Guest Chef! Charles McE. Cooks

Charles, a physicist by day and avid cook by night (a blogger all the time) needed little persuasion to guest chef at the Spouse House. His MO is all-in-one meals, especially "stu" (aka stew). For this venture, he was determined to step it up a notch with a side dish. We brainstormed ideas and came up with a cabbage salad, as I had a great quantity of crispy savoy cabbage from our Featherstone Farm Winter CSA share.

Charles stirs the stew while I mash the potatoes and parsnips, and toss the salad.

This evening, the stew included black pepper bacon, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, green beans and sundry soup making staples (onions, broth, and the like).

Guest Chef! Kate E. Cooks

Kate is no stranger to homemade dinners, favoring build-your-own themes (crepe bar, anyone?) and trading dinner duties with her sister occasionally. For the Spouse House, however, she had something different in mind.

Slicer tomatoes meet their destiny amid the carnage of floret'd broccoli.

Under her fingers, and with Alec's help, two pizzas rose: fresh tomatoes atop a white bean puree with overtones of smoked gouda and a green mountain of broccoli and arugula capped with feta and mozzarella.

Kate keeps an eye on Alec's work.

Into the oven they went, and out they came again, melted and tantalizing, ready to join my second attempt at enjoying fennel in a salad (read about my first, wildly successful attempt).

Beets work their overpowering magic on fennel, one of my struggle vegetables.

Come back soon, Kate!

Guest Chef! Thomas W.W. Cooks

Thomas came to the Spouse House kitchen with a favorite recipe that he was willing to tweak: broccoli chicken stir fry with a crunchy peanut butter sauce. We tried sauteing the onions first rather than with the broccoli and marinating the chicken for about 20 minutes before cooking it, with good results.

I also taught him how to cook beets (from Mhonpaj's Garden) in the pressure cooker.

Thomas slips the skins off beets.

Perhaps "teach" is a strong word. I am still figuring out beet-size to cooking-time ratio, and it took two tries to get them to an acceptable softness. I improvised a curry dressing to doll them up.

Thomas invited two guests. Danny brought V8 Fusion juices and we tried to guess what was in them.

Henry and Hannah read food labels.

The answer was on the bottles, of course, so we read the ingredient lists simultaneously. Of course.

Guest Chef! Kathy J. Cooks

We lured Kathy J. into our kitchen with promises of fresh, organic produce from Mhonpaj's Garden.

Kathy likes to talk while she cooks. 

She tied on her apron and jumped right in. Appetizers first: sauteed Parmesan-stuffed Swiss chard packets with a balsamic reduction and kale chips.

Swiss chard wrapped around a hunk of melted Parmesan.

 Then a pause as the polenta was prepared.

Kathy puts the finishing touches on the green beans
while Lani stirs polenta and reads To Kill a Mockingbird.

The main course was worth the wait: creamy polenta with roasted vegetable and mushroom ragout, mixed beans with grilled corn, and a caramelized red onion olive tart with a whole wheat crust.

Looks good, tastes good.

Another pause before dessert: brownies made from scratch by Kjersti with chocolate-chocolate and/or blackberry ice cream.

I asked Kathy if she followed a recipe for the ragout. She said she did, once, but has since reinvented it with every preparation. "I cook more from recipes than some of my friends," she said. "That's how you learn."

It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. 

Wendell Berry