Spring Luncheon

The secret is in the dressing. Well, not really. The secret is a just-picked mix of lettuce and other greens such oak leaf-lettuce, Reine des Glaces, baby arugula, baby spinach, frisee, a few pea shoots, an asparagus or two (thinly sliced), sorrel, escarole, a smattering 

Butter Cookies From Brittany

That’s “Brittany” as in “French Brittany” the westernmost maritime province of France. Following my recent post on making Petits Pots de Yogurt With Strawberry Compote, Paula and Mary both asked about the golden cookie pictured next to the yogurt, and would I please provide the 

Petits Pots Of Yogurt And Strawberry Compote

Yogurt is for dessert too. After a 15+ year hiatus, I am again making yogurt. Easy, tasty, low-tech. Did I say easy? Since I much prefer eating yogurt to drinking milk, I have been making at least two quarts of yogurt a week. Love it! 

Hardening Off

It’s time to start hardening off the babies. At least, for those of us in the Northern Piedmont (and in the mid-Atlantic area). Yep, time to start hardening off the hardy annual vegetables that were lovingly started indoors. That include you people who took one 

He Likes Duck Fat

Potatoes fried in duck fat, with garlic & parsley, a very fresh green salad (with not a leaf of lettuce in sight) topped with a little bit of duck breast – a perfect lunch for this blessedly rainy Sunday. Obviously, he thought so too (and 

Making Yogurt

It only took me 15 years. I used to make yogurt. Really, I did. I had one of those nifty little machine with individual glass containers. You prepared your yogurt mix, pour it into the little glass jars, nested the jars into matching holes in 

A Potted Kitchen Garden

Do you do pot? Not that kind of pot, silly! But “pot” as in food grown in a container… Virginia Rockwell asked me in a comment on the post labeled “Eating Local in the Northern Piedmont in Winter” if I have “any tips for newbies 

Lovely Lemony Sorrel

There are indubitable signs of springs out there (besides the 2 minutes of additional daily daytime we are getting now). For once, the snowdrops are nodding their tiny white bells in the still blustery gusts of wind and then, then!, yellow IS swelling the buds 

Cream Those Sunchokes

So what do you do with that almost, but not quite forgotten vegetable, Jerusalem Artichokes or Sunchokes, freshly dug from the garden? I have read that you can eat it raw, but have not tried that yet – except for a sliver to taste: it’s 

Presto Garden Buckwheat Noodles

I don’t know about you, but when I am home working and need a quick lunch, I want it QUICK. It’s often throwing together a green salad & omelet, or fajitas (or quesadillas), or – in winter – reheating some soup and making a sandwich