I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
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, …
My 17 year-old daughter is obsessed with tacos. Like a serious teenager in love with a movie star, except it’s a taco infatuation. She searches them out at taquerias and divey Mexican restaurants wherever she goes. She’s in Brooklyn visiting friends. “What did you eat?” …
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 …
For me, matzo ball soup is comfort food; warm, soothing chicken soup with a big, steaming, ball of carbohydrate. When I was young, it was my grandmother – the one who wasn’t a particularly good cook – who taught me to make matzo balls. You …
As I came inside from shoveling a foot of heavy spring snow this morning, I noticed that the leaves are starting to emerge on my potted fig trees, which are still stored in the garage for winter protection. It seems everyone, including the plants, knows …
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 …
I read with interest an article in the Food section of The New York Times a couple of weeks ago about a new seed company, Row 7 Seed Company, that in their words, is “built on chef-breeder collaboration.” Started by Dan Barber, chef at Blue Hill …
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 …
