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If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

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If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

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This blog will pay for itself.

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Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

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Nothing worth doing is easy.

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You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Saturday Afternoon Recipes: Beat The Winter Cooking Blues

Saturday Afternoon Recipes: Beat The Winter Cooking Blues

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The other day, narya and I were talking about the late winter cooking blues and how we handle it. Seems we both look to fruit recipes to help us make it to the time of fresh spring ingredients.

I start making a lot of recipes with lemons – Chicken Piccata (recipe below), Lemon Nut Pork Chops (recipe here), lemon desserts

and blueberries. Love me some blueberries (I’m making Grilled Sirloin with Spicy Blueberries tonight) Pictured above: Perfect Blueberry Pancakes (recipe here)

I always think that Chicken Piccata is going to be a nice light dish until I reread the recipe and remember it always takes more oil and butter than I think as I go along. Oh, well, not every meal has to heart healthy, LOL

Chicken Piccata

  • 1 cup Italian breadcrumbs
  • 1 tsp basil, crushed
  • 1 tbsp lemon zest
  • 1/8 tsp pepper
  • 1 tsp crushed garlic
  • ½ tbsp olive oil
  • 4 boneless chicken breasts, pounded flat
  • 1 tbsp butter (more as needed)
  • 1 tbsp olive oil (more as needed)
  • 1 lemon, sliced into very thin slices*
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 tbsp fresh snipped parsley
  • 3 tbsp lemon juice

bowl, skillet

Combine breadcrumbs, basil, zest, and pepper in bowl. Mix ½ tbsp oil and garlic together. Coat both sides of chicken with oil/garlic and dredge in breadcrumbs. Over medium-high heat 1 tbsp ea. of butter and oil in skillet, add chicken and cook 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove chicken – keep warm – add lemon slices to pan, sauté 30 seconds, add water, parsley and juice, boil for 1 minute, spoon over chicken.

*Scrub well before slicing.

 

From narya, her Strawberry and Chocolate Cake:

Saturday Afternoon Recipes:

This is such a hard time of the cooking year for me: the farm share people want to give me onions, carrots, root veggies, and potatoes (and spinach), but potatoes don’t do all that much for me and most of the root veggies are brassicas. I love a lot of brassicas—kale, broccoli, and cauliflower in particular—but they are offering things like turnips and parsnips and cabbage. I have discovered that I cannot eat any brassicas in their raw state, and that some of them will fight me even if I cook them first. I like purple potatoes, and sweet potatoes can be used with a lot of Asian spices, but, again, there’s only so much I can eat. Two other things have helped this year: I froze a lot of corn that I par-boiled then cut off the cob, and I roasted a lot of tomatoes and froze those. I’ve been hoarding them a bit, because we still have so much of winter to go.

For an excess of potatoes, I make gnocchi. I use the Lucky Peach recipe (archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170722084123/http://luckypeach.com/how-to-make-gnocchi/ ). I’ve used all kinds of potatoes, including purple and sweet: that means I end up with purple or orange gnocchi. I currently have some of the types of potatoes he recommends, and I will likely turn them all into gnocchi this weekend. Here’s the important part: if you’re going to go to the trouble of making gnocchi, make a LOT of it. After you boil them, you can spread them out on cooling racks and freeze them (don’t do this in lumps—you have to spread them out), then bag and freeze the frozen gnocchi for a later meal. Thaw them spread out, too, rather than in a lump. I also save the skins and roast them till they’re crispy. I don’t want to throw away anything I can use.

Still: brassicas and potatoes and onions and carrots. Then again, dessert makes everything better, so let’s go there.

I always get a bunch of frozen fruit from the farm share (or the grocery store if need be), especially strawberries. Keeping in mind that I eyeball a lot of things, here’s my favorite way to use them. I start with Smitten Kitchen’s easy chocolate cake (link to recipe here) and I hack it in the following ways.

Hack number 1: Fruit and Frosting

First, take a bunch of frozen strawberries (cherries work too), and throw them in a saucepan with a little sugar and some lemon rind if you have it; cook it down. (This week I started with well over a pound, but I divided the results in two and froze half.) Let it simmer for awhile (half an hour?) on low, then scoop out the berries with a slotted spoon and reduce the liquid even further, until it’s very thick and syrupy. Get out your mixer and make frosting with some of the cooled fruit syrup, confectioner’s sugar, and a little butter; you’ll need more sugar than you think, especially if you use a fair amount of the syrup. Why do I make the frosting first? Because it’s easier to make in a mixer than by hand, and then I don’t have to wash the beater—there are no raw ingredients that can hurt you. If you make the cake and then the frosting, you have to wash between, because of the eggs and flour. If you don’t like this much frosting, you can make a simple glaze with the strawberry syrup and some confectioner’s sugar. Strawberry frosting makes everything better. (Powdered dried fruit will also work!)

