Yesterday Jon and I woke up to a garden covered in a sparkling blanket of snow. We spent most of the day outside, throwing snowballs, making snow angels, and watching our dog romp through drifts.

After dark we gathered around a bonfire in our friends’ backyard, sipped spiked apple cider, and then took turns sliding down their crazy steep street on a shovel (who needs a sled?).

I am definitely now filled with the Christmas spirit. And since I can’t send snow to each and every one of you, I thought I’d share this comic from Tundra Comics instead. Happy Holidays!

Have you ever come upon a book with a story that you find completely irresistible? That you can read over and over again? That you recommend to everyone?

My perennial book recommendation is French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France by Richard Goodman. It is a delightful memoir of Goodman’s year in France, the French farmers he befriends, and the small plot of land that he tends on the edge of town.

It’s the kind of book that compels you to settle down into a chair with a cup of tea and not get up until it is over. One of my favorite passages in the book is, “I don’t think it is so easy to make a garden too small, but it is very easy to make a garden too big. This I did, and magnificently.” How true and perfectly put!

A few weeks ago, my friend Mari who writes for Amazon’s blog Omnivoracious asked me to send her a list of my favorite garden books. French Dirt was definitely on the list. A few days after Mari posted my recommendations, I opened my email and found a note from Richard Goodman, thanking me for my little nod to his book.

I was thrilled and delighted that he took the time to email me and asked if he might share a few lines about some of his favorite gardening and cooking books. And he agreed.

I hope you have fun getting to know Richard (he is also the author of The Soul of Creative Writing) and that over the next weeks you’ll take the time to sit down and read French Dirt. Think of it as a little holiday gift to yourself.

Richard Goodman’s Book Recommendations:

People tend not to believe me because of my book, French Dirt, but I’m not a very good gardener.  In fact, I know very little about gardening.  French Dirt isn’t misleading, though.  Its subtitle says, The Story of a Garden in the South of France.  It doesn’t say, How to Garden in the South of France. Now, that would be misleading.  No, I’m just a passionate amateur.  I turn to people who do know what they’re talking about when I want to learn something.  The same goes for cooking.  I’m a passionate amateur in the kitchen.  For me, though, it’s all about the writing, too.  I find it very hard to read a garden book or a cookbook that’s dull.  And too many of them are.

That’s why I find myself turning again and again to the late, great garden writer Henry Mitchell.  For years, he wrote a column on gardening for the Washington Post. I discovered him through his book, The Essential Earthman.  I remember opening the book for the first time in a bookstore on the Upper East Side where I worked for below-minimum wage.  I was instantly a fan.  His writing is strong, direct, knowing, sharp, and wise.  Just listen to the first lines of the book, “As I write this, on June 29, it’s about time for another summer storm to smash the garden to pieces….”  The chapter is titled, “On the Defiance of Gardeners.”  Everywhere you turn in Mitchell, there are wonderful things: “Wherever human gardens magnificently, there are magnificent heartbreaks,” he writes.  He concludes that first chapter, “Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners.”  And, later in the book, “A garden is not a picture, but a language.”   And this simple dictum, which might save many a gardener from a lot of stress, “No plant is perfect.”  The Essential Earthman is one of the best books I’ve ever read, period.  It was followed by another Mitchell gem, One Man’s Garden.  I read Mitchell as much for his prose as I do for his advice.  I’ve used his books in my writing courses many times.  Why not?  Good writing is good writing, wherever you find it, and that’s just the point.

As for cookbooks, one of my favorites is James Beard’s American Cookery. It bestows absolute confidence, and I love to read it again and again for the prose.  Beard is a very fine writer.  He loves and knows his food and the people who produced the dishes he writes about.  His book is as much a chronicle of American history through its cooking as it is a guide.  Although James Beard is a well-known expert, I don’t think he ever received the major recognition he deserved, and I think now that’s even more the case, with all the super chefs coming at us from all parts of the world.  But Beard was special.  It’s all there in his books to see.

Thank-you note season is upon us. Holiday parties, overnight stays with friends and relatives, and a whole day devoted to giving and receiving gifts means that many notes will be written and received in the next few weeks. And I’m quite happy about it. In my opinion there are far too many emails flying around inboxes and not enough handwritten notes in mailboxes.

Instead of giving a card that spells out “thank you”, I’m planning on sending cards that are so pretty they are a little thank you, a gift in themselves. I think that Olympia, Washington-based artist Nikki McClure’s beautiful papercut notecards are just the ticket. Her bold, graphic images celebrate small moments–planting a seed, sharing a meal, watching birds fly across a field–and serve as a reminder that food, flowers, and family are all things to be thankful for.

Nikki McClure’s works are available for purchase at BuyOlympia.com, which sells a very cool collection of handmade goods. The note cards are $3.00 each and are printed at a small press in Portland, Oregon on very eco-friendly paper (it is 100% Recycled, 100% Post-Consumer Waste, Processed Chlorine Free paper that is manufactured with electricity that is offset with Green-e® certified renewable energy).

Sometimes when I’m out in my garden I pick up a handful of soil and smell it.

