Here’s the concept: pasta + greens + very light cream sauce = deceptively elegant, super easy dinner in a hurry with stuff you have lying around. The exact pasta, greens and cheese can be mixed to suit whatever you have on hand. This version is Orecchiette with Rainbow Chard, Tomatoes and Stilton. Chard (like its…
Greeny Guilt
A few days ago on the Facebook page I shared a link to an article called, How to Create a Zero-Waste Kitchen and asked the question, “how green is your kitchen?” I gave myself a B-, which, in this era of grade inflation, isn’t a particularly good grade. B- Really? Do I really work this hard –…
Little Monkeys Making Messes
Dirt. Dirt, dirt, dirt. When you garden, a certain amount of outside comes in. Fine. When you cook 2 to 3 meals a day on a stove (in pork fat, no less!) a certain amount of grease distributes in a fine layer over everything. So in my 7 years as a gardener and my lifetime…
Cross Dressing Fruit and Frustrated Apple Maggots
One of my readers, Robin, left this comment on the October Garden Tour post, where I showed my espaliered apple tree full of apples wrapped in pantyhose footies: I’m really curious about the cross dressing apples as well. I must’ve missed the post that explained it. Why the sexy legwear? And how big were they when…
Palm Your Tater: Exfoliating Gloves Clean Root Vegetables
A while back I realized that the cheap scrubbing-mitts I kept in the shower might do for root veggies what they do for my post-garden-work-Hobbit feet: get the dirt off. I bought a pair for kitchen use and put them to work. Here’s how they fared against purple potatoes and sunchokes fresh out of the…
A Very Homestead Holiday
I hate to be the bearer of exhausting news but the holiday season is right around the corner. Personally, I think it’s obscene to see Christmas wrapping paper and Halloween candy on display at the same time, but there it is. This is the world we live in. Image from Premier Packaging, shared via Creative…
Beet Greens with Bruschetta
I remember back when I bought a lot more produce at the store. A women picked out a few bunches of top-on beets and took them to a produce employee. “Can you cut the tops off these for me?” she asked, “I don’t want them.” I hovered near the Asian veg section, eavesdropping and mildly horrified….
Monsanto Announces New SoyBee'n Self-Pollinating Soy Bean!
Last month, noted seed and biotech company Monsanto announced the purchase of Beelogics, a company with a product in trial that may help prevent colony collapse disorder in bees.* In related news, Monsanto has successfully built bee DNA into insect-pollinated crops through genetic engineering. Though the technology is currently being trialed on a limited 3,000…
An October Garden Tour
Beds are thinning out. Things that are picked are not being replanted. The loss of the beans and squash certainly changed the profile of the garden. But there is still so much good stuff out there. Here’s how my garden is looking right now: First planting of savoy cabbages look – sorry, this isn’t very…
Fall The Wife
I’ve been thinking about this. Fall is my favorite harvesting season. If I had to marry a vegetable growing time of year, it would be Fall. Spring is a virgin. She makes you wait. You want Spring in April, but she doesn’t actually put out until late June. I’m all for keeping it buttoned up…
Baby Moccasins And Other Off-Season Adventures
The peak marathon of late-summer work in the garden is finally over. Oh sure, there’s clean up and garlic and cover cropping and all those other tasks, but there’s no urgency. The days are shorter and the tasks are less immediate. I’m still preserving pears and apples but the weekend-long sessions of salsa and canned tomatoes…
What’s In A Name? The Beyond Organic Backyard Egg Question
My mom was over and asked, “Are your eggs organic?” “Oh yeah, of course!” I said, “We use organic feed.” But I’ve been thinking about it, and here’s the thing: I’m not sure our eggs are organic. Not really, not technically. I mean, our chickens have a good life. Compared to battery-caged birds they are…