Cherries: Door County Cherry Blintzes

Photo by Douglas Detert

Real Door County cherries are a mix of sweet and sour and add a bit of bite to the sweet and creamy flavors of the traditional blintz. If you want to get extremely Wisconsin with the whole operation, substitute shredded cheese curds for the farmer cheese, or get good farmer cheese from Hook's.

Cherry blintzes take a little bit of time and work to assemble, though the cherry topping could be substituted with warmed-up cherry preserves or pre-made cherry pie filling to save some time. My favorite cherry preserves are from Slack's and can be purchased here. For recipe, click on blog title or "read more"

Online cooking resources

A huge amount of cooking information is online. My favorite sites are searchable or at least indexed. In my opinion, the best food site currently up is Epicurious because of the wide search functions by ingredient, seasonality, food restrictions, and meal type.

Another good general resource is the BBC Food site that has a great information on ingredients and cooking techniques (including brief how-to videos on each).

The Vegetarian Resource Group has a listing of obscure food additives and ingredients. Look here to find out if acid casein or lipase are vegetarian, vegan, or neither.

Check out the links to the right and leave comments if you have ideas for blog links I'm missing.  I love good photography, clear recipes, and new ideas.

Sweet Potato: Sweet Potato Hash

Photo by Emily Mills

Sweet potatoes are good for you and good in savory dishes with enough salt or other seasonings to balance out the sugar.  This is one of the really simple ways to make sweet potatoes and could work for breakfast, lunch or dinner. A sunny side up egg on top is a great way to add protein and make a whole meal. I use grapeseed oil because it has a light flavor and holds up to high heat without breaking down (it has a high smoke point), but vegetable or canola oil would work too.

For the botanist nerds: sweet potatoes are the only edible member of the morning glory family Convolvulaceae and are not related to yams.

Hash:

2 large sweet potatoes, cut into 1" cubes

1/4 cup grapeseed oil

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp fresh black pepper

Heat the grapeseed oil over medium-high heat in a skillet. Add the sweet potatoes, onions, salt and pepper.  Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are tender.  There should be some caramelization of the onions and sweet potatoes. Add more salt to taste.

Welcome!

Welcome to Three Variations, my attempt at creating an online cookbook of all my recipes plus any other food ideas and links I happen to think are interesting. I became a vegetarian in 1992 as a young teenager and have more or less stayed vegetarian ever since. (More being my year of eating mostly vegan food, less being my realization that I'll never cut gummy worms out of my diet forever.)

When I became vegetarian, my mother told me this was my choice but that I'd have to cook any additional food beyond the family dinner if I wanted special meals. So, I slowly started to teach myself how to cook. My mother has also heavily contributed towards my cooking knowledge over the years.  Safe presents for us can always be found at Orange Tree Imports in Madison, WI, a specialty cooking store that feels like a magic toyland of ravioli crimpers and Swiss knives. I've also picked up ideas over the years from cookbooks, food science books, and eating out a little too much for my budget around my home city or when traveling.

This blog is called "Three Variations" because I'd like to present at least three ideas for recipes based on each ingredient. This will hopefully challenge me if I don't yet have three recipes based on an ingredient and works the way I think a lot of us think at the grocery store: "Oooh! They have star fruit! I'd love to try star fruit! What the #!@%$ should I do with a star fruit?" This blog will hopefully answer this question eventually. Not immediately, because I'm not a huge fan of star fruit, but eventually. Thanks for checking in here.  Please subscribe or visit again- I'll try to have new content as fast as my friends will let me feed them.

Oranges: Blood Orange and Spinach Salad

Photo by Emily Mills

Winter is a good time to experiment with oranges in recipes. They're cheap, in season, and a good source of Vitamin C. This recipe is a variation of the classic spinach, fruit, and nut salad with vinaigrette dressing. Use a store-bought vinaigrette if time is an issue. Other oranges could be used, but blood oranges are the most festive-looking against the green spinach around Christmas.

Salad:

6 cups washed spinach

1 blood orange

1/2 red shallot, minced

1/2 cup walnuts

Vinaigrette:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh orange juice

1/4 tsp salt

Peel the blood orange and separate segments. Remove any seeds and cut segments into thirds. Toast walnuts over medium head until lightly brown. Add all ingredients to a bowl and toss.