eating local

On the last day of summer we ate the last of our tomatoes — and they didn’t taste as good as they did in July. They were a little crunchy and mealy and not as juicy, but we ate them (slathered in pesto sauce), because we knew our next tomato would be ten months from […]

The weather may be 85 degrees and muggy outside, but inside Kitchen Conservatory, it is ginger-spiced! Today we baked the gingerbread pieces for all the houses for our Gingerbread House classes in December. Since we make 200 houses, and each house has six pieces (four walls and two roofs), we baked 1200 pieces of gingerbread. […]

Our bees are really, really angry and who could blame them. Today, we took away from them their whole summer’s work, so we could enjoy the fruits of their labor — honey. The late, hard frost in April damaged our bees because they could not feast on their favorite food: cherries, apples, and other beautiful […]

Today we dug up our potatoes. Cut a freshly-dug potato and they crackle and snap like a crisp apple. The taste of a fresh potato will spoil your taste buds against the commercial potatoes held in storage for months. Fresh potatoes, boiled until tender, are so creamy they hardly need butter, but, of course, I […]

Fresh basil (locally grown) is now available at Kitchen Conservatory. Come by and pick up a bouquet for $2, since there is no such thing as too much basil. Even if you don’t use it in cooking, the sweet aroma of basil makes a lovely centerpiece. Or use the basil in this salad to remember […]