties are spotted, and can be cooked the same way, though pintos require a bit less time. Fresh pinto/cranberry beans aren’t widely available, and the season is short, so do try them if you’re lucky enough to find them.

Week 31 Veggie List & Menu

Chrysanthemums and Lemons

It looks like cold weather is settling into Santa Cruz with mid-fall. Every year it seems so sudden. Nights get chilly and the furnace must be turned on. Tonight I even covered up the plants, as it’s rumored that we will have our first hard frost. The chrysanthemums, luckily, are quite tolerant of this and continue blooming in the garden.

Cornish Hens with Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Hen with Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Recipe adapted from Meals for One or Two

It’s a perfect fall day here in northern California. The locust tree in my neighbor’s year is dropping golden leaves so poetically that I don’t mind them fluttering into my yard. It’s sunny, cool, and a bit breezy. Yellow and white chrysanthemums bloom in the garden. A pot of rustic applesauce bubbles on the stove. Thinking of my east coast friends, who are still cleaning up the aftermath of an unbelievably early snowstorm, I feel extremely lucky to have this beautiful day, not to mention power and lights. Best wishes to east coasters, may you be warm and lit again soon.

Lemon-Ginger Green Beans

Green Beans to Celebrate New Year

Recipe from Cooking By Moonlight

It’s the Celtic New Year and a beautiful fall day in the Santa Cruz mountains. A fresh breeze is combing the redwoods, blowing small branchlets of russet needles everywhere. It’s cool but sunny, invigorating weather for outdoor forays, and a perfect day to start a new year. For those of us who like playing with numbers, 11/1/11 is a particularly fine and symmetrical day to begin the year.

Apple Cranberry Crisp

Fruits of the Season

Recipe from Cooking by the Seasons

Happy Halloween All! It is said that at this time of year the veil between the living and the dead grows thinner. Christians are preparing to celebrate All Saints and All Souls day to honor the dead and pray for their safe journey to heaven. In Mexico, folks will be celebrating Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) by building altars to honor the dead, decorating graveyards with flowers, and inviting spirits of those passed to join the celebratory gathering of family and friends. Participants cast an eye towards the living as well, acknowledging the fact that we will all pass into spirit someday. Similar celebrations occur in Brazil, Spain, and parts of Asia and Africa. I’m building a memorial altar to honor my dear friend Joy and my father, who both passed away this year.

African Carrot Sambal

Carrot Sambal with Padrone Peppers

Recipe from the Carrot Cookbook

Long about 1978 our Santa Cruz Planned Parenthood self-published (by way of copy machine) an unassuming Carrot Cookbook compiled by PP employees. This volume was a follow-up to their Zucchini Cookbook, which was “considered almost too silly to use as a fundraiser,” yet sold 20,000 copies at $2.50 each. The philosophy of the Carrot Cookbook was “to glorify the carrot—to elevate it from just a stick around a bowl of dip, just a companion to a brown bag lunch, just a curl alongside a hamburger.”

Week 30 Veggie List & Menu

Bumper Crop of U-Pick Apples

Fall is most assuredly asserting herself now, with golden sunny (and shorter) days and long chilly nights. On Monday we celebrate All Hallows Evening (Halloween or Samhain), marking mid-autumn and the end of the Celtic year. Traditionally, this is the third and final harvest of the year, the harvest of fruits and nuts. Fall fruits and veggies are abundant in coastal CA now: the last of summer’s tomatoes and peppers, fall’s apples and pumpkins, wintery root veggies and multi-seasonal lettuce and greens. This bounty of veggies calls for a giant stir fry on Saturday.

Herbed Tomato Soup

Herbed Tomato Soup

Recipe adapted from Meals for One or Two

It’s the very end of tomato season this year on the central CA coast, so I ordered 10 lbs. of dry-farmed Early Girls from our CSA Farm. That was the smallest quantity I could get. I’m planning to make more baked tomato sauce, perhaps with Armenian bell peppers, but in the meantime remembered making a delicious tomato soup when I first came to Santa Cruz a few decades back. I don’t remember the recipe, except that it contained milk and I kicked it up by adding some red pepper. But this recipe uses neither of those ingredients…I was going to add them, but the soup tasted too good as is.

Chicken with Peppers, Zucchini, and Tomatoes

Chicken with Garden-Fresh Veggies

Recipe by Bruce

Even in marriages with no particular gender roles, a woman is lucky if her husband likes to cook and is good at it. And if her husband can improvise with ingredients on hand, and even does the dishes, it doesn’t get much better. To quote the movie Footloose, “Let’s hear it for the boy!”

Baked Apples

Baked Apple

Recipe from The Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer

Inspired by our 11 lb. U-Pick and my recent apple pancake recipe, I turned to Fannie Farmer’s classic Boston Cooking School Cookbook for a baked apple recipe. Originally written in 1896, this was the first cookbook to use standardized measurements such as tablespoons and cups. This became the most popular cookbook of its time in the US. The 1945 edition, which my mom loaned me a few days before she died, contains meal-planning and nutritional tips from the era too. 

