Do people really eat this herb?

There are some herbs that are best left to the appreciation of the eye and nose, to flavor the landscape rather than the table. Maybe I have yet to unlock their culinary secrets. Given the wealth of delicious, easy to grow herbs available to gardeners, I am puzzled as to why anyone would grow borage, for example, for culinary reasons.

Now, I love herbs. My herb garden is a constant source of flavor for my kitchen. Gleanings from my plants find their way into the family dinner almost daily, be it chives cut into eggs, mint leaves ripped off the stem for a quick garnish, or basil pounded into unctuous pesto. I drink my herbs as well, steeping them for tea and liqueurs, or even blending up a lemongrass-ade. But even I have my hippie-herbal-chef limits, and borage definitely crosses the line. Does anyone really eat borage? Does anyone really look forward to borage the way, say, that I do to a sprinkling of rosemary on bread, or tarragon in my sauce?

My Rodale gardening reference advises gardeners to eat borage leaves "raw, steamed or sauteed as you would spinach". On a more ominous note, M. Grieve, author of Culinary Herbs and Condiments (Dover 1971), reports that borage leaves were "formerly considered good in salads". "Formerly" I presume to mean "in a time when folks were too near starvation and scurvy to turn down anything green". The surface of the plant is thick with stiff, prickly white hairs. Though hailed as a source of delicious honey and for a "crisp cucumber flavor" (undetectable on my tastings), the hairy borage leaf is not something I would willingly eat again. It's like eating fur. Finally, as if the hairiness of the leaves were not enough, M. Grieve also writes of Borage's uses that "stems and leaves supply much saline mucilage". Shudder. The less mucilage on my plate the better.

My Bohemian Perennials

Hops and horseradish are both new to my garden this year, but historically appropriate to this area of Chicago. Indeed, I expect someone has raised the plants on this land at some point in the last century. While my neighborhood, Hermosa, is now known mostly as a Puerto Rican and Mexican community, it once housed mostly German and Czech immigrants. The neighborhood is bordered by rail yards and factories and this was a haven for local labor. Some of the older denizens of this area -- the 80 and 90 year-old African-Americans -- still recall to me when this area was "Bohemian". "Mind you," said one, "that was when there was still an ice man and coal carts".

Both of these newly planted perennials have not grown according to my book-learned expectations. I expected the hops to come up much sooner. They just popped up yesterday, in mid-May! Hardly the "early spring" oft cited in my garden reading. When I was visiting friends in chilly Oregon in early April, they already had long, winding vines trained up their arbor (I use "vines" colloquially, as I think the right label for hops is actually a bine -- but I don't want to put on horticultural airs). Perhaps this delay in popping up is due to languorous first-year growth. Maybe next year the hops will be up with the asparagus. According to my sources, hops grows like gangbusters once it gets going, up to half a meter a week. I plan to train the strongest shoots up my porch, which looks painfully new against my old, worn house. Hopefully, the graceful green vines will soften the raw edges of the construction.

The horseradish did come up early, but I am surprised about how it has been struggling. Everything I had read seemed to imply that it was generally repellent to all forms of garden pests: "no major insect problems" and "no diseases" is repeated everywhere in the "garden wisdom" literature. Usually, the authors write that the plant itself is the pest and it will take over the whole garden if you aren't careful. Well, my plant can't seem to keep more than two leaves on it at once -- every time there is new growth, I come out in the morning to see the leaves nibbled or snapped off. I can't figure out what it is -- I assume slugs or snails, since those seem to be damaging everything else in the garden. As usual, I am pretty suspicious of the information in the gardening books and websites. Who among these authors has actually grown everything in their books? Read just a few websites or "encyclopedias" and you find the same tidbits and tips repeated over and over again, often verbatim. It's like all the cookbooks that talk about browning meat to "seal in the juices" even though Harold McGee disproved this theory long ago.

Anyway, I did find an excellent online article on horseradish by a woman who seems to have actual experience. Interestingly enough, she calls into question another popular "fact": is horseradish really the ideal companion plant for potatoes? As for pests, she points to the flea beetle as the usually culprit for springtime damage. Now, my leaves do not have the "shot-hole" appearance that seems to be classic for the flea beetle. I am glad, however, to find someone that admits that horseradish isn't the absolute problem-free plant that the majority makes it out to be. Even she, though, attests to it's aggressive spreading habit, so I am going out to sink a bottomless pot around my plant right now. While it is currently struggling, I fear that when it does settle in and start real growth, it could be the end of my tiny vegetable bed!

Edible flowers

Edible flowers always seem to me more of an eye-pleaser than a palate-pleaser -- while a few yellow or purple blooms can boost the visuals of a salad, I rarely find that they boost the flavor. After the "Wow! I am eating a flower" moment, I don't need to go back for another taste. A garnish of flowers is a good way to show off your chef street cred to impressionable guests. Sadly, after the oohs and aahs, usually the blooms are politely pushed to the side of the plate. Nor do I blame these diners. The candied violets I made a few nights ago -- jewels though they were -- tasted, well, sugary. Ho-hum.

