Tulsi, India’s Queen of Herbs, revered for centuries as a sacred plant and used both medicinally and in worship, is thriving right here in my garden.  Native to India it is traditionally grown in pots in every Indian home and I am just beginning to understand the devotion.  Tulsi is not known as the ‘elixir of life’ for naught.   Western medicine is finally studying this amazing herb for its health-promoting properties.  It contains eugenol (also in cloves), a compound

    Avocados are nearly a perfect food.  They’re creamy, tasty, filled with nutrients and healthy fats, rich in omega-3’s, and they go with so many different kinds of dishes both sweet and savory.  Lately we’ve been eating them with a spoon out of the shell-like skin with no seasonings, or maybe a little lime and salt, and enjoying how filling and satisfying they are by themselves.   You can add avocados to almost any smoothie, the green fruit makes

 photo by Roy Hampton It has been so fun going through my father’s photos of our times in Mexico.  Good memories of a slower life, and my oh my we all looked so young. This is a print of two nopales (prickly pear cactus) growing on a hilltop.  One grey day while taking a walk on the mesa my father noticed he could see these dancers when he was at a very particular place in the road.  A few feet either

    If I called this ice cream you wouldn’t even want to try it because you don’t have an ice cream maker or churn.  It’s too thick to be called a smoothie.  Whatever the name might be, here it is and it’s tasty as-is or could be amended with your favorite additions like cocoa powder, cardamom, clove, ginger, lemon, other frozen fruit, or the countless smoothie options.     My friend gave me a bunch of organic bananas that were on the

  Is ‘herb’ a verb? It is now.     I was recently asked to provide some desserts for a party in late September, a request I usually decline because I’m not baking-inclined, but they wanted the entire event to be gluten free so my empathetic streak took over.  A chocolate chile cake was of course on my menu but then I stumbled upon gluten free angelfood cake recipes online, and on chow.com found the idea of combining strawberries mixed with fresh herbs as a topping.  What

    Purple lisianthus from the Canoe Creek Produce at the Farmer’s Market.  I hear they’re difficult to grow because they are slow to germinate, but it is so worth the wait.  I’ve found myself sitting and just staring at them over the last week and a half that they’ve lived on the table.           In these August days we’re so free with how we use fresh produce here in the midwest, vegetables are mounded into salads because they

  It’s amazing to eat produce when it is still warm from the sun.   These ingredients of summer that I’m finding in my garden or the Farmer’s Market—cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, onion—there is just nothing like fresh and connected to the vine or the soil sometime in the last 24 hours.   photo by David Cavagnaro   It’s been a busy summer of catering with back-to-back and mid-week events crammed into the first two months of summer, but this is the flip-side payback

  A ridiculously simple snack it is, yet it’s been a (sometimes daily) staple for us when we need a no-grain high-protein crunch.  If you’ve ever done a cleanse-diet or a few weeks of eliminating sugars and grains and reducing carbs, you know the near-desparation that can set in as you search for something you can eat.  This provides a satisfaction that is hard to describe if you’ve never experienced that frantic hunt for foods that are not sugars or grains—it’s fast to make, fulfilling with

  Once again I find myself wrapped tightly in the schedule of catering events and I’m not able to do justice in writing the experiences of the last ten days on our adventure into the south.  This sunset tells the story much better than I ever could, it was the gift given as our group gathered to celebrate our friend, teacher, family, mentor, writer and artist Mary Kay Parker Deen. .       . These angels are trees in Bay St. Louis, resurrected

    NOLA a.k.a. the Rebirth City. I’m traveling with friends this week to New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, visiting friends and eating delectable dinners everywhere we go.  Not much time for words so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.         A sweet morning on the porch while we visited my friend Beatriz who owns the Fairchild House B&B on Prytania in the Lower Garden District.     It was recommended we take the ferry across to Algiers and