Let me introduce you to a match made in food heaven: kosher salt and red pepper flakes.

My friends Kari and Jesse introduced us to this delightful condiment combo at a make-your-own-pizza party last spring, and I’ve had a dish of the two on my counter ever since. It is a ridiculously simple way to add a little zip to pretty much any savory recipe.

We take a pinch from the middle of the dish and sprinkle the salt and pepper flakes on everything from teriyaki take-out to oven-roasted asparagus. Try it! You’ll see that a little salt and spice makes everything nice.

Last week I ordered a hamburger at a local greasy spoon. It came topped with a limp scrap of lettuce and a mushy, mealy, pink, sorry excuse for a tomato. We’ve had miserable fog, thick frost, black ice, and snow flurries, but it was this duo of pathetic vegetables that made me long for summer.

Flipping through seed catalogs and plotting my salad succession plan did not get me out of my funk. No. Only some straight up food porn would do. So I hopped on my laptop and brought up the Etsy shop foodchic. Wendy Dooldeniya’s gorgeous portraits of tomatoes were just the ticket.

The lovely green tomatoes seem like a promise to me that summer–and tomatoes picked straight off the vine–will come eventually, and a reminder that I should stick to eating my stash of frozen homegrown tomatoes until then.

Prints of these photos (and other lovely food portraits) are available at foodchic for $15.

You have got to love this new T-shirt designed by Jen Harris of Black Sheep Heap. It’s part of a series of 3 designs that Harris created as a fundraiser for Just Food, a really cool non-profit based in New York City. Just Food is working to create a more just and sustainable food system not just in the City but in the surrounding region. They incubate community gardens and CSA programs, teach people about nutrition and how to cook with whole foods, and they are currently speaheading a campaign to legalize beekeeping in New York City! How cool is that? It makes me want to join Just Food even though I garden way over on the left coast.

The Yes We Can shirt also reminded me that I need to get cracking on completing my goal of learning to can this year. So this morning I signed up to take a canning class at my local co-op in mid-March! In the class we’re going to learn how to make canned wintery treats, including citrus marmalade, apple butter, pear chutney and red onion relish. I was so excited to find a canning class offered this winter because now I’ll be all set to go when strawberry season hits. Hooray!

For those of you in the Seattle area, the Winter Canning Kitchen class is being offered at five PCC Natural Markets throughout February and March.

My chickens give us the most gorgeous eggs. Clyde, our Araucana, lays large, pale blue eggs with thick shells. Inky, a Black Australorp with a goofy personality, reliably lays six, slightly elongated, mocha colored eggs each week. And our Buff Orpingtons, Bumble and Boo, announce the arrival of their light brown eggs with a chorus of loud bawk, bawks.

We feed our hens a mix of organic feed, cracked corn, and table scraps. Plus, when we’re at home, they free-range around the backyard snacking on grass, worms, slugs, and most recently, my emerging chive shoots.

This diverse diet results in eggs with deep orange yolks and clear, firm whites that hold together when cracked into a bowl. We get nearly two-dozen eggs a week, and this winter, I’ve taken to scambling them with a bit of crème fraiche, Parmesan cheese, and fresh thyme. The eggs are delicious—and make for a quick breakfast or lunch.

Creamy Scrambled Eggs with Parmesan and Thyme
Serves 4

Butter, crème fraiche, and cheese make all eggs taste better, but for the best flavor and color, try to track down eggs from pasture-raised hens for this recipe. Prevent the eggs from sticking—and ensure a soft, creamy texture—by cooking them in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet over low heat with plenty of butter. I like to serve the eggs on thick slices of toasted kalamata olive bread.

You’ll need:
2 tablespoons butter
8 large eggs
¼ cup crème fraiche or sour cream
½ cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated
6 3-inch long sprigs of thyme
salt
pepper

Instructions:
Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk them until the yolks and whites are well combined. Strip the thyme leaves off their stems and add them to the eggs. Whisk in the crème fraiche and Parmesan. The crème fraiche will look a bit lumpy once it’s mixed with the eggs. Don’t worry—just make sure it is evenly distributed within the egg mixture.

Heat a 10- to 12-inch cast iron skillet over medium low heat.  Add the butter and swirl it around in the pan as it melts, coating the sides. When the butter begins to foam, pour the egg mixture into the skillet. Immediately begin stirring the eggs with a fork, scraping the edges of the pan as you go. Don’t be tempted to cook the eggs on medium or medium high heat–they will stick to the pan and develop a rubbery texture.

When the fork begins to leave a trail in the pan, set the pan onto a cool burner and continue stirring the eggs vigorously for about 30 seconds. This helps prevent the eggs for sticking and encourages the development of big curds. Place the pan back on the burner and continue stirring, lifting the eggs from the bottom and folding them over the top as they thicken. Continue cooking the eggs until they develop a soft, pillowy texture. Remove from the heat, and shower with thyme, flaked salt and pepper. Serve immediately with buttered toast.

This morning in his inauguration address President Obama (!) called on all Americans to give back to our country.  He said:

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

I think that as gardeners we are especially well suited to heed this call. In your very own yard, you can increase access to nutritious, organic food by growing extra vegetables and sharing them with your local food bank. You can give more people the opportunity to learn how to grow their own food by volunteering to start and maintain vegetable gardens at schools, churches, and community centers. In late summer, you can organize a group of friends to harvest and donate unused fruit from local trees to food banks. You can help protect the health of our planet—and our communities—by gardening organically and teaching your neighbors to do the same.

