German goulash soup (Gulaschsuppe)

German goulash soup (Gulaschsuppe) is a hearty and warming stick-to-your-ribs meal for a winter day. 

Pennsylvania Dutch ham, green beans, and potatoes

 

This is a humble, simple, and budget-friendly dinner made with leftover ham, yellow potatoes, and green beans that is perfect for a chilly winter evenings. 

Potato and spinach curry

A flavorful vegetarian curry dish made with Indian spices, yellow potatoes, and fresh spinach. This curry is a delicious way to enjoy potatoes and a meatless meal.

Turkey and summer vegetable soup

Ground turkey, diced tomatoes, fresh garden herbs, and summer vegetables make a scrumptious and hearty summertime soup. 

Dill pickle potato salad

Creamy potato salad filled with dill - dill pickle juice, chunks of dill pickles, and dried dill - is perfect for the dill pickle lovers in your life!

Italian sausage, potato, & pepper sheet pan dinner

Sheet pan dinners are all the rage these days and for very good reasons. They are super easy to make, eat, and clean-up! One of my favorites is this Kielbasa, cabbage, & potato version. We have that one relatively frequently. 

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This one with Italian sausage reminds me of foil packets we sometimes make for camping - full of sausages, potatoes, and peppers (sometimes onions, too). 

We have had such a very long and cold winter this year. It even snowed a little this morning again and it's almost May! I'm ready for things that make me think of warmer weather and this type of dish reminds me of campfires and grilling. 

It makes for a simple yet flavorful dinner or lunch for about two to three people, but can easily be adjusted for more just by adding more of what you like. I like to use two sheet pans to help everything brown up nicely instead of steaming. However, you can try to put everything on one if you prefer.

Sheet pan kielbasa, cabbage, & potato dinner

This easy meal filled with smoky sausage, sweet carrots, cabbage, and potatoes and drizzled with a maple, mustard, and apple cider vinegar sauce is a simple and filling weeknight dish! 

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I've been making this dinner since I first got inspiration over at the amazing Budget Bytes about a year ago. I've changed it over time and also scaled it up a bit to feed our hungry family of four and it remains one of my favorite simple and budget-friendly dinners. 

I'm trying to post more frugal recipes on my blog lately as being a frugal mama is where I am these days. Since we are getting close to St. Patrick's Day, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots tend to be on sale and even more budget-friendly than usual, so this is a great time of the year to try out this meal. It's also very adaptable - you can easily add more or less of the vegetables that you wish. 

You can use red or russet potatoes instead or yellow. I use turkey kielbasa (a great Aldi find!), but you can use your favorite kind. This meal will feed about four people depending on age and hunger level.

Salt and vinegar potato wedges

If you like salt and vinegar potato chips, you'll enjoy these roasted potato wedges infused with salt and vinegar flavors.

Turkey and apple cheddar-biscuit pie

This meal is full-on autumn comfort food at its best! Turkey, apples, and vegetables in a cider gravy all topped with light and buttery cheddar biscuits and baked until golden and bubbly. 

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It has easily become a new favorite of ours. This recipe is a modified version of a similar dish in one of my favorites books: Apples of Uncommon Character: Heirlooms, Modern Classics, & Little-known Wonders. It's not a cookbook, but a beautiful book all about apples that also has 20 apple recipes in the back. I sometimes dream of living on an apple orchard one day and have a bit of an obsession with all the different varieties and with apple recipes. 

This dish is delicious as is, but I think different vegetables would also work very well such as replacing the celery with celery root, replacing the potato with turnip or rutabaga, or even adding a bit of cubed winter squash like butternut. This recipe will serve about four to five people.

Green bean and red potato salad

Summer green beans and baby red potatoes come together in this light and delicious salad. It's perfect for a cookout, picnic, or summer dinner side dish. 

Sweet corn chowder

Is everyone enjoying lots of sweet corn right now? I was happy to see sweet corn arrived to the farmers' market recently. It's a sure sign that you are at the peak of summer and I think it's something most people look forward to each year. 

