Pantry Collective

Before I begin: Check your schedule for next Sunday. Are you free? Yes? Good! Plan a brunch and invite 7 of your favorite people. And then put this on the menu. Or maybe you should just skip the invites, have a brunch for yourself, and eat this all on your own. I won’t tell.

This is quite possible the most perfect brunch food I have ever eaten. Savory, cheesy, with eggs and potatoes and crunchy bits on the edges… Oh man, I wish it wasn’t all gone. I could go for another slice right now.

What’s that? You think you don’t like turnips? Well, you have two choices: don’t worry about it, because you’d never know they were there, or don’t worry about it, and don’t add them. Whatevs. Gruyère too expensive? (It is for me, too!) Get some Gouda (that’s what I used) or some white cheddar and go to town. Do not forget the fresh chives. Do not substitute the yogurt. If you can’t find plain greek yogurt, at least strain your watery Dannon overnight so it’s nice and thick by morning.

Do not halve the recipe. You will regret it. I know this from experience.

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Around Thanksgiving, when cranberries were readily available and inexpensive, I bought an extra bag and froze it so I’d have some around once they were gone for another year. For some reason supermarkets think we don’t want to eat cranberries any time of the year except late fall. While it’s true that they happen to be in season then, it’s not like seasonality has ever concerned the grocery store before (see: tomatoes RIGHT NOW).

These muffins are delightful. Have I ever made muffins from scratch before? Nope. Were these super easy? Yep. Tart cranberries, fresh orange zest, and yummy toasted walnuts, with a crunchy muffin top thanks to the sugar sprinkles. You could make blueberry muffins with the same recipe, although I would use lemon zest in that case. I might increase the amount of fruit, too - 1 1/2 cups is fine, but I think they could have handled two cups and would have been all the more full of cranberry flavor.

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This summer, my friend Shama invited John and me over for quiche. It was quite yummy (although she will do that thing cooks do where they find the one less-than-perfect thing and tell you about that when they describe the dish - I understand, I do it all the time!), and I was inspired to make my own the next weekend. We had it for dinner, but it’s a great brunch dish, too.

I used a random assortment of vegetables. Swiss chard from the CSA, zucchini, onions, mushrooms, and some de-podded edamame (is de-podded the proper term? I have no idea…). I think you can get away with whatever veggies you want in this type of dish, really. I vaguely looked at recipes, but decided quiche couldn’t be all THAT hard and kind of improvised. I did use a store-bought pie crust that I already had in the freezer, so I don’t get any “from-scratch” points here, but hey, it was delicious and easy and that is what matters sometimes.

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My mom and I were talking one day and she mentioned that she had made this blueberry cake. I was in a blueberry mood - I’ve been eating lovely fresh blueberries on my morning cereal for weeks now, and just that day I had barely managed not to purchase a humongous bushel of them at Costco. (I would have bought them if I had known about this cake! But alas, I didn’t think I’d get through them before they went bad.) Upon hearing that the cake was chock full of blueberries and not too sweet, I knew I had to have it for myself. Unfortunately, since Mom is is Connecticut, I couldn’t swipe a slice of hers - I had to make it for myself, even though I regularly swear off making baked treats since John and I don’t need to consume entire cakes ourselves.

How could I resist this cake, though? CHOCK FULL OF BLUEBERRIES. That really says it all. Right now, blueberries are plentiful and cheap and ripe and delicious. The cake really is not too sweet, although you can certainly up the sugar if you like. It would be a yummy (if somewhat decadent) breakfast. I topped our slices with a little yogurt sweetened with confectioner’s sugar and a touch of vanilla extract.

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As soon as cherries became reasonably priced we started buying them in large 2lb bags from the produce market. At first we just ate them out of the bag, pitting the cherries with our teeth and spitting the pits into a separate bowl along with the stems. And they were delicious! Fresh cherries are such a treat.

Eventually, though, I wanted to make something with these lovely cherries. I don’t own a cherry pitter and I didn’t feel like spending $14 on a tool I might use once a year, so I wound up pitting all the cherries in this recipe by hand, with the tube portion of a turkey baster and a plastic bag to protect my hand from cherry juice stains. It was a lot of work, I won’t lie - but the end result was very yummy. This dish can be eaten for dessert, certainly, but it also works as a sweet morning treat, almost like a coffee cake. It’s pretty decadent, so you’ll want to share with some friends. Or, maybe not! I won’t judge you. :)

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