Nourish and Thrive
You know that spring has sprung when you see the bright yellow blaze of forsythia blossoms across the neighborhood. Forsythia is a shrub that barely gets noticed until spring arrives, and then it’s the star of the show! I was pleasantly surprised and excited to find out that forsythia flowers are edible, especially since I…
Foraging is one of the most rewarding things that you can do, especially when you find a huge patch of a highly nutritious plant such as chickweed. While it’s always fun to find and identify a wild edible plant here and there, it can be a rare occasion to be able to harvest enough to…
{This post is sponsored by Mountain Rose Herbs} I have a thing for shortbread cookies. I also have a thing for edible flowers. So it makes total sense to combine the two in my mind! Dried lavender is an edible and medicinal flower that I always make sure to have on hand, because I use…
We all know that fall is all about pumpkin spice everything, but why don’t we have a zucchini spice craze in the summertime? I’m about to change that! Zucchini is abundant in gardens everywhere, and can be used in yummy baked goods like this zucchini spice bread. When I was first searching for a zucchini…
Many people know about stinging nettles, but they are much more well known for their painful sting than their edible and medicinal qualities. If prepared the right way, stinging nettles are delicious and nutritious! So many edible wild “weeds” are brushed off as being a nuisance, when they are actually quite tasty, and often have…
Rhubarb is an interesting vegetable that is most commonly eaten as a fruit. It is tart and delicious with an old time flavor that grows on you over time. I love it, and was very excited to discover a rhubarb plant growing in our backyard when we moved into this house last year. Rhubarb is…
Please welcome guest poster, Devon Young, herbalist and blogger at Nitty Gitty Life. Devon recently completed a degree in Complementary and Alternative Medicine with the American College of Healthcare Sciences. When not writing, practicing herbal medicine, or tending to her farm and family, Devon enjoys foraging for wild edibles and medicinals. Enjoy her recipe for…
I have an exciting foraged food recipe to share with you today! I’ve wanted to make dandelion pesto for a long time, but have recently been inspired by a brand new book by Rosalee de la Forêt, Alchemy of Herbs. This book is full of amazing herbal recipes, I really want to try them all! …
Radishes are a vegetable that are sometimes hard for people to get excited about. I think they are amazing, though! For one thing, they are super quick and easy to grow. They germinate in no time, even in cold weather, and are on your dinner table before any other plant in your garden has time…
I know a thing or two about hummus. I got turned onto the store bought version long before it was popular, and shortly thereafter starting making my own. At first I would use canned chickpeas, then I got fancy and started cooking them from scratch. My homemade hummus was really good, but never quite as…
The dark and dreary winter is often brightened by beautiful citrus. Even though I don’t live in a place where citrus can grow naturally, I still enjoy it while I can. There are many ways to use and preserve citrus, and I often turn to making lemon or grapefruit curd, as I can’t get enough…
Turnips are a vegetable people love to hate. This is something that I don’t understand, because I think they are awesome! (No, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck). They are cheap, easy to cook, easy to grow, and just like beets, you get two tasty vegetables in one. Turnip greens are actually one…
Foraging in the wintertime can sometimes be difficult, but there are always conifer needles. Any recipe that uses conifer needles really intrigues me, so I thought it was time for me to make something with them myself. I am visiting the central California coast at the moment and redwood trees abound, so they seemed like…
Winter squash is one of my absolute favorite vegetables. They are hearty and filling, the perfect cold weather food. In the fall and winter, we probably have winter squash 2-3 nights per week or more. There are many different ways to prepare it, some more elaborate and fancy than others, but it doesn’t have to…
Well, the holidays are upon us, so who wants a drink? Seriously though, there’s really not anything better than a hot, spiced drink on a chilly and festive day, alcoholic or otherwise. I’ve been a big fan of mulled wine for a long time, but this year we have quite a bit of wild hard…
Jerusalem artichokes, also known as sunchokes, are a root vegetable that some people love to hate. They have two things going against them, one being that they can completely take over your garden, the other that they have been known to cause gastric distress in some people. They didn’t get the nickname “fartichokes” for no…
It seems that as soon as October is upon us, most of us go crazy for pumpkin everything. I am no exception to this rule, as I could probably eat pumpkin food year round! Seriously, pumpkin pie has always been my favorite, long before it was cool to like pumpkin. I do prefer to keep…
