We discovered the slow cooker is by far our favorite way to cook turkey legs. When you do nothing more than add salt and pepper and cook low and slow, the meat ends up so tender you can pull it cleanly off the bone with your fingers. It tastes so delicious we end up with nothing left but a pile of shiny white bones and tendons. There are so many little bones in turkey legs a lot of it usually ends up not getting eaten. Carnivals are always full of people walking around with a carnage-covered turkey bone. The slow cooker totally solves this problem, and the flavor and texture of the turkey soar.

This super simple slow cooker pulled pork recipe is such a treat. It is one of my favorite recipes to serve at a big gathering, to take on a road trip, or just to indulge. The flavors are inspired by the Hawaiian method of roasting a pig in the ground. I’ve actually roasted whole pigs in the ground several times and it always comes out amazing. This slow cooker recipe is amazing too. It is juicy, tender, and flavorful.

I have a confession to make. My lard didn’t come out pure white. “Oh no!” you’re thinking, “I expected so much more from you!” Well, maybe you weren’t thinking that, but I was thinking it about myself. I know what went wrong, so I hope you will still trust my tips on rendering your own lard. I blame it on my 11-year-old slow cooker. It has been cooking too hot lately and I vowed to replace it soon. But we ran out of lard and I decided it was time to make it again, overheating slow cooker be darned! The result was lard with a yellow tint and porky flavor. Fat that has been cooked more gently renders into white lard with little flavor, which is perfect for baking. The more flavorful and colorful lard will still be excellent for savory applications, but will lend a pork flavor to everything.

Chicken tikka masala is chicken cooked in a creamy sauce with a mix of Indian-inspired masala spices. In this lightened-up version from Weight Watchers, tomatoes make it rich and filling and Greek yogurt gives it creaminess. It is spicy in the sense of being filled with the flavors of ground spices (there are no hot peppers). The recipe takes about 15 minutes to throw together. You can easily double it. It freezes well.

This recipe comes from a small, unassuming, and rather generic looking spiral-bound cookbook, 101 Things to do with a Tortilla. I received this book as a gift a few years ago, and at first totally dismissed it. It uses a lot of canned ingredients, which usually isn’t my thing, and it has no photos. But somewhere along the line, I decided to give it a go, and was immediately impressed. The recipes are very easy, very fast, and very inexpensive. While I’m not usually into cooking from cans, which so often contain soggy and gray produce that barely resembles the fresh version of the same, sometimes it’s just so easy! And certain foods actually taste good from a can, such as tomatoes and beans.

For this recipe, I paired the canned goods and supermarket produce with ground beef from our favorite local beef farmers, Bass Farms, who use sustainable growing techniques and minimal chemicals. They have a little farm stand off the highway just outside of the Shawnee National Forest, nested amongst rolling hills and forests of tall, bright green trees with thick undergrowth. The stand sells beef as well as a variety of summer produce, including tomatoes and peaches, and flowers too. We try to get to their stand at least once a month during the summer.