Posts by author:

Jennifer McDonald

Ice cream and popsicles, oh my!

June 3, 2010

Now that June’s heat is upon us, my thoughts have turned toward cold frozen treats.  I went to the grocery store recently and made the unpleasant discovery that a lot of the ice cream and popsicles available are loaded with high fructose corn syrup and other undesirable ingredients. Luckily, I have an ice cream maker [...]

Read the full article →

Confidence renewed

June 1, 2010

Remember a couple of weeks ago when my confidence in my gardening plans was shaken? Well, it was completely renewed this weekend. Our peas have come in and we’ve been gorging on the tiny green orbs for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I pulled out the vines, as they were starting to die back from [...]

Read the full article →

Facing fears in the kitchen

May 27, 2010

One thing that has been a hurdle for me as a cook over the years has been facing some of my fears in the kitchen. I didn’t really learn to cook until I was 30 and a new stay-at-home mother. Before that, my husband and I cooked together after work, but he did most of [...]

Read the full article →

It’s time to get real

May 25, 2010

The other day I was talking with someone who spoke with great pride about how she had recently made dinner from scratch, including making a box of “really yummy rice with herbs.”  I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything — and those who know me know how hard that was — but today I [...]

Read the full article →

Cluck! Cluck!

May 20, 2010

How would you like to wake up in the morning and eat farm-fresh eggs with your breakfast?  If you had chickens in your backyard, your eggs couldn’t be of a more recent vintage. Yes, that’s right, I am suggesting that you might want to build a coop and start raising your own Chicken Little and [...]

Read the full article →

Milk and cookies

May 18, 2010

I think we all can agree that cookies are among the most important food groups for humans. (The other ones being chocolate, Italian, and au gratin.) My daughters certainly agree and every Sunday evening as I’m putting the week’s grocery list together, I’m often besieged with requests for things like ginger snaps, oatmeal raisin cookies, [...]

Read the full article →

Strawberry fields forever

May 13, 2010

One of the many great things about early May in Virginia is that it’s strawberry season. Strawberries might just be one of Nature’s most perfect foods.  They’re at their best when they are grown organically and then eaten right after they’ve been picked.  Strawberries grown in California (or further afield) and then shipped to your [...]

Read the full article →

A momentary crisis of confidence.

May 11, 2010

I’ve been gardening for about 15 years now, but didn’t really have much of a kitchen garden until a couple of years ago.  Last year, my family moved into a new house with a blank slate for a yard, which gave me the opportunity to imagine all the possibilities and just how big my kitchen [...]

Read the full article →

Compost

May 6, 2010

Are you composting? Compost is important — it enriches your soil and gives your plants a vitamin boost that’s quite potent.  That crumbly black stuff coming out of your compost bins makes for a healthy, thriving garden which means lots of tomatoes and beans and cucumbers and more. I will tell you honestly that I [...]

Read the full article →

Home grown ‘maters

May 4, 2010

Now that it’s May, gardeners everywhere are starting to dream of tomatoes. Fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes are truly one of the greatest foods ever.  Nothing can compare, especially not the cardboard orbs masquerading as tomatoes in grocery stores. I’ve already seen some greenhouse-grown tomatoes at the farmers’ market, but the fact is, they’re still not as good [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →