‘vegan vegetarian omnivore,’ the inclusive new cookbook from anna thomas

Peter Estersohn

No other plant native to South Carolina has such fragrant and beautiful spring blooms and stunning fall color as the witch-alders. Fothergilla was named after Dr. John Fothergill, an English physician and gardener who funded the travels of John Bartram through the Carolinas in the 1700’s. These beautiful shrubs have been planted in both American and English gardens for over 200 years, including gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

THAT OLD, DISCARDED ELECTRIC FAN that isn’t strong enough for the hot summers of global warming…hey, bring it on. It’s perfect for accomplishing one of the tricks to growing better tomato seedlings, which is (after all) the only thing you probably really care about on the run-up to another spring. To hell with winter.

I first met Deb Perelman in my former life, when I worked for Martha Stewart. It was late 2007 or early 2008—a millennium ago in internet years—and we’d invited in a group of bloggers we admired to get better acquainted.  Deb sat to my left (and beyond her was Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks.com, with the founders of Apartment Therapy and theKitchn.com across the table, and more). I think that gathering is what crystallized my intention to start a website: such an inspiring group.But I digress. If you haven’t visited Smitten Kitchen, prepare to be entertained, educated, and called to action.DEB PERELMAN is a self-taught home cook, and is funny in that self-deprecating way I love (often using the cross-out strikethrough key on her editing dashboard to good effect). On the blog, and in the new cookbook, Deb invites you into her kitchen, and family, teaching you (her Tips section online alone is worth a visit, let alone all her recipes) while tempting you. You always come away hungry…until you get out the ingredients

The Deer’s Delicate Palate: We all wonder (often in loud expletives when something has been chewed) what it is that deer won’t eat. I loved this online tool created at Rutgers University Extension (based on observations in northern New Jersey) that rates things from “Rarely Damaged” to “Frequently Severely Damaged” (above) in a five-point scale that seems more sensible to me that saying anything’s “deerproof.” We could all benefit from this kind of thinking, a sort of risk-assessment philosophy of planting in the presence of these beasts. (You know me; I don’t. I gave up and got a deer fence.)Compost-Bin Envy: I have never met Ryan Boren, one of the lead developers (read: software engineer) for WordPress, the platform I so love and that this site is built on. Who knew that Boren is also adept with wood-working tools and built himself a composter-to-covet at the Texas home he shares with his growing family and some mighty cute goats. The “after” shot of his three-stage compost bin is here; the detail shots here.An Old Friend, Overplanted:

To enter to win a copy, simply scroll down to the comments and tell us how you like your spears. Type a whole recipe right into the comment box, or just a link to a recipe on your blog or another’s, or perhaps a tip instead about what you like asparagus served with (Anna says dill and lemon come to mind, for starters).The backstory: I met Anna Thomas when “Love Soup” came out last fall, and promptly stocked my freezer with double batches of several of her recipes made from my winter squash and sweet potatoes and kale and the like, and stocked up on copies to give as holiday gifts. Now a whole new season of homegrown vegetables has begun, and I’m working my way through “Chapter 9: First Tastes of Spring,” and on to “Chapter 10: Green and Greener.” Heaven. Vats of Asparagus Bisque, here I come.Thismust-have cookbook features 160 vegetarian recipes for soups and all the extras, from b

I spoke about some notable natives with my friend Andy Brand of Broken Arrow Nursery, with whom I often hosting half-day workshops in my Hudson Valley, New York, garden, when we focus on upping the beneficial wildlife quotient in your own backyard with better plants and better practices. Andy has been one of the experts I’ve pestered for ideas as I’ve been doing that in my own garden in recent years to good effect.Andy is manager of Connecticut-based Broken Arrow, and he’s a serious amateur naturalist, and founder of the Connecticut state butterfly association. (That’s a photo by Andy of a red-banded hairstreak on a Clethra blossom, top of page.) Learn where many familia

These non-native “ladybugs,” introduced by the Department of Agriculture to help combat certain agricultural pests, have made themselves right at home in America—and in my house, too. In fall, the south-facing side of the exterior can be teeming with patches of them, as they look for places to tuck into and overwinter. The USDA imported lady beetles from Japan as early as 1916 as a beneficial insect, to gobble up unwanted pests on forest and orchard trees, but it was probably later releases, in the late 1970s and early 80s in the Southeast, that took hold. Today, multicolored Asian lady beetles have made themselves completely at home around the United States, easily adapting to regions as diverse as Louisiana, Oregon, and mine in New York State.

I paid a visit this summer to historic Beekman 1802, the rural residence of my ex-Martha Stewart colleague Brent Ridge and his partner Josh Kilmer-Purcell, also known as “The Fabulous Beekman Boys” from the Planet Green reality show and from the popular memoir “The Bucolic Plague” that Josh published last year about their city-to-country transition.For the Beekman Boys’ latest project (do theyever stop?), the cookbook team included another old friend, Sandy Gluck, former food editor of Martha’s “Everyday Food” magazine and one of the smartest cooks I know. The result: a happy combination of fresh-from-the-garden ingredients, including many heirlooms, that Brent and Josh grow at their Sharon Springs, New York, farm or purchase nearby, combined into well-written, practical recipes that invite me to try them. No crazy-long lists of ingredients; no daunting step-by-steps, thank you.

“In a way,” she writes in the introduction to “Vegetarian India,” “I have been traveling for this book forever.” I suspect other readers will be grateful as I am for every mile she logged and every recipe gleaned from a vast and diverse nation of many cuisines.In Madhur’s talk and in the book since, I’ve been transported to India’s roadside food stands offering spiced potato fritters or perhaps mung-bean pancakes (topped with chutney and perhaps an egg, please). We stopped in home kitchens, and for a workplace lunch with a Bombay jeweler; at an ashram, enjoying a simple, not-too-spicy cauliflower dish; in Southwest India for an unexpected fusion of ingredients: mushroom curry made with coconut milk.About 200 simple-to-prepare recipes

You may recall my previous conversations with Thomas, the co-author with Claudia West of the provocative 2015 book “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.” Even though we both have worked around plants for many years, it’s as if Thomas sees them differently from the way I do, in a sort of super-savvy botanical 3-D. He doesn’t see them as mere decorative objects, but astutely reads their body language for clues to who they want to grow with (or not) and how to put them all together successfully.I love how he sees, and thinks, as you can glean from our lively Q&A, where he says things like this:And this:Though not intentionally so, the Times article turns out to be especially timely—and not just because it’s early spring, and we gardeners need to make smarter choices

“Something odd has to happen for hairworms to be on soil or vegetation, instead of in water, so at first when I got those calls I thought: It must be earthworms,” says Hanelt, a Research Assistant Professor with the Center for Evolutionary and Theoretical Immunology in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “But I asked one caller to send me some—and lo and behold, they were hairworms.”It took years between the time Hanelt saw his first nematomorph, while on a survival-training hike in high school, until he actually knew what it was.“There they were out in the middle of the forest in winter, in a bucket of water,” he recalls. He saved the strange animal,