Get ready to adjust your idea of what constitutes a yam. In Africa, a yam definitely is not the tuber we so frequently confuse with a supermarket sweet potato. Where real yams are concerned, you need to think bigger. A true yam (from a perennial vine in the Dioscoreaceae family) can grow up to eight feet [...]
Entries Tagged as 'okra'
Kids Make Yams And Okra
November 20th, 2009 · No Comments · Ethnic, kids
Tags: African·food appreciation·greens·okra·yams
Saving Okra Seed
November 5th, 2009 · 5 Comments · garden
Saving okra seeds should be easy, right? You can’t hardly miss the seed pods. But the ones I saved from last year resulted in zero germination. What did I do wrong?
The only thing I can think of is I didn’t leave them on the plant long enough. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. [...]
Okra And Pepper Medley
October 14th, 2009 · No Comments · Recipes, garden
Regular readers will be heartbroken to learn that this is the end of our okra for the year. I know, I know. It hardly seems possible. It seems like we were just getting started on the endless possibilities of okra. But the sad truth is impossible to deny: the season is over. There will be [...]
Breakfast
September 28th, 2009 · No Comments · breakfast, garden
Eggs poached in curried okra stew.
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Shopping: none
Food gardening is more like jazz than a symphony. You always have to be ready to improvise, depending on what’s in season. This okra stew usually calls for zucchini and sweet potato leaves. But our champion okra plants have lapped the zucchini and we are out [...]
Fried Okra, Eggplant And Green Tomato
September 21st, 2009 · 4 Comments · Recipes, garden
I normally don’t require a recipe to fry my okra. But I took a cruise through my cookbook library to consider my options and ran across this intriguing entry from Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking. The so-called lowcountry refers to the area around Charleston, South Carolina, and its coastal plain. It boasts it’s own culture and [...]
Tags: eggplant·fry·green tomatoes·okra
Land Of Plenty
September 10th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Recipes, garden
I wonder if more Americans wouldn’t cook at home if they didn’t get the idea from our popular media that every meal had to rise to the level of restaurant food. The same ethic has been embraced by hundreds of food bloggers, each enticing us with recipes entirely different from what we saw yesterday–photos to drool over, [...]
Tags: okra
Grilled Lamb And Pomegranate Swiss Chard
September 8th, 2009 · No Comments · Recipes, dinner, garden
Forgive me garden mother for I have neglected my Swiss chard.
We consider chard one of our most reliable vegetables. It marches through almost any kind of weather and doesn’t seem to mind how many times you harvest: It just grows back. We usually plant the ruby variety of chard but this year planted some green [...]
Breakfast
September 7th, 2009 · 2 Comments · breakfast
Egg poached in curried okra stew
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Shopping: none
Our okra plants are still going strong. I can barely keep up. I’d collected a big bowl of pods and yesterday spent some time in the kitchen turning them into some of our favorite dishes, one of them this curry-seasoned stew with our own home-grown squash, sweet [...]
Curried Okra Stew With Sweet Potato Leaves And Coconut Milk
August 31st, 2009 · 2 Comments · Recipes, garden
Did you know that sweet potato leaves are edible?
Until last year, I didn’t know either. When I got the news, I was inspired to create this Indian-like stew of okra and sweet potato leaves smothered in coconut milk and seasoned with curry spices. As you might imagine, this is one of those dishes from the [...]
Tags: coconut milk·curry·okra·stew
Fast And Furious Okra
August 15th, 2009 · 9 Comments · Recipes, garden
I actually met a longtime District of Columbia gardener recently who said she had never planted okra and did not sound anxious to do so anytime soon.
What? How can this be? Doesn’t everyone know that nothing grows like okra in our hot, humid D.C. summers? Okra positively loves it here. It just can’t get hot [...]
Tags: okra
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
