I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
As we cross the threshold from summer to fall, I am harvesting the last of my summer vegetables before cool-weather, fall crops ripen in earnest. There are a few cucumbers and tomatoes hanging on the withering vines, and I want to savor the last of …
Labor Day weekend is upon us. You have been invited to a party, but you don’t feel like cooking. What should you prepare? Why not make it simple and interesting, something no one else will even consider? Why not bring fresh figs and feta? Late …
Some dishes are traditional, with ingredients that you know from experience, work well together. Caprese salad with summer tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella comes to mind. Others are wildly exciting because flavors that should clash actually work together beautifully. I had such a dish this …
About 10 or 11 years ago, we were lucky enough to take a family trip to Italy. Our children must have been about 6 and 8. On this particular day, we spent a long time driving to our next destination; a beautiful hotel in the …
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 …
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 …
I didn’t always like mushrooms, especially when I was a kid. But things change in adulthood and one of them for me was falling in love with mushrooms. Several years ago I was searching for appetizers to make for a dinner and we had extra …
It’s so insanely popular and can be found everywhere, because it’s so insanely good and should be eaten everywhere. I was hungry and needed a snack. We had a ripe avocado. Toast. Smash. Drizzle. Sprinkle. Done. The version I just enjoyed was smashed avocado …
