I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
Banh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich made on a toasted French baguette, may be the world’s most perfect sandwich. There are a riot of flavors and textures in every bite that balance each other perfectly. It is sweet and crispy from the daikon radish and carrot …
The best summer foods to grow in your garden are the ones that have the simplest preparations for the table. Asian shishito peppers are one of those foods. They grow easily and abundantly, and when it’s time for harvest, you pick them, sear them for …
I am definitely a carnivore. I wish it wasn’t so, but alas, I do like eating meat and poultry. But I try to make several meat-free dinners a week and we have plenty of friends for whom I cook who are vegetarians. So this I …
People sometimes ask me about my favorite fruit or vegetable that I grow in the garden. Truthfully, the answer is whatever is ripe at the time. But, there are definitely some crops that rise above all others. For example, fresh garlic, which is sticky and …
I love growing garlic in my garden because it is the gift that keeps on giving. In early spring I can pick green garlic, whole immature plants that are similar to scallions, before the bulb forms into garlic cloves. July is the main harvest time …
Foraging is the art of going out in the wild to search for items to consume; think searching for wild mushrooms. If you read food magazines, you know it has become very popular lately. You can even take classes on local foraging in a lot …
A is for asparagus, the first vegetable of spring. B is for…oh, never mind. Let’s stick with asparagus for a while. It’s coming up in the garden right now and will only be here for a few weeks. It lets me know that I will …
As I started working outside a few weeks ago to get the garden ready for spring planting, I remembered from last season that some of my raised beds needed replacing. The soil in them was fine, it’s that the wood was starting to rot away, …
It’s early April, so it’s time to get the garden going. While there are only a handful of plants I can place in the ground now, I can start many of my summer crops inside from seed. Many gardeners prefer the ease of going to …
As spring approaches, the garlic that I planted in the garden last October is starting to poke up in rows from beneath its blanket of leaves. I look forward to using the abundance of garlic from my garden as I cook throughout the year. In …
