Growing Gardeners
Dig into our online garden classroom featuring urban gardening advice, fun projects for kids, and recipes straight from the garden.
Learn to foster a garden that supports your community and local ecology.
Recipe: Strawberry Cake
This weekend I want to bake myself a little love. This is my favorite kind of no-fuss cake that to me is perfect. No frosting or layers or complicated drizzles. Just delicious fruit, buttery batter and simplicity.
Recipe: Fresh Ricotta for a Big Lasagna
Homemade ricotta is just so much better than anything you can get from the store. Ricotta is soooo easy and one of those cooking projects that is well worth the extra effort. There are plenty of things that are not worth making from scratch but to me, ricotta is not one of those things.
Recipe: Citrus Ginger Juice
This Lime, Grapefruit and Ginger Juice is one of my favorites in the spring. It is bright and acidic, with the warm and soothing ginger to add more depth. It is also incredibly adaptable - lemons, sweeter meyer lemons, oranges, blood oranges, really any citrus works.
Recipe: Chicken Stock in the Oven
Something that seems to have nine lives in our house is a roasted chicken. We save our bones and pick the leftover meat off the carcass. Before bed, we throw the roasted chicken bones into a pot and toss it in the oven overnight. The next morning we have a rich stock to keep for future soups, risottos or whatever else we might need it for.
Forage for your Food!
Learn to identify common edible plants and forage for your own food in the Bay Area.
Recipe: Carrot + Cilantro Soup
One thing that may make staying at home more delightful is cooking something that feels like spring. And that uses basic ingredients you may already have around your house! Here’s a spring recipe I wrote about a few years back that I may have to revisit this weekend while I look out my window in anticipation of healthier days to come.
Recipe: Chicken Soup with an Egg
What do you cook when it seems like nothing is in your house?
Recipe: 3 Favorite Pantry Staples
Here are three, easy recipes to cook with items from your pantry right now!
Recipe: Spicy White Bean Stew with Greens
A few weeks ago I made Alison Roman's new stew recipe, and I haven't stopped making it since. It is endlessly adaptable, meaning I can make it with ingredients I have on hand.
Recipe: Roasted Garnet Yams with Chamomile
I love vegetable recipes that are dead simple but take ordinary foods and make them taste more interesting and more flavorful than usual. We make these nearly once a week at home, often throwing them in the oven while we eat dinner and catch up on the day, remembering to pull them out when our house is perfumed with the smell.
Recipe: Eggplant-Tomato Gratin
I've been cooking up lots of tomatoes lately in all kinds of ways. I found a recipe for colorful grape tomatoes sautéed in lots of anchovies and garlic then finished with a good dose of vinegar. I've been adding tomatoes to rice and broth for a rich pilaf, and roasting them with herbs to go alongside my weekly roasted chicken. But my go-to recipe lately has been a tomato and eggplant gratin that is simple and comes together really quickly.
Recipe: Elotes Locos
But twice, just for fun, I elevated our grilled corn and made elotes locos and both times it added just the dedacence needed for an otherwise simple summer feast. Elotes locos, tomato salad, lettuce dressed with a simple tangy dressing and cornbread - summer in a nutshell. There is less of a recipe here, and more of a method and some tips and tricks I learned along the way.
Fridge Organizing + Zucchini with Croutons
At the risk of creating the most boring Maggie's Market Guide to date, I thought I'd share my approach to fridge organization. In the last couple of months, in an effort to reduce food waste, I have taken on a new approach to sorting my food and it's working! Leftovers are getting eaten, produce is not languishing and it's been easier to look and see what's for dinner.
Recipe: Charred Eggplant Salad
You broil or grill split eggplant unless soft and blackened. Then you scoop out the flesh and mix with olive oil, garlic, salt and parsley. Done. That's it! We ate it with feta cheese and a piece of salmon, but it would be a great addition to an appetizer spread or mixed into orzo pasta or smeared on toasted bread.
Recipe: Long-Cooked Broccoli
Sometimes when thinking about March recipes I am fully in spring-mode, ready for peas and asparagus, light soups and crisp salads. But all this rain and cold weather have me fully planted in late winter and I am craving braised cabbage, beans and greens, and long-cooked broccoli. All of these things take a little time, but the end result is worth the wait.
Recipe: Adaptable Granola
As I opened my cookbook just the other day (my collection of old print-outs, handwritten and stained pages, clippings from newspapers) I realized my go-to granola recipe was still the same one Lillie posted nearly 12 years ago. Many things have changed since then, but the successful formula has stayed the same.
Recipe: Meyer Lemon Curd
When looking up a curd recipe I knew I had to go straight to the queen herself - Mary Berry, British baking legend and judge of my beloved GBBS. She did not disappoint, and her method was easier than others I had made.
Recipe: Chicken Stock in the Oven
I was reading one of my favorite food blogs, looking for a chicken meatball soup recipe and she mentioned making her chicken stock from a leftover roasted chicken in the oven. This sounded easy and brilliant and just the life hack I have my eye out for these days.
Recipe: Squash and Celery Root Soup
Last week, I saw a stale loaf of bread on my counter and assessed what else I had in the kitchen to make dinner. Bread became croutons to top a winter squash and celery root soup. This soup is particularly easy since you roast all the vegetables in the oven first before simmering and blending. It was cozy, comforting, and belly warming - a perfect way to start the season.
Recipe: Tomato Cobbler
This week, I made tomato cobbler which is basically exactly as delicious and seasonal and smile-inducing as it sounds. I even made it mid-week, after a full day in the garden, and it came together really quickly.