Creamy poppy seed dressing

A cool and creamy salad dressing with poppy seeds that goes perfectly with big spring and summer time salads. 

Quick pickled red onions

Tangy, sweet, spicy, and crunchy, these quick pickled red onions add a burst of flavor to tacos, burritos, salads, and more. 

Hot and spicy refrigerator turnip pickles

Hot, spicy, tangy, and delicious -- these refrigerator turnip pickles add terrific flavor to any meal or relish tray!

Eggplant and chickpea fritters with herb yogurt sauce

Eggplant, chickpeas, fresh herbs, and spices come together to make these tasty little fritters. They are completed with an herb yogurt sauce and are a lovely vegetarian summer meal. 

Deli-style refrigerator dill pickles

Easy and crispy deli-style refrigerator dill pickles are a delicious thing to have in your fridge this summer. They are perfect for sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, and much more. 

How to make Greek dressing

Homemade Greek house dressing is a perfect salad dressing for summer vegetables. It's easy to make and adds delicious flavor to your salads, chicken, and more. 

Slow cooker cranberry apple butter

Smooth and tangy and lightly spiced cranberry apple butter is cooked in the slow cooker and then stored in freezer containers to use throughout the year. It's perfect on biscuits, toast, sourdough bread, swirled into oatmeal, and more.

Parsley and sage walnut pesto

Fresh summer herbs make for a delicious pesto that you can use on pasta dishes, meats, pizzas, vegetables, and more. This pesto is bright and vibrant and perfect for using up some garden herbs.

Small batch rhubarb jam

Thick, sweet, and full of that sour-tangy rhubarb flavor, this simple rhubarb jam requires only rhubarb, sugar, and water. It's a delicious jam for sandwiches, biscuits, crackers, and more.

Ramp greens pesto

Bright, vibrant, and full of onion and garlic flavor, this ramp greens pesto is a delicious way to add spring flavor to pasta, pizza, chicken, and more.

Blueberry ketchup

Jazz up your burgers, steaks, fries, and more with this homemade sweet and tangy blueberry ketchup!

Oven roasted apple butter

Disclosure: This post is sponsored on behalf of #appleweek. Our generous sponsors, Swiss Diamond, Envy Apples, Imperial Sugar, Nordic Ware, Rodelle Vanilla, Flahavan's Irish Oatmeal, Nairn's and The Spice House have provided us with products for recipe creation and a giveaway for our readers. As always, all opinions are my own.

 

Apple butter is taken to another level when you slow roast it in the oven. The apple flavor condenses and you get a hint of a caramelized flavor for the most amazing and deeply apple-y apple butter! 

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This is my first recipe for #AppleWeek! I'm so excited to join this event this year because as my readers know I have a bit of an apple obsession. Stay tuned all week for bushels of fabulous apple recipes! 

This apple butter was made in this Swiss Diamond XD Nonstick Roasting Pan. I am so excited to be able to add this roasting pan to my cookware collection. According to Swiss Diamond's website, their XD coating features not only a new nonstick diamond-reinforced coating formulation, but also an advanced PFOA-free and eco-friendly production process. 

The apple butter in this recipe reduces down a lot of leaves apple residue on your pan, but clean-up was so simple - just soapy water and a sponge and it wiped right off. This roasting pan is going to be perfect for our family all year round for making roasts, chicken, and even casseroles. Don't forget to enter to win one of the awesome prizes from our sponsors!

I lightly spiced this apple butter to really highlight the apple flavor and not overwhelm it with too much spice. I also did not add any sugar as I used sweet apples. If you use more tart apples, or want a sweeter product, feel free to add some brown sugar to the recipe after it is pureed. This recipe will make about 2-1/2 cups of finished apple butter. 

I left one small jar in my refrigerator and froze another two jars for later. Any sweet apple will do in this recipe. I used Gala apples and left them unpeeled for even more apple flavor, but you can peel them for an extra smooth apple butter. 

I like my apple butter spread onto biscuits or toast, or even used to make apple butter oatmeal muffins.

Pickled quince

Do you have quince growing in your region? We can find it here in Western New York from a couple local farms in the fall and occasionally in the grocery stores in the fall and winter. They are a very hard fruit that needs to be cooked before eating. 

