Herby baked feta

It’s a little bit early to hope for fresh homegrown peas, but I made this last night and it went down a storm, so it’s worth using up the last of your frozen harvest (or shop-bought frozen peas) for this. And if you’ve been sprouting pea shoots this winter, they make a lovely garnish.

This is one of a series of posts looking at what we might eat on Mars, where most food would have to be shelf-stable, tinned or freeze-dried. You can find other posts on this topic under the Martian Meals tag.

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Do you know about the Amazing Baking Soda Uses for Growing Vegetables? It is beneficial in producing a sweeter harvest, protecting them from unwanted pests, and much more!

If you’re well-versed in TikTok food trends—cottage cheese, rat snacks, or boozy pineapple spears, anyone?—you may already know about the recent sushi-related food trend that influencers are trying their hand at: the sushi bake. This riff on the super popular Japanese dish is quick and easy to prepare, making the flavors of sushi much more accessible from home.

IT’S SO EASY, and also good for you—so good you could eat one for breakfast, and nobody would even raise an eyebrow, at least not in my household. And ‘tis their season, so I’ve been baking pears. I feel silly even telling you how to do this.

When Alexandra Stafford, author of the book “Bread Toast Crumbs” and creator of the website alexandracooks.com, has visited the podcast before in recent years, we’ve usually talked vegetable cookery or soups, because we’re both big soup-makers. But 2020 is no normal year. And so what the hell? Let’s bake.Plus: Comment in the box at the bottom of the page for a chance to win one of the books we’re featuring—all five will be given away here to five readers. Then head over to Ali’s website for a chance to win each book, too (details below).Read along as you listen to the November 30, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher

The way I cook is all about big potsful of things, and freezing or canning for later: cook once, eat multiple times. For the price of 1 pound of dry beans and a few simple ingredients, the yield is enough for six or eight portions, most of which are frozen in small containers for later use.This easy recipe takes very little active prep, but lots of waiting on each end for soaking and then baking. We gardeners are patient types, no?baked-bean tips and tricksDon’t want to pre-cook the beans? Soak them for 24 hours, changing water several times, and plan to bake them longer, perhaps all day. No good tomatoes in winter? I avoid needing to use canned by freezing a few bags of whole paste types at harvest time (above) for just this

I AM ON THE ASPARAGUS DIET, because that’s what the garden has to offer at the moment: beautiful spears of tender asparagus. I like them tossed in olive oil and sea salt and roasted till nearly crispy, but sometimes I want not a side, but a meal, and here’s my favorite one: Easy Asparagus-Parmesan Bake, a fast concoction that’s not quite a quiche nor a frittata, but does involve a nice fresh egg or two.

I was preparing to talk to cookbook author-food activist-cook Bryant Terry about his new cookbook, for an upcoming radio episode (more on that next week). But digging back through his earlier cookbooks, I came upon the idea of barbecued black-eyed peas.They sounded like my barbecued baked lentils–but keeping in mind that “barbecue” never means the same thing in any two places. The difference? My lentils are more of a sweet barbecue sauce flavor; the black-eyed peas I “barbecued” inspired by Terry have a kick, and a smoky goodness. For my latest experiment, I took his idea of adding sautéed green pepper, plus chipotle pepper

These may remind you of my popular vegetarian baked heirloom beans, but lentils cook much more quickly, and I don’t use molasses or the same spices in these as I do in the beans. That said, you could alternate either flavor with either “pulse,” and simply vary the cooking time.barbecue lentils, minus the grillingredients:1¾ cups lentils, rinsed (I use the basic greenish kind; black “caviar” ones are fine, too) Water to cover the lentils to twice their depth (about 4 cups) 1 medium onion, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 Tablespoon oliv

Mission accomplished, I can say after sampling the result—especially a four-ingredient cookie of almond flour, maple syrup, baking powder and vanilla extract that took about 3 minutes to prep (recipe below, plus a recipe for homemade baking powder, since commercial brands generally contain grain, I learned).I don’t have to follow a restricted diet, but the widening shelf of ingredients at the local food coop like almond and coconut flours (not to mention all the other-than-wheat grain flours, and ones from beans and such) has caught my attention. Out of curiosity, I went to a book signing and baking demonstration by Elizabeth at Hillsdale Home Chef, a nearby