On Tuesday, March 27, from 5 – 8 pm, Chipotle in Westford will be having a fundraiser to benefit Sustainable Westford, the group behind programs in town such as the Westford Farmer’s Market, UpCycle It!, and the Healthy Kids Coalition. I don’t know about you guys, but I love Chipotle.  I’m up for any excuse to pick up some burritos for me and my husband, and quesadillas for the kids.  So I thought this week I’d share with you some accompaniments to a Chipotle meal:  a very mild, raw, fresh salsa that goes great with chips or on top of burritos, and baked cinnamon sugar tortilla chips with …

If you’re someone who likes just about any excuse to celebrate, you probably know that next Wednesday is Pi Day.  Every March 14, math geeks everywhere celebrate that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter equals approximately 3.14.  And how do we celebrate?  By eating pie and other round foods, of course! In honor of this year’s Pi Day, I’m sharing a recipe to make Pi Day Bacon and Cheese Quiche.  I love quiche, and my kids will actually eat it as well, provided I don’t put any vegetables in it.  If you’re not working under similar limitations, feel free to add some spinach, …

Before I moved to Massachusetts, I just assumed that it would be easy to get fresh fish since we would be living so close to the ocean.  However, once I moved here, I realized that what is carried in most supermarkets is no better than what was available when we lived much further from the coast. That is why I love Liberty Fish at the Westford Winter Farmers Market at Eric's.  Each week, they bring a selection of fresh fish—and I mean fresh!  Never frozen, absolutely perfect.  Great fish like this doesn’t need much; it can stand on its own.  A squeeze of lemon, a crack of pepper, a sprinkle …

Here in Westford, kids are no longer allowed to have sweet treats at school parties.  But I’m a “let’s make lemonade” kind of gal.  So, we’ll just have our sweet treats at home! I gathered up the Robinson School Destination Imagination Team to make one of my favorite treats:  chocolate dipped pretzels.  It’s fun, easy, and delicious!  Not exactly a neat recipe—chocolate and sprinkles end up all over the place, especially on kids’ faces.  But it’s all easily cleaned up and well worth the mess.  And if I can do it with six 1st and 2nd graders, anyone can! I almost always make too much melted …

If you’ve stopped by the Westford Farmer’s Market in the past few weeks, you may have noticed there is a new cheese vendor.  I love cheese, so you can imagine my excitement.  And I’m happy to report that the Nobscot Artisan cheeses are outstanding!  You can sample them at the Farmer’s Market and pick your favorite flavor to bring home. I picked a tub of chive blend—it’s a soft cheese, tangier than cream cheese, and oh so delicious.  A spinach and herb Bagel Alley bagel with Eastleigh Fresh Nobscot Artisan cheese spread on top has become my new favorite Saturday-after-the-Farmer’s-Market meal…

Happy 2012!  Hope the year is treating you well so far. Did you make any resolutions?  This stir fry will help you meet some of your goals for the year: Want to eat better?  This recipe uses whole grain brown rice and plenty of vegetables. Want to eat more organic food?  It’s easy to find organic tofu and chicken—both are available at Market Basket in Westford.  There’s even a small section of organic vegetables along the back wall near the cut melons. How about eating less meat, or adding a vegetarian meal each week?  This recipe uses less than one pound of chicken for 4 to 5 servings.  Or …

I don’t know how it started, but my family always rings in the New Year with cheese fondue.  Maybe because it’s fun, maybe because it’s delicious—whatever the reason, I always look forward to our New Year’s Eve fondue dinner. Fondues are traditionally prepared with some kind of alcoholic beverage, often white wine.  We share this with our three kids, though, and they don’t particularly like the flavor of a wine-based fondue.  So I experimented a few years back and tried an alcohol-free version by substituting chicken broth for white wine.  My family likes the chicken broth just fine—it doesn’…

Tonight marks the first night of Hanukkah—Happy Hanukkah to all of you who celebrate!  And how better to celebrate than with potato latkes?  But don’t think you need to celebrate Hanukkah to enjoy these latkes.  I fell in love with potato pancakes long before I met and fell in love with my Jewish husband—now I get to celebrate a holiday that features latkes and jelly donuts! There is some debate about whether latkes should be grated with the coarse or fine side of the grater.  I personally use the coarse side of the grater, but knock yourself out if you want to try the fine side.  The …

If you read this column with any regularity, you know I love vegetables.  I never miss Dragonfly Farm and Springdell Farm at the Westford Winter Farmers Market.  They still have so many delicious vegetables available.  It may not be the flashy tomatoes and brilliant squash of the summer months, but there are many jewels to be found, even in December, thanks to the hard work of these farmers. One way I like to serve vegetables is over fried polenta.  Sometimes I make my own polenta, so I can add herbs and cheese right while it’s cooking.  But, I do appreciate the ready-made tubes of polenta …

Most weeks, I share a recipe I’ve made many times.  Sometimes they’re even recipes passed down from my mom or grandmother.  But today, I’m sharing something new with you. Last weekend, I was wandering through the Westford Winter Farmer’s Market at Eric's and I came across a new vendor: Golden Egg Farm.  I stopped to talk, and bought a dozen beautiful (and delicious!) eggs.  I noticed they were also selling goat meat.  I’ve never tried goat meat, but I like a challenge and love to try new things, so I bought a pound of ground goat. Then I started researching ground goat.  I found plenty of …

