Weekly Menus

Today, I’m going to start a two week conversation about cast iron. If you’ve followed me for any time, you already know that I LOVE cooking with cast iron. It heats evenly, handles tricky work like searing a delicate fish, baking, the flames of a grill, or a campfire and a casserole with equal ease. I have a variety of skillets and stock pots and use them almost every day, and as The Stone Soup …

Happy Friday! Thanks for checking in again today for the conclusion of my series on cooking for one. Today, I’m featuring desserts! Two of the desserts I made for week of being single while Mr. Stone Soup was playing with trains came out great! The third dessert, for strawberry short cake, tasted good, but wasn’t a rousing success. I have to admit…the recipe for the cake was kind of hard to adapt for just one. …

Hi and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook. This week, I’m featuring recipes for one. I came up with these single serving gems because last week, Mr. Stone Soup Cook was playing with model trains for most of the week, and instead of tried and true recipes, I wanted to challenge myself to come up with interesting and innovative recipes just for me. I hope you enjoyed Monday’s post, where I featured breakfasts for …

Last week, Mr. Stone Soup Cook spent most of the week at a model train convention, so I was on my own for meals. Before he left, I had roasted a chicken. For my first couple of meals on my own, I used up leftovers from the chicken, along with other bits I found in the fridge. The meals were satisfying and efficient. And while I am the Stone Soup Cook and I do like …

Hello! I hope you’ve all had a great week! My week has been super busy with getting my house back in order. We were finally able to get a contractor out to do the repairs on our house after that tree fell on it a couple of months ago. We’ve been painting and moving back into the house all week. Instead of recipes, this week I’m featuring one of my favorite new product finds: tomato …

This week, I’ll be featuring another farmer’s market haul challenge, which is a lot of fun. The markets last week had an abundance of tons of my favorite things, but it’s a kind of “shoulder season,” if you will. Asparagus are still in abundance, although it’s getting to be the end of the season; the cherries are still splendid, tomatoes and cucumbers are starting to come onto the market, as are squash, eggplants, strawberries, sweet …

As cherries are still abundant in the market, I thought that instead of more recipes involving cherries this week, I’d share one of my new favorite kitchen tools with you: the OXO multi cherry pitter. Last year, at the end of cherry season, I was weary of pitting my cherries one at a time with my little OXO hand-held cherry pitter. It works pretty well (although some pits are larger than the pitter will allow …

Life is like the cherry blossoms: beautiful, short and meant to be enjoyed. These are words written by a lovely young woman I used to tutor in English. She had studied in Tokyo and regularly waxed poetic about the cherry blossoms in Japan. I had her write an essay about them and her essay ended with those words. I couldn’t agree more, but I would also apply them to the cherries themselves. A hundred years …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! I’m so happy to be finished with the two fava bean weeks. I really, really tried to like them… This week, I’m relieved to be working with carrots! And it’s been a really fun week 🙂 Let’s consider the carrot for a moment: the bridesmaid of the produce department. Almost always in a supporting role, rarely the star. And yet, the carrot is perfectly comfortable to …

Welcome back! I hope you’re having a great week. It’s time to pick up where we left off talking about fava beans. Last week, I spent a good deal of time working with fresh fava beans. Here’s a quick recap: while I thought the fresh fava beans were delicious, it’s hard to make a case for them. Try as I might, I have not been able to come up with a way to eat the …