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A few years ago my husband and I discovered this old Bing Crosby Christmas song "Christmas Dinner Country Style" (if you've never heard it, check it out - it's great) on a holiday album we bought. I absolutely love the song, and then became kind of obsessed with the idea of pickled quince at a holiday table. Lucky for me I have a copy of Ripe and it contains a whole section on quinces and also a recipe for pickles. 

I actually made these pickles last year at this time, but ran out of time to post them before quince season was over.... so I saved them until now. Now is the perfect time to scout out some quince and make a batch of pickles to serve along with your holiday roast, turkey, or ham. 

These pickles offer a unique and lovely compliment to roasted meats - sharp, sweet, tart, and delicious. They will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks and indeed I'd recommend making them at least one week ahead of when you want to eat them so they become extra flavorful.

Grandpa's hot dog sauce

A meaty and hearty chili sauce is a delicious way to top your summer hot dogs. This recipe is a family favorite and one we look forward to each year.

Salted preserved lemons

I've declared 2014 the year of fermentation! I've tried my hand at sauerkraut and received The Art of Fermentation for Christmas, so I'm slowly building my knowledge and experience in this technique. Salted preserved lemons are something I have been wanting to try for a while. 

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I have never actually eaten them before, but after learning about them, they stuck in my head. I love Moroccan spices, so I've been imagining the wonderful flavor that these lemons will impart to couscous, tagines, and much more. I'm super excited for them to finish their fermenting and curing process so I can give them a try!

Citrus is in season now, so it's time to get a jar of these going. They will take about 4-6 weeks to be ready to eat, but will last for a year or more in the refrigerator. 

You eat the rind, so you'll want to get organic lemons. I used regular lemons, but many people recommend Meyer lemons. There are tons of "recipes" for preserved lemons out there and as far as I can tell, there's no prescribed amount of salt - it seems to range from 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup per quart jar. For this recipe, I used a little under 1/3 cup of sea salt and 7 organic lemons.

Sauerkraut two ways

Homemade sauerkraut can be made in small batches using a Mason jar and a few other items.

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I tried a couple batches of sauerkraut this fall and recently pulled them out of the back of the fridge to give them a smell and taste. They are good, and definitely have a funk that you expect from ferments and sauerkraut. I think that I still have a way to go before "perfecting" my ferments though. 

I'm finding that so much depends on the temperature when you start the ferment. You need to check it to make sure it's still bubbling and that it's not getting too warm (should be room temperature). I have used the recipes in Nourishing Traditions as a baseline for making my sauerkraut. These recipes make one quart and use 1 medium head of cabbage to two tablespoons of sea salt. 

It can come out a bit salty and I'm hoping to find ways to use less -- you definitely don't want to use a super fine grain salt, it will be too much. I discovered that you can use reCAP Mason jar lids to turn a Mason jar into a fermenting crock (find instructions here). 

It's great! Plus when you finish the fermenting process, you can use them to cover the jars in your fridge, or replace them with a regular Mason jar lid and use the reCAPs to make more ferments. They are also great for using your jars to make salad dressing, syrups, etc. that you can easily pour and store.

The two sauerkraut recipes I made are for jalapeno kraut and caraway kraut. Both make 1 quart of sauerkraut. I'm hoping that these recipes will inspire more people to try fermenting and preserving foods.

Roasted strawberry balsamic vinaigrette

I had some farm fresh strawberries left that were quickly getting soft on me. Originally, I was going to use them in this salad for a light dinner one evening. But since they were getting soft, I decided to turn the strawberries into the dressing. And it was a good idea! 

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The strawberries were very sweet and I decided to roast them until they become very soft and juicy. I added some balsamic vinegar, grainy mustard, and a bit of strawberry jam for extra sweetness. I used it to top a salad full of baby spinach and greens, red onion, toasted almonds, crispy bacon, and feta. It was such a fresh and delicious dressing and salad with a perfect combination of flavors. 

We try to eat a salad dinner at least once a week in the summer, especially on the evenings when I have my boot camp class. Have a mentioned this class before? Boot camps seem to be becoming all the rage recently. I've been taking one for about 8 weeks now and I absolutely love it. It's been a great way to get me to do more cardio exercise. Plus, the class is at a school right down the road from me so I can walk to and from class - a definite bonus. But after I get home, I don't want a heavy dinner to eat after working out, plus it's later than we would usually eat dinner. This recipe will make about 2 cups of dressing.