Hack number 2: More Fruit!

Mush up the strawberries and add them to the cake. If I’m ambitious, I’ll pull out my mini food processor, but not always. I’ll note that it can be hard to taste them in this hack; the chocolate is pretty strong, so if you are looking to taste the fruit, go with hack 2.5.

Hack number 2.5: Fruit Filling

Mush up strawberries and possibly a little of the syrup with cream cheese and use that as a filling for the cake. Put half the batter in the pan, put the strawberry/cream cheese mixture in, then put the rest of the batter on top. This does work better if you puree the fruit a bit. Use a pastry bag or a plastic bag with a corner cut off, rather than trying to spread the mixture. You can add an egg or a little cream or milk if you need to make the filling more spreadable, but not too much.

Hack number 3: Other ingredients

Go ahead and use two eggs. I am not going to use a yolk for this and have a white sitting around. For the cocoa, I use a combo of King Arthur three-cocoa blend and a little bit (maybe 10 grams) of King Arthur black cocoa. I also added a little baking powder (half a teaspoon?), to make up for a lack of acidity for the baking soda. Cocoa powder is something I tend to buy in bulk, because it’s so useful and it lasts, so I usually have several varieties sitting around.

Hack number 4: Liquid

I rarely have buttermilk around. I have used sour milk; yogurt plus water; water; milk; yogurt plus water plus whatever’s left of the strawberries and/or syrup. . . you get the idea. It can affect the rise of the cake, but I guarantee you that for this kind of casual cake, a flatter cake that is slathered with strawberry frosting will still make everyone happy. I also add good-quality chocolate chips sometimes—be aware of that when you test for doneness, as a chocolate chip might make you think it’s not done when it is.

In addition to chocolate and berries being a classic combo, I find that the sweet taste of spring fruit helps mitigate the endless slog of brassicas and potatoes that is the winter farm share.

So that’s how we get past the winter cooking blues. I also start making slaws – jicama slaw and coleslaw – anything that is fresh and crunchy helps. Sidenote: I just talked to a friend in LA who said that everything is so very green there now that the storm had passed and I was a little jealous. Then I remembered in the fall I planted over 60 new bulbs, so I have that to look forward to.

What foods get you through those last days of winter? Do you get bored with winter fair around this time, too? What are you most looking forward to enjoying as the weather warms?

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Dangerman

    I start making a lot of recipes with lemons …

    Pro-Tip:

    Lemonade using Meyer’s Lemons is extremely good.

    Meyer’s for pies or bars kinda blows, but the Lemonade is out of this world (h/t Moon Landing; as someone that built Geosynch satellite components, that is very cool).

  3. 3.

    trollhattan

    No more bees from a lion corpse—changing the world’s oldest brand logo.

    For over 140 years, Lyle’s Golden Syrup — a staple item in any British baker’s pantry — has featured a rather curious logo on its tin: a lion’s carcass surrounded by bees. But now, for the first time since the 1880s, the product recognized by Guinness World Records for having the world’s oldest branding and packaging is undergoing a major redesign.The company said its new visual identity was designed to “refresh the brand’s legacy to appeal to a 21st century audience.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/style/lyles-change-lion-logo
    Remain unclear on “partially inverted.”

  9. 9.

    TaMara

    @TBone: I hate capers with a fiery passion. Right up there with any type of broccoli. It may have something to do with the fact I’m a super-taster. Some ingredients completely take over a dish for me, and not in a good way.

  10. 10.

    cope

    Having lived in Florida for 3.3 decades, food was not really seasonal, almost everything was always available (maybe at a price) in the grocery store.  Now that we are back in Western CO where there are actual seasons, the coming months will bring us amazing peaches, corn and chili peppers among other delights.  Also, if I get myself motivated, once the irrigation canals are back and running at full capacity, there will be wild asparagus growing alongside some of them, just asking to be harvested.  Meat-wise, one of my sisters just picked up her locally raised lamb from a butcher about 30 miles off towards the mountains and my other sister asked if we wanted to go in on half a steer.  And on a totally aesthetic take, the unusually warm winter has tricked some of the 100+ bulbs my wife planted last fall into poking green things up out of the ground.  I will actually be watering things today but with the city water since the irrigation water won’t be flowing for at least another month.

