On Christmas Eve my mother died. I’m not using the popular euphemism of “passed away,” because it was death that came for her. For more than a week before, I had passed little vigils of a few hours each day at her bedside, where she trembled delirious with fever and called quietly for help. I…
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Creamy Oyster Mushroom Soup
The night of the first frost I came home from the market, unloaded, and then in the dark began pulling big sheets of frost cloth over the plants I hoped to save. The wind whipped around me, tearing at the edges of the cloth as I scrambled to secure it down. The campers who had…
FIVE FLAVORS BITTER MELON STIR-FRY
Ok, I know i just did a post about how inedible bitter melon is, but this is actually becoming a recipe I crave. I love the way all the flavors blend together! In Chinese medicine the flavors influence our different organ systems. Having a balance of all the five flavors brings balance to your whole…
LATE SUMMER GROWING AND EATING GUIDE #3: Callaloo
Callaloo or amaranth greens, are of if my favorite summer vegetables. They cook down to be very tender, and have such a delicious flavor. When cooked they are very much like spinach. Apparently any amaranth leaves can be eaten, even the thorny wild one if you’re so inclined, but some are better eating quality than…
Sky Blue Sticky Rice With Blue Butterfly Pea
I just love the wild and twisting shapes, the intense, slippery flavors, and the bright colors of the late summer garden. A good late summer garden in Florida should look and feel like anything could happen, like a loud Saturday night party scene. The crickets and cicadas blare their loud music day and night, and…
Summer Omlette with Malabar Spinach and Garlic Flowers
At last the summer rains have come to wash clear the everlasting skies… I was working in the garden the first afternoon they began, sweating rivers in the baking hot afternoon. Hand clearing this wild land and making a garden is a tedious and thorny task, more daunting than difficult however. It feels pleasant in…
Breakfast Parsnips And Bacon
We are in those baking hot, long sun days now, the hard drought time of the early summer when even the wild plants wilt and long for rain. At my new farm, the dry afternoon wind blows through the herby meadows and smells fragrant and good from the wild croton and the skullcap. This year…
Green Monster Pancakes
I feel like this is a spring in my life… So many new beginnings… it makes me feel young again. I remember how difficult it was to leave my old farm behind – even afterwards more and more things from my old life have been shed or liquidated. It feels so distant now, like the…
Buttery Cauliflower With Toasted Pecans
I love the power surge that comes from the earth and sky in the beginning of spring. It happens so quickly. One drowsy winter day you fall asleep in the damp chill, and suddenly you are picked up and shaken awake in a whirl of pink and pure white and new green, and the bright…
HEALING SLEEP
I’ve discovered something that is one of the most powerful sources of healing and regeneration that I’ve ever experienced. It helps or resolves almost any problem. Infections, colds, stress, anxiety, injuries, surgery, heartbreak, anxiety, stress, insomnia, weight issues, aging, immune and brain issues, and many others. And it’s free and can be done at home!…
The Chicken Trap
So I have these bad chickens….. I had all the poultry closed up in a pen with ridiculously high sides. They have food, water, and i bring them a bucket of scraps and things out of the garden every day. But it wasn’t enough. Three of the hens grew their wing feathers back recently and…
CRISPY SESAME GARLIC EGGPLANT
The first frosts of the winter have come through. I am missing the woodstoves I left behind in my old life, but I remember, too, when we had first moved, and nothing was finished yet, and the slow process over eight years where life felt more and more comfortable. Little details, like which direction a…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 