Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.
Gardening brings so much pleasure and beauty to my life. I’m really pleased with how my little plot has been progressing over the past few months. A friend who stopped by my garden the other night asked me to explain my broad sweeping goals for [...]
I love basil, and I even worked on a basil farm in college. One of my favorite basil recipes is pesto, and my children love it too! We make it from organic pesto we grow in our garden, and we eat it on baguettes, crackers, pasta, pizza, etc. It is really easy to make if you have a blender, but be careful to stop and stir often. You can easily burn up the motor on your blender if you are not patient.
Pulverize in a blender:
Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.
Hurry! It’s almost over! Like any good thing, the blueberry season is all too short, and the smart cook embraces it for all its worth while it’s here. The same could be said about the sour cherry season, but, frankly, I’m really only in this (“this” being the making and eating of Berry Cherry Pie) for the blueberries.
It’s that time of year. My mouth is watering and a body is craving antioxidants. And there’s no better time than right now to grab, buy or even pick your own summer jewels. I’m of course talking about berries - a myriad of types and varieties can be found in virtually every area of the U.S.
So once you have your hoard, what now? My culinary intuition and memories turn to bettys, buckles, crisps, crumbles, cobblers and grunts. The questions for most home cooks is, “What does it all mean?” and “What’s the difference anyway?”
Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.
I bet you and your friends have a few summertime traditions. An annual 4th of July BBQ? Maybe a no-excuses-we’re-going-to-the-beach-the-same-weekend-every-year outing? Or perhaps a camping trip instead? A group of my friends, who have long scattered across several state lines and life stages (singles, newly weds, divorcees, and new parents are all among them), come together one night a summer to sit under the same tree in a big back yard, drink a lot of beer, play horseshoes and pretend for a little while that we’re still carefree and 20.
Quite frankly though, I’ve outgrown what little taste I had for a keg of lager beer. So, this year I decided I’d try a taking along the ingredients for a cocktail. Spurred by my success with the Lavender Lemon Soda recipe, I thought I’d try another simple syrup infused with a fresh herb that would add a little somethin’-somethin’ to my cocktail. The rosemary plants in my garden called out to me immediately.
Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.
No matter how much I enjoy them, I always feel a little strange about eating dandelion greens. It’s also strange to think about somebody purposely growing dandelions, don’t you think? But the truth is, they’re mighty tasty, in that slightly bitter way.
The urban farm I volunteer on is growing dandelions for the first time this year, and the large bunch I brought home with me landed on the counter next to the mesh bag of baby red potatoes I’d just picked up at the store. Fate would have these two ingredients married together over the course of the next hour into a hearty warm salad, one of those concoctions where I raided the fridge and threw in whatever seemed viable, including some chicory from the farm too.
Parenting is a juggling act.
We’re trying to balance our kids’ needs and our own time, our budget and our health, our relationships, our jobs, and our sanity.
It’s not simple.
It’s not really hard, either, but there are some tips and tricks to keeping your parenting fun, healthy, and inexpensive. Feeding your little people on a budget can be challenging, and making time to prepare whole foods seems impossible for parents on the go.
When we were oh, so young and unattached, with no dependents, and the robust health of youth, we could eat pizza and ice cream every day, live on coffee and granola bars, go out to eat for lunch and dinner, or let the pantry stay empty for weeks.
Then along comes baby. Big change. We now need to make sure the fridge is full and the cupboards are stocked. And we don’t want to feed our children junky stuff, no matter how cheap it is. We are what we eat, the saying goes, and our children learn about food by watching us shop for, prepare, and eat the family meals.
Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.
I’m really putting my lavender plants to work already this summer. First a bubbly lavender lemonade, and now lavender scented ice cream! I’m running to catch up to the bandwagon here, flagging it down like a speeding city bus. Many folks have long been touting how sublime the marriage of lavender and cream is. But I hadn’t bought into it until this batch of ice cream.
Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.
We’re in full swing with the growing season in the mid-Atlantic region. I certainly enjoy all the fresh produce spilling out of my garden, but none tickle my taste buds quite so much as Swiss chard and sorrel. For those of you not familiar with these delightful greens, here’s a little primer that should get you well on your way to enjoying both!
This week, I made a decision to incorporate more raw foods into my diet. My new goal is to eat at least one raw meal a day, and to transform my kitchen into an entirely raw one. I’ll be documenting the steps I’m talking, and go further into the reasons why in my next several posts.
My first step though is getting rid of all of the wonderful food I’ve got stored up, but will now be eating less of, like grains, beans, and soy products. I can’t think of a more delicious way to clean house than this red lentil recipe I created last night.
I’m still stuck on what to name this dish. My husband called it “Mediterr-Indian” because of the spices that borrow from both cultures. It’s pretty low on fat, and good for people with food allergies, as it’s nut, soy, and wheat free, and of course, vegan. The recipe for the lentils, and the roasted cauliflower after the jump:
Opah! The Greek God of Spanakopita smiled down favorably this week here in Wisconsin, providing tender green spin
ach along with the first of our dill — which means it’s spinach pie time. The Greeks sure know how to pack in the healthy, iron punch with an abundance of greens alongside poignant feta cheese. And while spinach pie can be made just fine with frozen spinach, you just can’t beat the tender flavor of fresh.
Like other mainstay international dishes, this Greek dish has various versions — and spellings: “Spanakopita” for “spinach pie” and “spanakotyropita” for the more detailed “spinach and cheese pie.” But the short gist is an abundant bowl of cooked spinach and herbs mixed with feta and eggs, nestled in between buttered layers of phyllo. By accident once, we bought puff pastry sheets instead of phylo dough which worked surprisingly well. Combinations of spinach and Swiss chard work equally well.
Harvest those local greens and enjoy!
Recipe after the jump.
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