Epic Tarragon Roast Chicken

Even with our best-laid meal prep plans, we’re sometimes left lunchless on the busiest of workdays. Yes, we know it’s almost always healthier and more affordable to assemble something ourselves rather than resort to fast food when the clock strikes noon—but sometimes we forget or run out of time. When this situation arises, we’ll gladly take a grab-and-go option over skipping a meal any day.

Header image courtesy of Eat Just

Cold Winter days call for warm, comforting soups. This is one of my family’s favorite on a cold Winter’s day! Roasting the vegetables helps to bring out their flavor, allowing for minimal added fat and salt, while not compromising on flavor. This recipe makes a hearty vegetable soup thick with tomatoes, onion, green bell peppers, mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, and barley. You can add additional broth if you prefer, and the soup also freezes well. To learn more about the safe handling of vegetables, check out HGIC 3517, Safe Handling of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. Enjoy!

It’s turkey time!

Everyone usually agrees that tomatillos, garlic, onion, peppers and cilantro are the basic ingredients involved, but do you simmer your tomatillo salsa on the stovetop, or simply pulse-then-blend the raw ingredients together? Perhaps it’s best to roast it in the oven till the whole thing transforms from a thin-into-thickening slurry, and finally to something more like a loose and glistening jam?On the word of my friend You Grow Girl, Gayla Trail, I went with the roasting-pan method.Since I planned to freeze (rather than can) about a dozen small jars, I didn’t have to worry about a perfect balance of acidity, or what other ingredients I added. I simply went by eye, and taste. In my first batch, I was timid about the hot peppers; in my second, I went a little bolder.

THIRTY-SOMETHING YEARS into life as a vegetarian, I have consumed more potatoes than I can even imagine, and eat them several times or more a week. So how to make them different, and special? Memories of a favorite Greek restaurant I frequented decades ago sent me looking for a recipe for patates riganates, roasted potatoes with the flavors of lemon, garlic and oregano. Here’s how I make it, and some variations:

THE PROMISE OF ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS is what keeps me from turning under much of the vegetable garden, after record rains brought havoc to some crops. I’ve harvested five cherry tomatoes and as many beans so far, sigh, in a season that began with an abundance of asparagus but then fizzled.

AND I THOUGHT I’D SEEN JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING. Do you want your tomatoes fried, scrambled, or soft-boiled?Categoriesedible plants tomatoes

HERE’S ANOTHER RECIPE that doesn’t require a recipe—you know, like my “baked pears,” when the dish’s name itself tells you the whole story. Instead of baking pears, I’m making roasted vegetables this weekend, as I do most every week in giant batches.  But I suppose there are always questions, such as: peel first, or not, or how hot should the oven be, and what do I dress the vegetables with first?

SEE, NOW *THIS* IS THE REAL PRICE OF FREEDOM: recalcitrant, rebellious eggs, with no regard for order whatsoever.

“Vote for the Dinner Party,” the headline on Pollan’s story reads, says, and then the subhed: “Is this the year that the food movement finally enters politics?” It’s pegged to the looming vote on Prop 37, the California Ballot Initiative on the labeling of genetically modified food (which as Pollan points out is not some new invention, but something Americans have been eating for 18 years).  But it goes much farther, because as he says:“What is at stake this time around is not just the fate of genetically modified crops but the public’s confidence in the industrial food chain.” A must read (which will appear in print in the Sunday Times magazine).more on prop 37, with an infographicWANT TO READ MORE about Prop 37, and particularly about what companies support labeling and don’t–a shocking list, if you haven’t s

In 2008, when I was shifting my life from city-dwelling corporate executive to rural dweller, I met Alana Chernila. We aren’t close in age—she’s was at that time a mother to two young girls—but I recognized in her right away some common essential elements.The natural world was the anchor we were both intentionally gravitating back to—and we each were obsessed with having a well-stocked freezer and pantry (or else!). We were also both brewing books. Alana’s “The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can