Is anyone up for cooking yet after last week?  I hope so, and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! While I was shopping the Westford Winter Farmer’s Market, I stopped by the Foxboro Cheese booth.  Aside from delicious cheese, of which they offer many varieties, they also sell grass-fed beef.  They had stew beef—that was all I needed to see to know that I’d be making beef stew!  It’s not a quick recipe, but it’s so flavorful and well worth the wait.  Beef stew has long been one of my favorite dishes.  When I was growing up, my mom would make it many times each winter, and I’ve …

What is Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes?   You’ve got to have mashed potatoes as part of your spread.  But let’s be honest, they’re kind of plain.  Something to drown in gravy and butter—hey, nothing wrong with that.  But mashed potatoes aren’t the star of the meal. Well, all that’s about to change.  A mashed potato bar transforms the lowly potato from something that just takes up room on the plate into a main attraction!  I first had a mashed potato bar at my sister-in-law’s house a few years back.  She’s a tremendous cook, and goes all-out for holidays.  Not that anything’s she’s ever …

When Elizabeth Almeida of Fat Moon Farm wrote to let me know she has a lot of carrots she’ll be selling this weekend, I knew right away what recipe I was going to make.  This carrot soufflé is a favorite of mine.  I make it every Thanksgiving.  Even people who generally don’t like carrots tend to like this dish—it’s very sweet, so appeals to the younger crowd as well as any older folks who normally shun all veggies. Fat Moon Farm will be open this Saturday, November 19 from 12:30 pm to 6 pm.  In addition to carrots, they will also be selling winter squash and whatever greens survived the snow…

I’m sure most of you, like us, spent the better part of last week without power.  That was fun, right?  I briefly thought about featuring a “power’s out” recipe for the week, but my cooking went something like this: Dry cereal and granola bars. Everything from the fridge that was going to go bad and didn’t need to be cooked. That grilling favorite:  “Meat with a side of meat”.   You know, where you pull out all the meat that’s going to go bad and throw it on the grill.  We had kielbasa with hot dogs and pork chops.  A vegetarian nightmare! More dry cereal and granola bars. And then escape to …

Happy Halloween!  I hope you had a spook-tacular day.  But you know what’s really scary (other than a snow storm in October)?  That huge pile of Halloween candy.  If you’re anything like us, you bought way too much.  Add that to the piles the kids collect, and it’s candy overload.  Or at least it will be next week, once we get our make-up Halloween. Luckily, Kristina Greene shared a few tips for us in her Greene Westford column.  One of her ideas was to make cookies using leftover Halloween candy.  That sounded like a great idea to me, so I spent the past week trying out different cookie …

The myriad winter squashes continue to inspire my cooking.  They’re so filling, low cost, and delicious I just can’t stay away.  And as the days get colder, nothing is better than soup simmering on the stove.  The whole house smells delicious on soup days! I’ve got a house full of winter squash, but it was the pumpkin bagels that really inspired this meal.  Have you tried the pumpkin bagels at Bagel Alley at the Westford Farmer’s Market?  So yummy!  My boys remembered them from last year, and have been waiting all season for pumpkin bagels to show up again.  The first few weeks we just ate …

Is there anything better than a hot baked sweet potato?  The answer is yes:  a twice baked sweet potato!  Bake a sweet potato, scoop out the insides, mash it with maple syrup and other deliciousness, and stuff it all back inside. I tend to like my sweet potatoes in savory dishes like sweet potato and kale soup, or as a taco filling.  But this side dish is sweet.  I took my inspiration from sweet potato pie and candied yams to make a dish that really highlights the sweetness of the ingredients. And I must admit part of why I wanted to make maple sweet potatoes is because of Ben’s Sugar Shack …

Last week I featured a butternut squash recipe, this week I’m using acorn and delicata squash.  If you can’t guess, I’m a big fan of winter squash.  I love the slightly sweet, slightly nutty flavor of winter squashes, and I love how well their flavors match with all the other fall fruits and vegetables. If you’ve never had delicata squash, I’d encourage you to give it a try.  It’s smaller and skinnier than most winter squash, and when the seeds are removed, it makes a boat shape perfect for stuffing.  It’s got a delicious, sweet, delicate flavor that perfectly complements the other flavors in…

As the leaves on the trees start to change, flavors of autumn are showing up everywhere at the Westford Farmer’s Market.  Fior D’Italia is no exception.  Last week at the market, they had many fall-inspired selections available, like pumpkin ravioli, winter squash ravioli, and my favorite, sweet potato gnocchi. All of those fall flavors match really well with sage—our sage plants are still going strong despite the colder weather.  So I decided to top the pasta I got at the market with a browned butter sage sauce.  It’s a simple dish that you can throw together in about fifteen minutes.  I …

The calendar might say there are still a few days of summer left, but the Westford Farmers' Market already has plenty of delicious fall vegetables.  And in my opinion, the tastiest way to enjoy these vegetables is to roast them. Roasting vegetables brings out a delicious flavor and texture.  People who have only tried (and usually disliked) boiled brussels sprouts are often surprised to discover their almost creamy texture and slightly nutty flavor when roasted.  Roasting vegetables also makes them sweeter and less bitter—a sure bet to appeal to any veggie-phobics. This week, I combined red …