Kirsten Madaus's Blog (116)

It pains me to see folks piling their spent tomato plants, laden with green tomatoes, at the curb for yard waste pick up. I'm glad to participate in this round up of 65 Recipes for Using and Preserving Green Tomatoes over on…

Disclosure: the folks at Barn2Door sent me a box of jujube fruits direct from Fairview Orchards in exchange for writing a post using the fruit and spreading the word about B2D. I've already fulfilled that obligation, and then some. This post is not part of that, it's…

I've spent the last 2 Saturdays going around to my favorite farmer's markets to amass enough tomatillos to put up some salsa verde. The other key ingredient, though, is decidedly not local to Ohio.

It's the time of year when the smell of roasting chiles permeates the air when I walk down to the grocery store in my little town. For a few brief…

I firmly believe there's a Murphy's Law of Canning. You know Murphy's Law, right? Anything that can go wrong will go wrong? I believe that is statistically true over time.

[I had an ultrasound by an OB/Geneticist--yeah, not too many of those around, I'm…

That glorious eggplant shown in the first photo got me ruminating--if all you know how to do with an eggplant is to make Eggplant Parmesan, what do you do when you get several each week, every week, in midsummer? With that in mind I reached out to my fellow food bloggers asking for their recipe links using eggplant, to boost my …

Once upon a time a family left their little house in Ohio and headed West to see some sights. Abraham Lincoln sites. Laura Ingalls Wilder Sites. Natural wonders like the Badlands, the Tetons, Old Faithful and Glacier. The Miracle of America Museum.…

Why is it that recovering from vacation can be as much an undertaking as going on vacation? The mountain of dirty laundry I unpacked was replaced by a mountain of weeds that exploded while we were gone. [The weeds didn't go in a pile by the washing machine though.]

As a gardener I understand why I don't typically take a vacation in the summer. I had…

The CSA is in full swing and we are eating local produce morning, noon and night.



I look at the box as inspiration, challenge, and opportunity.



A recent weekend breakfast was Swiss chard and potato hash topped with fried eggs, along with backyard berry and kale smoothies.



At lunch the other day I looked around while I sipped my PB, banana and kale smoothie. My daughter polished off a leftover of pork and Napa cabbage in miso sauce. My son ate pinwheel…

My first time having success growing banana peppers! I love 'em in sandwiches and on pizza so every year I plan to put them up as pickled peppers. Usually my plants produce a single pepper at a time, though, so I add them to Layered Summer Vegetable Appetizer (recipe here:…

My eyes lit up when I spied the beet greens descending into my crate at farm share pick up this week. The greens were attached to beets [which I tolerate] and as soon as I got home & took a photo I quickly cut them off and stored them separately. Greens last longer when their roots are not sucking the life out of them. [There…

I consider it a personal challenge to use or put up the contents of the CSA farm share box before the next pick up. We get a large share and some weeks it's a breeze (hello, August) while other times of the year it can be arduous (hello, June). I find it particularly hard with greens, especially in the Spring when we'll get 5 to 6 different kinds of…

Our days are alternating between unseasonably cool--love!--and surprisingly hot--not acclimated yet--so eating has been all over the place. I realized more than being a seasonal eater I am a weather-dependent eater. I don't care if the calendar says June, if it's 50's and rainy I don't want a chicken…

My title should be no surprise to anyone who eats seasonally. It seems with the exception of strawberries, radishes, and garlic that Spring means green foods.

While I have been feeding my family from the farm…

I once planted pokeweed. Deliberately. What was I thinking?

I'd idealistically transplanted a bunch of milkweed from a frontage road to a new butterfly garden when I came across what looked like a different type of milkweed. I didn't notice that it wasn't actually milkweed right away, and then I had a heck of a time in subsequent years keeping the…

It's funny how the internet can affect your behavior (and not the grand time suck that my FB page sometimes is--I start sharing new recipes and lose hours). No, I'm talking about how I can be exposed to a new idea at the perfect teachable moment.…

What's Happening Around the House and Yard

The 2014 SWSR…

I often get asked "What do I do if my kid/spouse/guinea pig won't eat _______ [insert name of vegetable]?"



While pondering what to do with a new-to-us vegetable in the CSA box, celeriac, I wrote up a list of tips that have worked for us over the past 9 CSA seasons.  No tricks, though--the whole family knows what's in the meal.

You can find the…

While most of my blog is about how I feed my family from our CSA farm share, every once in a while I step out of that routine. Sometimes I'm sharing what I did with good deals from the grocery store, sometimes ice cream desserts, and sometimes I use the blog as a family recipe log.

In this post I am preserving how my mom makes lefse. It's authentic to my…

I've got a Monday Muffin to share with you--another foraged creation. 

After making wild violet sugar and wild violet syrup, and then wild violet granola out of those--it seems only fitting to make wild violet muffins.

These are dainty and delicious.…

I admit I need nights off sometimes--don't we all? But I hate, hate, HATE to waste food even if I don't feel like cooking.

When we've got plenty of food in the fridge, it's easy to whip up a Taco Rice Tortilla pizza for our family Friday Night Pizza night.

You can get the recipe, and a rant about leftovers, right…