I have tried to grow several Pelargonium varieties this year and been pleasantly surprised at the various forms and colours I have succeeded in producing.
21.07.2023 - 22:23 / awaytogarden.com
WITH MONTHS OF GARDEN HARVESTS and farm markets ahead and “The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” recently out, I rang up Deborah Madison from her New Mexico garden to talk fresh food ideas. Share in her wisdom about the goal of mastering just a few dishes; about learning to cook in a nonlinear fashion; or on making quick stocks—including from your bean-cooking water.Last time we spoke, Deborah’s high-desert garden had been suffering without rain. “It’s the same this year, sadly: severe drought,” she said. “I do have some things up, though. My sorrel plant is up, and lovage, tarragon, salad burnet and chives—the little green things that you’re so grateful for.”
The latest edition, updating 1997’s bestselling, award-winning “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone,” has more than 150 new recipes, among an impressive 1,600 in a massive volume. Expect to take many delicious detours—even when the subject is something as seemingly simple as barley (five variations are offered) or mashed potatoes. Whip them up plain (Deborah includes a pinch of nutmeg with the more-expected ingredients), or with saffron, with basil puree, with roasted garlic, with herbs and olive oil, or with root vegetables.
In our conversation on my latest radio show and podcast, we discussed how vegetarian cooking has evolved, her signature dishes, and more. Be sure not to miss the question and answer about the other meaning of “food with a face” below:
the q&a with deborah madisonQ. The original book came to you, you write, after you taught a class in cooking at Esalen Institute.It was a long time ago—maybe 1988—and it was a weeklong class, teaching people everything about cooking. We made vinaigrettes, we made bread, we made salads, we made soup, pasta. When I got
I have tried to grow several Pelargonium varieties this year and been pleasantly surprised at the various forms and colours I have succeeded in producing.
A bit of light relief for a dark corner! Spreads well but easliy controlled like butter (take a knife too it..
Our transatlantic cousins still benefit from the Pilgrim fathers gardening knowledge taken to their shores centuries ago. The potato famine of 1845-50 caused Irish farmers to discover the Idaho potato. Now these and other horticultural favours can be returned by this book of organic homespun tips.
There’s a spot beside my patio where Nicotiana and annual poppies like to propagate–don’t ask me why–and I’ve learned to let them do so, above, until they’re just big enough to move around where I want them. (This means we each get our way half the time, I guess you could say.) In the driveway gravel, wonderful sedums like ‘Matrona’ sow all the time, and I’m happy to have the freebies to add to the garden.If the colony of volunteers is in the right place but just too thickly sown, I edit (with repeated pinches of my fingers, removing enough to allow the survivors good spacing). If the colony isn’t where I want it at all, I scoop up trowelfuls (above, with Nicotiana) and move them, above, or sometimes even individual young plants.This is my system with not just the poppies and flowering tobacco, but with tall verbena (Verbena bonariensis), and would be with Nigella and larkspur and other things I no longer grow (though who knows why?).I know, I should neaten up my act–how messy to let the dill grow 6 inches high before weedi
Since the book “Planting in a Post-Wild World” came out in 2015, co-authored by Claudia West with Thomas Rainer, I’ve been gradually studying their ideas and starting to have some light bulbs go off, on how to be inspired to put plants together in the ways that nature does, in layered communities.Claudia joined me on the July 17, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to about some of the practical, tactical aspects of plant community-inspired designs that we can app
I have been known to plant spinach in my mittens, actually, as late as Thanksgiving, and again as early as March if the raised beds have drained out and the soil is workable. Seeds sown from September until the ground freezes up, then topped with a floating row cover, will offer a real headstart of a harvest in the North in April, when much
DESPITE THAT 1940s Harry Truman-ism, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen,” that’s exactly where harvest time sends us, especially if we grow our own edibles. Who better to ask for inspiration now than Deborah Madison—often called the Julia Child of vegetarian cooking? Listen to our conversation (my newest podcast) about her latest book, “Vegetable Literacy.” Along the way you’ll get wisdom on her must-have garden herbs; a recipe for her versatile, rich-in-a-good-way Romesco sauce; and even Deborah’s unexpected secret weapon for gopher control.Madison’s massive 1997 volume “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” (Amazon link) is probably on your shelf, or should be, and this year she published her 10th cookbook–another comprehensive, beautiful must-have. It’s arranged not in the usual manner (appetizer to dessert) but taxonomically, by plant family. (Remember my story about it, and her recipe for cauliflower pasta with red pepper flakes and more?)
Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney’s 2010 book is full of photos of all the oddball things you see outside (if you stop long enough to notice!): egg cases and cocoons and all kinds of webs; folded and curled-up leaves as if something’s hidden inside (it is!); and all manner of bumps, lumps, notches, and holes in foliage, bark, you name it. Even tiny previously unexplained pattern in the sand…and soil…a.k.a. tracks and signs of insects.“I’ve always been interested in everything around me,” says Charley, whose Master’s degree is from the University of Vermont’s field naturalist program. “Then someone gave me a digital camera right after I graduated from college, so I started paying closer attention to the little things. And then I started wishing I had a field guide to tell me what all these signs left by insects and other invertebrates were—but it just didn’t seem to exist.”Charley and Noah took it upon themselves to create that guide, in “Tracks and Sign of Insect
Adam and I talked about not just the Japanese types, but also other garden-sized maples for adding interest in every season and garden situation–in pots or the high shade of woodland gardens, to full-sun locations.my maple q&a with adam wheelerQ. When I was at Broken Arrow recently, there were many choice things to look at—but I kept noticing the maples you offer, particularly. How many do you grow?A. In the collection at the nursery, I suspect we have 150 or 200 different maples, and really that’s the tip of the iceberg with this genus.Q. There are a lot of native A
I was fighting the cues: wanting to get on with cutting miles of clean edges between turf and beds despite sodden soil (answer: don’t!) or rake some grassy areas that are still plastered with leafy, twiggy winter detritus but likewise still soft. Again: no can do, without pulling up the lawn.As much as I want to make it all “just so” in time for Open Day next weekend—maybe I can’t.The orientalis hybrid hellebores (Helleborus x orientalis) know about
Ten size-XL paw prints adorned the back porch; on the front welcome mat was deposited some apparently undesirable reject from the compost pile–not tasty enough, I guess. Feeding the birds? Not me, at least not right now. Project Feeder Watch, a bird-counting program with Cornell Lab of Ornithology that I look forward to each year (as you can read here), starts Saturday, but I think I’ll skip a week or two before I put out any more feeders. Extra-warm weather has at least one of the local bears on an extended feeding frenzy; the birds will have to be patient. After all, look what happened to the iron pole holding up the one feeder I
TIME FOR A LITTLE NON-PLANT MOMENT, captured in a quick jumble of other-than-botanical snapshots from around the garden lately.