In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
Kales are a mainstay of the garden from mid-fall to early spring, with their winter hardiness, and their ruddy beauty. The various leaf sizes, colors, shapes, and textures seem to be almost endless, allowing one to paint kale parterres – if one was so inclined …
One easy cake formual to memorize; (almost) endless recipes at your fingertips: a buckle cake for all seasons
Paté is a much better use of chicken livers or turkey livers than making stock (Which they make cloudy, anyway) – and you might even be able to feed them to members of the household who profess not to like liver by itself, but will …
One of my favorite cookbooks is “My Calabria” by Rosetta Constantino with Janet Fletcher. A favorite cookbook is one I want to read, which draws me into the author’s world, tell stories that are relevant to the food it presents, and provides context for recipes. …
The strawberry mousse is one of of those desserts that is so simple, so utterly reliant on the goodness of strawberries that it is either spectacular… or a total let down when made with sub-par strawberries. In which latter case, no doctoring can make it …
Blackberry time is here. The canes in the garden have started to produce, and should all go well, continue to produce for another 4 weeks. Which is good, because blackberries (and eggplants) are one of the consolations of a typical Virginia summer, especially the kinds …
Despite Thomas Jefferson’s efforts 200 years ago, olive trees don’t grow in Virginia. Erratic winter weather with nightly lows in the single digit temperatures followed by days at 70F — as well as hot muggy summers — don’t make happy olive trees. Anything below -10C …
Who hasn’t plucked and munched on a handful of wild blackberries or huckleberries while hiking? Didn’t it feel like a tiny treasure hunt, the taste of wild berries sharper, more intense than their tamed counterparts? Sure, foraging for berries takes time, but you didn’t lift …
So far, it’s been a good year for berries! A cold winter and abundant spring rains have given the plants what they want. You will not hear me complain about the past winter nor about the rains (yet, at least…) I am actually harvesting red …
When I have green tomatoes and baby ginger, I make Green Tomato Jam With Baby Ginger. Because, I have pickled green tomatoes and made green tomato relish in the past… but we don’t eat that much of it. So the pickles and the relish …