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We were out for dinner a few weeks ago and the topic of the lake came up, and “yes, the boat is in the water, and oh, the kids will love it, we MADE AN HERB GARDEN!” and suddenly we had 15 people planning to descend on our little home.

Which always makes me happy and gives us an excuse to use our 10+ beds (two rooms have bunks and trundles, please erase any mental pictures of a castle on a hill).

But the best part about hosting for a weekend is that I have every excuse needed to spend 2 days in the kitchen preparing food.

And of course, hunting and gathering at the Union Square Farmer’s market for some treats beforehand.

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When we got up to the lake on Friday evening, the kids were eager to check out the herb garden, which despite my black thumb, has grown more lush by the minute.

I realized quickly that animal-shaped watering cans are the key to child labor, and put them to work doing all of the weeding and watering while I oversaw the process with a glass of white in my hand.

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We’d just finished watering the herbs when storm clouds gathered above and drenched us with rain while the sun continued to set over the Appalachian trail. It was our first sun shower together, such a beautiful moment.

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Rodney and I got engaged the Spring before we started business school and the time seemed ripe for a trip. With a small window between work and the start of school, we decided to pack up our bags and head to Europe. We spoiled ourselves by starting our trip in Spain, hitting Barcelona first, and then making a short stopover on the islands of Mallorca and Ibiza. We got into the usual kind of trouble over there, riding scooters on highways and staying up until dawn. I’m still thankful that we survived those few days, even if my camera didn’t.

From Barcelona, we traveled by overnight bus to France, where we met my parents who were living in Nice for a month. This all sounds very Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous, and I promise you that it’s not. This was the one time when the stars aligned and multiple family members somehow ended up on the same trip of a lifetime in the same area, at the same time. This will never happen again. Or maybe it will if we actually do become rich and famous.

To celebrate our pre-dawn arrival, my step-dad met us at the bus stop and hustled us back to their apartment where we were met with an impressive spread of French cheese, salami and duck terrine.

As you can imagine, we ate like gluttons; so much so, that Rodney and I made ourselves sick and had to spend the next day in bed suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. Too much raw milk cheese isn’t always a good thing.

Fortunately, after our week of binge eating in France, we were on our way to the Liguria region in Italy. Our plan was to hike through Cinque Terre and get healthy again with a mix of salads, fish, and lotsa lotsa pesto.

If you’re a fan of pesto, there is no better place to eat this stuff than in Liguria. Pesto is religion here, with shriveled old Nonnas duking it out for bragging rights over who makes the best version.

With our bellies full of pesto, we headed south to Amalfi. Like our experience in Mexico, we didn’t know where we’d be staying, but hoped for the best, and ended up finding a gem of an apartment with a roof deck facing the Mediterrean. Our place was and run by a mother/son duo, both of whom loved gelato and neither of whom spoke a lick of English.

As you would expect, they grew basil on their doorstep. More pots than I could count, so heisting a few leaves here and there was a no brainer. 

We split our roof deck with another apartment, and thus found ourselves sharing dinners and conversation with an Australian couple who were visiting from the city of Adelaide.

“I dated a guy from Adelaide, he’s an actor, I met him on my study abroad in Sydney” I once mentioned. “Name is Damon Gameau.”

As luck would have it, their daughter was at a party with Damon when her parents called to check in. As heard from our side of the phone “Lovely time in Italy, beautiful villa in Amalfi, staying next to a gal who said she dated an actor from Adelaide. Yes, his name’s Damon Gameau. Oh you’re at a party with him! Well tell him that we’re with Jessica! His old girlfriend from Sydney.”

There was a lot of “what a coeencidence Muriel” kind of stuff before the daughter said “hold on Mum, I’ll go and tell Damon”.

A minute passed, and the daughter came back on the phone to report that Damon had never heard of me.

I don’t know how you can forget a girlfriend of 6 months, but apparently it can be done. We went on a mini vacation together. He introduced me to homemade carbonara and Tim Tams. We used to drink white wine in our cramped garden in Coogee Beach. We were in a house fire together. How can one forget these things?

