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I’m pretty sure one of the reasons pasta is so popular is that it’s so adaptable! Even when there seems to be nothing in the house, I can dig out various ingredients to make something delicious. Many age-old methods of preserving food for the pantry – for example, drying, brining, smoking – develop lots of the bold umami flavors that can give much character to a dish.

Such ingredients take center stage in the pasta recipe I wrote about in this past week’s Berkshire Eagle, and in our household, we usually have most of these ingredients on hand! 

I may not be living on Easy Street, but an easy sheet pan supper can be a lifesaver on a busy day. The permutations are infinite, only bounded by your imagination, as long as you keep in mind each ingredient’s suitability for roasting.

The version I shared in this past week’s Berkshire Eagle column uses sausage, and this allows for substitutions due to myriad dietary practices, including plant-based sausages. (Be sure to follow any package instructions.) Take the idea and run with it, finding your favorite combinations! 

I think chicken soup may be universal, but with myriad variations in every corner of the world. In this past week’s Berkshire Eagle column, I wrote about how I make chicken broth, plus three different ways to make the broth into a soup. Buying a carton of broth is absolutely fine, too, especially if you’re nursing a cold and don’t want to take much effort.

I’ll be honest: when someone tells me that they unequivocally do not like a certain food, I take it as a challenge to see if I can make it in a way that they will like it. Sometimes it ends up that they eat a recipe that includes a forbidden ingredient that I don’t even know they detest! But sometimes it’s really hard to hide something because the flavor is strong or distinctive. With that in mind, I made a long-time family favorite, chicken paprikash with mushrooms, when Greta was away, at which point I realized I had never shared my recipe in a Berkshire Eagle column, so it became an easy pick for this past week!

Of course I brought food for the freezer, including five 10-packs of Dan’s favorite meatballs, when we traveled to our kids’ house for some babysitting help because of work trips. How happy I was when we arrived and they told me that their sister-in-law, who lives about a mile away and has a brand new two-week-old baby, had asked if I could make some for her freezer! However, she has a number of food issues, including being gluten-free. No matter, though. I can always find ways to accommodate whatever is necessary, and the recipe from last week’s Berkshire Eagle column is just one possibility for that! 

Our kids were not at all disappointed that I prepared for last week’s Berkshire Eagle column by testing my wild boar ragù with beef, and then with pork, yielding plenty to share! Having a portion of this sauce in the freezer provides an easy yet extraordinary dinner, or something quick and delicious on a busy weeknight. 

While the version of this recipe below uses zucchini, you could just as easily use peas, even frozen peas which are easy to have on hand. Soon after this appeared in my fortnightly Berkshire Eagle column, a friend told me how she made this with shrimp and bay scallops! I love hearing how people take an idea and make it their own, whether by design, or because of what they have in the house!

We are still enjoying this year’s pears! Besides the soup below which was featured in the Berkshire Eagle this past week, we’ve enjoyed pears in salads with blue cheese crumbles (with one fancy presentation in radicchio leaf cups), several baked goods with pears, including pear babka, and slices of pear over yogurt with granola and honey. I’m still planning to make one or two more things, perhaps a pear focaccia and/or pear preserves.

My readers surely know by now that it gives me great joy to cook for those I love. It is especially fun to cook for my granddaughter, Naomi, who eagerly eats whatever I make for her! Her dads love this recipe as it includes a vegetable and is easy for her to feed to herself. In fact, she loves it so much that the day before this column appeared in the Berkshire Eagle, Ben sent us a video of her finding and eating every last bit, and after each bite she let out a dramatic and satisfied “Aaahhh!” 

Maybe your leftovers are gone. Maybe you are tired of your leftovers. (If so, put cut up turkey and gravy in the freezer. Defrost later and put together in a baking dish with frozen peas and carrots, and top with store-bought puff pastry for a quick turkey pot pie!)

The Monday after the long weekend (for most of us) it’s back to a full week in the busiest season of the year, both because of holiday events and activities and because of any year-end items on the agenda. With this in mind, I felt that last week’s Berkshire Eagle column had to include an easy recipe!