In my experience, the exception to the underwhelming taste of edible flowers is the humble chive blossom. Though billed in many a garden book as imparting a "mild onion flavor" to dishes, I find the taste more powerful, closer to that of raw white onion. This strong, lingering flavor is especially prominent when still in half-bud, the tiny florets just emerging. Added to omelets or pasta, the blossoms can serve the same role as chive leaves, but with a lovely purple tint.

Many a gardening expert attests to to "spicy" punch of nasturtium flowers, which I will taste soon enough thanks to the seed GROW project. I tried to resist planting the nasturtium seed until all danger of frost had passed. But I just had so very many seeds, and with so much room for error, I had to push the limits of weather. After an overnight soak, I planted some seeds three weeks ago, and only one came up. Replacements are going into the ground this week. I was tempted to pluck one of the first tender leaves from the seedling for a quick taste, but I resisted. Soon enough I will have leaves and flowers by the bowlful. Let's hope that's a good thing for both the eye and the palate!

"I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds.

Early Spring

The chives are up! They are always my first edible sign of spring, cheerily growing despite frozen ground and wet, chilly air. This year they even beat out my earliest crocus. I have two large chive clumps, both of which need dividing. The soil is still too wet for me to start digging. I want to pot up one of the divisions, so that I can try to winter them over indoors next year. Right now I have only rosemary inside, and I am weary of working it into my weekly menus. Once I can harvest the chives, I will be posting my favorite recipes for my first spring herb. The other chive divisions will be given away or else scattered throughout my perennial beds, as I love the purple flowers. The only caution is their propensity to self-seed, and if you don't deadhead you will end up with many baby chives the next year.

Somehow, I don't mind pulling weeds when they are chives (maybe I can even use them for a "microgreen" garnish). My number one weed nemesis is quack grass. Along with the chives, quack grass is springing up in my perennial bed. I have been aggressively hand-pulling the rhizomes for three seasons, and I have effectively decimated the population. When we first moved in, the whole bed was an overgrown quack-grassy knoll with a dense mat of rhizomes. Thanks to heavy mulching, the rhizomes are now long and easy to grab, and I rip them out with abandon. I think of it as "aerating" the soil in my bed. To hope for complete eradication is folly, mainly because rhizomes lurk on the other side of the fence in my neighbor's yard and also under my two well established spirea shrubs. I would need to uproot my shrubs and maul the edge of my neighbors yard to really get the rhizomes out, and if I leave behind but a few snippets of rhizomes, they will inevitably pop up the next year.

I pulled the mulch off the alpine strawberries, and they look no worse for the wear. At first, I thought one had winter-heaved out of the soil, but it is actually just a dense underbelly of last year's leaf stems. I still can't tell if I needed to mulch them -- they are "alpine" after all -- but it didn't do any damage. The little baby plant that sprung up from fallen seed last fall is still doing well, so I plan to move it elsewhere. If I was nice, I would pot it up and give it away along with my chive divisions, but the berries are so delicious and small that I need every plant I can get. Even if I divide aggressively and the plants seed their little babies every season, I don't think I'll ever have enough for a bowl full of berries!

Finally, I had a longing look at my asparagus bed. Sometimes I get spears by Easter, but nothing is pushing through the earth quite yet. It is always a minor miracle the way the spears rocket out of the apparently dormant ground. There is a thick layer of composted manure blanketing the whole bed, and I have noticed that my habit of heavily layering the compost and manure in this area has raised it noticeably above the adjacent beds. All this care for a plate or two of asparagus, but what delicious plates! And who am I kidding? It rarely even gets cooked and onto a plate, as fresh-cut asparagus is a delicious raw snack. In a plot as small as mine, I focus on quality not quantity, and I would rather my son know the taste of the real stuff in small amounts, rather than enjoy weekly plates of imported spears. The asparagus has the added bonus of being quite ornamental once the harvest is over and the plants fern out. This year I am interplanting sweet peas -- Cupani's original -- to wind up the ferns. Not sure if it will work, but another garden writer wrote about this project enthusiastically. Given that this is the richest soil in my garden, it is a shame not to use it more. So the sweet peas will go in soon, but not before I relish the green snappiness of new-grown asparagus spears.

Supermarket gardening

Is there a bigger racket in supermarkets than the herb section? Tiny little plastic boxes filled with a few wilted sprigs go for two or three dollars, sometimes more. With large herbs like sage or basil, that price can break down to over 10 cents a leaf. For anyone who gardens, even on a windowsill, it is shocking to do the math on the retail value of your herb plants. I look at my ratty, overgrown thyme patch and realize I've got close to a hundred dollars of culinary gold!

