A number of years back, I was asked to bring something for one of our end-season crew parties, so I decided to make a chili recipe that I had inherited from my mother, though with a few twists. For years, mom made us what she called “thin chili”, which received this moniker because the dish [...]
OK, so we’ve all been there: enticed by those luscious catalogs glowing with glossies of ripe and redolent vegetables, we’ve rushed out, bought large quantities of seeds, and then stuck the packets in a drawer, only to remember them again in June, far too late in the game. Well, thanks to our friends at John [...]
I was raised in a family where every penny needed to do double duty, so I learned early the value of preventing waste and preserving what you were given. These lessons followed me into the garden, where I’ve generally been pretty successful in maximizing nature’s bounty – my previous posts on harvesting honey and canning [...]
A few weeks ago I went to see Julie/Julia – which was terrific by the way – and I was reminded again how much I enjoyed watching PBS when I was a boy, and, how formative good television could be on receptive little minds. But while Julia Child is certainly the best remembered of that [...]
I just got in from harvesting a hefty batch of green beans (one of the few crops that seems to have done well this season) and I have a few lessons to share. 1) Forget about those quaint looking traditional bean pole tepees made from bamboo stakes. I tried those this year, thinking they would [...]