Poached pears with chocolate sauce Poached pears and chocolate can be either a hot or cold dessert. For poaching, I like either the early-season Bartlett pear—a medium-large fruit with white, sweet, and tender flesh, or the late-season Bosc—a large, long-necked fruit with white, tender-juicy and sweet flesh. I poach the pears whole then serve them
McIntosh and Granny Smith are two apples that are slightly tart and juicy and well suited for cooking and applesauce making. (Once I have the applesauce, it’s hard to resist the baking up a dozen applesauce muffins.) McIntosh is an East Coast and Midwest favorite. Granny Smith, originally from Australia is a West Coast favorite. It’s
Lettuce is ready for harvest as soon as the leaves are large enough to eat. Salad greens are easy and quick to grow and rich in vitamins and minerals. Plant salad greens—leaf lettuce, arugula, mesclun, and radicchio are a few—for harvest in cool weather—spring or fall. In warm-winter regions, grow salad greens outdoors year-round. In
Carrots are easy to grow; just give them loose, rich soil free of clods and stones and a soil temperature anywhere between 45° and 85°F. Carrots are easy to grow; just give them loose, rich soil free of clods and stones and a soil temperature anywhere between 45° and 85°F. That means you can grow
Onion Growing: Day length or daylight hours stimulates the onion plant to start making a bulb. To grow good bulb onions you need to know about how day length and temperature affect onion plant growth. Onions are photothermoperiodic; that means they are sensitive to temperature and also to daylight. Day length or daylight hours—determined by
How you prune a raspberry plant depends upon when the plant bears fruit—once a year or twice a year. Raspberries can be divided into two types by when they bear fruit: (1) one-crop, summer-bearing raspberries also called standard raspberries and (2) two-crop, summer and fall bearing raspberries, also called ever-bearing raspberries. Red raspberries can bear
A heavy summer harvest of ripening tomatoes, peppers, squashes, and eggplants can be easily made into a base for soup, sauce, and juice and stored for winter use. Each week during the summer and fall set aside 40 minutes to quickly prepare, cook, and freeze the vegetables that you can’t eat fresh or add to
Freeze tomatoes whole or cut. Freeze the bounty of tomatoes you don’t eat fresh this summer for use in cooking next winter. Freeze tomatoes whole or cut into wedges. Wash and dry tomatoes for freezing and cut out any bad spots or bruises. Place whole or sliced tomatoes on a baking sheet and put the
Sun-dried tomatoes with olive oil Sun-dry tomatoes or oven-dry tomatoes to use for seasoning in salads, soups, stews, casseroles, mixed vegetables, and snacks. You can also rehydrate dried tomatoes for use in cooking. Choose firm, ripe, full-flavored tomatoes that are heavy for their size. Tomatoes with a high acid content dry best. Excellent tomato varieties
Summer squash blossom You can prepare, sauté or deep fry, and serve squash blossoms in 10 minutes or less. Squash blossoms—yellow-orange and delightfully bright–are a summer delicacy; they must be picked, cooked, and served on the same day. If you have more zucchini or other summer squash than you can eat, store, or give away
