Cucumber Watermelon Salsa

By recipesJune 3, 2015April 21, 2023 Appetizers, Featured, Recipes, Summer Produce

Crunchy cucumbers—especially when you can get them locally-grown and fresh-picked!—make a great base for a salsa. Here, they are paired with ripe, sweet watermelon for a unique cucumber watermelon salsa that tastes great with grilled seafood!

KITCHEN COPY: SCANDALOUS STRING BEANS

By chucksmithJune 3, 2015April 21, 2023 Appetizers, Cooking Methods, Featured, Kitchen Copy, Locally Grown, Photos, Recipes, Seasonal, Summer Produce basil, green beans, local ingredients, locally grown produce, recipes, vegetarian

Whether whores first invented puttanesca is no concern of mine. The sauce is bright, flavorful, pungent, and goes with just about anything you can scrounge together. Including the ubiquitous green bean. Literally translated, alla puttanesca means “in the style of a prostitute.” It is a culinary legend whose origins (like so many inventions) are clouded with speculation. There are various…

Protecting Pollinators in Your Vegetable Garden

By rebeccatalbotMay 28, 2015May 29, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

My heart always lifts when I see a honeybee in my vegetable garden. Like many people, I’ve known for several years that honeybees are in trouble. In 2011, my sister showed me the documentary “Vanishing of the Bees,” which explained how honeybees had been disappearing across the globe due to colony collapse disorder and emphasized the…

Thai Stir Fried Veggies

By recipesMay 28, 2015April 21, 2023 Featured, Main-Dishes, Recipes

Everyone makes stir fried veggies of some kind and sprinkles on some soy sauce. Here is a Thai version. The key to success here, as in any stir-frying, is to cook one serving at a time. Too much food in the wok slows cooking time and defeats the purpose of the high heat of the wok….

KITCHEN COPY: A RHUBARB TO REMEMBER

By chucksmithMay 20, 2015April 21, 2023 Cooking Methods, Featured, Kitchen Copy, Recipes, Seasonal recipes, rhubarb, soup, vegetarian

The poisonous leaves of the rhubarb plant can cause a variety of symptoms including stomach pain, nausea, and breathing difficulty. The bright red stalk of the rhubarb plant, on the other hand, is totally edible and can cause delight, a sense of wellness, and sometimes (in extreme cases) euphoria. When I was about seven years old, my…

Planting the Three Sisters

By rebeccatalbotMay 14, 2015May 16, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

“There was only one way in which the three sisters were alike,” says the Iroquois legend of the Three Sisters plants. “They loved one another very dearly, and they were never separated. They were sure that they would not be able to live apart.” This picture of sibling harmony and love aptly illustrates the way…

Roasted Beets

By recipesMay 13, 2015April 21, 2023 Cooking Methods, Featured, Hardy Vegetables, Recipes, Root Vegetables, Sides

Roasting Beets preserves their color, flavor, and nutrition much better than boiling. It also makes peeling them a breeze!

Roasted Veggies & Quinoa

By recipesMay 7, 2015April 21, 2023 Featured, Recipes, Sides, Summer Produce

This is a very versatile recipe. The veggies and the herbs can be changed to suit your taste, but after a lot of trial and error I find this exact combination to be outstanding! You can use any color quinoa, but I prefer red mainly for the color. This is a great side dish for…

KITCHEN COPY: THE WHOLE EGG

By chucksmithMay 6, 2015April 21, 2023 Appetizers, Cooking Methods, Featured, Kitchen Copy, Recipes, Vendors eggs, local ingredients, recipes

For someone who grew up eating uniformly bleach-white supermarket eggs, all natural, free range eggs were a revelation. My wife used to run a farm, and it was there that I first encountered them. It was on that farm where I witnessed firsthand the obvious benefits of allowing laying hens the opportunity to range freely. And it was also on that farm where I first tasted…

Edible Landscapes: Planting for the Palate

By JenniferHetrickApril 30, 2015May 4, 2016 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

Adding plants with beautiful colors, textures and shapes to flowerbeds and garden space always makes sense, but joining permanent edible landscape plants to your yard is another bright idea that can benefit your family at the kitchen table. Anne-Marie McMahon, founder and owner of Sugarbush Nursery in Robeson Township, Berks County, gladly advocates installing edible landscape…

Cooking Fresh Greens

By recipesApril 22, 2015November 2, 2017 Cooking Methods, Featured, Leafy Greens, Recipes