I carefully save my summer herb harvest in the freezer. I do like the look and smell of drying herbs. If fresh herbs aren't available, however, I prefer to cook with frozen. For tougher plants -- sage and thyme - I just freeze them in ziplocs with as much air pressed out as possible. The more tender leaves -- basil and parsley -- I freeze in oil as pesto. There is one herb, rosemary, that I can always use fresh, since it is growing away happily in my guest bedroom. I plan to try more of this windowsill culture next winter.

Sadly, I miscalculated with my sage this year. I ran out of frozen leaves a few weeks back, thanks to several dishes of chicken saltimbocca. I have some dried crumbly sage in a jar, which would probably do okay in a poultry stuffing. The recipe I planned to make this weekend is a parsnip risotto and, for taste and aesthetics, fresh or frozen leaves would be best. I guess I could cook something else, but I have a big stash of parsnips, so I really want to make the recipe. And, yes, I can be a resourceful cook and substitute ingredients. But on the first go at a recipe, I like to follow the prescribed method. Finally, sage is sage. If I use rosemary, it's not like I'm substituting yogurt for buttermilk.

I stood at the grocery store this morning, a sorry little box of sage leaves in my hand, eying the $2.99 price tag. I weighed my interest in the parsnip recipe against the shame of paying that much for something I grow for pennies in the summer. My son, always observant, remarked to me that he had found a "match" for my box. I expected this to mean he'd found other boxes of sage, but actually he had found a nearby shelf with organic herb plants on it, including sage. They are the earliest "gardener trap" plants that I have seen set out this year, luring the rookies (or the experienced but desperate) into buying plants way too early in the season. Many looked leggy and root-bound, but the pot of sage didn't look half bad -- a salvageable salvia, if I repotted right away. There were at least double the leaves on the plant as there were in the box. Price? $2.99. Even if I stripped all the leaves off the plant and killed it, I would break even. I only need a few leaves, though. So the rest of the plant can be nursed on the sunny windowsill alongside my rosemary. Score one for the supermarket: their gardener's impulse purchase trap worked. Is it just coincidence the plants are priced the same as all the herb boxes? How many other shoppers have done the same mental calculation this weekend?

My son must have really caught the supermarket gardening spirit, since after his apple at lunch he carefully presented me with 5 seeds that he wanted to plant. He insisted he had to grow a tree. They must have been talking about Johnny Appleseed at daycare this week. Now, apple seeds are tricky. I know they can be home sprouted, but, from what I've read, they won't grow out to be like the actual apple from whence they came. And, it will take a very long time to discover this -- years and years, in fact. Not the ideal toddler project, but my son was insistent. I surfed the Internet and came upon some charming stories -- a family who has an apple tree they rescued after it sprouted in their compost pile, a 30 year old whose grandma still has a tree he planted from a seed as a little boy. It couldn't hurt to try. I tried to convince him we should cold stratify and sprout them in a wet paper towel like many sites instructed, but he wanted a cup of soil, just like the other seeds we are starting. So now he has a little pot of apple seeds on his windowsill.

I suspect he may kill the seeds with the ferocity of his love....if they ever even sprout, given no stratification. He has already asked to water them three times, insisting they are "thirsty to grow". If this project doesn't work, I know there are other supermarket garden activities we can try, well beyond the standard 1970's avocado pit. In fact, we bought a pineapple this morning, and I had an inkling of a memory that the top could be rooted. I found many websites with instructions and several referenced the book Don't Throw It, Grow It! The Chicago Public Library system will have it in my hot little hands in a fortnight, so stay tuned. This is likely the beginning of a long gardening relationship with my supermarket.

Mid-winter assessment and identifying a weed

The cold is back in Chicago with a vengeance, but over the weekend we had a bit of a January thaw. The snow that had been hanging around since before Christmas melted away, and I went out to assess the garden. I found my fall-divided Sedum "Autumn Joy" already putting forth new growth.

I also took a long, sad look at my Munstead Lavender. I didn't prune it well this past season and the center is all woody. I am not sure if it is worth trying to salvage.

From what I have read, once the center is woody, the best plan is to grow new plants from cuttings. The center isn't as thick and overgrown as some I've seen, but I plan on starting a few new plants this year. I just went to a propagation workshop that recommended stripping a branch, coating it with rooting hormone and layering it in the soil. I may try that, but someone also recently gave me a package of clear rooting gel. I think this will be a good way for my son to track the progress of the new plants and see how roots form.

Along the side of my house, in a slim cement crack, I found a mystery weed still thriving. It popped up this year, and I wish I knew what it was! It has very sweet purple flowers during the fall. I am sure it is a common urban weed, but I rather like it. It brightens up the harsh cemented-over area.

At first I thought it was creeping charlie, but on closer inspection, the leaves aren't the same.

