Spiced Party Nuts

Oh my. I had never experienced homemade spiced nuts before making them on New Year’s Eve. Man, they are good. The flavor of homemade versus store bought spiced nuts is incomparable. You really get a lot more bang for your buck if you can spare a few minutes to create your own (all three of these recipes takes less then 20 minutes and that’s including cooking time). They’re fresher, bolder and you have the flexibility of playing with the flavors. Say goodbye to expensive, stale, store-bought nuts and try one – or all three! – of these. Be forewarned: they’re addictive.

Note: all three recipes have slightly different cooking techniques.

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Spiced Party Nuts

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Another tomato recipe already? Well folks, we’re at that time of year when you can use all the tomato recipes you can get your hands on. And this is a great one for using up a lot of tomatoes with minimal effort and fantastic results. Best of all, this is a perfect recipe to make in large batches and freeze – it’s an easy way to capture the flavor of summer tomatoes and enjoy them when it’s cold and dreary.

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Roasted Ratatouille

Admittedly, this recipe is about one week late. Last week’s box contents were a perfect mix for ratatouille – eggplant, zucchini, garlic, onion, and parsley. But many of you, like me I suspect, have vegetables that hang around the week after and this is a perfect recipe for clearing out your refrigerator. There are a lot of variations and styles of ratatouille and everyone has their favorite. I am a big fan of roasting and I like my vegetables to remain separate and distinct, so this version is perfect for my tastes. You can serve this bruschetta-style on toasted bread with goat cheese. Or, as a side dish to fish or poultry, warm or room temperature.

As I was researching this recipe, I discovered a little tidbit about eggplants that I never knew: there are male and female eggplants! Females have more seeds and some people find them more bitter than their male counterparts. Who knew? You learn something new every day.

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Roasted Ratatouille

Compound Herb Butter

Compound Herb Butter is a simple and quick way to dress up vegetables, fish, steak, chicken or to use as a spread for bread. You can make a variety of different flavor combinations and keep them handy in the freezer for fast, last minute seasoning. This week, I made an herb compound butter with the thyme from our box, but the variations are endless (see recipe pdf for a list of variations).

The technique is simple:


Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Compound Herb Butter