I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
While the height of gardening season is late spring through the end of summer, gardening is really a 12-month-a-year sport. Yes, summer tomatoes may be the star of the show for many gardeners, but there is bounty to be harvested virtually all year long if …
The story of Jimmy Nardello’s peppers is an immigrant tale. Giuseppe and Angella Nardello arrived from southern Italy in the late 1800s, immigrating to Naugatuck, Connecticut. With them they brought seeds from their Italian garden, including a sweet frying pepper. They grew these peppers to …
It’s been a doozy of a summer. Unbearably hot and humid on Long Island, where I live, we have been forced to use the air conditioner much more than usual. A passing hurricane this week, which fortunately did not amount to much, made things even …
As the summer heats up, the cucumber vines in my garden lengthen, with yellow blossoms at their ends. There are male and female flowers, the females with tiny fruit just below the petals. Over a week or two, the fruit grows, enlarging into a full …
There are some vegetables I don’t grow in my garden. It’s not for lack of trying or because I won’t eat the result. Rather, I just can’t get them to grow. I try for a few years. Nothing. Modify my technique. Failure. Finally, I give …
Asparagus, a perennial that returns year after year if properly cared for, is one of my most cherished crops. Last year in late spring, when the harvest was over and the plants were maturing, sending their frilly leaves out to collect sunlight to transport food …
January is a bleak month in the garden. There is little growth, and so by leaps and bounds the most exciting activities are perusing catalogues to order seeds for the coming year and planting cabbage, kale, and leek seeds under lights in the basement to …
Every cold January, I contemplate my garden. I think about the hard work I’ve put in and the abundance I’ve harvested. I ponder my plot’s successes and failures. I salivate when I look back on the fresh bounty it provided, tasting so much better than …
It was early spring and snow still blanketed the ground, melting a little during the warmer daylight hours and freezing again when the sun sank below the horizon. I had a craving for Chicken with Hoisin Sauce, a Chinese stir fry I made on repeat …
I read a lot of cooking magazines, so I see the waxing and waning of trends and fads in restaurants and kitchens. Mostly I ignore them. In one ear, out the other, although maybe they leave a tiny impression in a far off corner of …