I am continuously frustrated in my attempts to identify weeds in my yard. This website on Illinois weeds should be helpful, but the search function is difficult and the pictures do not reliably load. This site on weedy wildflowers in Illinois has better pictures and information, but no search function. The one weed book at my library is in black and white and focuses on meadow weeds. What's a girl to do? Maybe the Internet will work its magic and someone clicking through this blog will know what this is.

The one thing I am sure of is that this weed will be listed as a plant that loves barren ground and abandoned industrial wastelands. Whenever I positively identify a weed in my yard, it is always listed as a plant that thrives in horrible, infertile areas. This always punctures any pretensions I have about my little urban plot being some oasis of organic fertility. Oh well, the real weed identification won't begin for a while yet. More snow has fallen, and it feels like January again.

1/28/10 Update....I found the answer to the mystery weed! See comment below!

The "herb"-an gardener

Every time I see two wilted sprigs of sage in a plastic box going for 2.99 at the local grocery store, I thrill to the little patch of herbs sitting near my garage. Considering value for square foot, can there be anything more rewarding than herb gardening? With a pair of sharp kitchen scissors at the ready, I can jazz up any lackluster meal with a trip to the backyard. Just yesterday, I dug through the snow for some thyme for chicken stock. Probably not at the peak of flavor, but the broth did taste great.

Drying lavender

I cook with fresh herbs whenever possible, but at the end of the summer, I freeze sage leaves, chopped lemongrass, and basil pesto for winter use. I am not a big dryer of herbs. I do love those coffee table books showing colonial-inspired kitchens draped with drying plants. Who doesn't sigh over those rustic garlands hanging down from the rafters? The first year I had my herb garden, I hung bunches of sage in my kitchen, feeling very Laura Ingalls Wilder about it all. I learned this: no woman can cook through a quart jar of dried sage in one winter.

My herb bed is 4 x 7 feet, and only has one or two specimens of each plant. One day - when I have more space - I will design a formal herb garden, edged to perfection and shaped into a beautiful Celtic knot. But for now this is a work-a-day plot. It serves as a source of kitchen seasoning, rather than Shakespearean inspiration. Other than this bed, I have a large patch of mint growing a bit too enthusiastically near the back door, courtesy of my neighbor. He went a little nuts with the mint planting on the edge of his property two years ago, and it spread quickly into my yard. Grumble though I may about its invasiveness, this mint is always at the ready to be tucked into spring rolls or cut into a chiffonade garnish. As a die-hard coffee drinker, I don't dry any herbs for teas, but I always mow down a section to plunge into my summer iced tea as it is brewing.

So here is my 2010 plan for the herb garden; this is probably the area with the least new plans. I am just keeping the tried and true going, and restraining myself from trying to squeeze in one more basil plant!

Perennials:

Thyme - Not only a cooking staple, but it makes the best cordial I've ever tasted.

Lavender, Munstead - I didn't prune aggressively enough. A little woody at the center. May need to grow new plants from cuttings.

Chives - I have two plants. One is coming out -- either to be potted or maybe divided and placed as an ornamental in the front beds.

Garlic chives - Planted this past summer -- we'll see if they make it through the winter; not sure if they are reliably hardy in Zone 5.

Sage

Tarragon

Greek Oregano

Annuals:

Thai basil

Italian basil - see my notes on basil in the pesto post.

Pots:

Rosemary - Going strong on my window sill -- we'll see if I can get it through the winter.

Lemongrass - This was in-ground last year and became a behemoth in the corner of the herb garden. I'm going to container-garden this in the upcoming season, and hopefully keep it alive inside for winter use. I might stick a few around the flower beds, as it is pretty striking in full growth.

Undecided:

Dill - This has made the cut for the past few years, but my husband hates the taste of dill and it never does well wherever I put it. Does make for a nice addition to flower arrangements.

Chervil - Grew well last year, but aside from a few potato salads, I didn't really use it for anything. Made me feel very French though.

Parsley- This plant is always a bully in my garden -- it gets big and wide no matter how aggressively I cut it back. My husband claims it gives him a soapy taste like cilantro, so I tend to avoid adding it to too many dishes (I know, horrors, but I have a cooking audience of two, so I need to cater their tastes or I'm doomed for a bad review).

Shiso- I really want to grow this; not only is it important to several tasty Asian dishes in my repertoire, but it is a rather lovely ornamental. I have had no luck growing it from seed these past two years. Should I give it one more try, or throw in the towel?

Finally, I am most intrigued by some of the obscure Southeast Asian herbs featured in the Kitazawa Seed catalog, but I'm afraid it will turn into a chervil-like situation and I won't use them often enough to justify the real estate usage. I'm sure I'll impulse buy some other herb plants when I prowl the nurseries this spring. I have promised myself I will try to start most things at home, but the herb plants especially are hard for me to resist. If I see Anise Hyssop, how can I say no?

