Delaware Girl Eats

Crustless Mini-Quiche Squares Make a Perfect Brunch Dish

Make brunch even easier with these crustless mini-quiche squares your guests will love This year as winter concludes and perhaps like no other year, folks are dying to get together, start mingling and start enjoying good food together. Here on the East Coast, we've enjoyed several springlike days that have heightened the anticipation. You can almost feel the Cabin Fever. This is when we can start enjoying the company of friends again. And what better way to do so than an informal brunch get-together. As a host, I feel that the food for these needs to hit all the buttons... Read more →

Enjoy Parrozzo d'Abruzzo for a Delicious and Authentic Italian Dessert

Here on the last day of January, there's still just enough time to squeeze in making an Italian dessert traditionally prepared for the holidays but enjoyed year round -- Parrozzo d'Abruzzo. This chocolate glazed, citrus flavored, dome-shaped almond cake is typically Italian in that it's denser than cakes normally are in the US and is not overly sweet. It offers a delicious conclusion to a winter meal or can be a lovely snack to be devoured in front of a warm fire. I chose this dessert as a fitting start to the new year because it's the first dish I've... Read more →

Lasagna Rollups Inspired by” Midnight Chicken” for Cook the Books

Lasagna rollups offer an easy to serve dinner and make for comforting winter treats Just when you least expect it, Winter throws you a curve ball. After weeks of spring-like temperatures here in Delaware, suddenly temperatures plummeted last week and it snowed twice in five days. While the snowflakes were lovely to watch floating down, the shoveling aftermath was not fun. Plus, Delaware rarely sees any appreciable snow so many folks were unprepared for the drill. Luckily, I was raised in Northeast Ohio where it snows all winter long, so I was able to fall back on long habits to... Read more →

Fruitcake CAN Make the Holidays

Here's a fruitcake that will change your mind about this favorite holiday treat Fruitcake is such a maligned holiday dessert. Over the years, it has been transformed from the holiday baked gift of choice to a caricature of its former self, now viewed as a rock-hard, thick, dense brick to be shunned not embraced. But this doesn’t have to be so as the fault lies in the recipes not the yummy ingredients that make up this treat. What can be wrong with a dish made up of figs, dates, candied orange peel, glaceed cherries, pecans and walnuts? Not much in... Read more →

Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins for Post-Turkey Day Treats

Give Thanksgiving one last hurrah with these great pumpkin cheesecake muffins Yes, Thanksgiving is over, but there’s still time to squeeze in baking some Fall-ish goodies before the Christmas onslaught begins. My family always gathered in the traditional way for Turkey Day, replete with roasted bird, stuffing, mashed potatoes & gravy and of course green beans. This year however, being a much smaller group, the plan was to go totally avant garde with grilled steaks and a vegetable casserole. The one traditional component we couldn’t bear to part with was a pumpkin dessert. However, here too we approached it a... Read more →

When Comfort Counts Go for Pasta, Spinach and Ricotta Casserole

Nothing beats a comfy pasta casserole on a chilly Fall evening One of the most enjoyable aspects of cooking is the creativity it can unleash. Missing a particular ingredient for a recipe? Swap it out with something else. Same thing for an ingredient that you might not care for. Substitution can take the cook down many roads. Another form of creativity is taking a random assortment of ingredients and transforming them into an enticing dish, whether or not it absolutely adheres to the written recipe. Then too there is the selection of ingredients themselves. I enjoy meandering the aisles of... Read more →

Apple Desserts are just the thing for Fall

It's time for apples galore. Here are just a few of my most recent concoctions When I was growing up in Northeast Ohio, apples were a key part of my family’s Fall routine. We had the remains of an apple orchard on our property as did our neighbor next door. He kindly allowed us kids to pick as much as we wanted and hardy a fay went by in apple season that the family didn’t enjoy some kind of apple dish – pancakes, salads, pies, cakes and just unadorned to be bitten into with gusto were all part of the... Read more →

timballo di zucchini

The current selection of Cook the Books is 97 Orchard, an edible history of immigrant families in NYC. I enjoyed the reading, particularly about the Italian family. The passage that really resonated with me was "No people are more devoted to their native food than Italians and Italian groceries are filled with imported edibles that flourish in the different colonies of the Americas....The prices or the imported goods is a drain on the purses of the patrons and they wearily try to get the same satisfaction from American-made substitutes, which have the same name and appearance but never the same... Read more →

Swiss Chard and Leeks Gratin

A nearly-vegetarian gratin featuring Swiss Chard, leeks and other goodies along with Italian sausage The Blue Ridge Mountains. A place of legendary lore, stunning vistas and fascinating people. Plus it's the setting for our latest Cook the Books reading selection, "Honeysuckle Season" by Mary Ellen Taylor. The narrative of this book jumps back and forth from Wartime 1943 to the current day, chronicling the lives of women from both those generations. It recounts how the protagonist, Libby, discovers an overgrown, abandoned greenhouse on an eerie Virginia estate where she has been employed to work, and the secrets it contains. I... Read more →

Celebrate March 8th's Festa Della Nonne with Lemon Ricotta Torte

Lemon Ricotta Torte captures tastes of all things yellow including lemons and citrus flavors It’s almost here and I’m ready to celebrate International Womens’ Day on March 8th. In Italy it is known as the special feast, Festa Della Nonne. Similar to Mother’s Day, this day is set aside to honor women for their sacrifices, achievements and friendships. Women are invited to enjoy themselves in the company of friends to eat, drink and be merry with wine and cake, while men are expected to carry the household workload, or so they say. The Mimosa flower was designated the feast’s official... Read more →