Harvest to Table

  There are all different, shapes, sizes, and colors of plums to be tried. Ripe plums can range in texture from firm to slightly soft. They can range in flavor from deliciously sweet to tasty tart. Plums can be pink, red, scarlet, purple, blue-black, green, yellow or amber skinned. Their flesh can be yellow, green, [...]

 Blackberry. Brambleberry, dewberry, boysenberry, loganberry, marionberry, olallieberry. Blackberry is the collective name for a large group of fruits in the same genus. Blackberries are also called brambles and brambleberries, particularly in England. The boysenberry, loganberry, marionberry, and ollalieberry are common names for popular blackberry varieties or hybrids ‘Boysen’, ‘Logan’, ‘Marion’, and ‘Olallie’. Dewberries are almost [...]

Alas, beefsteak tomato season. Go off to your farmers’ market and there they will be. You can rarely get a beefsteak tomato in a supermarket. The beefsteak is what grocery and produce retailers would call a destination item, IF they could get them to market and keep them safe before sale. But, they can’t; the [...]

Nopales are the tear-shaped, hand-sized leaves or pads or “paddles” of the prickly pear cactus. Nopalitos are nopales (pronounce no-PAH-les)–cactus spines removed–cut into bite-sized squares or strips. To make nopalitos en salsa verde, steam or boil nopalitos until tender crunchy then re-cook in a sauce of puréed tomatillos, onion, garlic, cilantro, and jalapeño chiles boiled [...]

For a distinct lemony flavor and fragrance, place two lemon grass stalks inside the cavity or underneath a fish or chicken and steam. To make the flavor and fragrance more potent, bruise or pound the stems with a pestle before steaming. Lemon grass has the floral aroma of lemon and lime peel and fresh-cut grass. [...]

  July is a busy month in the kitchen garden. This month you are caring for the summer’s crops and beginning their harvest, and you are preparing and planting the fall and winter garden. Beets, turnips, kohlrabi, carrots, and zucchini are ready for harvest this month. Don’t be tempted to grow the biggest this or [...]

  July is the seventh month of the year, but it was once the fifth month. Julius Caesar was born during this month. When he remade the calendar during his rule of ancient Rome, he moved the start of the year from March 1 to January 1. He then added a month, gave it 31 [...]