So I dusted off my pride, and focused on the pesto. Because, what’s more important in life, amnesic ex-boyfriends who didn’t use enough shampoo…or pesto?

Exactly.

And here’s a little secret that I’ve learned in the past year or two: pesto can be made with just about any green. And basil, though I love it, needs to be treated with care or it can turn dark.

So my favorites lately have been of the more….exotic variety. Arugula pesto, carrot top pesto, radish green pesto, kale pesto. Name the green, you can make it into pesto.

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My go-to combo is usually garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts, but I’ve discovered recently that pumpkin seeds make a fine substitute for nuts for our nut-allergic friends (our daughter included).

You don’t even need a recipe for pesto, although I’ve provided one below – just blitz the garlic in a food processor, add everything but the olive oil and pulse to a paste, and while the motor is running, add enough oil until you hear it slushing around loosely. Season to taste.

So whether you’ve signed up for a CSA and are preparing to get overwhelmed with greens this summer, or you (like me) can’t bear to throw away the beautiful vegetable tops that so often become compost or trash, I hope that this gives you some inspiration to get your pesto on. Enjoy!

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I’ve been meaning to address the topic of beets for some time because, like ramps, there seem to be divided camps: those who love them, and those who would veer across three lanes of rush hour traffic to avoid them.

I would plant myself firmly in the beet lover camp, although I do admit that they’re an acquired taste. They have an earthy mustiness that takes some getting used to, but once you’re there, rejoice. Because not only do they taste great, but they’re also one of the healthiest foods on earth.

A few of their benefits:

  • They help clear out BPA that resides in everything from your water bottles to your canned vegetables
  • They lower your blood pressure
  • They’re rich in all kinds of vitamins and nutrients like vitamins B and C

I’m sure there are more, but the purpose of this post is to talk about this beet dish and why you need to make it now.

What some of you may not know is that the beet greens themselves are also edible. And I do hate it when vegetables/vegetable parts are described as “edible” since it suggests that you caaaan eat them, but why would you want to?

Beet greens aren’t just edible, but they have a flavor profile on par with Swiss chard, kale, and other leafy greens. The problem is that when you see beet greens in the grocery store, the greens have often seen a few too many days and ill handling, and they end up wilted and yellowing. Sometimes you may scratch your head and think “do moths eat beet greens?”

Those aren’t the delicious greens that I’m referring to. Head to your nearest farmers’ market to find just-picked beets and you’re in for a treat.

In celebration of all things beet, I decided to make a dish that uses all parts of the beet, nose to tail. So put on your beet butchering hat, and take a look at what I’m calling my Jerry Garcia beets.

Alternate titles for this post included “Hallucinogenic beets” and “Meaty nose-to-tail beets” but to keep the vegetarians and non-drug users reading, “Jerry Garcia beets” seemed to be a good compromise.

I also liked the sense that I was naming my dish after an actual person. When I’m reading through cookbooks, I’ll sometimes come across a dish titled after someone special in the author’s life, like “Rinka’s mom’s beans” or “Aunt Julia’s salad dressing”, which makes me think: who is this Rinka and why is he or she so lucky to have a mom who makes such fabulous beans? And why don’t I have a dish named after someone?

I did think of referencing one of my favorite culinary folk heroes, my Dad, famous for his raw flour and red wine Thanksgiving gravy, poured through the beak of a ceramic bird called “the puking chicken”.

But unfortunately – or fortunately – he has no connection to beets. Inspiration needed to come from somewhere else.

By happy accident the beets turned out this color:

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Your reaction here might be “eeeew” (particularly if you’re a beet hater) or “awesome”. So I may be speaking to the minority of people who will agree with me, but multicolored creamed beets were the highlight of my day. And this isn’t joke food. This ain’t no Janet Jackson nipple cupcake, nor is it a cookie dough ice cream-filled taco. It’s real deal food; food that I would happily serve to friends and family, whether they live in California and can handle this kind of thing, or New York, where they’d have mild, wavelike panic attacks about all of that color.

