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Since I'm cooking for a table full of people on busy days, I'm often throwing things in a pot (er, the instant pot)and I just thought I'd share that a soup doesn't just have to be a soup! Most times, I'm using the soup as a crutch - all the chopping and major seasoning done, main vegetable component of the meal ready, I can focus on adding other things and it's super easy and fast. Basically you have this veg version of a hamburger helper in the freezer. I rarely use it as a meal on its own (but of course,...

Usually when we tour around the garden with school kids I'll test them on different crops - 'Can anyone tell me what vegetable this is?!' kind of thing. No one got the rhubarb (before I pulled out a stalk to show them the red part). And yet when I asked them how many of their grandparents had a rhubarb plant, many of them raised their hand. Earlier in the week I was talking to Marie - she and her husband Pious are renting some land right beside the rhubarb for growing organic vegetables, they're from Cameroon and grow a lot...

Many of the plants (and furniture for that matter) that I grew up with and that populate the gardens around the house have stories attached to them. Friends gifted them or traded them with my mother over the last 40 years. The lovage that we eat every year is one of them. Dorothy and Ernie lived across the road from the farm, where my parents built the workshop, the barn and the house where we now live. They were Swiss, and had come from Switzerland in the 70s. Ernie had orchards and gardens and died when I was young and I...

We have a new dog! Sonny is a three and a half year old rough collie - he was the barnyard pet of a retired breeder. He is very relaxed dog, but we might wait to introduce him until a little bit later. But you may notice his hair ALL over the yard because he needed some serious trimming when he arrived.