A classic smooth butternut squash soup, spiked with bacon and garnished with pumpkin seeds and smoked paprika.
The Garden
Prickly Pear Juice
How to make prickly pear juice, known in Mexico as agua de tuna. How to juice a prickly pear without getting the spines in your hand!
Sour Corn
Southern sour corn, a lacto-fermented pickled corn, is a specialty in Appalachia. Sweet, tart and crunchy!
Sausage Stuffed Peppers
Everyone loves sausage stuffed peppers, and my favorites are with the big, relatively mild jalapenos you can buy these days.
Epazote: Mexico’s Mystery Herb
Dysphania ambrosioides is a secret ingredient in many Mexican recipes, including this epazote salsa recipe.
A Life in the Garden
A healthy garden becomes a haven in an otherwise frenetic world. There is a certain satisfaction to growing what you eat, and eating what you grow.
Agretti
How to cook agretti, the Italian vegetable that also goes by monk’s beard and is Salsola soda in Latin. Agretti is easy to grow, too.
How to Make Nixtamal
Nixtamal. Such a cool word! It is to Mesoamerica what hominy is to the United States: corn treated with an alkali substance to render it more nutritious, easier to grind, and, to many, tastier and more aromatic — think about the smell of a Mexican corn tortilla and that’s nixtamalization you are smelling. Nixtamal or