A few months ago I planted a half-bed of Caraflex cabbage, a new-to-me variety that has become my official favorite fresh eating cabbage. This pointy-headed cabbage has performed wonderfully for me on dense spacing, so I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’ve made basically one thing with it. That’s not to say the cabbage has gone to…
Season
Spring Pea Soup with Coconut Milk
I love early spring as a gardener, but I hate it as a chef. All the delicate flavors of spring we look forward to – the asparagus and rhubarb and tender greens – those crops tend to be ready for harvesting about 6 weeks after our tummies are ready to be eating them. Talk about…
10 Tips to Simplify Your Spring Planting
It’s spring, the very beginning of the gardening year, so why do some folks feel like they are already behind? This is a crazy time of year for the gardener, I totally understand. Between seed starting, transplanting and soil prep, it’s easy to feel like you just can’t keep up. Here’s a few tips to keep it a…
Beet and Apple Salad with Yogurt-Dill Dressing
My kids love this salad. It’s full of big, chunky pieces of roasted beets and apple, and has a mild, creamy dressing. And it’s bright pink, which adds to the fun. If you want something a little more sophisticated than a Barbie Ferrari colored salad at the dinner table, just spoon the dressing over the…
Roasted Carrots with Feta and Parsley
This is a simple side dish that turns even bulk, supermarket carrots into something special. The combination of the sweet roasted carrots and the salty feta works really well together, and the parsley and lemon keep everything fresh and bright tasting. This dish couldn’t be simpler – toss carrots in olive oil and season with…
Easy Cabbage and Pasta with Creamy Mustard Sauce
The dish came about as so many do. I was searching for inspiration in the fridge and found only cold, leftover cooked pasta and a head of green cabbage. Cabbage and noodles can seem ho-hum, but more than one civilization has applied culinary alchemy to them and made greatness happen. I won’t claim this dish…
Beet Greens with Lemon, Bacon and White Cheddar
With beets, you get two great vegetables for the price of one. The greens are very similar to chard (beets and chard are closely related) but with thinner stems and a smoother, smaller leaf. This easy preparation is a variation of my standard, go-to method for skillet cooking greens. Here, beet greens get paired with…
Of Dead Heroes and Roast Chickens
Judy Rodgers died Monday. Unless you are a chef, or a follower of the food world, or live in San Francisco, this probably means nothing to you. Why should it? People die every day. If we mourned for every person we’ve never known we would be paralyzed. But Chef Rodger’s passing means something to me….
Easy Skillet Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Oh, poor maligned Mr. Brussels Sprout. Seems like he gets pulled out every year as a Thanksgiving side and then is forgotten the rest of the year. Can’t you just imagine him in a group therapy session for one-day-only vegetables? Brussels would take the floor: “Hey guys. Yeah, well, it’s gotten a little bit better…
Romaine Salad with Sweet Potatoes and Tangy Blue Cheese Dressing
This salad came about, as so many things in my kitchen do, because I was looking to use up some leftovers. For dinner a night or two before I made this salad I had roasted several sweet potatoes in their skins and served them simple and plain, with butter and salt passed at the table….
How to Get The Seeds Out of A Pomegranate Without Going Crazy
Pomegranate: possibly the most delicious fruit ever. Surely the most tedious fruit ever. Separating all those seeds from the extensive, bitter membranes that intersperse the delicious seeds of the pom is a herculean task. I have developed a pretty decent hold-sections-of-pom-over-the-sink-and-scrape-the-seeds-off-with-my-teeth technique, and even manage to eat this seasonal winter fruit without getting horror-movie-esque levels…
Split Pea Soup with Bacon (or, How To Eat Well For Almost No Money)
“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and…