Quacking from Rappahannock (our blog)
Postcard From The Hollow
Elle est belle ma campagne… She’s is greening, pastures growing for cattle and sheep…
In the garden, things are also fattening (lettuce & mustard greens) and pushing up: fava beans up (yeah!!!!), peas 2 inches tall, potatoes, and first asparagus tip showing its purple nose yesterday.
Of course, that tip was just the vanguard. Every year, a few show up in early April, push the soil apart to see the sun, check out the weather and then just wait until they decide the conditions are just right to grow more – several looong weeks later. They also send word down to their brethren that there is no rush since it’s just the few of them (and yes, it is mostly their “brethren” since most of my plants are male).
It’s going to be a good year in the garden. Of course. Every year in the garden is a good year. Promises, broken promises, failures, joys… life.
Are you taking the slow road with me?
Spring Salads
Every spring , without fail, I become almost tear-eyed that we are eating great bowls of arugula, spinach, mache, sorrel, chicories and the very first of the lettuces – all planted last fall, all growing again with the milder temperatures… and the rain.Brave greens braving …
Spring Garden Rituals
She is here, you know. The blooming maples are splashing the hills red, the garden’s awashed in the yellows of daffodils and forsythias. Snow drops, winter aconites and reticulate iris seem a distant memory already: our hearts rejoiced in the brave little show they put …
Seasonal Flavor
I am very happy to continue writing The Seasonal Table Column for Flavor Magazine. The first 2 pages of the March-April issue Seasonal Table is shown above, with Molly Peterson’s photography. As the magazine also contains recipes from restaurant chefs, my role is to provide recipes geared at the home cook using ingredients locally in season. The March April issue includes recipes for those dishes: Continue reading Seasonal Flavor
Postcard From The Garden
Snowdrops have been blooming this week, ever so taller everyday. They make me catch my breath. Everytime. They break my heart. Everytime. They make me smile. Everytime. Morning quivers in the thorns; above the budded snowdrops caked with dew like little virgins, the azalea bush …
Chocolat, Je T’Aime.
I post a picture of pickled Jerusalem artichoke or marinated peppers (canned last summer) or wheat berry salad on Facebook. Do I get request for recipe? hahaha… However, I post – as an after thought really – a photo of an almond and chocolate cake… …
Winter Pickles: Sunroots aka Jerusalem Artichokes
Undemanding. Vigorous. Pretty in a blowzy sorts of way. Tall. You could almost be talking about me. But not quite: Helianthus tuberosus is what I mean. You know: Jerusalem artichokes, sunchokes, sunroots, earth apple, tobinambours. Look at them in that somewhat blurry September picture, towering over the arches of the cold frame – well over 8 feet tall (the arches top at 4 feet tall and the ground is sloping up, so the prospective is somewhat distorted). But tall they will grow in decent garden soil, and that only from spring to fall as they are an herbaceous perennial – impressive, no?
The bright yellow flower is cheerful and pretty too, in an unsophisticated care-free sorts of way – although small when compared to the overall plant size. Nothing like its fat headed cousin the annual sunflower.
Some people actually things sunroots are “invasive”. Well… for those of us on the Eastern North American seabord, that’s impossible: Helianthus tuberosus is native to Eastern North America (from Quebec to North Florida and as west as North Dakota). How can something native be invasive? Continue reading Winter Pickles: Sunroots aka Jerusalem Artichokes
Postcard From The Kitchen
Everyday meals throughout the year. Eating seasonally and locally. A pretty “collage”, no?