Okay, I made them and am reporting back. SERIOUSLY good cookie, and I am incredibly picky about what sweet is worth the calories. These are worth it. I’m going to a party this weekend and am supposed to bring either an appetizer or a dessert. I never choose to make dessert, but I am going to take these cookies.

Nothing pulls me in faster than a cookie described as both crunchy and chewy, and ginger to boot? I’ll probably try to make these today! If I do, I’ll report back!

Val

batever, don’t use perfectly good veggies -- use veggie scraps. The ends of onions and carrots and celery, the stems of parsley are just as good at flavoring broth as the good whole veggies are. Save them in a baggie in your freezer, and when you make stock take the baggie out and add it to your stock.

And don’t waste a good whole onion, usable stalks of celery, or fresh parsley unless you have an abundance. Keep a baggie in the freezer. When you chop an onion, save the ends in that bag. When you chop celery, put the waste into the bag. Same for parsley -- the stems flavor broth as well as a fresh bunch. When you put the carcass into the pot, pull your baggie of collected veggie scraps out and dump them in, too.

Yes, you plant it in the fall, after your first hard frost. And you can just plant any old garlic. I’ve not noticed a major difference in taste of the green garlic between the varieties -- maybe when the plants are young, they haven’t developed their mature flavors. But by all means if you’re planting garlic, plant green garlic from the same stock. When you pull the head of garlic apart into cloves, separate the nice big cloves from the small ones. Use the nice big cloves to cook with or plant for next year’s fall crop, and plant the little skinny cloves for green garlic.

AND! And and and! Green garlic is easy to grow in most soils, deer and rabbits don’t like it, and it can be chopped and frozen without first blanching.

I guess I’m weird that I enjoy my cooking time. While I chop etc., I listen to NPR, sip a glass of wine, talk to family members, maybe catch up on a show I’ve TiVoed on the kitchen set. 60 minutes doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me.

Great addition! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about folks who don’t feel they have time to cook from scratch.

Maybe we’ll all relearn the joys of cooking from scratch.

Wow, great list! Thanks!

I wear aprons! Only when I’m both making something messy and trying to protect what I’m wearing, though. For instance, if I’m wearing a white shirt and making tomato sauce, on goes the apron. If I’m in my jammies making an omelet, not so much.

I don’t think it has to be an either-or thing. We can eat locally within reason and still work to improve the overall food production system.

I’ll never give up coffee, and sometimes those Chilean grapes and Israeli tangerines just look too good to pass up. But trying to eat more locally has made me mindful of the choice, and since local apples are readily available and incredibly delicious right now, most of the time I’ll choose SW Ohio apples in October and November.

It’s ironic that a documentary exploring the ways corn has changed American farming has no scheduled showings in corn country.