Parsnip Recipes to Flavor Your Cooking This under-appreciated root vegetable is the perfect potato substitute. Parsnips are a root vegetable that often gets lumped in with turnips and rutabagas, but it deserves a name of its own. A member of the carrot family they are fragrant and starchy and has broad appeal in many countries outside…
Month: October 2020
Spinach, Swiss Chard, Kale, and Collards
How to Eat More Greens Easy recipes to cook spinach, Swiss chard, kale, and collards. Leafy greens from spinach to collards have become mainstream in the past few years. They are undoubtedly healthy and, unless you are on blood thinners, everyone says to eat more. I love them because they are a quick-cooking vegetable that makes…
Winter Squash
Accessible Winter Squash Recipes How to cook those beautiful fall decorations. Winter squash show up at the markets in early fall. With a palette of autumnal colors and thick hard skin, they make gorgeous displays of fall vegetables in the large grocery stores and farmers’ markets. But accessing their golden flesh, underneath that hard exterior, can…
Sweet Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes Recipes Before and After Thanksgiving You should be eating this healthy vegetable year-round. In the United States, sweet potatoes make their appearance for my favorite cooking holiday and seem to disappear. But sweet potatoes are sweet vegetables that don’t need to be loaded with more sugar to enjoy them. Many spicy and savory…
Peppers, Sweet and Hot
Peppers, both the hot and sweet varieties, are often the accent in a dish, used sparingly to add color, texture, and flavor. In season, in the late summer and into the fall, they are sweet and in the case of hot peppers, sweet and spicy. Peppers in the grocery store can be expensive. Out of…
Sweet Corn
The Simplest Sweet Corn Recipe Enjoy this summertime treat without cooking. Even though corn is good, when eaten frozen or even canned, there is nothing better than fresh sweet corn in the summertime. Corn plants don’t like to be transplanted, so there isn’t an easy way for farmers to get a head start. They have to wait…
Summer Squash
Summer squash is the thin-skinned variety of squash that includes zucchini. It is one of the first vegetables ready to eat out of your summer garden. Most people are familiar with zucchini, but as this vegetable cross-pollinates, there are hundreds of varieties with different shapes and shades of green and yellow, some both green and…
Tomatoes
Be the boss of your summer harvest by keeping it simple. I never liked raw tomatoes as a child. But after eating fresh-picked tomatoes in the heat of summer I have realized this is an entirely different product than one purchased in the spring. Unfortunately, tomatoes have become ubiquitous in grocery stores 365 days a year….
Berries
Strawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries and Blackberries Flavor, cost, and quality improve when in season. Most berries can be grown in the northern regions of the United States, and blackberries can be grown nearly everywhere. Where I am in California, we pick strawberries in April and blueberries in May. Raspberries and blackberries are best in the summer,…
Potatoes
How to Cook Potatoes You need to know the type to know how to cook it. The humble potato is a root vegetable that we don’t give much credit. We blame it on making us fat in the form of French fries or mashed potatoes or potato salad, where it becomes a vehicle transporting oil or butter…