thick, creamy slow-cooker yogurt, with alana chernila

A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.

Salad:

Besides leaning how, enter to win the new book plus a chef’s knife and tote bag Alana shared with me to celebrate her book launch, the followup to her previous hit, “The Homemade Pantry” in 2012.One recent weekend, when we were teaching back-to-back, daylong cheesemaking classes at my place, I was explaining to the students how Alana Chernila and I ended up in my kitchen together this way, surrounded by all this milk and cream. After all, I’m a gardener, right, not a dairy farmer?Trying to explain Alana’s and my connection, I asked the class:“You know how my A Way to Ga

Andrew, who is now assistant director of the Chicago Botanic Garden, is past president of Magnolia Society International’s board of directors, and remains a member of the society’s board. In his tenure over 20 years as curator at Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Andrew built the magnolia collection from about 50 to more than 200 cultivars. That’s a lot of magnolias.Now Andrew Bunting is author of a book on the queen of flowering trees, called “The Plant Lover’s Guide to Magnolias,” just out from Timber Press as part of an ongoing series on various distinctive genera of plants.We talked magnolias on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along while you listen in to the April 25, 2016 edition of the podcast using the player below (or at this link)–and even learn how to train a magnolia or any w

“If you know the basic science and a few techniques with home dairy,” says Alana, author of “The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making” (Amazon affiliate link), “the whole world opens up and you can make a zillion different things.”That first book has been lavished with praise from food stars including Mollie Katzen, and Alana just delivered the manuscript for “The Homemade Kitchen,” due out in fall 2015. She’s a keen gardener whose grow-your-own passion and cookbook writing both began in 2008 with a job selling vegetables in our local farmer’s m

Thanks to Lisa, I got helpful advice about shopping for bulbs, and the importance of choosing perennial companion plants that work well with them—creating dramatic backdrops, or hiding faded bulb foliage—plus tips for making our tulips last longer and more.  We also talked about gardening by subtraction—the essential process of editing, especially in a looser “wild garden,” as the Gravel Garden style represents.Lisa, at Chanticleer since 1990 after graduating from Longwood Gardens’ Professional Gardener Program, is also one of the co-authors of lavish book about Chanticleer called “The Art of Gardening.” (Enter in the comments box at the very bottom of the page, after the last reader comment, to win a copy.)Read along as you listen to the Aug. 29, 2016 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the

Last year I had word that my website was nominated for a “best garden blog” contest, put on by “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine. Curious, I clicked over to the sites of all the other nominees—many of whom I did not know.One, in particular, stood out as a kindred spirit, and then a funny thing happened to seem to say, “Get in touch with that blogger” even more emphatically: A reader of mine emailed wi

What do you say we all make this the year of the more inspired approach to eating our vegetables? To that end, I called friend and cookbook author Alana Chernila, whose latest volume is “Eating from the Ground Up: Recipes for Simple, Perfect Vegetables.”We talked about a range of topics from how to roast a potato (no, not by just tossing it on a roasting pan with some oil) or a beet to perfection (ditto), to ingredients you may not be using that can make even a simple side dish into something special. A

Our guide is Virginia Tech associate professor of horticulture Dr. Holly Scoggins, a herbaceous plant specialist and educator, who also teaches greenhouse management and ornamental plant production and marketing. She conducts research to help commercial growers of container plants get it right, optimizing inputs like water and fertilizer, for instance, or different kinds of growing media.In other words: Holly Scoggins knows a well-grown plant when she sees one.Because she apparently can’t get enough plants, Holly also operates a U-pick blueberry farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains, blogs at The Garden Professors blog at extension.org, and contributes to the Professors’ popular Facebook page.On my public-radio show and podcast I learned a whole new style of plant-shopping etiquette, and got over my sti

Seattle-based Debra Prinzing is a longtime garden writer and author most recently of the books “The 50 Mile Bouquet” and “Slow Flowers” (Amazon affiliate links). When a garden designer friend who has also been a guest on this show, Kathy Tracey of Avant Gardens, recently wrote about a workshop she’d attended with Debra, I knew I had to invite her to my public-radio show so we could all learn more. The transcript follows:my slow-flowers q&a with debra prinzingQ. Your own adventure into slow flowers began with an “aha” from the food world.A. It did. I’m in Seattle, which is a big food community, and there are big food communities all across the country where we’re celebrating the chef and the farmer—they’re like the rock stars.The slow food movement began in Italy, I think, in the 80s, and migrated to the U.S., bu

In this increasingly bountiful produce season, whether from the CSA, farmers’ market, or backyard, I’ve been turning to inspiration to my friend Alexandra Stafford’s website, Alexandra’s Kitchen, and to her Instagram feed, too. In a Q&A on my public-radio show and podcast, Ali’s shared how to store vegetables to make them last longest (hint: cut green off those roots at once, for instance) to recipes for pasta carbonara that uses a ton of them, or grilled-veggie tacos (photo, top of page), plus various sauces, quick pickles and pestos, too.Plus: Enter to win a copy of Ali’s cookbook “Bread Toast Crumbs” by using the comment form at the very bottom of the page. Read along as you listen to the June 25, 2018 edition of the podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or

Years later, when visiting English gardens, I’d smile to see what are referred to as “houseleeks” happily growing on shed roofs, out of stone walls, and in other unfussy spots.These days at nurseries and in plant catalogs, Grandma’s version, the Sempervivum, are just the start–joined by what my friend Katherine Tracey of Avant Gardens Nursery calls “the other hens and chicks.”I got inspiration on the creative use of succulents from Kathy on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along as you listen to the April 1