Vegetable humor

Vegetable humor from today’s Dear Abby column:
“I’m an inveterate punster — ‘If I put a leafy green vegetable on the barbecue, will it be chard?’”
Abby advises the punster to keep his puns to himself. I disagree. Anyone else have a good food pun to share?

CSA, week 2

I am convinced it’d be easier to snack healthfully if I had farm-fresh produce arriving at my house weekly all year round.
Last night, while cooking up a batch of Martha Stewart’s Chicken with Ginger – with extra veggies from this week’s CSA share thrown in — I munched on a handful of peas. Fresh, crispy and with [...]

How do their vegetable gardens grow?

This photo from Laura Dowd of Local Food Connection shows a typical midsummer large share from Local Harvest/ZJ Farm in Solon.  
One thing I didn’t have space to include in today’s cover story about CSA farms is a list of typical Iowa CSA crops and harvest times. Specific crops, of course, vary by farmer, but here’s [...]

More healthy recipes for kids

In today’s column, I shared a couple of recipes from the Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County, which recently overhauled its menu in an effort to help kids adopt healthy eating habits. My column included two kid-favorites. Here are a few more. All are developed by nutrition coordinator Liz Weinburg of Iowa City.

What I’ve Been Cooking Lately: Caramelized Leeks with Roasted Salmon Fillets

Before I bought my first leek, I was kind of intimidated by them. I’d never watched anybody cook with them — or even knowingly eaten them — so I had no idea what they tasted like or how to clean or prepare them.
But a year or so ago, there was a recipe that I wanted [...]