  14. 14.

    trollhattan

    Will file this under “who knew?” Yay, us? Also, take a bow, Philly.

    Eater: These are the top 12 places to eat in 2024
    Eater listed these 12 destinations as the best places to eat this year:
    Busan, South Korea
    Cairo, Egypt
    İzmir, Turkey
    Medellín, Colombia
    Milwaukee, Wisconsin
    Osaka, Japan
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Salvador, Brazil
    Sacramento
    Seychelles
    Udon Thani, Thailand
    Vorarlberg, Austria
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article285838141.html#storylink=cpy

    Article lists places I haven’t tried, so there’s that.

  16. 16.

    narya

    Lyle’s Golden Syrup is awesome; I have a hard time finding it on store shelves, though. And it’s necessary for Anzac Biscuits.

  18. 18.

    TBone

    @trollhattan: I miss it very much.  Didn’t know what I had and how much I’d miss it till it was 3.5 hours away 💔.  I currently drive 30 minutes to another town here for any hoagies or cheese steaks because they import the rolls from Philly.  At least there’s that little consolation.

  19. 19.

    TaMara

    @trollhattan: I’m really surprised LA isn’t on that list. You can find almost any type of ethnic restaurant there, usually owned and operated by wonderful immigrants who make authentic cuisine.

    Ethiopian comes to mind. Yum.  And any hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean is amazing. Then…those original taco trucks. Delish. My first taste of authentic Mexican food came from those in the 90s.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    That looks fantastic!

    This time of year is all about the strawberries for me. In Florida, you’re required to state your strawberry shortcake allegiance: biscuit or sponge. Saying “both” is like claiming to like the Gators AND the Noles; it just isn’t done. I’m a biscuit gal myself.

    Tangentially related tip for fellow cooking show aficionados: Roku channel has a bunch you can stream for free. I’ve recently discovered a show called “Lidia’s Kitchen” featuring a delightfully no-nonsense Italian American lady.

  21. 21.

    TaMara

    @Betty Cracker: Oh, no! In my family it’s Angel Food Cake or nothing. And all the local stores put their cakes next to the strawberries this time of year.

    BTW, I tried making an Angel Food cake once, from scratch when I was first married. Let’s just say I have purchased them ever since. Yikes what a disaster.

  23. 23.

    Lyrebird

    @TaMara: FWIW, I’m a super-taster who loves capers and poor-man’s capers*, too, who knows.  Yes they do kinda take over.  Do you like olives?

    *nasturtium buds

    Either way, THANKS now I know it’s not just me that can get tired of my own cooking.

    Thanks to @narya: , too!!!!
    Would narya or any other expert jackal be willing to give a few more details on the icing making?  I have not used a stand mixer in oh 20 years or something, but we have all those ingredients, and my kids would love it.  Should I put in a little powdered sugar, mix-a mix-a (Daniel Tiger ref), see if it looks like frosting, then add more?  Do I have to do something complicted with the butter?

     

    PS: one more q for to @narya: if available – you froze half… you froze half of the icing, or half of the strawberry reduction (??) stuff before making icing?

  24. 24.

    VFX Lurker

    @trollhattan: No more bees from a lion corpse—changing the world’s oldest brand logo.

    A+ redesign. The artist kept a single bee with the lion, and the flowing shapes of the lion suggest flowing syrup. Top-tier work.

    The article says folks can still get the older logo on the tins:

    The product’s old logo will continue to be used on Lyle’s classic golden syrup tin, though its bottles and dessert toppings will all now bear the new branding. A company spokesperson declined to comment on whether this represents a majority of the units sold.

  25. 25.

    narya

    @Lyrebird: Nah, it’s not complicated. Let the butter warm up til it’s soft, and then mash it around with the sugar (and syrup). I start with maybe three tablespoons? Enough to give it a little body (so it’s not just a glaze). It’ll go faster and more smoothly (literally) if you even have a hand mixer, plus then the kids can lick the beaters, but you could use a spatula. (I prefer that to a whisk, because the ingredients tend to clump in the wires of the whisk.) Your method is perfect for this–it’s all about the hacks, after all.

