Spinach Salad with Rhubarb Vinaigrette and Strawberries

This was one of those happy accidents of having a variety of things on the kitchen counter at once, and not something that I set out to do. The spinach from our CSA farm was so small and fresh that it seemed a shame not to make a salad of some of it (though with [...]

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More Spring Greens: Spinach and Herbs

I came back from our CSA farm with a ton of lettuce, arugula and spinach as well as a quart of strawberries that I picked. Because the greens take up so much room in the refrigerator, I make it a habit of first using those that can be cooked down to a small volume. The [...]

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Spring Greens Ottolenghi

One of the online food columns that I enjoy is The New Vegetarian that Yotam Ottolenghi writes for The Guardian in the UK. I was thinking about ways to prepare cabbage and kale that would feel seasonally spring-like and looked up a post from early April called “Yotam Ottolenghi’s seasonal greens with crushed peppercorns recipe.” [...]

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Everybody’s Doing it…Rhubarb Crisp

Apple crisp has been a staple of fall and winter desserts in my house since I was a kid. The recipe my mother used probably came from a Better Homes & Garden’s cookbook, and is still how I make it today, though I’ve cut back on the sugar. Butter, flour, oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon [...]

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Rhubarb Grilling Sauce: my Rhu-barb-e-que

OMG, I logged into Tigress’s website Sunday night to see what the posting deadline was and there, to my horror, she had made the very recipe that I had just adapted. Didn’t want you to think I’m a copycat (we just copied the same thing). I took a slightly different approach.  Luckily had already done [...]

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Pickled Asparagus with Curry Spices and Another Batch with Herbs

After I wrote this, I had an unexpected result: floaters!  Uh oh. You never want the ingredients in the air space, so I inverted the jars to let them cure. They were fully sealed but since the blend of spices was a complete experiment, I won’t be sad to decant after a month to test-taste. [...]

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Flower of the Week

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Rhubarb Preserves with Orange and Ginger

I love how ginger complements rhubarb, probably because they both originated in the same part of the world – Asia. Oranges are also a natural complement to both. Last year, when I was on a rosemary kick, I made rhubarb jam with oranges and rosemary, which was good but a little dull. Needing spark, I [...]

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The Red-Green Color Problem: Rhubarb and a Red Hen

I always like to see how things grow, so as soon as rhubarb season arrived, I rushed out to a local farm to check out the rhubarb patch. What I really wanted to know is how big the plant gets and how closely they can be planted since I have ambitions to plant some in my [...]

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Asparagus and Leek Bread Pudding

I had lots of asparagus stems left over from canning pickled asparagus, a couple of fat leeks from the farmers’ market and a hunk of stale bread, so on a ridiculously cold and blustery day in May, bread pudding was not only expedient but comforting. I used my typical formula for bread pudding but decreased [...]

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