At the end of nearly every summer, my wife and I buy a bushel of corn from a local Vermont farm. Have you ever bought anything by the bushel before? It’s fun and you can often get a good deal by buying a greater quantity.

It’s easy to get bored with cooking in the winter. The typical dinner composition of protein, vegetables, and starch gets to be extremely mundane, especially without quality fresh produce to liven up the palate.

When I was a kid, my French Canadian grandparents often made something called ployes. Ployes are thin, crepe-like pancakes popular in northern Maine and Quebec. You can spread them with butter, roll them up, and enjoy them as a side to just about any meal. They’re delicious with stew or soup…

Tea is one of the things that helps me get through winter. It might sound boring, but I find a warm mug of tea on a grey winter’s day a welcome comfort to the bitter cold. And the number of unique tea varieties available these days keeps it interesting. It also helps prevent me from drinking…

Biscotti are my kind of cookie. Is there another that crunches so beautifully? I don’t think so. Another that pairs so perfectly with a cup of hot tea or coffee? Definitely not.

I’ve never really understood pomegranates. They’re fruit, but when you cut them open, you find that they’re entirely made up of seeds. There’s no edible flesh like a melon or an apple. So what are you supposed to do with a bunch of seeds?

Have you ever felt like there’s something you can’t accomplish? That it’s beyond your ability, and you don’t even bother to try? The older I get, the more I realize I have no idea why I feel that way. Some things in life only appear more complicated than they are, and once you give them a ch…

Cranberries are fall’s take on lemons. Though one is a berry and the other a citrus, I think the two are more alike than not when it comes to desserts. They both have a pleasant sourness that holds up well to sweetness. Many ripe fruits (excluding citrus, in general) are high in natural suga…

Have you seen that meme about how you can lose the little remaining joy you have in your life if you replace your morning cup of coffee with green tea? It’s so relatable. But it’s not because green tea is terrible; it’s that when you deprive yourself of something you enjoy, you end up unhappy.

A fool is someone who doesn’t appreciate dessert. It’s also the name of the easiest dessert I’ve ever made – a simple blend of cooked fruit and whipped cream.

Is it just me, or are blackberries one of the summer’s most underrated fruits?

I’m always interested in unexpected ideas for cooking with the herbs and flowers in my garden. If you’ve kept up with my column over the years, you’ve seen recipes such as mint pesto, lemon balm lemonade, lilac tea, rosemary lemon cake, and chamomile cookies. You can say they’re a little out…

A vegetable garden is a wonderful thing. Not just for the food it produces, but for the attention it requires. No, really. Hear me out on this.

Summer is here, and gatherings are back on. That means you’re going to need to bring something to share with those family and friends you haven’t seen so much of lately. And since it’s been a while, it better be good.

As a food writer, it won’t surprise you that I have a running list of foods I want to make and recipes I want to create. Spring rolls have been on that list for weeks. I had the wrappers but kept putting off making the rolls, thinking that it would be a project that required a lot of time an…

Cardamom is one of my favorite spices, and I’m always finding new ways to use more of it. So I figured, why not add it into something I enjoy every day and make cardamom flavored coffee? It turns out, this is a common flavor of Thai Coffee.

Last year a generous friend divided up her rhubarb plant and shared some with me to plant in my own garden. Now, after taking time to get established, it’s finally ready to harvest.

I know it’s spring in the garden when chamomile starts to pop up like a weed.

I’m a sucker for buying frozen drinks when the weather is nice. How often do I make them at home? Rarely. Even though I have a decent blender and the main ingredient for any frozen beverage: ice.

I’ve always thought it funny that carrots are considered a spring vegetable. By always, I mean for as long as I’ve known a few things about how vegetables grow.

This soup reflects a few of the lessons I’ve learned over the past year. For starters, it reminds me to appreciate simplicity. Humans have a knack for overcomplicating things and for better or worse, we’ve had to learn to simplify our lives in some ways lately. A soup made of mostly celery, …

Chances are that you use olive oil in your everyday cooking. But have you tried it for baking? It may sound unusual, but baking with olive oil is common in countries such as Spain, where there is a fresh and flavorful supply of olives.

Imagine you create something so good that people name it after you. But then, you get into an argument, and someone takes your creation away and changes its name on you. As the decades pass, your creation lives on, yet you go forgotten.