We’ve got so many apples on our tree right now, it’s ridiculous! While making apple cider with our homemade press is rewarding (and in turn gives us yummy hard cider), I wanted to do something different this time around. So, I started flipping through my Ball Canning Book, and came across apple butter. Of course! …
It’s blackberry season! You know what that means, right? It’s cobbler time! I’m such a sucker for simple and rustic fruit based desserts. The fruit brings natural sweetness, so minimal sugar is needed, plus you get the natural health benefits and antioxidants from the berries. These blackberries were amazing! We went foraging for blackberries recently…
You might have seen my recent post about foraging for salal berries. Well, after bringing home a bunch of these foraged berries, I really wanted to do something delicious with them. Salal berries are slightly sweet when fresh, but I knew that cooking intensifies and brings out their sweetness even more. I’ve watched my good…
So I had a bowl of little yellow and red plums sitting on my counter for almost a week. I gleaned them from a tree down the street from my house, with the owners permission, and I could take as many as I wanted. They were not quite ripe when I picked them, so I…
Hello my friends! Today I have something really special for you. Cake. Yes, cake. I am usually not much of a sweets person, and when I do make something of that nature I almost always cut back on the sugar. I know, call me crazy, but that’s just how I am. I’m also partial to…
I have a lot of calendula growing in my backyard. This is not a bad thing, mind you, as calendula has many uses, but my mind kept turning to cookies (whose doesn’t?). It’s probably because of this Sweet & Savory Dandelion Shortbread post by Gather that I keep seeing. That recipe definitely sparked my idea…
So, we have this rhubarb plant that came with our new house. I was super excited when I found out what it was, because now I could make all the rhubarb things! It’s a pretty well established plant and was already going in full force when we moved in a month ago, which meant I…
Yes, I did it! I made a completely homemade Reuben sandwich, where every single ingredient was made from scratch and home fermented. I have to admit it was a bit difficult to do, mainly because of the logistics involved in making sure that every ingredient was ready at the right time. But, in the end…
Have you ever had real corned beef? Not the store bought, precooked stuff, but the real deal? There are many delicatessens and butcher shops that make it in house, which is where I had my first taste of it. I was completely blown away at how tender and delicious it was! It was so good,…
Artichokes are a strange vegetable for the uninitiated, but an absolute delight for those of us who love them! When I was a kid, it was always an exciting night in our household when we had artichokes with dinner. I must admit that I wasn’t a kid who liked a whole lot of vegetables, but…
I’m the first to admit that blue cheese is not my favorite. This is strange, because I’m a total cheese lover, but something about blue cheese has never quite done it for me. It’s a little too funky, a little too stinky, and well… a little too blue, if you know what I mean. I’ve…
There is nothing better to warm your bones on a cold winter day than a hot cup of tea. Make that cup of tea a delicious spicy black chai, and you will be in seventh heaven. The fragrant and warming spices that make up a cup of chai are so comforting and tasty, and the…
It’s winter time, and you know what that means. It’s citrus season! We are lucky enough to have friends and family in the southern part of the country who send us homegrown citrus during the winter, which is always an exciting package to get! Bright, fresh citrus can really make a dreary winter day more…
Burdock is a plant that is useful in so many ways, but we often don’t know what it is or what in the heck to do with it. It is great for your garden in that the long roots break up the soil and the leaves can be used for mulch. It is a powerful…
I love homemade bread, and I especially love rye bread. The problem is that I haven’t always been too successful in making bread the traditional way with kneading and rising. It always seems to turn into a hard lump of some sort, and I’ve never been motivated enough to learn how to do it the…
Remember when I said that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday? I wasn’t joking! Besides my fermented cranberries post that I gave you last time, I have a few other recipes up my sleeve that will be perfect for your holiday table. One of them is these roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon and maple pecans. I…
I love pumpkin season! I know, it seems as though there is pumpkin everything during the fall, but I honestly don’t mind it. While most of the store bought pumpkin flavored items are probably not so great for you, these no bake pumpkin coconut cups are not only healthy, but amazingly delicious and a cinch…
