Salsa Mexicana

Many, many years ago, Christmas 1999, to be precise, a dear friend gave me a cookbook of Salsa recipes. This book has 50 recipes for salsas. Tomato salsas, chile salsas, fruit salsas, tropical salsas, and corn salsas. So Many Salsas! Page 8 of this book is the most stained and dripped upon page in this book, because it is the page with our favorite go-to homemade salsa. Super simple to make, with easy to find ingredients, it’s a keeper. Enjoy.

Beef, Vegetable, and Wild Mushroom Soup

from Bon Appétit | January 2008

This soup gets a rich, earthy flavor from dried porcini mushrooms, which are available in the produce section of many supermarkets and at Italian markets and specialty foods stores. Perfect for a chilly day with a loaf of good, crusty bread.

Martha Washington’s Bean Soup

When I was a young wife and mom, a Texan married to a Pennsylvanian and living in Germany, cooking for my husband was complicated. He was not raised on the staple dishes of my own upbringing, and I was unfamiliar with the foods of the North. Enter Jo. Jo and her husband lived downstairs from us. She was from Pennsylvania, and besides being an avid cook, she had a desire to have someone to "mother." Jo and Roger quickly became dear friends to us, surrogate grandparents to our firstborn, and in her kitchen I learned to make the mysterious meals that my husband loved. This soup is one of our favorites. So good for a cold or rainy day. This soup is a reason to have ham- so you can have a ham bone to make soup! (And I still don't know what Martha Washington has to do with it!)