Polpettine di Manzo in Umido con Piselli

My favorite recipe for meatballs.  I only recently carried through and made the sauce as well, and it is delicious!  This comes from my favorite Italian cookbook, Biba Caggiano's Trattoria Cooking, and I hope to cook my way through from cover to-cover someday!

Wonderful Hummus

This can be served as a dip with pita bread, pita crisps, Triscuit© crackers, or colorful veggie wedges such as tomato, bell pepper, and cucumber. Serving crumbled feta cheese and olives on the side is nice too. Great party dip!

Figgy Jams

We used to go out to Uncle Pat's place in the Texas Hill Country to pick figs, resulting in the need to face abundant consequences. We now have a fig tree of our own which has started producing abundantly consequential harvests of figs, and the jam making is deliciously overwhelming! Fortunately, I have my Ball Blue Book of Preserving out with the recipe for Fig Jam marked and have found a few other amazing recipes for figgy jam.

Choose figs that are ripe, very ripe, and not quite ripe, but discard those that have gone beyond ripe and now smell punky or fermented.  Wash them and cut off any bad spots.  These recipes are for 5-pound batches of figs, so measure your fruit out into approximately 5-pound lots.  Since figs have their own natural pectin and there is no need to add powdered or liquid pectin you can vary the amount of fruit slightly, but keep in mind the size of your pot and the number of canning supplies and jars you have prepared.

The “Mothership” Tomato Salad

I learned this from Jamie Oliver- one of my favorite chefs.  As with many of his dishes, this recipe is not precisely measured- go with the flow!

Baked Ratatouille Gratin

In Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child asserts that, "A really good ratatouille is not one of the quicker dishes to make..."  Whether Julia would consider this version to be a "really good ratatouille" concerns me not.  We love it and it is not only quick to make, but rather simple as well.  We serve it with pasta and a nice crusty loaf of bread.  I'll give Julia's version a try someday, when I have more time.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

I found these delightful muffins on Pinterest when I was looking for ways to use up the stockpile of cranberries left in the freezer after the holidays.  The original recipe was great, but a bit thin on cranberries.  I want a berry in every bite!  So I adjusted here and there and ended up with just what I was dreaming of in a cranberry orange muffin.  You could use fresh cranberries- before stockpiling them in the freezer, or, if using frozen, take them out to thaw slightly before adding them to the batter.  That way the batter won’t become a frozen lump as you try to spoon it into the muffin tins.

Cranberry Streusel Pie

My Mom found this recipe years ago, and it has become a holiday staple for our family.  It's an unusual pie, in that the "filling" isn't gooey or fruity.  It's more like a loose coffee cake in a pie shell with a sweet and crunchy topping.  Not only is it a unique addition to the dessert selections, but the leftovers make a tasty breakfast....