Apple Pancakes

Apple Pancakes with Cinnamon and Apple Syrup

Recipe adapted from The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer

When I was a kid, my family observed meatless Fridays, usually fish, potatoes, and a vegetable. I wasn’t crazy about fish back then. So imagine my delight when my mom decided to serve more casual fare for a period of time when my dad went to night school. Pancakes for dinner!

Apple Syrup and All Things Apple

Apple Syrup on Apple Pancakes

Recipe by Robin, Bruce & Happy Girl Kitchen

Bruce and I got a little carried away at the Live Earth Farm Harvest Festival and Apple U-Pick yesterday. Although we were hot and tired by the time we walked all the way to the orchard, we picked 11 lbs. in just a few minutes. This is about twice the number I’d planned to pick--since our apple tree at home is still bearing large if less numerous fruit. In the US, apples will never taste fresher or cost less than they do right now. So let’s celebrate apple season by noshing as many as we like for snacks, then making apple goodies with the rest!

Week 29 Veggie List & Menu

Celebrate: More Apples, More Apple Recipes

“Adapt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our CSA sent these words of wisdom in last week’s newsletter. It’s even more appropriate this week, since this week’s fruits and veggies look like an instant replay of last week’s. Patience is the tool that I need to re-make the Carrot Sambal, Roasted Beet Salad, and Apple Cake recipes from last week in an attempt to improve them from good to uniquely delicious.

Summer Squash in Fresh Tomato Sauce

Squash and Tomatoes: A Winning Combo

Recipe by Robin

If someone told me that I could eat only two vegetables for the rest of my life and let me make the choice, I’d choose yellow squash and tomatoes. When I was a teenager, my mother and I would eat all-vegetable dinners straight from the garden on hot summer evenings. These always included sliced fresh tomatoes and steamed and mashed crookneck squash with butter, garlic salt, and pepper. These meals inspired me to take up organic gardening a few years later.

Psari Savori: Greek Fish Fillets with Tomato and Wine Vinegar Sauce

Psari Savori, both Flavorful and Colorful

Recipe adapted from Middle Eastern Cooking

Back in the 1970s, I discovered the first all-ethnic-cookbook I’d ever seen on my sister’s in-laws’ bookshelf. The Cooking of Scandinavia was one of a Time-Life book series called Foods of the World. Each book consisted of two volumes, a large picture book and a small spiral bound recipe book, featuring cuisine of various countries and ethnic groups. The beautiful (pre-Photoshop) photos and the descriptions of foods and customs of other nations inspired my young mind and opened up a whole new world of cooking and travel ideas for my future. You can still find these books at flea markets and used book vendors, and they are fun forays into the pre-globalized world of the late 1960s.

Week 28 Veggie List & Menu

Fall Fruits: Warren Pears & Gala Apples

I've been away from the West Coast, in Cape Cod, MA, scattering my deceased father's ashes and visiting places that he loved, and that I love. Amidst family musings, and with limited kitchen resources, I temporarily abandoned my usual weekly menu format, while donating our weekly farm share to Loaves and Fishes, a local food bank. It's been liberating to only post recipes and whatever commentary comes to mind. But now I'm ready continue with my original format, with my goal of creating a whole year of seasonal menus.

Open Faced Tomato Sandwiches

Open Faced Tomato Sandwich

Recipe by Mom

We tolerate things from our family that we'd never put up with from friends. After all, we can un-friend someone, but we can't un-family them. If a friend asked me, after not seeing me in three years, "Why did you come and visit me anyway? I'm not lonely!" I would not call up the next day to ask if I could see him then. In fact, I would not have traveled the 3200 miles to his town to make a connection. But I did that with my father last year, and it happened that this was the last time I saw him before he passed away. It was not an easy or fun trip, not a happy connection, but a reaching out to someone who was expert at distancing others when his mood suited.

Microwave Steamed Butternut Squash

Cooking Squash Away from Home

Recipe compiled at Chowhound.com

Normally I would have never agreed to microwave a winter squash. But while on Cape Cod recently, the only locally grown veggie I could find was butternut squash. And how to cook that in a motel efficiency unit with only one large knife of dubious sharpness was a challenge, until Bruce suggested microwaving it.

He did some web research, and it seemed simple enough, as long as we watched the squash carefully. According to rworange at chowhound.com, “NEVER leave the kitchen. If the squash starts whistling, squeaking or making other noise, there's too much steam building up inside. Pause the microwave for a little and then restart. Otherwise said squash might explode.”

Sustainable Grilled Bluefish

Grilled Bluefish with Seaweed Salad

Recipe by Bruce

I’ve been on the US East Coast for awhile, to scatter my recently deceased father’s ashes with my two sisters. We chose a beach in Provincetown, MA that my parents enjoyed, and where we scattered Mom’s ashes a few years back.

Being on Cape Cod, I’ve wanted to enjoy the seafoods that we don’t have on the West Coast. Of course, there’s lobster, which is too difficult for a transient like myself to prepare, and the smell would linger, since my room doesn’t have a fan. But there’s also bluefish, which my husband can grill fairly easily. This is an oily fish so can smell quite a bit, so outdoor cooking is preferable.