Bon Appegeek

Back in November I wrote a post about the final week of the local farmer’s market: about the gift of free broccoli from my favorite stand, the last green beans of the season, the hand-lettered cardboard sign that said “SUPER TENDER.” You would have kissed your rutabagas and wiped away tears after reading that [...]

Bon Appegeek posts dropped in number this summer, mostly because I haven’t been doing much of that that thing you do where you take food and mix it with other food and heat it. What’s that called…oh yeah, cooking. A combination of fresh fruit, microwaved sweet corn, tomato salads, and hot temperatures killed [...]

I canned tomatoes for the first time this year. The jars contain a mixture of Early Girl, Arkansas Traveler, Jet Star, Juliet, a few Cherokee Purple, and unknown varieties from family and friends who thought I could use a few more tomatoes. Here are five thoughts that might persuade someone to put up [...]

Check out the box.
What? Not attractive? Why are you dissing my box? What has my box ever done to you?
I guess I should explain. This was the first box of the year from my organic CSA several weeks ago. I would never have joined a CSA were it not [...]

1. Recall vague memory of your high school biology teacher noting that this widespread weed is edible somehow.
2. Flip through your copy of Edible Wild Plants by Lee Allen Peterson. Frown.
3. Flip through your copy of Edible Wild Plants by Lee Allen Peterson again. And again. And [...]

You know you store too much stuff under the sink when your faucet suddenly squirts hot water around the seams and you frantically fall to your knees to pull out bottles of soy sauce, fish sauce, rice bran oil, olive oil, roasted sesame oil, perilla oil, chili oil, black truffle oil, black sesame oil, honey, [...]

Mush gets no respect. It’s one step up from gruel, rhymes with slush, and features a character who regularly dresses in drag. “Why is that man wearing a dress? And why do those Koreans talk funny?” (Wait, that’s M.A.S.H. Never mind.) Most of my favorite foods are mushy: smashed [...]

The first hint that I would never truly tame Indian food came early on in my cooking education. Having run out of storebought garam masala, I decided to grind my own from a spice collection that had, by then, grown quite large. I confidently turned to my cookbooks and pulled down Indian Cooking [...]

Holy badword! The Menu For Hope III raffle campaign has already raised more than $14,000 and is less than $3,000 away from exceeding last year’s total! There’s still time to get in on the action, and Bon Appegeek’s donated pasta maker package is still just as shiny and pasta makeriffic as ever.
In the [...]

Step 1. Buy a butternut squash with a neck almost as tall as your cat. If you don’t have a cat, borrow one from a neighbor. Don’t tell them why you need the cat. Trust me.

Step 2. Preheat your oven to 400ºF. Crush a garlic clove in a mortar [...]

I love greens but have always avoided chard. Why? Well my theory is that I have a subconscious terror of eating a green that sounds a lot like shard, but I’m not really sure about that, because if such a terror does exist, so far it has successfully remained subconscious. Also, chard [...]

You know it’s autumn when it’s too warm to turn on the heat but too cold to keep the oven off. Since turning the oven on just for warmth is rather wasteful, I’ve been looking for things to put in it. Braising, cooking food in a small amount of liquid on the stove [...]

Pick vegetables and herbs in the morning because they’re most nutritious then, I’ve read. No wait, pick them in the afternoon because they’re most nutritious then, I’ve read. Pick them after a rainfall. Pick them after a short drought. Pick them on sunny days. Pick them on foggy days. [...]

Braces cost $3,000, cause agonizing pain for two years, chafe the insides of your mouth, require acrobatics to clean, and even after all that you must continue to wear retainers every night for fifty years until you finally reach the sweet, sweet release of dentures, all just to keep your teeth starlet-straight and snaggle-free. [...]