In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
Lemon Verbena A small shrub from South America, lemon verbena (Aloysia triphylla) is a delightful plant in the garden. Because it is a tender perennial, I grow two mother plants in pots that come in the house or the greenhouse in winter, and make cuttings …
On July 2, The Washington Post (business section) had yet another article on the latest salmonella scare. Is it tomato? Or is something else? The FDA still does not know. Not a great confidence builder in the FDA or our industrial food system now, is …
I love to the capture the essence of fruit in fruit based-desserts, but I don’t care to bake in summer – well, not too much. I also detest wasting food. So here we are, late June, and the apples need to be thinned, or they’ll thin themselves (and what a waste that will be!) or the fall harvest won’t be quite as good. In late June, those thinnings are of honorable size, perfectly good for apple sauce actually – but just not fully ripe. So what’s a girl to do (beside apple sauce?): Minty Green Apple Sorbet, a simple-to-make concoction, delicate and refreshing – definitively a summer dessert!
I normally make that sorbet in the fall with green apples (green as in color, not maturity) such as Granny Smith. They give the sorbet a faint green color that’s just lovely and the tartness that comes through is just wonderful. But this is June (well July, but I made the sorbet in June) and there is no local Granny Smith apples to get until the Fall. So big thinnings it will be. To be sure it worked, I made the sorbet three times. Since the household comments were positive, here is the recipe. (If you try it, let me know how you like it) Continue reading When you Have Green Apples, Make Sorbet
It is so easy to be a locavore in summer – it’s possible to do it almost without having to think about it – and to be almost totally locavore. Vegetable are abundant, fruits are in season. From the garden I am harvesting the last …
Most people who grow strawberries – or who pick-them at pick-your-own operations or even frequent Farmers’ market – are familiar with the so-called June strawberries. They bear over a few weeks from mid/late May to mid/late June here in the Northern Piedmont depending on the …
I have said my goodbye to fresh sour cherries for this year. I have frozen and made jam with a bucket of them – and of course enjoyed quite a few in cobblers and eaten them “au naturel”. But for the cook with a liking …
It’s now solar summer, and while the days are just about to start diminishing again – albeit imperceptibly at first, we are getting into the time when we have an profusion of fresh beautiful and wonderfully tasty produce. Production is really stepping up in the …
Nothing special in the locavore log – same salad style lunch yesterday and home-made pizza (again!) last night. My baker always makes a double batch of dough…
Lunch today was a lot of fun, though. I was holding a workshop “Growing and Cooking with Herbs”. The class started at 10:00 and we spent about 1 ½ hour in the garden, talking about common culinary herbs – and some not so common; their different cultivars; how to plant, propagate and grow them; how to harvest and use them. We had plants samples so we could touch, smell and nibble on a leaf to compare flavors. Then I handed out the menu, and each student was given a basket, a pair of scissors and a list of herbs to harvest. We moved back to the house where I demonstrated the preparation of 2 kinds of no-cook chilled soups, roasted herbal chicken, sorrel potatoes, pesto, herbal vinegar (students picked the herbs they wanted to use as they were taking their vinegar home), minty green apple sorbet and lemon verbena poached peaches with kaffir lime. At 1:15 we were ready to eat. Students took those recipes – and a few additional ones we did not have time to prepare – home. Supplies for the meal was my own garden, Waterpenny Farm for some of the herbs & vegetables, Roy’s Orchard in Sperryville for the dairy products (from Pennsylvania – less than 100 miles, so I’ll call that “regional-local”), the peaches (from Georgia – more than 100 miles, so not local… I know I know…) and the green apples (theirs). The chicken were raised in Culpeper County and bought at Food for Thought. I hope that my students left with the sense that one can make uncomplicated (and easy to prepare) food that taste delicious when one is using fresh herbs and fresh seasonal produce.
I really thought I was a pretty serious composter. I have two large (at least 5 x 5 x 4) bins going at once, often three – mmmhhh… “piles” would probably be a better word than “bin”, although I do try to corral my compost …