    ETA: I froze half of the syrup and half of the strawberries, in separate containers, so I could use the strawberries to make the filling and the syrup to make the frosting.

  26. 26.

    TBone

    I forgot to tell how I lighten the piccata (hubby had triple bypass).  I don’t bread the chicken cutlets.  I pound out the chicken breasts to a uniform thinness and lightly dredge in seasoned flour. Then all are sauteed in olive oil only.  After deglazing the pan with wine and lemon juice and maybe some chicken stock, then I add about 2 tbsp. butter and whisk to emulsify the sauce.

  27. 27.

    Wapiti

    I pick raspberries (from a U-pick farm) and blackberries (feral) in July and August to get that summertime boost through the winter months. I freeze the berries on sheet pans and then store them in tubs.

  28. 28.

    cope

    @Betty Cracker: Lidia is great, we’ve just started watching her as well. We’re also following “Cook’s Country”, “Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television” and “America’s Test Kitchen”. The Food Network has been dead to me for quite a while now since the Fierification of most of its shows.

  29. 29.

    Lyrebird

    @narya: Hey, thanks a ton!  And yes, must lick the beaters.  We inherited a very good stand mixer.  Not only is it sentimental, it weighs a TON so I would much rather learn to use it more than donate it!

    I don’t bake much because of having sugar problems myself, but the kids don’t have those issues, and icing can go on lots of things: pancakes, bars, boring sugar-free stuff that mommies can eat unadorned…

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    Lidia’s Kitchen is good. I get it on one of my lesser PBS stations. Also look for Simply Ming with Ming Tsai. He has great guest chefs, and they do two takes on one ingredient or dish.

  33. 33.

    TBone

    Some things I am very grateful for here in Mennonite country are the pickles, preserves, jams, and jellies.  I had a jar of peaches last week (only other ingredients are water and sugar) that tasted like a sunny summer day.  I save the liquid and add it to smoothies.  But they’re pricey.

  37. 37.

    cope

    @TBone: They were great, thanks for reminding me of them. The other day, I was involved in a fun discussion about chefs and cooking shows from way back in the day…”The Galloping Gourmet”, Justin Wilson, even “The Frugal Gourmet” (I know, I know) and some others that don’t come to mind right now.

  38. 38.

    ChasM

    Woke up wondering what I was gonna make for dinner. Oh hi TaMara! I have all these ingredients, including fresh basil! Now I know what I’m making for dinner.

    (Also Grilled what with spicy whaaaat? So making that later this week.)

  39. 39.

    ChasM

    TaMara, re: potatoes. Have you checked out poppycooks on Insta? She is the undisputed potato queen, I’m sure you can find something to you liking.

  40. 40.

    JMG

    We have a cooking division of labor in our house. I do broiling, roasting and all fish dishes and basically anything kind of short order, as well as the salads (I may write The Short Attention Span Cookbook). Alice does soups, stews and sauces. Late winter is her time to shine. Tonight we’re having a daube, a Provencal beef stew. I don’t know her recipe, but I know it’s got anchovies, red wine and navel orange in it because I bought the ingredients this morning.

  42. 42.

    narya

    On Friday, I made a pot roast with venison–I can provide directions if anyone needs them–and then made some polenta to go with it. The leftover polenta went into yesterday’s blueberry cornmeal pancakes . . . today we’re going to have leftover turkey (frozen a couple of weeks ago) on a baguette, with avocado, some fancy schmeary cheese, a little steamed spinach . . . and then off to a wine class.

  43. 43.

    Miki

    @cope:  I love all those shows but would forget to watch them when they’re on my local PBS station. Solved that problem recently with an inexpensive (< $100) DVR – 4th Gen Tablo –  that connects to my cheap indoor antenna. So far, so good – I’m recording about 11 different cooking shows each week. (Don’t judge – I’m still in recovery from my knee replacement surgery (fracture to femur during surgery)).

    A fun cooking watch on YouTube is Anti-Chef – he’s just a guy teaching himself how to cook by following different recipes from cookbooks (Julia Child, Thomas Keller, Marcella Hazan). Videos are mostly not too long and can be quite funny. https://youtube.com/@antichef?si=UtuREZNrJJhvChzt

  45. 45.

    TBone

    @cope: I have one of the Fruge’s cookbooks!  Got it at a yard sale, of course.  Shame about that guy, if true.  All of your mentions invoke fond memories ❤️ except for what happened to the Fruge.  I still love many of his recipes though.

