Author: Carolyn Bass

Welcome to Cousin Cuisine

Welcome to Cousin Cuisine

It’s said that if you go back far enough, we’re all related. That feels true on many levels, particularly when you see someone walking down the street who reminds you of a beloved aunt or long-gone grandparent. We are one big family going about separate lives on a giant ball of earth we call home. This blog is for all of us, but brought to you by one segment of our greater family: The grandchildren of one amazing cook originally from Iowa, Elsie Mae Brown Marshall. Elsie raised seven children, five of them during the depression years. While her...

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Southwest Cucumber Salad

Southwest Cucumber Salad

What do you do when you miss a couple of days at the vegetable garden and your cucumbers look like this? And when your tomatoes have not yet ripened to make gazpacho with those cucumbers? I have that problem right now. Because of the late frosts in our region of North Carolina, our garden started late. In previous years we were overflowing with tomatoes by now and I’d have already made several batches of gazpacho, tabouli and other great tomato/cucumber combinations. I harvest most every day and have already put up two gallons of dill pickles. We had a couple of days of...

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Tarragon Chicken Pie

Tarragon Chicken Pie

(Based on an English recipe by Dan Lepard at GoodFood) My friend Karen L sent me this luscious sounding recipe from a British website and I tried it out on a rainy October night. The original recipe by Dan Lepard called for vermouth, but with none on hand, I used a dry white wine. I might try this again with vermouth, but it was fabulous with the white wine substitute. For the crust I used the recipe of my dear friend Candy Pearsol, who learned it from her mother Virginia. (I’ll post Candy’s crust recipe another time.) My grandmother made fabulous...

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