Although I have not seen the movie, we here in Lenox, MA have a connection to The Cider House Rules because a local landmark, Ventfort Hall, a gilded era “cottage,” served as the exterior set for the movie.

In any event, the column I wrote for this past week’s Berkshire Eagle offered three recipes using hard cider. I have long enjoyed cooking with hard cider, and it’s becoming much easier to find with more and more producers of fermented beverages.

Tahini adds great flavor to so many recipes, and lately I’ve been adding it to quick breads. I often have some shredded zucchini in the freezer, and so began a series of baking efforts (from fresh zucchini, from frozen, with regular flour, with gluten-free flour) that made everyone quite happy!

This recipe was in the Berkshire Eagle this past Wednesday, and I’ve already heard from a few people who have made it! One friend even used a Turkish tahini-molasses blend because that’s what she had in the house, and now I have to explore that product!

Not too long ago, I had a student who wrote about the Maurice Sendak poem Chicken Soup with Rice, and it brought back so many memories of singing Carole King’s version with my kids when they were little!

Though delicious, rice is not my personal favorite addition to chicken soup, but I love serving roasted chicken or chicken pieces with a side that can soak up all the good juices. Then I came up with the idea of roasting the chicken right on top of the rice and wrote about it for last week’s Berkshire Eagle column, a perfect cozy meal as the weather gets cooler!

For years and years I resisted making homemade mac & cheese. As much as I love cooking projects, I hated having to boil the elbows and make a roux and then a cheese sauce before putting the casserole dish in the oven. Then people started cooking pasta in just enough liquid (such as with the pasta cooked in red wine I wrote about previously).

Now, this recipe from last week’s Berkshire Eagle column is our to-go with ribs, with fried chicken, with so many different dinner possibilities!

I know it’s so easy to open a jar of sauce for pasta. But if you have an onion and a can of tomatoes (both of which we always have in the house), you can make easily make something far better than what you can buy in the store! In my Berkshire Eagle column this past week, I wrote about a family staple which can be adapted to create myriad versions.

As I wrote below for my most recent Berkshire Eagle column, Lola was tremendously special to our family when we were young. And like me, her love language was cooking. I learned years later I could have been making bank if I had been more stubborn, because she used to give my sister, Linda, a quarter every time to get her to take a bath!

My fried chicken will never taste the same to me as Lola’s did, because there is something special about knowing someone cooked something for you with love. I hope people feel the same love from me when I cook for them.

When I was a kid, my grandmother had this gadget with a row of “teeth” that she would scrape along an ear of corn to open up all the kernels. She would say that she and my grandfather needed this because their teeth could no longer handle the skin of the kernels, but this way they could still enjoy corn on the cob. In this recipe from last week’s Berkshire Eagle column, I devised a different way to minimize this problem, cooking corn cut from the cob as if it were risotto.

Well, it’s easy as long as you have a cherry pitter! When ripe summer fruit is available, I try to make pie fairly often, and my most recent Berkshire Eagle column celebrates this seasonal treat.

Sometimes I even make enough pie crust dough for several pies, and keep it in the freezer to streamline the process. On the other hand, refrigerated or frozen store-bought crusts are quite good, and there are even gluten-free pie crusts available! This recipe adapts well to other summer fruit, so enjoy while you can!

Although I have often made quiche and other similar recipes with many combinations of produce and/or protein, I wanted to make something a bit more striking for a change. Thinking about the visual effect of Hasselback potatoes, I created a recipe for this past week’s Berkshire Eagle, that looks dramatic. Getting the squash slices to stand on end took a bit of finagling (and, of course, that’s not at all necessary for a delicious dish), but if you have company coming, arranging the slices Hasselback-style makes for a pretty presentation.

Q: How many forms of the same ingredient can I use in a single recipe?

A: My most recent Berkshire Eagle column uses peach yogurt as the base of a marinade for chicken, peach jam to make a glaze, and grilled peach halves as garnish (although this last part is optional if you want to make things easier).