  47. 47.

    wmd

    I made my annual winter batch of gretwurst – a breakfast meat that my grandmother used to make. It consists of beef and steel cut oats, which are cooked, then formed into patties and fried in butter.

    Boil a chuck roast in salted water until fully cooked. Allow to cool, reserve the stock, then grind it (my grandma had a hand cranked meat grinder, I cut it into chunks and use a food processor).

    Cook steel cut oats in the stock. I generally go for about 2:1 ratio of oats to ground cooked beef. When oats are cooked remove from heat and stir in ground beef.  Let it cool a bit, then fill containers and refrigerate for use in the coming week, freeze other containers.

    Preheat a cast iron skillet (this is traditional, but cast iron isn’t strictly necessary). Put in a pat of butter, form patties about 4″ in diameter and 3/8″ thick (just smash 2-3 T into the pan). fry until brown, flip and fry the second side.

    I generally add a bit more salt while frying, depending on how well salted the stock is after cooking the beef.

    I suspect my grandmother began making this in the Great Depression in order to make beef go farther. It’s a tasty comfort food for me.

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    Do you get bored with winter fair around this time, too?

    No, I never get bored with the results of my cooking.

    (To pedant, it should be winter fare, not fair.)

  49. 49.

    Aunt Kathy

    RE Jeffery’s shrimp recipe…chicken paste? I had never heard of that. Anybody have experience with that?

  55. 55.

    Trivia Man

    Food has become much more difficult on our house. Does anyone have input or feedback on gastroparesis? Very challenging to get enough nutrition let alone lovely flavors,

  58. 58.

    sab

    @TaMara: I tried making an angel food cake 50 years ago in college. Somebody slammed a door when it was in the oven and I could hear it fall from upstairs. It ended up an inch high with the texture of hard cheese. Never again.

  60. 60.

    Barbara

    @Trivia Man: This sounds like (symptomwise) what my daughter ails from.  I think that high fat is worse for her than spice, but overall, the spices have to be at a lower level than I would favor.  We have around 20 different versions of lentil soup (she’s a vegetarian) but we tend to use an immersion blender so that they are creamy rather than chunky.  She finds adding a bit of fat — coconut cream — to be okay, but not a whole can.  She mixes a lot of things with rice, so maybe a small amount of a flavorful sauce with a lot of rice.  She makes baked apples (minus skins) a lot.

    She finds homemade teriyaki sauce to be tolerable, and combines that with air fried, marinated tofu or eggplant.

  61. 61.

    lowtechcyclist

    The recipes look great, but what’s this ‘winter’ stuff? I’ve got crocuses blooming in my yard. Winter gave up weeks ago around here.

  63. 63.

    laura

    @Betty Cracker: while you have mentioned being a mostly vegetarian household, you should check out this master bolognese sauce- it’s a project, but I try and keep a couple of quarts of pints in the freezer to use as a base for a more tomatoey sauce. It’s a flavor riot: https://www.salon.com/2020/02/29/how-to-make-an-excellent-bolognese-sauce-revealed/

    I’m meyer lemon and naval orange rich right now and just want to make and eat pound cakes and chiffon cakes and drizzle cakes, but I still want to be able to get out the door without having to butter my hips.

  64. 64.

    Trivia Man

    @Barbara: thanks

    weve already eliminated most spices, and the immersion blender is in heavy rotation. Fiber and fat are definitely deal breakers.

    ive made some  skinless applesauce that seems to be ok, ill for sure experiment with apples as the “spice”

    Smoothies with Orgain  also helps when th nutrition 

  66. 66.

    Barbara

    @Trivia Man: It’s from a Milk Street cookbook: 1/4 cup mirin, 1 tablespoon soy or tamari sauce, 2 tsp. sugar, 1 tsp. sake, plus grated ginger to taste. Cook until sugar melts, and use while stir frying air fried tofu or eggplant.  The beauty of air frying is that a little fat goes a long way.

    ETA: If you don’t like cooking with fat, consider using sous vide. No fat required, even for lean meats or fish.

  67. 67.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @lowtechcyclist: Yes, I was just thinking how lucky I am to live in a place where Spring starts in mid-February. Our Flowering Plum trees (my favorite!) are in bloom, and lots of daffodils opening up. Some warmer places than my canyon have California Poppies blooming, too. :-). The Almond tree is just finishing its bloom.

  71. 71.

