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Finger food is a great way to get kids eating real food. These little strips of beef are juicy and tender, with a crunchy panko bread crumb crust—delicious served with the slightly sweet orange dip. Just add a colorful vegetable (carrot sticks, broccoli spears, cherry tomatoes, or bell peppers), and you’ve got a great kid’s meal.

This Italian-inspired salad uses fresh cheese tortellini as its base. (You can find fresh tortellini in the refrigerated section of your local supermarket.) It’s a fun variation on the usual pasta salad suspects. Plus, it’s superconvenient because you can fix it up to a day ahead and serve it straight from the fridge. We love the way tortellini and mozzarella taste when they’ve been marinating in Italian seasonings and how nice the colors of the broccoli, tomatoes, and olives look when they are served together. That’s why we call this salad tricolore (Italian for “three colors”)!

Pimiento cheese is the bright orange spread that Southerners are crazy for because it’s comforting and delicious and traditional. It’s most often served as a dip or spread, but it’s also good in a sandwich all by itself or as a topping on burgers. I like to make up a big batch for family gatherings and barbecues, and if I have some left over, I’ll eat it in a sandwich the next day. I’m going to give you a big recipe, too, so you can do the same.

Here’s a soup to warm your heart even on the bleakest day of winter. Use it as a guideline, and make your own innovations according to what you have on hand. The beans are very nourishing, the meat accent lends heartiness, and the greens are healthy, giving balance and color. It’s interesting how cooks of the past just knew these things instinctively.

This mock bouillabaisse is so scrumptious that you would never know it had anything “left over” in it. You do have to stop and pick up a dozen or so fresh mussels and a few clams the day you’re making it, but otherwise everything else is at hand, and you can put this together in half an hour. I am assuming, of course, that you have a good fish stock in your freezer; if not, plan to make this after you’ve had a lobster or a supper of steamed mussels and have some of that intense lobster or mussel broth left. Otherwise use clam juice, diluted by Half with water because it is quite strong.

This is a rich, comforting soup to make if you have treated yourself to a whole steamed lobster (see page 254). You should have about 2 cups of lobster broth left in your pot after steaming, so be sure to save it. Also, check and scrape out any bits of lobster flesh still lodged in the shells, and use them as a garnish.

This is really another take on the preceding vegetable soup, but it differs enough in detail to warrant a full-dress recipe. It is without question one of my favorite soups, and I usually plant a couple of rows of leeks in my garden so I can indulge myself at a moment’s notice. This is one soup in which I prefer to use water rather than stock, so that nothing interferes with the sweet, pronounced flavor of the leeks.

Steamed mussels make a lovely dish to eat alone slowly, plucking the plump flesh from the shells as messily as you like and sopping up the heavenly liquor with chunks of French bread.