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We love to eat sweet corn on its own with some butter and salt, but I also like to make a batch of corn chowder. Surprisingly, I haven't posted my corn chowder recipe on here yet, so it gave me the perfect opportunity to use this fun corn soup bowl. Corn chowder really highlights the sweetness of corn. It's simple in flavors and ingredients to let the corn shine.

This recipe will make enough for about four servings as a main dish. We had our soup for dinner with some garlic bread. It was delicious! It also makes a nice lunch (we will be taking the leftovers to work).

Smoked white fish chowder

Spring has been slow to get started here this year. In fact, it's still be rather chilly most days. I've yet to retire my jackets and sweaters and heavier jammies and it's almost May. 

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On a chilly and damp day, a thick, creamy, and hearty chowder with a side of buttery bread is a perfect meal to me. This chowder uses a firm smoked white fish for the protein and it's paired with lots of vegetables and a creamy broth. Capers and a dash of hot sauce help add that extra something to really bring this chowder together.

This soup will serve about four people, especially with a side of crusty bread. I made a spelt sourdough to go with our chowder and it was a perfect companion for sopping up all the leftover broth. I'm working on perfecting my sourdough skills and will probably begin sharing more recipes using sourdough starter in the near future. 

You should be able to find smoked white fish in most larger grocery stores near the meat and deli section (probably near the smoked salmon).

Chorizo and potato tacos

Slightly spiced sausage and potatoes are cooked together with garlic, smoked paprika, and a touch of cayenne and then topped with all sorts complimentary toppings. 

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Tacos. Need I say more? Doesn't everyone love taco night? I know it's always been one of my favorite dinners. And while we love a good regular beef taco, we also love to try new taco fillings.

I don't really remember when we first starting making these chorizo and potato tacos, but ever since we first tried them they've remained a favorite in our home.

This recipe is for about 8 tacos, but it's quite simple to double it for more people. This is the amount I make for just me husband and I. 

The toppings below are some of my favorites for these tacos, but others like shredded green cabbage and avocados are also a perfect choice.

Hot German potato salad

We celebrated Oktoberfest a little late this year, but that's OK because we still got it in before October faded away. 

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As part of our dinner we had delicious sausages from Spar's European Sausage and Meats, German sweet and sour red cabbage, and this Hot German potato salad along with some German beers. All in all, a very tasty meal! I can't believe that October is almost over. October and November are my favorite months of the year and I'm trying to make sure I enjoy them fully (before the craziness of December takes over everything).

This potato salad recipe is just slightly adapted from The German Cookbook. Since receiving this book for Christmas last year, I have really come to love it and the process of learning more German recipes. If you are at all interested in German cooking, I highly recommend it! 

When my husband tasted this potato salad he said it reminded him of what his grandparents would serve when he was a kid. I previously posted the cold version which we also enjoy. This recipe will make enough to feed about four people as a side dish.

Cold German potato salad

I remember eating German potato salad at family and other picnics as a kid and not being a big fan. I'm pretty sure that most of it came from a can and I remember it being very sour tasting. 

 

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There's a hot and a cold potato salad recipe in The German Cookbook that I've been waiting to try. This is the cold version and it's reminiscent of the potato salad I remember, but better. I am a big fan of potatoes and vinegar together, so I was fairly confident that I'd enjoy the homemade version and I was correct. 

 

The salad would be perfect for all the upcoming summer picnics because it lacks dairy and gets better the longer the potatoes soak in the vinegar and other flavors. This recipe will serve about four people as a side dish, but you can easily double or triple it for a larger crowd. 

 

Hopefully you can find some good sweet German mustard in your grocery store or specialty foods shop. We buy it at Spar's European Sausage Shop (which, by the way, is an excellent place to pick up something to go with this salad).

Creamy potato and ramp soup

Do you forage? Foraging is something relatively new for me and it started when my husband introduced me to the ramp. 