Cooking Fresh Greens Fresh hearty greens are an excellent (and delicious!) source of vitamins. Maybe you’ve considered preparing them at home but don’t quite know how best to do that. Here is a SUPER SIMPLE preparation for greens, which can be used for many kinds such as swiss chard, collards, kale, beet greens, mustard greens,…

KITCHEN COPY: CONTEMPTIBLE KIWI

By chucksmithApril 21, 2015April 21, 2023 Cooking Methods, Featured, Kitchen Copy, Recipes, Seasonal, Winter Squash acorn squash, gluten-free, kiwi, recipes

At the risk of sounding totally counterculture, I would like to confess that I love tropical fruit. That is, I thoroughly enjoy consuming fruits that have been harvested in tropical regions, packaged, and shipped across the globe. I enjoy these things even while I acknowledge the impact that common farming/distributing practices have on the environment and…

Strawberry Rhubarb Compote

By recipesApril 16, 2015April 21, 2023 Breakfast, Featured, Recipes

Rhubarb is a unique, flavorful (and on its own fairly tart) fruit (or technically speaking, vegetable.) It can be such a delicious treat if prepared properly…and it’s so easy! This is a recipe for compote, which is basically a stew of fresh fruit with sugar. This particular compote is wonderful over ice cream, biscuits, shortcake,…

Harvest Fresh Strawberries from Your Backyard

By rebeccatalbotApril 16, 2015April 9, 2018 Berries, Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

Every year, the garden center at Wolff’s Apple House features an abundance of strawberry plants for home gardens, and every year that I hear about this it still sounds magical. Really? You can harvest strawberries from your backyard? And not just those tiny, gritty wild strawberries, but lush, flavorful homegrown strawberries? I shouldn’t be too…

KITCHEN COPY: C IS FOR CONFIT

By chucksmithApril 8, 2015April 21, 2023 Cooking Methods, Featured, Kitchen Copy, Recipes confit, recipes, red cabbage

It could have been the alcohol. But more likely it was just foolish pride… Having paid good money for my culinary education, I wasn’t about to let myself be upstaged by some amateur food enthusiast. Especially not in front of others. Small matter that one of those “others” was my new love interest, and Mr. food…

Designing Early Spring Flower Boxes

By rebeccatalbotApril 2, 2015April 24, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Flowers

This week, I caught up with Wolff’s Plant Manager Laura Dusenshine to learn more about designing early spring flower boxes to take full advantage of early spring flowers as we add splashes of color to our homes and gardens. Here is her vibrant, plentiful bouquet of advice. As people design flower boxes, what kinds of…

KITCHEN COPY: EASILY ELEGANT LEEKS

By chucksmithMarch 25, 2015April 21, 2023 Appetizers, Featured, Holiday, Recipes, Root Vegetables, Seasonal beets, Easter, leek recipe, winter produce

Leeks have come a long way in my life since 2001. It’s been an uphill battle for this once neglected ingredient. Unlike onions and garlic, the leek is more intimidating. It seems almost alien when pulled from a grocery bag and placed on a cutting-board at home. I remember a cashier quizzically examining a bunch of…

Welcome Springtime with a Terrarium

By AlessandraSimmonsMarch 17, 2015March 17, 2015 Crafts, Featured DIY, succulents, terrariums

Terrariums are beautiful, tangible odes to spring. They are also easy to make. There are two kinds of terrariums: open and closed. Closed terrariums, that is, terrariums with lids, are perfect for plants that thrive in high-humidity, such as plants in the fern family. From asparagus to maidenhair, there is a great diversity of green and leaf…

Pavlova with Strawberries & Mint for St. Patrick’s Day

By rebeccatalbotMarch 12, 2015April 21, 2023 Berries, Desserts, Featured, Recipes dessert, gluten-free

In 2007, my husband and I found ourselves wandering through Boston. We were honeymooning there, and although we had each visited the city before, separately, we didn’t know it well. We wandered between the wharf and Newbury Comics, visited Paul Revere’s Old North Church and hopped the train to Cambridge, and every suppertime we found our way back to…

Our Best Spring Recipes

By rebeccatalbotMarch 5, 2015November 2, 2017 Featured, Leafy Greens, Recipe-Round-Up, Recipes

It is snowing in southeastern Pennsylvania as I write this, with three to five inches predicted to fall by evening. But at Wolff’s, tulips, crocuses, pansies, narcissus and daisies brighten the garden center, holding out hope for spring. I don’t know about you, but I sure need that hope. I need to start noticing that…