Planning ahead

My Chicago ristra : the last of the garden chili peppers

The first of the 2010 seed catalogs have arrived, and I have been spending a good many hours poring over them. I have a very small garden, and this is the time of year when I feel the most regret: I could grow so many more types of vegetables, if I only had the space! Of course, in late August, when I can barely keep up with the weeding and harvesting of my tiny plot, I shudder to think of how I would handle even five more square feet. And most folks I know who do have larger garden plots also lament that they do not have enough space. No matter how big your plot, it may just be the nature of gardeners to always want more space to try other plants, other methods of culture.

The tiny garden forces me to consider my exact intention for the vegetables I raise. If only my intention could be to live largely off my own land! Self-sustenance, for reasons of size and time, are out of reach. For now, my efforts are largely divided into three categories. The first two were my most obvious starting place: growing things I cannot buy easily and growing things that taste significantly better than store-bought. Into the former category falls my herbs, rhubarb, and zucchini (for blossoms and young fruit). Into the latter category falls my tomatoes, strawberries and pole beans. After several years of buying wizened shallots at inflated prices, I am adding shallots to my garden in 2010. Since I can only find them occasionally, even at this inferior quality, file them under both categories. And, after my rousing success with strawberries, I am also trying out container-grown blueberries this upcoming year. They should be virtually guaranteed to taste better than the mealy, overpriced fruit sold in the nearby stores.

Finally, there is the category of vegetables I grow just out curiosity: asparagus, eggplant and hot peppers, for example. Heretical though this may be, I am unconvinced that these plants taste better than store-bought or offer any economic value. Yes, I know I can tell myself that there is an indescribable flavor added to anything one has produced from ones own land and efforts. And there is something to be said for the health benefits of moving off of the industrial agriculture grid in any way you can, even with a postage stamp garden. But from a sheer culinary perspective, I remain unconvinced. I grow them because I want to know how to, and I imagine that one day, when I try to go for a sustenance-level garden, I will need to know how to.

This final category offers the most flexibility, except with the asparagus, which, as a perennial, I am stuck with for now. I could dig it up, but it is very exciting to see the spears pushing up out of the ground. And even if it doesn't taste better than store-bought, it doesn't taste worse. I am, however, editing out the eggplant totally. And I am downsizing to one Thai bird pepper plant this year. No more serranos! I can buy them off the local farm truck for pennies. This means I have room for some heirloom carrots this upcoming year, as well as some cold-weather greens and onions.

The plant that I know I shouldn't grow -- but have become totally obsessed with growing over the past few years -- is horseradish. It can be invasive. It is unnecessary. I only cook with horseradish a few times a year: cocktail sauce for our annual shrimp boil and a spicy condiment for the occasional steak sandwich. It is not a critical part of my cooking repertoire, to say the least. But I really want to know what fresh-grated horseradish tastes like, and I am always a bit dubious of the sad little jar of the prepared root that I buy at the fish store. I certainly only need one plant, but my favorite catalogs sell them in packs of five or more. So, I will order it. I will foist off the extras on gardening friends, as I did with my extra asparagus crowns. Because I know gardeners. They can't truly say no, neither to seeds nor crowns nor rhizomes. They'll likely snap up whatever new plant is offered for the taking, no matter how small the garden. There's always a space somewhere -- and after all, they're curious.

Rosemary in winter

The first three years that I lived at our house, I planted rosemary directly into the herb bed in my garden, treating it as an annual. Every fall, I would clip off thick branches and freeze them, to be used slowly over the course of the winter. I always hoped that somehow my plant would defy all hardiness predictions and survive the Chicago winter. Inevitably, I would be back at the nursery buying another pot in the spring. I still frown in frustration when I read of folks in zone 5 creating "shrubs" of rosemary -- either they mulch more effectively than I do, or have found a hardier strain.

This summer, I rescued a nice fake "terracotta" pot from a neighbor's trash pile and decided that a potted rosemary plant would suit it best. I was able to balance the pot on some old cinder blocks in the hottest, sunniest corner of my little backyard garden. This spot is smack up against the back wall of my house, so it receives the reflected light and heat from the light grey siding. The plant grew much better under these conditions than it ever did in my actual herb bed. I suspect it also helped that it was far from the reach of my hose and watering can, and thus exposed to near-rock-garden environmental conditions. And I mean rock garden: only my collection of semper vivum grew there before.

At the end of the summer season, I brought the rosemary indoors, and gave it my one area of prime "sunny window" real estate (the other windows in my house have only partial sun throughout the day). It has been doing well, but I must curb my usual houseplant watering practices. I put a shallow dish of hens and chicks beside the rosemary to remind me that I am going for Mediterranean conditions, not the moist tropical care that my other houseplants crave. We'll see if it survives the winter -- hopefully come May I can place it back in its sunny outdoor spot. If it doesn't survive, oh well! I'll just buy my usual plant at the nursery, and long for the day when I can move to a higher zone.

