Last year, feeling disheartened by the ever-increasing amounts of cash I was shelling out on garden supplies, I decided to attempt to track the value of food I produced. I consider gardening both a hobby and an act of political protest, so I wasn’t exactly expecting it to pay its own way, but I was [...]
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As if I had any doubt, spring is here! Asparagus needs three years in the ground before its first harvest, and we’re not quite there yet. Next year, we’ll finally get to taste the amazing spears that poke their heads right out of our yard. In the meantime, they serve as a welcome reminder that winter [...] 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. Yet no [...] 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 [...] Check it out: kohlrabi is NOT a root vegetable! 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. Somehow, I [...] 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 [...] There are people who will tell you that you can grow potatoes in pots. They would be wrong. And yes, that is my entire crop. 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 [...] |
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