Cooking Strategies

On hot summer days, we are huge fans of nearly instant dinners! And I thought it might be fun to share a few of our "instant dinner" tricks!

Actually, we prepare "instant dinners" all year round, but especially in summer when we have so much yummy local produce available!

Baking cookies  - one of the best parts of Christmas!  But waiting until a few days before the holiday to bake several kinds of cookies can be a recipe for holiday stress!  Cookie baking takes time.

Why not just bake one very favorite cookie at Christmas, and bake several of your other favorites NOW and pop them in the freezer.

I can tell you from personal experience there is nothing so satisfying as putting together a plate of home made Christmas cookies long after the hours on your feet in a hot kitchen have been forgotten!

It is the beginning of berry season at our favorite local farm, the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island.

We purchase almost all our produce from the farm from the beginning of June until the last day of October.  And sometimes we even u-pick our strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries!  Portland/Vancouver residents are so fortunate to have this family friendly farm located just a few minutes from downtown Portland. 

You have all heard the advice... bake ahead and freeze. Sound advice to be sure, but if you do that, you will miss all the heady smells of holiday baking when you are IN the holiday mood...right? I have a solution that might make your holiday baking easier and less stressful during the busy days right before Christmas.

I schedule a day in late November to chop, toast, grind and measure the ingredients that I plan to prepare during December: nuts, dried fruits, chocolate, coconut, dry ingredients - anything that will not spoil or deteriorate.