The nice thing about all theses recipes is that they can be combined by using what you have on hand...and what you like. I'm making one this morning for the weekend. I always have olives, pulled some pecans out of the freezer from the holidays that i will toast and lightly chop. Roast a red pepper on the gas burner. My basil bed is doing well but not enough for a pesto so i'll pinch off a dozen tops but the cilantro is bolting so i'll add that at the end with a squeeze of lime. Tomatoes are a month away but i have a dozen early sungolds (the size of marbles)...I'll cut in half and toss on top fresh. i have a bit of fetta left i need to use. A dozen sugar snap peas sliced in half. Not enough for a side dish. I made succotash wed and have an ear of corn left and half a zucchini and squash i'll use up. (my local Stop-n-Shop grocery has a local farm stand set up inside) A wooden cart with an umbrella, haha. I usually prefer simplicity and just a few ingredients but this time of year i have a little bit of everything...reminds me of my MIL's saturday soup my husband grew up on...all the bits of the weeks meals tossed in a soup pot with homemade stock from the freezer, maybe some rice or pasta. Not really left-overs using fresh, but certainly a 'garden party' pasta. Still a light sauce. I'm going to make a full lb so it will be a side dish tonight with cod cakes, a cold salad for tomorrows lunch, (DH will have some for breakfast, lol). Sunday night's return from the mountains i'll put the leftovers in a casarole, top with extra cheese, 'yogurt milk', panko and any grill leftovers, (lamb sausage!) and make an adult mac-n-cheese. (i have some rich stinky fancy munster i need to use up). A completely different meal when baked and toasted. sallyparis-love your blog. My husband caught me grating a few tomatoes last season, "now what are you doing!?", haha. Works great in a hurry but needs a big bowl. Love warm pasta tossed in all that yummy juice when tomatoes are so sweet and abundant. tricia-haha, the harried greek housewife. Now i know what to call it! Gwlolo- No need to 'cook' the sauce, but a few ingredients do 'brighten' flavors with a few minutes in a large wide saucepan, just a few minutes as the pasta is finishing. Add the warm pasta to the saucepan and toss. A caprese is nice just on top fresh when serving along with toasted nuts if using. If you have an abundance of fresh basil, some is nice tossed in the warm pasta but save most for the top garnish. Arugula is delightful as well.

So simple, yet so good. Lemon Salt Marinated Pork Tenderloin Recipe courtesy Michael Chiarello 6 lemons 1 1/2 tablespoons salt 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil Freshly ground black pepper 2 pork tenderloins (about 1 1/2 pounds total) Honey Roasted Applesauce, recipe follows Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Finely zest the lemons. Using a mortar and pestle, work the salt and lemon zest together. Add a few turns of black pepper and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Stir to blend. Rub the lemon salt mixture all over the pork. In a large saute pan heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil until hot but not smoking, add tenderloins to pan and sear on all sides, about 5 minutes total. (If you have a small pan, sear 1 tenderloin at a time.) Move pan with pork to the oven and cook until a meat thermometer reads 155 degrees F, about 6 to 8 minutes. Remove pork from the pan and let rest on a cutting board for about 5 minutes. Slice the tenderloins against the grain on a diagonal bias, fan out on a plate, and serve with Honey Roasted Applesauce. Honey Roasted Applesauce: 6 apples, Gravenstein or McIntosh 2 tablespoons sweet butter 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon finely ground sea salt, preferably gray salt 1/3 cup honey Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Peel the apples with a vegetable peeler, remove the core and cut into 1-inch chunks. Heat a medium saute pan on medium-high heat with the butter in it. When the butter begins to brown add the lemon juice and cook for 30 seconds. Stir in the apples and salt. Saute for 3 to 4 minutes until the edges just begin to color. Add the honey and put in oven for about 15 to 20 minutes until the apples are soft and lightly caramelized. Mash with a fork for a chunky version, or put in food processor for a smoother sauce. Serve warm, room temperature or cold. Yield: 4 to 6 servings Cook's Notes: Most applesauce recipes call for cooking the apples on the stovetop from start to finish. I prefer to start them on the stovetop and then finish them in a hot oven. The oven heat concentrates their flavors by drying and caramelizing them slightly. Although I have suggested a couple of apple varieties, you can use what good cooking apples are available in your area.

