Today I am so excited to announce that my book, Grow Cook Eat: A Food-Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening, Including 50 Recipes, Plus Harvesting & Storage Tips, is now on sale! Having the opportunity to write this book and work with the extraordinarily talented photographer, Jim Henkens, on all of the gorgeous photos was such a dream come true. I am so proud of this book and I feel very lucky that I get to send it out into the world.

To all of you who read this blog, thank you so much! Your questions and passion for good food inspired much of the content in this book, especially all the specific harvesting details. My goal was to write a gardening book that real life gardeners with busy lives would find useful and accessible, but also inspiring and seductive. Luckily, I landed at Sasquatch Books. The Sasquatch editing and design team was committed to helping make my vision for the book a reality and I really could not be any happier with how it turned out.

Grow Cook Eat is available at local bookstores, online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound and Powells, and at Anthropologie, West Elm, and Williams-Sonoma stores. The book will also be available at many wonderful small nurseries and gift shops and as an eBook. With the help of my crack project editor, Rachelle Longe, I’ve put together a little sneak peek inside Grow Cook Eat. The PDF includes the growing guide for basil and my Nona’s pesto recipe. I hope you enjoy it!

I have a ton of speaking engagements coming up this spring and I am looking forward to meeting a lot of other veggie gardeners. You can find the list over on my events page and on my book’s official Facebook page. I hope you’ll pop over there and like it. I’ll be updating the Facebook page regularly with event information. And in the meantime I will be over on Cloud Nine. I’ll probably be hanging out there for a few days but am looking forward to coming back to earth and planning this year’s garden.

After a long, busy day, this simple split pea soup is my go-to recipe for getting a healthy dinner on the table fast. The soup takes under an hour to make, with only about 15 minutes of hands on work, which gives you plenty of time to relax for a few minutes while your dinner bubbles away on the stove.

Even though I eat pretty much anything, I cook almost exclusively vegetarian, because my husband Jon does not eat meat or fish. Adding smoked Spanish paprika to this soup give it a smoky, savory flavor without the addition of ham. It tastes delicious when made with vegetable broth (or even just water if you are in a pinch), but chicken broth makes a fine substitution, too. Serve the soup with a simple side salad dressed with a lemon vinaigrette, and you’ve got yourself a light tasty supper that will keep your belly warm, something that is especially nice at this time of year.

Split Pea Soup with Smoked Paprika

Serves 4

You can find both dulce and picante Spanish paprika in the spice aisle of most super markets. The most common brand is El Rey de la Vera and it is sold in cute little red tins. I use both of these spices quite bit in soups and as a garnish.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/3 cup finely chopped carrot (about 2 large carrots)

1 teaspoon hot (picante) smoked Spanish paprika

1/2 teaspoon sweet (dulce) smoked Spanish paprika

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup dry split green peas

4 cups vegetable broth

2 cups water

1/2 to 1 cups hot water (optional)

Pea shoots (optional garnish)

Instructions:

Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot over medium high heat. When it shimmers, add in the onion and garlic and saute until soft and translucent (about 2 minutes). Add the carrot and cook until the onion begins to brown (about 2 more minutes). Stir in the hot and sweet paprika and salt, then add the split peas, broth and water. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to low. Partially cover the pot and simmer until the peas are very soft and begin to break apart, 30 to 40 minutes. Puree the soup in batches in a blender or with an immersion blender. If necessary, whisk in hot water to thin the soup to your preferred consistency. Divide the soup between bowls, drizzle with olive oil and garnish with a pea shoot, if using.

Outside of Boring, Oregon, on a rural road that winds past tree farms and fence-lined pastures, sits a rustic wooden barn that houses Red Pig Tools, makers of beautiful, classic garden tools. All of the tools in the Red Pig line are made on the property by blacksmith Bob Denman, who is dedicated to crafting smart, handsome, heirloom quality tools.

In my own garden I only regularly use five tools: a garden fork, spade, 3-tine cultivator, trowel, and bow rake (as well as an old steak knife for harvesting). Though I recently added a Red Pig Hand Plow to the mix, because when I picked it up, it felt weighty in my hand, like it was ready to go to work. The plough comes in both right- and left-handed versions, and Bob designed the sharp curved blade for making furrows, digging small seedling holes, tamping soil and uprooting weeds.

Bob and his wife, Rita, are clearly gardeners because all their tools feature smart design details that only someone who uses them regularly would think to make. For instance, the heads of the hoes are sharp on all three sides, which makes it easy to corner around plants. The tools are also very sturdy because Bob hand-forges the blade and shank of each tool out of steel and then rivets them to the hardwood handles.

The Red Pig Tools retail shop is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10:00 to 6:00 and the tools are also available through the shop’s website. You’ll find pretty much every kind of tool you’ll need!