    MomSense

    I haven’t been cooking much lately because I’m showing my house and the less cleaning I have to do between showings the better.  I miss it!  Cooking relaxes me.  I do love lemon, well citrus anything.  The fuck the fucking New York Times has a wonderful recipe for chicken tagine with olives and preserved lemons.  I highly recommend this recipe.  It goes really well with Tahdig (Persian crispy rice) or just basmati rice.  I think the recipe is free.

  72. 72.

    Albatrossity

    @trollhattan:

    Remain unclear on “partially inverted”

    Chemistry. Sucrose (table sugar) is a disaccharide (composed of two different sugars chemically bonded to each other). An enzyme called invertase hydrolyzes (breaks the bond between the sugars) and releases the two sugars (glucose and fructose). The resulting sugar solution is sweeter than the original. And the “inversion” is so-named because the original sugar solution and the hydrolyzed sugar solution rotate a beam of polarized light differently (one in a positive direction, the other in a negative direction). For more on this topic, the wikipedia entry is quite thorough!

  73. 73.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    Love avgolemono – I make avgolemono sauce and put it on stuffed cabbage leaves which I prefer to grape leaves.  There is also the soup that is served after midnight easter service called magiritsa which is delicious if you are adventurous and will try dishes made with offal.  Most of the recipes online do not call for enough fresh lemon juice.  Be prepared to add a lot more than the recipe suggests.

  74. 74.

    Miki

    David Chang has a new live show on Netflix – Dinner Time Live with David Chang. It’s an hour show, recorded live and unedited with David Chang cooking for friends. I’m not sure it’s worth my time (too much guests, not enough David), but some of the recipes are worth chasing down.

    Gnocchi Parisienne is one of them. I’ve successfully made gougeres a few times so I think I could do this.

    Jacques Pepin has a version where he bakes the gnocchi 

  75. 75.

    lowtechcyclist

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):

    Yes, I was just thinking how lucky I am to live in a place where Spring starts in mid-February. Our Flowering Plum trees (my favorite!) are in bloom, and lots of daffodils opening up. Some warmer places than my canyon have California Poppies blooming, too. :-). The Almond tree is just finishing its bloom.

    Here in southern Maryland, we’re still a ways behind you.  I’ve always held that March was neither winter nor spring, but a half-ass season where winter’s gone but the world still hasn’t woken up from it yet.

    Thanks to global warming, February has become what March used to be around here.  The crocuses are starting to bloom, but the daffodils aren’t there yet, and the forsythia are weeks away.  And who knows what effect our reduced winter will have on leaf-in.

  78. 78.

    gene108

    I was looking for book on the Civil War and stumbled across this: At Gettysburg or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle. A True Narrative. By Mrs. Matilda “Tillie” Pierce Alleman, 1848-1914.
    New York: W. Lake Borland, 1889.

    Took me a little over an hour to read the whole thing, and I am a slow reader. The battle as remembered by a then 14 or 15 year old girl. What’s striking is the absolute chaos around the battle for the locals. Also, click on the hyperlinks for maps.

    And also, too seems that having the support of the town helped the Union army. I didn’t realize the townspeople cooked what they could for the troops, carried water to them, and so on.

  79. 79.

    pieceofpeace

    @jeffreyw: Minor’s has a good range of broths, gravys, etc. and available from Amazon.  It originally came from a meat place (starting with an L, maybe Lobel’s?) like “Omaha Steaks,” but better.

    Now I see Nestle on their products, so not sure of the quality, or even where it’s made.

  82. 82.

    pieceofpeace

    @NotMax: And the Northern Italian Soupa Maritata, made with chicken broth, includes thin pasta and an egg mixed with cream that’s stirred in at the end, off the heat.

    Excellent for colds, flu, etc. with few ingredients and quick to make.  I’m going to try Avgolemono, do you have a favorite recipe?

  85. 85.

    sab

    @NotMax: Put me off cake baking for 40 years. I tried again and now my husband is obsessed with my cupcakes. Kind of a shame, because we are old and not so active and do not need the calories.

    I think I got the culprit recipes here from TaMara.

  87. 87.

    sab

    I love winter cooking. Cook it all day and the family has comfort food for the week plus the house is warmer. But if you rely on fresh veggies from local markets I can understand the stress.

  88. 88.

    SWMBO

    Disney World’s Whispering Canyon Cafe has a strawberry peach cobbler that is a religious experience.

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