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These little wild alliums are ready to eat in the spring and are fleeting like the spring wildflowers. They are delicious, pungent, and fill your house with the smell of onion and garlic. My husband and I were recently featured in our local paper in an article and recipe on foraging, specifically for ramps.  

This is the same recipe I wrote for the paper and since my husband brought home some ramps the other day, I figured I should make this soup again and get it up on my blog. 

While foraging is a wonderful way to get close to nature and your food, you must remember three important rules: 1) know what you are picking and eating; 2) only take a few (you don't want to decimate a patch); and 3) no trespassing. 

Ramps are often over-harvested. We get ours from a family members land and there are loads and loads of them that they've been sustainably harvesting for many years. Don't dig up whole patches of ramps or large clumps, or harvest them from small patches. Or, try using just the greens until you find a place to get the bulbs. 

This recipe will make a large pot of soup - enough for about 4-5 large bowls. You can make it in the slow cooker (which I did for this version) or on the stove (which I did in the article). 

 I served it topped with some finely sliced ramp greens, but you can also top it with some sour cream, minced parsley, and/or even a little cooked and crumbled bacon.

Pork chop and sauerkraut casserole

An easy and flavorful dinner for two - pork chop and sauerkraut casserole bake is perfect for an autumn evening meal.

Turnip and Yukon gold potato gratin

In my experience, most people don't get very excited about turnips. But, I'm not one of those people. In fact, I get pretty excited for all root vegetables and root vegetable season. 

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Look at those lovely large pink turnips in the photo (I used much smaller ones in this dish). This time of year the food blogs are filled with recipes featuring pumpkins, other winter squash, and apples - rightfully so... but you don't see as many featuring turnips, rutabagas, beets, celeriac, parsnips, radishes, etc..

I almost start to squeal with delight when we are walking through the farmers' market and cute little white baby turnips begin to make their first appearance. I dream of the day when we have land for a garden and in my mind, my garden is almost exclusively full of root vegetables, winter squash, and herbs.

I never even had turnips until the first Thanksgiving I was dating my husband. We were going to a dinner at his aunt and uncle's and she told him that we could "bring the turnips." I was in shock. Tunips?! I had never even tasted a turnip before, let alone cooked one. 

So, I searched the internet and found a recipe for roasted turnips. After searching the grocery store for turnips, I bought some, made the recipe, and hoped for the best. Well, they were delicious and everyone enjoyed them. Now that I make Thanksgiving dinner, I almost always have a turnip side dish to try to convert more people to turnip lovers.  

This gratin is lightened up because it doesn't contain any cream - although this dish is probably still a little heavy for a Thanksgiving side dish for me.

Baked potato soup

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I am a happy girl when I can begin to make soups, stews, and heartier foods again. The smell of fall is in the air and the leaves are beginning to turn and fall onto the ground here in western New York. In fact, the weekend actually had a bit of autumn temperatures, which was the perfect reason to make some soup. 

I've been wanting to make a baked potato soup for a while and now that I have, I only wonder what took me so long. It's a delicious - stick to your bones - kind of soup. Perfect for crisp weather. Plus it's very simple to make. This soup is definitely going to be a popular dish at our place this winter.

This recipe will make a large pot of soup - about 4-5 large bowls. Please feel free to use vegetable stock in place of the chicken stock for a vegetarian version. Enjoy any leftovers for an easy lunch at work the next day.

Lemony potato and pea salad with mint

I threw this potato and pea salad together one night to enjoy with some lamb burgers (topped with grilled eggplant, feta, and yogurt). 

 

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I wanted something that would compliment the Greek flavors of the burgers and I always love potato salad with burgers, too. I had baby red potatoes on hand and fresh mint growing in my herb garden and after a few minutes of thought, this salad was born. It came together very quickly and easily. 

 

The dressing is pretty light compared to many potato salads and it is very flavorful and tasted of spring. It paired very well with the lamb burgers and was good for a snack the next day as well. I made a relatively small batch of this salad, probably enough to serve about four people as a side dish. You can easily double the recipe to make more.