Spicy refrigerator dill pickles (recipe) My house always looks ridiculous this time of year, like a farmers market exploded in our living areas. I feel somewhat like a produce hoarder. The dining room table is covered with round, red tomatoes ripening on sheets of newspaper. There are cucumbers marching along the bookshelves. Piles of green beans, stacks of fresh corn, rows of peaches. Canning jars in every corner. Peppers in boxes. Boxes on counters. Counters are buried. There is such an abundance of beautiful produce in the Pacific Northwest during August and September and October. It is like the Olympics of food preservation. Late nights, long Keep Reading

Candied Jalapenos (Cowboy Candy) I'll admit it. Jalapeno peppers intimidate me. It's not so much the heat of eating them, as the pain of working with them. Jalapenos make me wheeze and cough. My eyes water. My fingers burn. Whatever my fingers touch burns. I had a huge bowl of jalapenos sit on my kitchen counter for four weeks because I was afraid of them. They just sat there taunting me. I can't stay away; they are just so delicious. It's like avoiding my workout DVD's because I know they are going to hurt me, but I keep going back for more. No pain, no gain! Jalapeno peppers can range from mild-hot and get their heat from something unique to Keep Reading

Growing up, my family took growing and eating produce seriously. It ran in the family. Acres of melons. Rows of beans. Boxes of nectarines. We'd grow our own food or buy it from a local farmer, often a family friend. While normal people would just eat a slice of melon or buy a fat cucumber and move on with their lives, my siblings and I grew up in the garden and kitchen, tasting and thinking about what we were eating. It never occurred to me that it was odd to have an entire vocabulary devoted to fruits and vegetables. Cucumbers were either bitter or sweet, seedy or crisp. A green watermelon was too young to leave its mother or not fit to eat. An Keep Reading