How fortuitous that the seasons for sweet corn and sugar snap peas overlap. Sweet beginning for fresh corn, and melancholy ending for the short-lived fresh sugar snap pea, which is worlds apart from the sorry, limp frozen variety available year round at your grocery store.
Blueberry rhubarb crisp – enemy of all white clothing and tablecloths, but oh-so-very-worth it when you take one taste of the ultimate early summer dessert.
Ever had a baby carrot? Not the baby cut carrots wrapped in cellophane at your grocery store, but a real baby carrot, just pulled from the earth. Last weekend at the Lakeside Farmer’s Market, I noticed that Walnut Hill Farm had a feathery pile of brilliant orange baby carrots arranged on a wooden table, and the dreary, drizzly morning brightened considerably.
The fresh local strawberries from Agriberry at the South of the James Farmer’s Market presented me with a problem : eat them all up until they are gone, really gone, or make a tasty cocktail mix with cilantro and fresh lime juice? I simply had to taste one, just one, and then another, and then…there were none left to make my spring beverage. So it’s a good thing Little House Green Grocery carries Agriberry’s strawberries, because my plan would have been foiled, as the market only comes around once a week and I had to strike while the berries are at their seasonal peak.
luscious shiitake mushrooms from Pine Fork Farm at the SOJ Farmer’s Market
They were the biggest, fattest, meatiest shiitake mushrooms I had seen. So impressively massive, in fact, that I had to ask Teal Brooks of Pine Fork Farm if they were a particular type or new cultivar. Nope, she replied, they were standard issue, but perhaps the clean and clear conditions at her farm in Quinton, Virginia were responsible for their luscious largeness, or perhaps they were grown with love.
strawberry balsamic gelato with local chocolate balsamic vinegar and chocolate mint from the garden
Spring means strawberries are in season, and strawberries are the crown jewel of the dessert family. I’ve got a serious hankering for a creamy, frozen dessert and I want to invite strawberries to my ice cream party.
It’s the age old question I grapple with : What will I take to work for lunch this week? I stand sulking at the fridge, peering at the jumbled contents. I try to make sense out of the possible ingredient combinations and come up with…zip. Nada.
Being a fan of all things winter, I must be dragged kicking and hollering into the freshness of spring. I got my wish for one last snow in Richmond March 24. Like most southern snowfalls, it arrived magically and left town abruptly, leaving traces here and there and front yard snowmen with collapsed torsos and lumpen, tiny heads.
This statement has been drummed into your head since childhood :” Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”. And, unlike other pronouncements, such as “If you cross your eyes, they will stay that way”, this one certainly rings true.
fresh Bombolini gluten free shells with kale apricot pesto
What I love about greens : kissed by the first frost of autumn, they are tender and flavorful; picked in springtime, they are equally tender and just as flavorful. Something else to love about greens ? Their versatility in the art of cooking.