i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
This is a recipe featuring fishmint (Houttuynia cordata), also known as the chameleon plant, or yu xin cao. I grow it in my garden, having gotten a bit from my parents since it’s an attractive ground cover. It’s used often in southern Chinese and Vietnamese …
My rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) have begun to come out and that means I’m dreaming of delicious recipes to use with it. There’s a delightful farm a little further out east, on the north fork of Long Island that makes the most amazing rhubarb scones. Tangy, …
It’s spring and my hostas are starting to come up. This means hosta shoots galore. With a flavor and texture like artichokes, they are absolutely delicious as tempura, which is what I made today for lunch. You might feel weird eating something you’d thought of …
Ginkgo biloba is a beautiful tree that has been planted for its ornamental value in both the east and the west. It has been praised for its medicinal qualities and for improving memory. It’s a large and long lived tree, requiring both a male and …
This week has been fun, learning about when and how to catch Snapper fish at the local fishing pier. We’ve been catching at least a few per day until today, when the super rough waters only came up with one. This one’s a decent size, …
One of the things I like to do most with dandelion is making a pesto. I’ll make it two or three times a year, usually in the spring and the fall when the dandelions are most tender. I pick the ones in the shaded areas …
Ah, dandelions (Taraxacum officionale), the bane of America’s sterile and homogenous grass lawns. It’s a pity people dislike it so much because it really is a wonderful plant, and in many parts of the world like Italy, it’s a common vegetable green. High in fiber …
Goosefoot, lambsquarter, and fat-hen all refer to the edible weeds of the genus Chenopodium. This is one weed I don’t pull, as it is an edible and mild flavored dark green, used anywhere you would use spinach (and, like spinach, is high in oxalic acid …
I plant beans every year, and have tried several different types including scarlet runner, snap peas, etc. I found though, that I like bush beans the best as far as taste and utility goes. The bush bean that I have (phaseolus vulgaris) is actually just …
It was so hard to come up with a pun for asparagus–you know, one that might be family friendly rather than raunchy, but I managed to do so after sleeping on it overnight. Asparagus officinalis (see, even they couldn’t come up with a better name) …