For years we’ve been making our collards the old-fashioned way: boiling them to death. But lately my wife expressed concerns that we were leaching all the nutrient goodness out of our greens. Could we prepare them a better way? This week I picked up a bunch of large-leafed collards at the farmers market and tried [...]
This morning I picked a big bowl full of green beans, the first to mature this season. Planted May 21, these are a Blue Lake bush variety that looks awfully similar to the Italian green beans we like so much. They are flat-ish and full of meaty flavor. Just picked off the plant, they are [...]
Tags: green beans·steaming·summer
In the past, my preferred method for cooking asparagus was to poach it in a heavy skillet filled with salted water. I liked this method, because I could monitor the asparagus spears as they cooked, plucking out the thinner ones when the were done, leaving the thicker ones to cook a while longer. We seemed to achieve [...]
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
What's in your turkey? We killed and butchered more than 80 birds on the farm of Mike and Michelle Klein in Prince George's County. Thankfully, Michelle did the gutting. Unfortunately, Mike bought his turkey chicks earlier than usual and they did not stop growing. Our prize for helping was a carcass that weighed nearly 40 pounds. It barely fit in the oven. Here, Mike is subjecting a slaughtered bird to the "magic fingers," a machine with a nubby, rotating barrel that removes most of the feathers. 
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