This year I’m volunteering to introduce middle school students to the concept of organic gardening, helping design and build a chicken coop and rabbit hutch at Seattle’s new Children’s PlayGarden, and lending a hand at my favorite food bank garden.

There is so much each of us can do, and the good news that this work is fun. It is gratifying. And it really can help make positive and lasting change.

It’s official. I need a bigger garden. In fact, I need a way bigger garden to fit all of the seeds I’m going to order. I came home from my three weeks away to a mailbox stuffed with seed catalogs. I’ve looked over almost all of them and am amazed at how many things I had never even heard of.

Case in point, the beetberry (Chenopodium capitatum) from Seeds of Change. This oddball green is described as “sprawling in nature” with “dark green leaves that snuggle the fruit amongst its foliage.” From the photo it kind of looks like raspberries have been glued to a tall, gangly arugula plant. To say that I am intrigued is an understatement.

(Clockwise from top left: Beetberry, ‘Golden’ purslane, ‘Magenta Spreen’ lambsquarters, and the Huazontle)

Seeds of Change is also offering a number of cultivars of weeds, including ‘Golden’ purslane, ‘Magenta Spreen’ lambsquarters, and Huazontle, a lambsquarter cousin with fuschia colored leaves and seed heads. I have wild purslane and lambsquarters in my garden now, but I can’t decide if I should just eat them or if I should order their refined relatives and do a taste test.

If you’re looking to grow a holy-cow-what-the-hell-is-that kind of vegetable, may I suggest the Mexican Sour Gherkin. I grew it way back in 2003 and it looks like a dollhouse-sized watermelon, but it tastes like a mildly sour cucumber (check out this You Grow Girl post for some great Mexican Sour Gherkin photos). It’s perfect for salads or for in the garden grazing. I’ve noticed it in a lot of catalogs this year, including Seeds of Change and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (which is a compendium of every cool, unusual, and down right weird vegetable you can think of and is one of my very favorite seed sources).

Radishes have also really caught my eye this year. In addition to  ‘Easter Egg  II’—my favorite blend of purple, pink, red and white radishes—I’m considering growing ‘Chinese Red Meat’, which has apple green skin and a bright red core.

I am also going to plant all three types of peas: English, snap and snow pea.  ‘Golden India’, a snow pea with pale yellow pods and two-toned purple flowers, especially appeals to me.

Let me know what you’re excited about growing this year. I’m planning on placing my order by the end of the month, but I don’t want to miss out on anything really cool!

I definitely have bees on the brain. So when I spotted my friend Christa’s honeycomb inspired necklace last week, I swooned. Her sweetie bought the necklace on stone&honey—a delightful online jewelry shop stocked with lovely gold and silver honeycomb jewelry, among other things.

I spent the better part of an afternoon trolling through stone&honey and its sister site smallthings, where I fell in love with a ring featuring a bold, graphic image of a bee and a necklace adorned with a chicken silhouette. Seriously, why did I not know about this jewelry before Christmas?

I was pleased to discover that Teresa Robinson, the artist behind stone&honey and smallthings, is based just down the road in Portland, Oregon and all her jewelry is designed and handmade in her studio. So this jewelry is not only cool, it’s local, too.

Flora & Fauna Inspired Rings from smallthings

Why, hello there. Remember me? I’ve been taking a little break to visit with family and friends and dip my toes into the ocean. While I was lolling away on the beach I dreamed up lots of new recipes, a really good idea for the site, and of course, a few gardening resolutions.

Gardening is really well suited to resolutions because there is always bound to be big failures (ahem, remember when my chickens ate my entire fall garden) and big successes (like the Pepper Palace). So, drum roll please, this is what I hope to accomplish in the coming 358 days:

1. Learn to Can. I can’t tell you how much I want to can. I want to line my cupboards with dilly beans, and syrupy peaches, and cans of tomatoes. I want jars and jars of applesauce and chow chow. I want to bring my friends homemade jam. I want to be able to eat food I grew myself all winter. So I must learn to can. I must!

2. Grow Salad from March through November. I always plant lots of salad in spring. My fridge is stuffed with it in April. I send Jon off to work with bags of greens to give away. And then I get distracted. I forget to plant more baby greens. Or, I plant more baby greens and then forget to water them. And come August, when I finally have tomatoes and peppers to put in my salad, I have no greens. So, first I’m putting together a succession planting plan based on one I wrote for Organic Gardening last year. Then, I’m going to try to follow my own advice!

3. Start a Community Beehive. I want to taste honey that comes from bees that buzz about in my own yard. How cool would that be? I’d like to think that it will be dark, and rich, and flavorful. I also hope it is good enough to share, because I’m sure the bees won’t just stick around my 6400 square feet of property. They’ll probably stray over to the apple tree next door and across the street to the lavender. So I think it’s only fair to share with the neighbors. To start, I just got a book on natural beekeeping. And I’m planning on joining Puget Sound Beekeepers Association. Stay tuned.

4. Try 2 Brand New Vegetables I’ve Never Grown Before. Last summer I was visiting the Brentwood Community Garden in Portland and became completely smitten with a gorgeous stand of sunflowers. Only they weren’t sunflowers. They were Jerusalem Artichokes. I am so planting them this year because you get fantastic flowers and tasty tubers, too. I’m also weighing growing Belgian endive or maybe cardoon. Whatever my second choice is I want it to be challenging to grow and hard to find at the supermarket or just plain weird. Can you think of any other candidates??

I’m excited to hear about your plans and I send you my best wishes for a New Year with lots of sun, just enough rain, and plenty of surprises.

Photographic evidence of the moment that I (pictured on the far right) decided having a beehive at home would be totally cool. Thanks, Marguerite!