Gardening 101: Planning, Preparing & Planting

When you walk into Wolff’s this time of year, a sea of vibrantly colored flowers greets you. Some of these plants are ready to go in the ground, like Pansies and cold-tolerant annuals like Alyssum, Diascia, Dusty Miller, Lobelia, Nemesia and Snapdragons. Other early season perennials are also waiting for their turn in the dirt,…

Thai Pizza with Sweet Chili Sauce: A New Twist on a Pizza Tradition

I was probably about six the first time I can remember my mom baking her own pizza dough.  After that, it became a family tradition: Friday nights were pizza nights, and her homemade dough, stretched to the corners of a cookie sheet, formed the basis of creations the family sometimes helped to make. This week,…

IN THE WOLFF’S DEN: PART I

There is a narrow dirt road that runs along the edge of the Wolff’s modest Sunny Brae farm. Mostly inactive now, this road used to be heavily traversed by tractors and various farming implements. Currently, three generations of Wolffs live along this stretch. Ken and Gennie, third generation Wolffs, live just across from the farm….

Wolff’s Winter Colors

Winter came early to the east coast this year, painting over October’s vibrant palette and turning everything white.  That’s the thing about winter that can really start to get to me: the way that color drains out of the landscape when the sun is shut behind clouds or the ground is hidden in a few-days-old…

Please Pass the Cranberry Sauce

I sat across from my cousin’s nine-year-old son this Thanksgiving.  A big platter of cranberry sauce gleamed on the table between us.  Greedily, we both stared at it. “Well, my friend,” I said.  “Looks like there’s half for you and half for me.” “Not if I get it first,” he said. Cranberry sauce is one…

Soup’s On: 4 Soup Recipes

In my apartment’s tiny kitchen, the whole room warms up when a pot simmers on the stove top.   This is one reason I love to simmer soup and stew this time of year.  The other reasons are more universal:  the chance to load a bowl full of vegetables, the frugality of re-purposing odds and ends…

Corn on the Cob, Fresh off the Grill

Fireflies.  Volleyball.  Sandy toes.  Lemonade.  Grass poking through a picnic blanket.  Campfires.  Corn on the cob.  All of these bring summer vividly to mind, and fresh, locally-grown corn on the cob, with its buttery-sweet crisp crunch, is one of the perfect tastes of summer.  Summer may be coming to a close, but all the way…