One must be careful when cooking with rosemary -- too much, and the dish suffers from an intense piney-ness that can bring to mind soap more than food. I infuse my sauces with a branch (no need to chop) and then fish it out prior to serving. And in the garnish department, a sparkling holiday cocktail of limoncello and soda looks rather jaunty when decorated with a branch of rosemary impaling a lemon twist. My current favorite recipe is homemade rosemary and olive oil crackers: one taste of these, and you'll never again shell out four bucks for the Trader Joe's version. The recipe is adapted from Karen Solomon's recent book Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It. She gives instructions for many fancy variations on the cracker, but simple squares, liberally topped with salt, are easy and delicious with red wine. Watch the baking here. You want to skirt as close to well-browned as you can before tipping over into burned. This is no time for pale, delicate pastry. The crunch and carmelization suit the aggressive rosemary flavor.

Rosemary Olive Oil Crackers

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of sugar

pinch of black pepper

1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary

1 egg

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup water

More salt for sprinkling

1. Combine the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times. Whisk together the wet ingredients and pour into the food processor, only enough to develop a single ball of dough (add a bit more water if needed).

2. Turn the dough onto a big sheet of plastic wrap and pat into a large flat rectangle. Cover with more plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour or so. Preheat the oven to 375.

3. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. Roll as thin as you can manage, usually 1/8 inch. Prick all over with the tines of a fork. Sprinkle with more salt, and roll a few times to embed. Cut into squares (pizza roller works best).

4. Transfer squares to oiled and floured (or parchment lined) baking sheets bake for about 10 minutes, but watch carefully. Once well-browned on all edges, remove to a cooling rack. I often end up removing some a minute or two before others, due to uneven rolling and weird oven microclimates. Do not underbake.

Fast food

Three times a week, I work late, usually not arriving home before 6:30 pm. As the primary cook in the house, my energy level usually determines dinner. If I am willing to cook, we eat at home. Otherwise we go out. My husband does not enjoy cooking and, if left in charge of dinner will opt for purchasing it, unless I leave specific and easy instructions on reheating something I've already made. This used to be less of a dilemma for us - but with a young child, eating out is not relaxing. If he is is tired and hungry, it usually ends up requiring more energy to wrangle him at a restaurant than it would have to chop up some stuff to stir-fry.

My transition to being parent as well as a cook has transformed my approach to dinner. I used to never make the same thing twice, working my way through a new recipe almost every night. If it took two hours, it didn't matter -- my husband could eat something to tide him over. But I get home now to a tired toddler who wants me to pay attention to him and not a cutting board. And I am learning that a repertoire of meals that we eat on a regular basis is very comforting to a toddler's mind...and perhaps to adults as well. But I cannot bring myself to use garish 30-minute meal suggestions that involve dumping several highly processed foods into a pot and stirring. I still want to cook from scratch, and cook my food: slow, healthy, tasty and based on my garden products, or seasonal vegetables. The freezer is my best source of fast food. Cooking ahead and freezing pizza sauce, bolognese sauce and pesto has given me three reliable meals that I can always fall back on. I've learned too that I can keep pizza dough "rising" in the fridge for a few days with no ill-effect; indeed a baker might say I am developing flavor by retarding the rising. Pesto is the most efficient: a frozen half cup of the stuff can be quickly thawed, beaten with some butter and cheese, and on the table in the time it takes to boil pasta.

Pesto is often rolled out in cooking magazines in August as a garden-based sauce for every home cook to try. It has gone from highly trendy to cliche in the fancier food circles, but it still tastes good. Pesto is also quite sturdy and freezes beautifully. Food history is always of dubious reliability, but I like to think of the oft repeated anecdote of the Genovese soldiers who went into battle with a pot of the stuff in their bags. I like pesto more in the late fall and winter -- a memory of my summer garden, of basil plants composted long ago. There are myriad recipes, but the idea is simple: basil leaves, olive oil, salt, and garlic. Pignoli or walnuts optional. If you want to break out the mortar and pestle, all power to you, but I really can't taste the difference. If, like me, you are making 12 cups in a single day, the Cuisinart is a far better choice. I use Marcella Hazan's recipe, and she instructs to stop here if you are freezing. When you are ready to use it, add some butter and cheese: she prefers a mix of parmagianno and romano. Make a lot. Everyone likes it. Everyone takes seconds.