I know. It’s a totally weird thing to do. But I love my soil and I’ve vowed to take better care of it. To start things off, I planted a cover crop of crimson clover a few weeks ago. I chose crimson clover for several reasons:

a. It germinates well in cool weather. An important quality since I didn’t get my act together until pretty late in the season.

b. Clover belongs to the legume family. Legumes, including peas and beans, have a special, symbiotic relationship with rhizobium bacteria. The bacteria act like little nitrogen factories for legumes. They form nodes on the plants’ roots and convert nitrogen from the air into a form that the plants can use. In return, the clover provides the bacteria carbohydrates and minerals and you end up with soil that contains more nitrogen–no fertilizer required!

c. Crimson clover produces lovely red blossoms in early spring and they are an important nectar source for native bees and other beneficial insects that emerge while the weather is still cool and flowers are scarce.

d. It also crowds out weeds during the winter and may even help suppress weeds after it has been turned under in spring. A study at the University of Maine found that turning fresh crimson clover into the soil reduced the emergence of lambsquarters (a problem weed in my garden) by 27%.

e. Crimson clover is easy to kill–and you need to kill it before you plant vegetables. Some clovers, especially Dutch white clover, grow a little too well and can be difficult to get rid of come spring. With crimson clover, all you have to do is cut back the top growth, flip the stubble under and then let it decompose for 2 to 3 weeks before planting. My colleagues over at Organic Gardening have been planting cover crops, including crimson clover, in the test garden for several years now and the soil is downright enviable (you can check out more about what cover crops they use here).

Crimson Clover Seedlings

I’ll report back in spring on how the clover does. In the meantime, you should check out the Natural Resources Conservation Services web page that is devoted entirely to quotes about soil. It’s awesome. Here are a few gems:

“How can I stand on the ground every day and not feel its power? How can I live my life stepping on this stuff and not wonder at it?” - William Bryant Logan from Dirt-The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

… the soil of any one place makes its own peculiar and inevitable sense. It is impossible to contemplate the life of the soil for very long without seeing it as analogous to the life of the spirit.” - Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America, 1977

“The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I had grand plans for a winter vegetable garden. I dug a bit of compost into the soil and planted little seedlings of lettuce, arugula, chard, and radicchio. I sowed baby greens, radishes, and beets. I even tried my hand at growing fall peas.

Then my chickens ate everything.

The little stinkers snuck through our fence and gobbled up all the vegetables except for the raddicchio and arugula. Apparently they don’t have a taste for the more gourmet greens.

After the chickens pillaged the garden, I fortified the fence and planted a cover crop of crimson clover. I figured at least I could feed the soil if not myself. But my garden had other plans.

Yesterday afternoon I slipped outside during a break in the rain to check on the clover and came across something unexpected: a giant red mustard growing between some Johnny Jump Ups.

The mustard is not going to keep us from starving this winter, but it reminded me that just when you think all is lost, your garden can surprise you.

When I was a kid, my dad made my lunch most mornings before I headed off to school. My lunch box featured a rotating menu of kid-friendly foods: sliced cheese, crackers, and salami, a thermos full of chicken noodle soup, PB&J sandwiches, apple slices, peeled clementines, a mini bag of chips, cookies, granola bars, and a juice box.

(From Sugar Charms: Shinzi Katoh 2-Tier Black Apple Bento Box, $19.99)

More often than not, my dad topped off my lunch with a napkin note. Sometimes the note had a joke on it. Or he wished me good luck on my spelling test. But usually it said:

I love you. Have a good day. Dad.

Now that I’m all grown up, I like to send Jon off to work with a homemade lunch (complete with napkin note). Usually I pack leftovers into a Pyrex container or a brown paper sack, but I feel guilty every time I tuck some chips into a plastic baggy.  I’ve been looking for a more sustainable alternative and I think that a bento box—the classic Japanese lunch box—or a tiffin—a set of stacked containers that are popular in Southeast Asia—may be the answer.

Tiffins Take Lunch Pails to a Whole New Level

(From Pearl River: Square Melamine Tiffin $31.50, Stainless Steel 3-Tier Lunchbox $15.50)

Tiffins and bento boxes are designed to hold lunch for one. They feature different compartments that you can easily fit sandwiches, carrot sticks, or leftover tacos into. They range in style from gratuitously cute to utilitarian and I’m having an awfully hard time deciding which one(s) to order.

I’m leaning towards a boring, but very functional, insulated canister because I can heat up Jon’s food at home on the stove (or microwave it in a glass container) and then he won’t have to deal with that at work. But my friend Nancy who lived for years in Southeast Asia, swears by tiffins. Decisions, decisions…

Frog Themed Bento Boxes Are Adorable and Popular

(From Sugar Charms: Yokom Kids Frog Face $17.99, Frog Style 17.99, Frog Style 2-Tier $22.99, Yokom Kids Frog 17.99)

A Leak-Proof SIGG Container

(From Reusable Bags: SIGG Snack Box $28.95)

Ridiculously Cute Bento Boxes

(From Sugar Charms: Shinzi Katoh Gibbon Bento Box $19.99, Nikyoro Mushroom Mini Bento Box $6.79)

Insulated Bento Containers…Boring but Useful

(From Amazon: Zojirushi Mr. Bento Stainless Steel Lined Lunch Jar $47.00)