If I had to pick my favorite fruits, I don’t know that citrus would come close to topping the list. Yet my feelings on the matter change about this time each year. The dreary days have me craving foods that pack a punch of flavor. I’ll take anything to help me get out of my winter rut and fr…

If you find pancakes boring, then it might be time to give aebleskiver a try. Aebleskiver are round, Dutch filled pancakes, and they’re about to bring some excitement to your breakfast game. Think of them as pancakes crossed with donut holes with the added lightness of popovers. In other wor…

I’ve avoided sharing a chili recipe for a long time. It’s not that I don’t like chili; I do. The problem is that everyone wants the best chili recipe. Or the spiciest. Or one that’s made without any beans. No, make that only with beans. Maybe a chili that’s not too spicy but includes coffee …

If we ever needed a good drink to close out a year, now is the time. That’s why this week, I bring you the Hot Buttered Rum. Warm, indulgent, and boozy, this is what we need as we cope with the tragedy this year has brought upon the world, and we look forward to better days ahead.

If you imagine a croissant in cookie form, you have yourself rugelach. These small Eastern European cookies originated from the Jewish communities of Poland. Today they’re found worldwide yet remain especially popular in Israel, especially the old-fashioned variety filled with chocolate.

Way back in September, when you could still travel a little on occasion, my wife and I went to Cape Cod for a few days. Always curious about the local foods of wherever I visit, I was excited to find a historic grist mill still working in the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts. Situated on a qu…

Spending extra time at home during lockdown this spring meant more time for trying new things. One of those included starting my own quinoa plants from seed. I had no expectations, but plenty of time, so why not? I set up grow lights and seed trays in the basement, tucked the tiny quinoa see…

I don’t know about you, but this year I’m celebrating even the smallest of victories. And successfully growing lemongrass in my garden this summer is one of them.

As with everything else this year, Germany’s Oktoberfest was canceled. It’s not the first time in its more than 200 year run that the world’s largest beer and folk festival was canceled, though the last time was back in 1949. With more than six million global visitors over the 16 (or more, d…

I have to say, picking green tomatoes is a depressing way to end the summer. But there was little choice. A couple of early hard frosts quickly killed off our tomato plants. Better yet, we were away on our honeymoon when it happened. When we returned, we scrambled in the dark, flashlights in…

I have to admit that I don’t enjoy overly spicy food. I think there’s an expectation when you grow a vegetable garden and like to cook that you need to get into hot pepper culture. But generally, jalapenos or chipotles are as hot as I go these days. When I want some spice, jalapenos are my g…

I often forget that peaches grow as far north as they do. I think of them as a fruit belonging more to Georgia than Vermont. But the majority of the country’s peaches come from California, not Georgia and definitely not Vermont. Nevertheless, they can grow well here and we picked a satisfyin…

One of the least used herbs residing in my garden is oregano. For years it has thrived behind the shed, returning each summer more vigorous than ever. On one hand, I don’t feel that bad about neglecting it, seeing as we started the plant from seed years ago and it doesn’t require much in ter…

Sicily was one of the stops on the Mediterranean cruise planned for our upcoming honeymoon. At this point, there is no chance we’re going to make it there this fall, and honestly, who knows when we will. Yet Sicily was one of the destinations I was most excited to visit.

Let’s face it, most of our travel plans for the near future are not happening. Instead, we are spending more time closer to home than usual. At least we should be. Sadly, we are missing out on all kinds of experiences in the process. Take my honeymoon plans to the Mediterranean, for instance…

With all that’s going on right now, it can seem difficult to spend much time thinking about cooking. I know I’ve kept busy by checking the news and social media, wondering if I need to clean more and canceling every social interaction for the foreseeable future.

Stouts are my favorite kind of beer. They range from dark brown to black in color and typically taste of roasted grains, coffee and chocolate. They have a complex and intriguing flavor that is perfect for winter and pairing with warm, deep-flavored dishes.

We all have that one thing we collect. Maybe it’s coffee mugs with witty quotes on them, ticket stubs from shows we’ve been to, or houseplants that do nothing but wither and die. Sometimes we’re not even sure how we ended up with a collection, as these things have a way of just appearing. Yo…

It’s not easy to get excited about parsnips. They look like a neglected sibling of the carrot. I like most vegetables, but I’ve been a bit indifferent to parsnips. I’ve never had luck growing them in the garden and they just haven’t popped up on my radar often. They’re just not as common.

Some nights it feels like such a hassle to get dinner made at a reasonable time. The only way I seem able to make it happen is by sticking with a meal plan and a schedule. But even that’s not foolproof, as it’s so easy to get delayed with something at work, finding myself having to make an u…

While the holidays may have come and gone, there’s a long, cold winter ahead, and no reason why we shouldn’t still enjoy ourselves. Yeah, we should definitely cut back on some of the overindulgences. But there are plenty of reasons to celebrate — birthdays, snow days, Fridays. Whatever the r…