As for the type of basil, I generally use the big leafed sweet basil that every nursery sells. The plants grow like trees by late August, and I can get three big batches of pesto in a good season. I have not been successful growing basil from seed here in Chicago. By the time the plants get up and running, even if I have started early indoors, the season is almost over. Thai basil doesn't work -- too much licorice taste; better to use it whole in stir fries. I read in a cooking magazine that Genovese pesto tastes better because those folks use the small leafed Genovese basil variety. The writer said the small leaves give more concentrated flavor. I grew two of those plants this season, and the only difference was that it was a much more tedious task to strip the leaves off the stems. Maybe the superiority of the Genovese pesto has more to do with terroir than with the exact type of basil they use.

Finally, pesto from basil grown in the garden is cheap. I have served it to friends who think of it as a luxury item, since to make pesto from Jewel Osco would require 15 dollars worth of their sorry, wilted and overpriced leaves. Of course, there is a price for the pignoli and the Italian cheeses, but it is spread out over 3 months worth of meals, and is cheaper than one night out at a restaurant.

Three successful new plants from this summer's garden

As a gardener, this chilly time of year always threatens to become the winter of my discontent: I look back over my summer and consider the diseased roses, the cosmos that took over my beds, the pumpkin vines that were the victims of an accidental (so he says) mowing by my husband. In a few more weeks, after everything is mulched and composted, I'll have a change of heart and begin again with my grand plans for my little plot of earth. I did have three excellent showings this year by new plants in my garden. Of course, when you have a cramped urban garden, one's heart sinks a little when you gather three new things onto your must-have list. Adding to your list inevitably means editing out other plants, for as Joe Eck wisely advises in his beautifully written Elements of Garden Design, "The smaller the garden, the fewer will be the number of species that should find a home in it....the smaller the space, the more the eye will need to rest on ample, extensive masses of plants". Sigh. Here are my three new loves from Summer 2009, all of which are easy and rewarding:

1. Alpine strawberries

Thomas Jefferson had a passionate love affair with these small, delicate fruits; I first encountered them in Italy, covered in Prosecco as a light dessert. They are beautiful plants and delicious to nibble, a mix of intense strawberry and pineapple flavor. While the plant bears the fruit cheerily from June to October, the strawberries are quite small. I now appreciate that the dessert bowl I ate so quickly likely represented about twenty plants' worth of fruit.

I initially tried to grow these from seed a few years ago using a packet of "Mignonette Strawberries" from Renee's Garden Seeds. I was warned they were slow to germinate, but I never saw any growth but weeds in the intended patch for the entire spring and summer. So, this year, I secured two small plants in the Herb section of Grand Street Gardens. Both plants took well to the sunny corner of my herb patch and happily bore small, delicious fruits all season. I am going to mulch them with a generous layer of straw this winter, much like my Ozark Beauty strawberries. I do wonder if mulching is really necessary given the "alpine" half of the plant name. But I don't want to experiment and potentially lose the output of one of my plants next season.

2. Scarlet Runner Bean

My child loves birds, especially owls, but his little eyes linger lovingly on the hummingbird pages of the bird guide as well. I have a need for vertical growth, not just because I am short on space, but also because the back of my house faces a tall white expanse of garage. I had initially planned on growing hops up the garage wall this year, but all the mail-order sources I found had them on back order. So I decided to go for hummingbird-friendly annual vines, and the best one I planted was the Scarlet Runner.

The Scarlet Runner grew fast and furious, and my main mistake was putting in short six-foot trellises. Next year, I'm going to trellis the whole 12-foot wall. It produced beautiful but small red flowers, several vines of which I trailed from my flower arrangements with nice effect. Then it produced huge big flat green beans. Apparently you can pick and cook them like pole beans before they get fuzzy, but we were too busy with the Blue Lake pole beans we planted in the raised beds. Best of all -- especially for toddlers -- the mature beans are gorgeous: big, black and speckled with brilliant hot pink. They look straight out of a Jack and the beanstalk story. For this alone, they are a worthy addition to a child's garden: my toddler is now a committed seed saver after seeing what he gets to collect.

3. Lemongrass

I cook a lot of southeast Asian recipes for my family, and lemongrass was the perpetual ingredient challenge for me. On the west side of Chicago, we have some small Chinese markets and a large Korean grocery store, but I have yet to find a Thai or Vietnamese store. For that, we have to go all the way up to Argyle. So I was excited to see a small, cheap lemongrass plant at City Escapes. I stuck it on the "Asian" side of my herb bed, along with the perilla, the holy basil and garlic chives. It grew into a beautiful ornamental tuft of grass. This lemongrass was a culinary revelation: I was used to wrangling those tough dried-out tusks of lemongrass from the market. Not only was the flavor more intense, but it was easy to chop. I also got the grassy tops, which apparently are rare to come across if you don't grow it, even in Vietnam. Next year, I am going to use it as a grassy effect in my perennial bed....no one needs to know it serves double-duty on the dinner table.

