I have a fun idea for you, if you’re willing to play along. Here is how it works. The next time you’re going to a backyard barbecue, planning a picnic, or having friends over for dinner on the deck, make it known that you will be bringing/serving chicken salad. This will trigger everyone’s (more…)

Green Curry Soup (Bowl made by Anne Coneys)

I love greens of all sorts and, though I’ve prepared them in many different ways, I most often fall back on the foolproof preparation of braising them. Fine and dandy, but I was beginning to bore myself, not least my boyfriend Mike who isn’t as greens crazy as I am.

Then I saw Anna Thomas’s story “The Soup for Life” in the current issue of Eating Well, one of the food magazines DCCC is currently reading and cooking from. Thomas loves greens, too, and has found an ingenious way to use them—as the basis of wholesome and flavorful soups. On one gray, blustery day she found herself in need of dropping a few pounds but also wanting to create something comforting and delicious to eat. The result? (more…)

Any fool can grow Swiss chard, I like to say. My gardening strategy is a process of elimination. I’ll give something one or two tries, and after that it’s off the list; I’ll let someone else, with greener thumbs than me, grow it. My goal is a garden of foolproof foods, and chief among them, come rain or shine, is Swiss chard. (Other foolproof greens are collards, kale, and mustard greens; but not spinach or watercress.)

Long before I started growing greens, (more…)