Rhubarb Upside Down Cake
Rhubarb's everywhere right now. Ripe and Cheap. The season for a tart but luscious Upside Down Cake. Takes about 10 minutes and $4 to prepare. Makes 10 -12 happy people.
From Farm to Pizza Stone
A big salad posing as a pizza. A huge mound of exceptionally fresh flash-baked greens on a hot, fresh pizza crust. Delicious. Another example of pizza crust as the perfect platform for almost everything fresh and tasty. Dinner for two - for less than $2.
Garden Watch: First Day of Summer
On the first day of summer, my corn stalks sprouted tassels. Tiny green tomatoes are hanging everywhere. The beanstalk's outgrown its trellis, so beans aren't far away. For those who prefer to just watch, the day lilies are popping.
Salt. Cabbage. Massage. Sauerkraut.
Massage cabbage with salt for a few minutes. Get the best sauerkraut you ever had. Come Fourth of July, your hot dog's gonna be thrilled to be covered with this. You'll be even happier. Even if you think you don't like sauerkraut, good chance you'll like this.
I lose 5 lbs. in June. It’s the lettuce.
Every June. I lose five pounds. I don't try to. It's all the shockingly flavorful greens we get when our CSA farm share kicks in. There's not much room left on the plate for everything else. So you eat a lot less of the high-calorie stuff. And you get inventive with lettuce.
Lettuce Soup. Cool.
A salad cross-dressing as a soup. Lettuce and herbs with milk. Amazing how flavorful it is. 96 degrees when I made this perfect cool, light meal. Better. Cheaper. Chilled. No oven, no stove, no sweat. Use a food processor and get it done in three minutes. Less than $1 per serving.
Strawberry-Rhubarb Popsicles
Tart rhubarb. Really ripe strawberries. So sweet you won't even think about adding sugar. A deeply sweet and wonderfully refreshing Way to end a meal on a hot day.
Garden Watch: Strawberry Shortcake
Nothing better than a handful of fresh strawberries, with the possible exception of Strawberry Shortcake. You can make the shortcake biscuit dough in five minutes flat. Seven to ten minutes in a 450-degree oven and you've got a killer dessert for $1.
How to Cook a Wolf
Nope, not a cooking technique or a recipe. The wolf is the wolf at the door. M.F.K. Fisher wrote How To Cook A Wolf at the tail end of the last Depression. The wolf was hunger. Or, more generally, scarcity. Or just anxiety about scarcity. Something that's very right now for a lot of people, don't you think?
How to Grill a Wild Salmon
I love wild salmon. I really love it grilled. But there was always this problem: when you flip a filet over on the side without skin, a lot of the salmon sticks to the grill. Wastes salmon. Looks ugly. Here's the solution.