oooh! I grew up eating paste e fagioli AKA beans and pasta soup!

Thanks for the info, Caroline! Maybe if I put down landscape fabric around the walls of the bed, I can at least stop further invasion of grass. I have hazelnut shells on the pathway now but the grass grows right through them. There may be nothing I can do for the grass that’s already gotten in but at least I can stop more, right?

My garden needs some serious work. Question: Grass is starting to poke through in some of my raised beds. On one of the shorter ones, I removed the soil in the fall and lined the bottom with cardboard to stop the grass from popping through. But I have another bed that’s at least 2 feet deep and I can’t fathom removing all of the soil. Do you have any tips for stopping grass? It is so invasive!

Ideal tournament day food for me (I play ultimate frisbee): bacon and eggs for breakfast (or oatmeal), 1 Clif Bar Shot Blok per game for calories during the day (I know, I know, chemicals... but I can’t eat when I’m running that hard), hummus when I start to get really hungry (around 2 pm) OR my teammate’s Famous Chicken Salad (we all kind of just stick our dirty hands in there and shove the food into our mouths before getting back on the field), the occasional salty chip, lots of Gatorade throughout the day to prevent cramping (more chemicals... but I’ll be done by Game 3 without it), pickles (also to help with cramping), and water by the gallon, of course. Afterwards, food is usually determined by where can the whole team go to eat as fast as humanly possible. I can eat a whole cow by that point.

Agree about stocks. That’s the best way to cherish the meat (and veggies) we eat. Scraps = delicious homemade stock.

I made that simple pasta recipe from Bon Appetit last week - the one with just cheese, butter and pepper. I had some leftover Italian sausage, so I cut it up and added it. Seriously delicious, and SO easy.

I don’t know if hers were The Best Hamantaschen Of All Time -- I don’t remember poppy seeds. But they were delicious. I want to try your recipe now!

Shoshanna, I love this story! Your writing always brings a smile to my face. A friend of mine made a batch of these for Purim and they were absolutely fantastic.

I always grow snap peas and have never ventured into the realm of shelling peas. But this might be the nudge I needed! Also: I signed up for the Baker Creek catalog this year and it is AMAZING. I love the photos and the varieties and the immense feeling of possibility it gives me every time I open it up.

loooooove cannoli... I may have to try this!

Made this soup last week (with apples instead of pears, since that’s what I had) and it was FANTASTIC. I mean, truly one of the best squash soups I’ve ever tasted.

Now, I hope my suggestion doesn’t offend, as Deborah Madison is one of my heroes of vegetarian cooking, but now that I’m a meat eater, I did decide to fry up some crispy bacon and chop it up as a garnish when I reheated the soup for leftovers. If you eat meat, you must try this. The salty, crispy bits are an excellent accompaniment to the sweetness of the soup.

I’m eating it right now and I’m in soup heaven. =)

Great story! I especially love your observation of how your son must find amputated parts grosser than a whole animal. We all should, but we don’t. It’s so bizarre how the meat industry has taught us to put our trust in their factories so that we can distance ourselves from the slaughter. But you, and your son, are right—the more we know, the better!

I usually buy a chicken and cook it whole. What is the benefit of cutting it first? It would cook faster, I’m sure, but is there any other reason to cut v. keep whole?

I have mid-sized rosemary bush in my front yard, right by the sidewalk. I sure hope passersby help themselves to as much as they want! I don’t much care for rosemary myself, so I use it about twice a year.

Parsley, though, is indispensable.

If I can remember! Let’s see... for breakfast, I had a cup of coffee with a bowl of Kashi cereal, both with whole milk. For lunch, I heated up leftover risotto from the night before, which I’d made from a medley of peppers—red, green and yellow bells, banana peppers, jalapenos and a cayenne—from the garden and the CSA. Oh, and leftover salad of mixed greens and radicchio (also courtesy of the CSA) with diced yellow bell pepper. Plus two cups of peppermint tea. In the mid-afternoon, my boss brought in some chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks, so of course I ate one. (I also grabbed a Smarties pack, Swedish Fish and some Sour Patch Kids from the office candy bowl.) Around 3 pm, I ate the remainder of the leftover salad. When I got home, I cooked up some pasta and doused it in some pesto I’d defrosted from a batch I made a few weeks ago when the basil was exploding in the garden. Oh! And I drank a glass of grapefruit juice and a ginger beer. I think that pretty much brings us up to speed on what I ate yesterday.

OMG! Just last night I was wonder how I should go about reviving my mother’s old wok. She sent it to me a few months ago and I wanted to use it for my stir-fry last night but it definitely needs to be re-seasoned--it’s all sticky and icky. This article is a wonderful coincidence!

Those “compost-able” plastics are the biggest scam. Put one of those cups in your compost and it will never degrade. It must be done at a commercial composting plant or else it won’t break down (it needs to be really hot). And how many people do you know who have access to a commercial composter? It’s just another way for to pretend we aren’t destroying the planet.

um, yum! I am totally getting rhubarb at the farmer’s market tomorrow to make this!!

The whole “flavor pack” concept is really gross. I’m sure they do that for milk, too, and anything else that needs to be processed/pasteurized to death.

Best orange juice I’ve ever had: spring break, senior year of college, my girlfriends and I drove down to Phoenix to stay with the parents of one of our friends. They had three orange trees and one grapefruit tree in their yard. I spent the entire week making gallons and gallons of juice. It was DELICIOUS. I’m pretty sure OJ and grapefruit juice will never taste as good again.

I had no idea that I was ever supposed to feel guilty about eating carrots or bananas in the first place. I’m so glad no one ever taught me to fear fruits and veggies!

The only cookbook I’ve ever been given as a gift was a fancy chocolate cookbook. It’s a tad on the pushy side. It doesn’t just call for butter -- it specifies the exact butterfat content. But everything I’ve made from it as been delicious!

Also -- a neighbor gave me his Moosewood Cooks at Home when he moved. It was falling apart and covered in cooking oil (I suspect an entire bottle knocked over next to it). But the recipes are fast, easy and delish -- a good score for sure.