Khoresh Karafs – Celery Stew

The first time I went to Iran, my sister-in-law made a wonderful celery stew – Khoresh Karafs. I had never tasted anything like it. Who knew celery could be so tasty as a star ingredient? Since then I had tried to find a recipe for it, but none were quite right. So, during our visit…

Tomato Galette

The tomatoes in my garden are ripe and delicious. The purple cherokees, in particular, are abundant and as tasty as ever, even if they never are very pretty. I have been waiting until this point to make some tomato-centric dishes, such as this adaptation of Yotam Ottolenghi’s Tomato Galette. It is a fresh tomato, pizza-like…

Cabbage & Kidney Bean Salad

I love cabbage. I always have. When I was a child, my father would make his own cole slaw; although I did not like cole slaw, I would hover around while he shredded the cabbage so he would give me a chunk of the head for me to eat. It was a great treat to…

Zucchini Parmesan Grinders

We still had a large chunk of the huge zucchini left; I wanted to use it for dinner, but I was in a finicky mood. None of my zucchini pastas or casseroles were what I was looking for. But I had this big pile of chopped zucchini to deal with. I love eggplant parmesan grinders,…

Zucchini Bread Pancakes

What do you do when you have a huge zucchini and have made enough zucchini bread (although, really, is there ever enough zucchini bread)? You make zucchini bread pancakes! Arielle was given a zucchini from her friend Tori’s garden. It was huge. She made 4 loaves of zucchini bread and there was still two and…

Turkey and String Bean Stir-Fry

One of the only vegetables that grew at my parents’ house was string beans. They pretty much grew wild along the fence by our picnic table; no one ever planted them. My guess is that they started as a volunteer from our neighbor’s yard and then became quite established. Wherever they came from, I loved…

Broccoli Cheddar Pockets and My Amazing Snake Rescue

Remember when hot pockets were new?  Boy did I think they were cool.  So handy, and back then I even thought they were tasty.  OK, that was before I discovered fresh, non-processed foods. But I still think they are a neat concept.  So I was tickled when I found a recipe for broccoli cheddar pockets…

Vegetable Gumbo

It is that time again…Swiss chard bouquets are adorning my counter top.  Such a happy thing, they always make me smile. There is a lot of swiss shard growing in the garden.  I thought I had a lot last year, but I think this year there will be more.  So I need to even more…

Carrot Top Pesto

It always seemed such a waste to me to discard (compost) the carrot greens after harvesting my carrots. There had to be a use for them, I just didn’t know what. Time to turn to my favorite book about root vegetables, Roots by Diane Morgan. And there it was, a recipe for Carrot Top Pesto!…