It started as a simple idea. I set out to cook some creamed beets & beet greens, using all parts of the beet, from the vibrant stems to the lush greens.

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If you read my Mother’s Day post, you’ll know that plans for this weekend centered around the home. No McDonald’s this year. Just lots and lots…and lots of cooking and baking. If you don’t like to eat butter, sugar, bacon, or stinging nettles, avert your eyes. I’m sure that most of you would say that you don’t like to eat stinging nettles, but if I can convince you to read on, I’ll try to make it worth your while.

On Saturday morning, before we headed up to the lake, the kids put in a pancake request. “Actually, I already made a big pancake with cherries” I was thrilled to announce. “It’s called clafoutis. It’s French.”

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Lauren stared at it and then said “um, mom, you made pie”.

Which nobody wanted to eat. Kids. So I made regular pancakes. Lauren had the brilliant idea to make a DIY pancake bar where each kid could top their pancakes with fruit, chocolate and sprinkles. Not the healthiest breakfast, but not an everyday treat either. And I’d already made dessert for breakfast so it was probably my fault for setting the high water mark for a morning sugar binge.

We got up to the lake around lunchtime, and no surprise, the kids were hungry again. I figured that I’d serve something a little healthier this time around…

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It’s that time of year when all rational behavior falls by the wayside. Ramps are here. Home cooks and chefs alike elbow each other out of the way in order to return from the market with a few bunches of these highly prized vegetables, triumphant.

They’re delicious.

Black truffle delicious? Pork belly delicious?

I don’t know if I’d go that far. But they’re pretty fantastic, owing in part to the fact that they’re only around for a brief window in the Spring. Then they’re gone, hidden from view until they can serve as next year’s bright indication that that Spring is back, and that Winter has been banished for 9 more glorious months.

Some of you may be scratching your heads at this point, either never having heard of a ramp, and/or reflecting on your extreme distaste for pork belly. Let’s focus on the first issue, which is the topic of this post. Pork belly will be saved for another occasion when I muster up the confidence to cook it at home.

If I’m to use my Instagram account as a laboratory of sorts, there seems to be a lot of confusion about ramps.

Are they overpublicized and overpriced?

Or are they unsung heroes, with iffy recognition at best? The kind of fame often reserved for cultish authors, who slip by unrecognized by the masses but are adored by a passionate few.

Here are a few of the comments that led to my confusion after I posted a few dishes that contained ramps.

First, there is a large and vocal group of ramp lovers….

  • “RAMPS, my fave!”
  • “Ramps!!!!” (inclusive of a bright green leaf emoji)

Second, there seems to be a strange sleeper cell of ramp haters….

  • “I’m suffering from ramps overload”
  • “#savetheramps”

Lastly, there are those, with whom many reading this post will identify, who have never laid eyes on a ramp:

  • “Wait, what’s a ramp?”
  • “Are those ramps?”
  • “How have I never heard of these?”

Because educating the ramp unaware population is far more critical than appeasing the (likely) minority of (ornery) ramp haters, here we go: a short tutorial on where to find ramps, and what you can do with them. I’ve tried to make this visual so that you can see for yourself how versatile this simple green root can be….

Sourcing:

For some reason, I have never seen ramps in a Whole Foods or for that matter, any store with four walls and a ceiling.

The only place I’ve found ramps is at the farmers’ market, where you can find them in bunches, looking like this:

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Season:

Although it depends on seasonal temps, ramp season (in the Northeast) runs from late April into early June.

Preparation:

Use them just as you would any fresh herb, or if you want a milder flavor, give them a quick sautee or grill.

Just go easy on them at first – their flavor packs a punch.

Here are some suggested uses:

1. Snip them raw like chives over anything that loves oniony things – omelettes, ricotta cheese on toast, or as my kids like to do, just eat the leaves plain.

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(That was, for the record, ramps scattered over homemade labneh; harass me about writing a post on labneh because it’s ridiculously easy and so delicious)

2. Sautee them and add them to baked foods, like fritatta…

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Stir them into a bubbling pot of mussels…

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