Farm to Kitchen Table

Several years ago, during a particularly busy time, we subscribed to a meal service that would send meals to the house (in a thickly insulated package) with detailed recipe cards. It purportedly would make getting dinner on the table…
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Thanksgiving can be pricey, can’t it? But it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how to enjoy a budget-friendly Thanksgiving this year. BDN file photo When my parents and siblings gather with me around the table this Thanksgiving, there will…
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There's an area in my house where everyone congregates. And that's become the heart of our home. What's yours? Photo by Sarah Walker Caron When we moved into our cozy 1887 farmhouse duplex, I bought three black stools for our kitchen…
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A few weeks ago, I declared my second planting of shell peas a failure. And true to form, Mother Nature wasted no time in letting me know how wrong I was. Not a day after publishing the column, I went to my garden to find flowers all…
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We’ve reached that time in the season — the point where we bid goodnight to our garden beds and reflect on the season past. We make mental notes not to repeat the mistakes we made this year. And we begrudgingly pull those plants we…
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Apples, apples everywhere! That’s how I’ve been feeling over the last week. My kids brought home two heavy bags from apple picking with their father. Our backyard apple tree is overflowing. And the farmers market has apples aplenty. …
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Photo by Sarah Walker Caron Was it only a week ago that my fingers dug into the wet, warm soil, pulling the weeds out by the roots? Was it only a mere seven days since I wondered how many more quarts of tomatoes we’d harvest? It was,…
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Photo by Sarah Walker Caron My mother texted me earlier this week with an urgency: could the flat lids from canning jars be reused? She’s a novice canner who has loved the jams, relishes, sauces and pickled items I’ve canned over the…
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When the fresh tomatoes from our garden started to pile up in the kitchen recently — brilliant reds and lemony yellows — I set out to make marinara sauce with fresh onions and garlic from the farmers market. I’d freeze some and use the…
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Photo by Gabor Degre It was a small rectangular plot, cut from my lawn and sort-of tilled by hand — if you can consider a little light digging tilling. In there, I planted my first garden, surrounding it with cheap metal garden…
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