Maybe some of you know this, but I actually used to be a cook for a living. Nothing much, just the pantry cook at Tuolumne Meadows Lodge in Yosemite National Park. I worked in Yosemite for almost 10 years with many different positions, but this was by far my favorite. As the pantry cook, I…
Pear season is in full swing and I’m loving it! Southern Oregon is pear country and right now is the time to buy, harvest, or glean them. If you’re lucky you’ll end up with more than you can deal with! I remember one year the pear tree we had in our backyard of the house…
Hey my friends! Here’s the next post in my “What to do with your CSA Box Veggies” series, if you’d like to see the first two posts in the series check out How to Cook Beets and Their Greens and What to do With Cabbage. This one is all about corn, how to make grilled…
I don’t know about you, but cooking big hunks of meat used to really freak me out. I was a vegetarian for a lot of years, so once I started eating meat again all of the cooking was pretty much done by Joel. Although I was a pretty well accomplished vegetarian and vegan cook, I…
Well, hello there! Here we are in the middle of the growing season, and it’s time for a second round of how to prepare your CSA box (or farmer’s market) veggies! In the first round we talked about how to cook beets and their greens, and today we’re going to talk about what to do…
Hello and welcome to summer! I don’t know about you, but I’m sure loving it. The start of each new season is always exciting for me as it brings new and wonderful things in the garden and subsequently to the kitchen. Summer produce is always so fun and bountiful that it’s a great time to…
Many years ago, when I first started making my own sourdough, I decided that I must put sourdough starter in ALL the things. Usually, this was a good thing, because sourdough only makes things better in my mind. But, when I first made the leap to put it into tortillas, my mind was blown! I…
Ahh, classic Italian food, how I love you. You are comforting, satisfying, and above all, delicious. Now, I don’t know if most of the Italian food I make actually constitutes as classic, but I like to think that it does. Unfortunately I don’t have an Italian grandma to tell me otherwise, so I usually just…
No, I’m not kidding. This is serious, and by serious I mean seriously delicious! These sourdough blueberry pancakes are so good, and probably about as healthy as a pancake can get without sacrificing flavor. The best part is that most of the work is done the night before! And by “work” I mean stirring a…
I know you’ve been on the edge of your seat waiting for the recipe for the Sourdough Naan Bread that accompanied my Coconut Lentil Cauliflower Curry last week! Wait no further, here it is! I do have to admit that, while this naan bread is extremely tasty and versatile, it’s not quite traditional. This bothers…
Hello everyone, hope you had a lovely weekend! We had a wonderful mix of sun and rain which brought beautiful sunsets and mild temperatures. Happy spring, by the way! It excites me to no end to know that we are at the very beginning of warmer weather. Planting seeds, here we come! For today, though,…
If you have no other reason to make your own sourdough starter, I’m telling you now, this is it! This pizza has changed my life, and I know it will change yours as well. I promise! I’m not going to say that making this no knead sourdough pizza is as easy as ordering out from…
I knew that I would write this post one of these days, but I figured that it would be later this spring or summer. However, I went to my Mom’s place in the Monterey Bay last week and this is what I saw in her garden. She had planted arugula last fall and her and…
This is the perfect recipe for winter, although it doesn’t quite feel like winter where I’m at! I know that those of you in other parts of the country are getting pounded with snow and ice, however, so this is for you. This simple pot roast recipe will warm up your house and warm up…
You must have known this was coming after my homemade sourdough starter post last week, and I hope you’re happy about it because this bread is amazing! Not only is it wonderfully tasty and sour, but it is really easy to make. I’m sure you’ve heard of the no knead bread craze, but it has changed…
One goal of mine with this blog is to show all of you how cooking real food from scratch is not only better for you, but easy. It does require a little bit of forethought, but once you get into the mindset of thinking a day or two ahead of time, it almost makes life…
Hello, this is Part 2 in a series about getting the most out of your chicken. Check out Part 1! Now that you’ve roasted your chicken, it’s time to talk about how to make chicken stock. If you are cooking whole chickens regularly, or even if you’re just cooking bone-in chicken pieces, there is absolutely…
This is Part 1 in a series about getting the most out of your chicken, check out Part 2! Today I’m going to show you how to make an amazing lemon herb roasted chicken. I know, I know, there are hundreds of recipes for roasting a whole chicken on the internets. But, I’m starting this…
