Moringa!

...s who has turned his entire front yard and even the parkway into an edible garden featuring fruits and vegetables from his native land, most of which we have never seen before. This morning, while walking the dog, I found him cutting hundreds of long seed pods off of a small attractive tree. He didn’t know the English name of the tree, but he told me that he likes to slice the seed pods and cook them with chicken. Thanks the the “internets” I was...

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Be Idle

...nking and generally doing nothing. We like to use mint that we grow in the garden — mint is one of the easiest herbs to grow and we recommend that everyone have a patch or pot of it on their homestead (it tolerates shade, but it can be a bit invasive so stay on top of it or make this recipe often!). We’ve also substituted basil when we have that on hand. 1/2 cup unblanched whole almonds, toasted 1/2 cup shelled salted pistachio nuts, toasted 1/3 c...

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Rats

...rat prevention goes, it’s really important to harvest all fruits from the garden before they drop on the ground. Our rat problem this winter may be due, in part, from our laziness and failure to harvest the fruit of our prodigious fig tree in addition to the foundation work we’re having done (thanks again to those realtors we want to sick the rats on). Other deterrents include not leaving food around and getting rid of wood piles. Rats are also o...

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Rapini!

...irst crop of the winter, delicious broccoli rabe, from our illegal parkway garden. Broccoli rabe or rapini, is often described as being bitter, but I think it would be better to describe store bought broccoli as band and rapini as “flavorful”. Actually rapini is not related to the broccoli plant and is instead more closely related to turnips. The variety we planted is called Cima di Rapa Quarantina and is available from growitalian.com. Thanks Los...

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Broadleaf Plantain

Today we introduced some weeds into our garden, planting some broadleaf plantain (Plantago major) seeds that we collected on our bike camping and wild food excursion with Christopher Nyerges. As Nyerges noted, this is one of those plants that Martha Stewart hates, and that makes the purveyors of toxic herbicides and lawn care products rich. You can’t eat your lawn folks. You can, however, eat broadleaf plantain. The young leaves are edible raw, b...

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