Today I've made a few things.. Mini Vanilla Wafers..(double batch today) Mini Vanilla Wafer Cookies 1/2 cup butter, softened 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup brown sugar 1 large egg 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 1/3 cup all purpose flour 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking powder Preheat oven to 325F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars until light. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Sift flour, salt and baking powder over the butter mixture and stir to combine. Scrap dough into a pastry bag fitted with a plain piping tip. Pipe the dough onto the prepared baking sheet, making each cookie the size of a large chocolate chip. Cookies will spread, but only a little space is needed between cookies. Bake at 325 F for 10 to 15 minutes, until cookies are a light golden brown. Baking time will vary depending on the exact size of your cookies. Mine were a bit tall, but slightly smaller than a dime. They spread slightly to about dime-size. Cool on baking sheets. Store in an airtight container. Baking Bites I let the last batch darken and dry out a bit more for "nanner pudding".. Just finished the Vanilla Bean Pudding Vanilla Pudding~Betty Crocker 1/3 c sugar 2 T cornstarch pinch of salt 2 c milk 2 egg yolks 2 t vanilla 2 T of butter (optional) Inside of half a vanilla bean(My addition when doing vanilla) In a medium sauce pan mix cornstarch, salt and sugar, whisk in milk...bring to a boil on medium..boil 1 minute...in the measuring cup from the milk gently whisk 2 egg yolks..when minute is up..pour about 1/3 of the milk mixture and whisk in the measuring cup with yolks...add all of that to the pan and whisk..boiling 1 more minute..stir in vanilla and butter. Pour into a dish and cover the surface with plastic wrap as to not make puddin skin..

Merry Christmas Ginny- Not much time this busy morning for posting, and this is probably too late to be helpful. Recipes for soft dinner rolls are as common as flip-flops in the summer, every common post-WWII cookbook like Betty Crocker, Good Housekeeping, Pillsbury, and the web sites for the yeast companies, will all have recipes for white dinner rolls made with active dry yeast. Prior to that, the homemaker used fresh yeast, and those are the soft white dinner rolls I remember my mother making. If I close my eyes I can still recall the wonderful smell you can only get by using fresh yeast, which is all but unavailable these days. Wal-Mart carried fresh yeast during November and December, and that was the last time I could find it in local stores. It's been at least 15-years since I last bought fresh yeast. The one thing those recipes have in common, and the one tip I can give when making them, is to use all-purpose flour like Gold Medal or Pillsbury, which are National Brands. That was the type of flour used. It wasn't until the advent of the automatic bread machine in the late 1980's that "bread flour" was available for household use. Nearly any recipe that has butter and milk in it will be the one to pick. Avoid using King Arthur All-Purpose or Robin Hood All-Purpose flour because they are higher in protein. If that is the type of flour you have to use, add a little more butter to the recipe (1/2 to 1 T.) to help cut the gluten-development. Hard rolls require flour milled from high-protein hard wheat flour (like bread flour), while soft rolls are best made with flour that is a mix of soft wheat and hard wheat - like National Brands of all-purpose flour. I have a rather interesting bread machine recipe for Soft White Bread that uses 1 cup of white cake mix, which is milled from low-gluten soft wheat, and that is the "secret" ingredient for soft bread. Before going gluten-free, when I wanted to make soft dinner rolls using whole wheat flour (I mill my own flour), I used a 3:2 mix of hard white wheat and soft white wheat (or used a low-gluten flour for the soft wheat like spelt or einkorn). I've been gluten-free for 4-years as of Jan. 1. I now find the smell of bread repulsive. For me, flour was a poison to my body, and for many people it's an addiction. The two isles of the store I try to avoid are the detergent isle due to the onslaught of all the toxic fragrances, and the bread isle. Best of luck on your gluten-free journey. My best advise is to stay clear of processed gluten-free foods due to the high-glycemic flours and starches they are made from. I use coconut flour and nut flour for baking, and have recently added banana flour to the mix, along with milling my own gluten-free flours from a variety of grains/seeds/beans, and I keep rice flour and starches, which are common to all-purpose g-f mixes, to a minimum. When I use rice flour, I soak, sprout, and dry brown rice myself, and mill it into flour to reduce the arsenic found in rice. Nearly all commercial g-f mixes and foods contain cheap, high-glycemic, rice flour. So you are trading one issue - gluten - for another potential issue - blood glucose (and diabetes). I've even been considering a 10-day grain detox to see if I should also eliminate corn from my diet. But I need to get through today, and get the visiting family on their way back to their homes (12-hours away) before the snow storm hits Saturday, before I can even contemplate a detox plan (lol)! -Grainlady