recipes

Peach Pine Nut Tart

Adapted from “The Cheesemonger’s Seasons: Recipes for Enjoying Cheese With Ripe Fruits and Vegetables” Serves: 6-8 Prep time: 1 hour thirty minutes, plus time for the dough to be refrigerated twice For the crust: For the filling:

A Guide to Farmer's Market Flowers
flowers

A Guide to Farmer’s Market Flowers

Aren’t they tempting, those fresh-looking bouquets for sale at farmer’s markets?  The bounty, the color, the variety! And there are always flowers you won’t find at your local florists, because they are seasonal and local, and so much more appealing because of their rarity.  It’s impossible not to be happy with a bouquet of farm market flowers in your tote – until you get them home and they start to wilt before you can get them in a vase… What […]

Summer Produce Secrets
food

Summer Produce Secrets

When you grow up on a farm you absorb things about food without realizing it, and simply take it for granted that everyone shares the same basic knowledge you do.  This post grew out of a surprising conversation I had with some young people who had no idea how to buy produce.  This isn’t a comprehensive guide, but more of a tip sheet to skim over before you buy. Apples: should be firm and crisp, and you shouldn’t be put […]

Pickled Chopped Salad
food

Pickled Chopped Salad

I love a salad that feels like a meal, but isn’t so full of heavy ingredients that it defeats the point of eating a salad.  Salads served in fast food chains often have this problem; it takes extreme editing of the empty calories before digging in.  My older daughter refers to this as ‘food surgery,’ and she meticulously picks out anything she considers unhealthy (or that she simply doesn’t like).  There’s nothing to edit from this salad. The recipe for […]