Here is a recipe for the rare grassy tops, adapted from the invaluable cookbook Real Thai by Nancie McDermott:

Lemongrass-ade

A generous handful of lemongrass leaves, cut into two inch lengths with scissors
3 cups cold water
3 tablespoons super-fine sugar (or, if you want to be fancy, a 1/4 cup simple syrup)
Ice cubes

1. Pack the leaves into a blender then top with the water and sugar. Blend for 1 minute. Strain into a pitcher.

2. Taste, adjust for sweetness, and pour over ice.

Good-bye garden and hello homemade liqueurs

Today was pretty much the last day of the edible garden. In years past, I have had the energy and foresight to plant a cold-weather garden of radishes and greens. This year work and family conspired to let my summer garden die a slow, scraggly death. Still, this week I got 10 pounds of grapes off my two year old Concord vine, 6 quarts of brussel sprouts and 2 final succulent pounds of Blue Lake Pole beans. I cooked and canned the grapes with Eugenia Bone's recipe for Concord Grape Walnut Conserve, from her new(ish) book Well-Preserved. The sprouts and beans we didn't eat immediately were pickled -- sprouts blanched and beans raw-packed -- with a "dilly bean" brine recipe. All the jars are now satisfyingly lined up on the shelves in my family room, along with the cauliflower, pears and apples I put up with produce from the market.

The beans were from One Seed Chicago -- in the early spring, my toddler recieved a handful of seeds in a newspaper twist at the Garfield Park Conservatory. I gave him a square foot of one of my raised beds, and the beans took off skyward. The old cable and phone lines that riddle the west-facing back wall of my house were the ideal trellis. Most of the beans within his 3-foot reach went straight into his mouth while standing in the backyard. That one square foot of raised bed, almost unwatered this entire summer, managed to put green beans on our plates once a week for the entire summer. Of course, since the "summer" started in late July this year, I can't say it was a very long season.

The canning process was, as usual, less work than I thought. "Less arduous" is actually what I mean, because it did take up a whole day. Both this weekend and last have been chilly, however, and hours of standing near large boiling pots of water were not unwelcome. I love seeing all of my beautiful jars lined up on my shelf. I am loathe to open any as this would disturb the symmetry of my display. I will be brave and do it at some point, but for now I just want to look at them. The only thing missing is strawberry jam. This was our first year of the strawberry beds, and we ate them all straight off the plants. I didn't even make one cobbler or pie! My kid would go out every morning and check the beds -- any berry remotely close to ripeness was quickly plucked and shoved rapturously into his chubby toddler cheeks. For a few weeks, the growth outpaced him and I was able to collect a quart. I stuck them in the fridge overnight and tried to pawn them off on him at breakfast but one taste and he pronounced them "bad strawbabies" and insisted on going outside to get better ones. I take it as a small victory that I have produced a strawberry snob in inner-city Chicago.

The canning spirit had inspired my inner French peasant, so I decided this was also the time to examine my stock of homemade liqueurs. I was initially turned on to this craft by the French Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herrmann Loomis. Well, I knew about it before then....in my travels to Mexico and Bolivia all it took was a few minute conversation with someone in the countryside and I was invariably invited to step over to their house to sample some homemade brew. I had even tried to make limoncello when I was living in New York, but it ended up being weakly-lemon-flavored cheap vodka. But Loomis' recipes looked promising and delicious, and since then, no dinner party of mine has been complete without pulling out a bottle or two of some digestif for my guests. Hostess that I am, my demand has outstripped my supply: my Quince Eau-de-Vie was finished a few months ago, and now I am left with a scant cup each of Thyme Liqueur and Vin d'Orange. So, I have started a new bottle of the Thyme Liqueur, especially since my thyme plants have threatened to completely take over my herb garden. I am also trying a head-to-head battle of the recipes for Liqueur 44. Liqueur 44 is a French orange-and-coffee cordial. Loomis has a Vodka-based recipe and Saveur recently printed a rum-based recipe. I have made a jar of each and in 44 days, I will sample and report the winner.

For now, here is the recipe for the Thyme Liqueur, adapted from Loomis. It is a good use for end-of-season herb plants, although technically one should probably pick the thyme at the peak of summer flavor, preferably in early morning. I will leave that to the purists, and for myself I will have this mellow herbal taste of early autumn. Hmmm...mellow only if you let it sit for four or six months....freshly made it can "bend a nail", as Loomis writes.

Thyme Liqueur

Thick handful of thyme sprigs, washed and spun dry
1 quart vodka
1 quart water
3/4 c sugar

1. Pack the thyme into a 1 quart jar that will close airtight. Pour the vodka over and close well. Shake and then let sit in a dark cool place for a month.

2. Strain the mixture and discard the thyme.

3. Bring the water and sugar to boil and stir over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool.

4. Blend the thyme essence and the sugar syrup together in a 2 quart jar. Let sit for another month. The liqueur will get more mellow and better with age.