Here I was, minding my own business, and suddenly fall happened. Or, more accurately, a string of tropical storms has turned the East Coast into a limp, soggy mess. Either way, my gardens are protesting—summer’s definitely over. But yet I feel like I’ve just gotten started on filling up the freezer for winter. The good [...]
Has anyone else noticed the skyrocketing cost of pine nuts, when you can find them at all? The going rate in Philadelphia seems to be somewhere around $25/pound. I think I’m not the only one with this problem—I noticed that the pesto at my local “boutique” grocery is made from pecans, not pine nuts.
I had no idea that so many people had such a strong aversion to beets. My beet class last weekend was somewhat under-enrolled, and I kept getting e-mails that said, more or less, “I really want to come and learn how to can, except that I can’t stand beets!” How can I convince you that [...]
Last summer, my friend Alex gave me a packet of kohlrabi seeds that she had purchased on a recent visit with her family in Switzerland. The instructions were in German, but I thought I could figure out what I needed to know: you plant them in early [...]
Let’s see. What did I do the past month, while I was on blog and Twitter and Facebook hiatus?
I had a nice visit with my mom.
I played a lot of piano.
I wrote (but not enough).
I edited (more than enough).
I cooked lots of boring, repetitive things that used stuff in the freezer.
I gardened nearly continuously.
You’ve heard about my gardening woes. Fortunately, not all is lost: I am growing a bumper crop of tomatillos. For the uninitiated, tomatillos are closely related to tomatoes, except that they’re green and grow in husks. The husks puff up when the plant starts to set fruit, and when the fruit fills the husk, they’re [...]
Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions about what to do with all of my red cabbage. The folks on Facebook were big fans of various braised cabbage options, but I’m sticking with the blog favorite: sauerkraut. Let’s hold off on sharing that recipe until we see if it works, shall we? Nicely salted and [...]
I am drowning in beans. Somehow, the two 4-foot rows that I planted in my community garden plots are producing an average of about a pound of beans a day. Never, ever would I have guessed that they would produce so much. The obvious solution is to preserve them, but beans—the classic low-acid food—are a [...]
Simple, improvised salads are one of the purest joys of summer. Get a few flavor combinations down, and you’re set. Mark Bittman’s recent list of ideas of 101 salads is a great place to start, but really: just toss together whatever comes in from the garden and eat what you like. Not coincidentally, things that [...]