Raspberries Atop Oatmeal Pancakes for Two
If you have ever considered planting raspberries in your home garden I highly recommend it. Once they're established, other than once-a-year pruning, they are relatively carefree and can last nearly forever with occasional transplanting. And you can stand up to pick...
Seven Tomato Recipes
Every year the tomatoes take over the kitchen. Besides our usual plain tomatoes and spaghetti sauce for the freezer, we've built up a collection of recipes that use this fabulous fruit. Here are just a few. Maybe you'll find something new or be reminded of past...
Tomato Harvest
The picture represents a very small fraction of the total tomato yield. I have forty plants growing in two beds. The 20 different types I grow our mostly heirloom varieties and a lot are started from saved seed. One hybrid I have grown for a lot of years is...
Simple Marinated Cucumbers
This has been a great year for cucumbers. We've had rainfalls mostly at the appropriate times so production has been steady. I'll be making refrigerator pickles with a lot of them but marinated slices are an easy and fast fix for dinner. Here goes: 2-4 cucumbers,...
Bindweed – CobraHead’s Weed of the Year
For our first, and probably last, annual award for the worst weed in the garden, this year goes to bindweed, hands down. Weed of the year requirements are simple. What weed is causing me the most grief or the most work to control in the garden? This year bindweed is...
Sweet Corn
We had an excellent corn harvest. Unfortunately, raccoons ate about two dozen ears due to my negligence in leaving the garden gate open one night Nevertheless, we still had a lot of corn to eat and freeze. We froze 16 bags of corn, each 1.5 cups for a total of just...
Brown Rice Risotto with Golden Oyster Mushrooms
A couple of weeks ago we had some heavy rains. The rain, coupled with the warm weather, brought out some nice flushes of golden oyster mushrooms in our woods. They were a bit dirtier than the ones you buy at the market so I did have to wash them. Since they do...
Recipe Favorites Over the Years
In honor of our 20th anniversary I thought I'd highlight some of our very favorite recipes from years past. When I looked at some of the posts I noticed that I still make a lot of them in exactly the same way. The rest have evolved over the years because I don't...
Twenty Year Anniversary!
In the summer of 1997 I was working in the garden with an old five-tined cultivating hoe, which I primarily use to shape and work up my open raised beds. One of the tool’s tines came loose and before I put in back in its place, I played with it in the soil. I was...
Rhubarb Crisp with Ginger
I like rhubarb crisps best at the beginning of the season. The stalks are succulent and juicy after all the spring rains. I realize there are a multitude of very good rhubarb recipes from pies to cobblers. (And we've tried a lot of them.) Following is a recipe I've...
A Tale of Two Invasives
Our property is over half wooded and for the last few years, two invasive plants have really made their presence known. Dames Rocket (Hesperis matronalis) and Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolate) are now well established. It’s interesting that both these plants were...
Come on Spring!
The vernal equinox of March 20th was supposed to mark the beginning of spring. Somebody forgot to let Wisconsin know. It’s the end of April, and we are just beginning to see weather that in any way lends itself to gardening. Indecent weather and the fact that I...
Fried Potatoes, Sweet Peppers and Shallots
I just used the last four potatoes from our 2021 harvest. They were starting to sprout but not so much that I couldn't use them. We also have a few shallots left so one went in the pan along with some frozen sweet pepper strips and a couple of cloves of garlic....
Tofu Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce
Where better to learn to make spring rolls than San Antonio in March? There are all kinds of fresh herbs and vegetables easily accessible at this time of year. You can put almost anything in the spring roll but it’s the fresh herbs that make them special. I asked my...
San Antonio Botanical Garden
Judy and I spent the month of March in San Antonio visiting our son Geoff and his wife Queenie, and enjoying and helping with our new granddaughter, Ophelia. Since we’re not doing any gardening, we’ll talk about our trip to the San Antonio Botanical Garden. The...
A Vacation from Gardening
January Garden While this may not have been the coldest January we’ve seen, it was still pretty cold. Depending on your gardening attitude, the frigid Wisconsin winter can be good, or not. I rate it very good, and other lazy gardeners are in my camp. There is...
Buckeye Bean Pot
Bean Nachos I've tried a lot of bean recipes over the years. I'll keep trying new ones, but I always come back to my favorite. Lately, I've been experimenting with various heirloom beans, such as Buckeye, Santa Maria Pinquito, San Franciscano, and cranberry beans...
2021 Garden
I like to grow food. My partner likes to cook. Those complementary interests lead to great meals. This year we had another good garden and as every year, some crops grew better than others. The advantage of growing a lot of different food is that a singular crop...
Not Quite Ready for Spring
Most years I use the month of November to get my garden ready for the next spring’s planting. Preparation includes removing all the trellising I’ve set up, a thorough weeding of most of the beds, cultivating and shaping the beds, and covering both my garden plots with...
Repurposed Chili Casserole
Repurposed Chili Casserole a.k.a. Mexicali Bean Bake is a dish I've been making for well over 30 years. I first found the recipe in an old vegetarian cook book. It is now online at cooks.com. I probably made it once or twice following the recipe. Then I realized...