Recipes Archives - Page 9 of 11

San Marzano tomatoes, fresh parsley, fresh oregano, and homegrown garlic and onions.

Recipe: Homemade Tomato Sauce

Italians believe that San Marzano tomatoes are the only tomatoes for making sauce. I'm Italian, and I've made sauce with just about any tomato I can get my hands on, but this year we grew San Marzano tomatoes for the first time. So there will be sauce. I grew up watching my mother make my grandmother's recipe for tomato sauce. It took no less than 3-5 hours. She often used canned tomatoes, one of the few canned products we bought.…

Post author:Christy
Post published:July 16, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:8 Comments

Start with fresh fruit

Recipe: Garden-Fresh Fruit Leather

Preserving the harvest was never so fun as when making fruit leather. It's simple and easy and is far better for you than the sugar-laden stuff you get from the store. Kids love it, and grown ups do it. Here's our first attempt at making two different kinds. We use our solar food dryer as much as possible during the summer, and this was the perfect experiment to try outdoors. If you don't have one, you can make fruit leather…

Post author:Christy
Post published:July 2, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:2 Comments

Try adding tomato for an even more savory experience

Recipe: Provolone & Leek Grilled Cheese Sandwich

We're up to our ears in leeks right now. We've made the giant vat of potato leek soup. We've dehydrated 3 jars worth of leeks for use in eggs and soups later on. Now what? Well, when we found this recipe for Provolone and Leek Greens on Country Sourdough, our inner 4-year-old jumped up and said, "YES!" We strive for extravagance here at Gardenerd, so we went full tilt on the melted butter and went a step above country sourdough…

Post author:Christy
Post published:July 1, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:3 Comments

We used Cocozelle Italian zucchini - cool stripes!

Recipe: Indian Summer Succotash

It's zucchini time, and if your garden is "overproducing" zucchini like ours is, this one is for you. It's a quick dish that takes 30 minutes or fewer, and uses home grown ingredients. Succotash is traditionally something that features corn and a type of bean, but this one is bean-free, and highlights the fresh-tasting flavors of the summer garden. We used zucchini, garlic, lemon juice, mint and tomatoes from the garden. The rest of the ingredients came from the store.…

Post author:Christy
Post published:June 18, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:0 Comments

Hearty lentil soup with collard greens

Recipe: Lentil Soup with Collard Greens

We cook from the garden around here. Whatever is coming in from "out there" determines the meal of the day. Since collard greens are finishing up, we needed to find a recipe to showcase them. Enter Sandy's Great Lentil Soup with Collard Greens. The recipe comes from a cookbook that's been in my collection for many years: Simply Natural: All-time Favorite Recipes from Kitchens of North America's Best Natural Foods Restaurants, by Les Sussman and Sally Bordwell. (BTW - it's…

Post author:Christy
Post published:March 25, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:0 Comments

Fresh Christmas Limas are incredibly delicious.

Recipe: Garlicky Fresh Christmas Lima Beans with Thyme

I've grown Christmas Lima Beans for several years and have come to love this prolific plant. The first time, we planted in spring and it grew and produced for a year and a half (and it would have kept going if we didn't have to pull it out). This time, after a year of constant production, we had to make way for new crops. Sad but true. After harvesting all the dried pods, the plant was still full of green…

Post author:Christy
Post published:March 12, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:3 Comments

Make meals from the garden with a little planning ahead.

Shopping from your Garden

Today we are joined by Jeriann Watkins, our guest blogger. Jeriann is a writer and self-proclaimed chronic procrastinator who is trying to make her life more intentional by focusing on vegetable gardening, making her own cleaning products, and other frugal living tactics. She's come to Gardenerd to share her strategy for eating and shopping from the garden. Take it away Jeriann! Shopping from Your Garden This year I’ve decided to focus on living frugally and paying off my student loan…

Post author:Christy
Post published:February 19, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:0 Comments

Recipe: Porcini Sea Salt (AKA cheating Williams-Sonoma)

In my 20s, when I had nothing, I drooled over Williams-Sonoma catalogs with wistful aspirations of "one day." Now many years later, stocked with a full set of cookware, I see WS for the overpriced eye-candy it is. Okay, principle aside, I still want everything in their Agrarian department ('cause it's pretty), but I have everything I need and can easily talk myself down. Or better yet, make what they're selling for a lot less. Case in point: Wild Porcini…

Post author:Christy
Post published:January 21, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:1 Comment

Packets before going into the oven - a thing of beauty!

Recipe: Seitan, Vegetables and Cracked Pepper en Papillote

New Year, new recipes to cook up home grown goodness. It's also time for quick meals that don't require a lot of work or fancy preparation. This recipe may look fancy, but it comes together quickly using vegetables and parchment paper (papillote) in about half an hour. If you are exploring more meatless meals, this is one to try. I used homemade seitan on-hand, but store-bought is fine. You can probably substitute an animal protein if desired, just adjust cooking…

Post author:Christy
Post published:January 7, 2014
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:0 Comments

Making Ancho Chile Powder

It's important to try new things every once in a while, because that simple act of diving blindly into the unknown is the very thing that keeps life interesting. Yesterday I did exactly that; I made Ancho chile powder from garden-grown poblano peppers. Let me preface this by saying that my chile powder is green. I know, I know, you're supposed to wait until the peppers turn red before doing it, but the poblano plant was going crazy and I…

Post author:Christy
Post published:September 18, 2013
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:4 Comments