Cabbage soup with sweet potatoes Cabbage soup is earthy with a subtle sweetness. With a few aromatic vegetables or some meat or lentils added, it makes an inexpensive yet flavorful and filling one-dish meal. Common green cabbage from the spring, fall, or winter garden is ideal for cabbage soup. Ratio. The ratio of liquid to
Great Northern bean soup Dried bean soups are hearty and perfect for chilly days. Black beans, navy beans, kidney beans, lima beans may be used. For a velvety, smooth soup, purée or whir the beans in a blender after cooking; for a soup with texture, purée only half the beans. Water is the common liquid
Pesto ingredients Pesto is a creamy green herb sauce you can make by hand in about ten minutes. Classic pesto is a combination of fresh basil leaves, garlic, pine nut kernels, grated parmesan cheese, salt, and olive oil. But pesto is not a specific dish, but the name for a style of sauce; so substitutions
Pasta ingredients Fresh pasta is easily made at home—with no recipe. All you need is all-purpose flour, eggs, salt, and a few drops of water. It is delicate and rich flavored and excellent with light sauces–butter and Parmesan cheese, or olive oil, garlic and parsley, or cream and bacon bits, or tomato sauce with an
Strawberry jam, plum jam, peach jam, blueberry jam, grape jam—any fruit can be cooked with sugar to make jam. Late summer is home-made jam season—unless you grow apricots and then mid-summer is jam season. My Santa Rosa plum tree is a jam factory in September. Whatever fruit you grow or buy at the farm market
Potato salad with dill and scallions Potato salad is a summer classic—but it’s also a spring and fall and winter classic. Some like it moist and creamy. Some like it dry and crumbly. Some like it dressed in egg-rich mayonnaise. Some like it dressed in oil and vinegar. Some like it with sweet relish and
Broccoli soup Purée aromatic and sweet vegetables in a blender for a velvety soup or purée them by hand in the pot for a slightly chunky soup. Carrot soup, leek and potato soup, cauliflower soup, broccoli soup, winter squash soup: root vegetables and substantive bodied or flowered vegetables make thick, flavorful purée soups. Potatoes, carrots
Veal bones for white stock White stock is full bodied with little or no color—and, on its own,nearly  neutral flavor. Use white stock to amplify the flavors of the foods added to it. Dried vegetable soups–black bean, white-navy bean, lima bean, kidney bean, whole and split pea, and lentil–are made with white stock. Reduce white
Avoid letting asparagus set seeds Protect perennial asparagus plants from cold temperature damage by mulching the asparagus bed with compost, aged manure, or straw before freezing weather or snow arrives. Asparagus crowns can produce tasty spears for 20 years or longer if given the right care and nutrients. The ferny stalks and branching growth of
Pears will grow almost everywhere apples grow and are nearly as cold tolerant. A standard pear tree requires about the same space as an apple tree and can be pruned to about 20 feet tall. Semi-dwarf pear trees grow to about 12 feet tall. There are two types of pears: European pears–with their classic pear
