2 cups dried black-eyed peas, soaked for 4 hours or overnight
6 cloves garlic, peeled
2 bay leaves
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2 large onions, diced
sea salt or kosher salt
2 cups diced fennel bulb
2-3 large bunches Swiss chard, stems chopped into ½-inch slices and leaves cut into 1-inch ribbons (separate from each other)
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large (28-oz) can diced tomatoes
¼ teaspoon fennel seeds, smashed in a mortar
freshly ground black pepper

1. Drain and rinse the soaked peas.  Cover the black-eyed peas with 2 inches of water in a large pot, toss in the whole garlic cloves and bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and let simmer until the beans are completely tender (you can squish them between your tongue and roof of your mouth). This will probably take about 30 minutes, but keep testing.
2. Meanwhile, sauté the onions in the olive oil in a large soup pot or saucepan with 1 teaspoon salt until they begin to release their liquid. Add the fennel bulb and chard stems, and cook over high heat until soft and aromatic.
3. Add the greens to the pan, along with the tomatoes and fennel seeds and grindings of pepper, and cook for 10 minutes, or until the chard leaves are tender.
4. Drain the cooked black-eyed peas, reserving the broth for use in another recipe (as soup stock). Add the black-eyed peas to the saucepan along with enough broth to moisten everything nicely. Simmer for a couple of minutes to combine the flavors, then try it and add salt to taste. I like this dish kind of as a soupy stew consistency, but just add the amount of bean cooking broth to your liking.
5. Serve warm or cool. It tastes even better the next day, as with all bean dishes.

This recipe is based on one in rebar modern food. A single batch will make 18-20 cupcakes, or one 8” double-layer cake.

cake

1 ½ cups grated carrots
¾ cup crushed unsweetened pineapple, drained
¾ cup unsweetened coconut flakes
½ cup chopped dates (I use date nuggets), steamed 5 minutes if hard and dry
¾ cup toasted walnuts, chopped (toast for 15-20 minutes in a 350 degree oven)
½ cup vegetable oil
¾ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons ginger
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt

frosting

2 blocks Neufchatel cheese or cream cheese (12 ounces each)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

garnish

1-2 cups large unsweetened coconut flakes, toasted in a 300 degree oven for about 8 minutes, until light golden-brown

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 8” round cake pans and set aside. Combine grated carrot, pineapple, coconut, dates and walnuts in a large bowl.
2. In the bowl of a mixer, beat the sugars with the eggs. Stir in the vanilla and whip on high speed until the volume has tripled. On medium speed, pour the oil in slowly to blend.
3. Combine the remaining dry ingredients and gently stir into the egg mixture. Fold gently into the carrot mixture. Divide the batter between the cake pans and smooth the tops. Bake 30 minutes, until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cakes in the pans for 5 minutes, then invert onto cooling racks. Wait until the cakes are completely cool before making the frosting.
4. Beat the cream cheese with the vanilla and powdered sugar until completely creamy. Put the bottom layer of the cake on a plate, and spread just the top of the cake with frosting. Place the top cake layer on, and again, just frost the top of the cake. (If you don’t want the cake to be quite as decadent, you can get away with a half batch of frosting, since you’re only frosting the tops of the cakes.) Garnish the top with toasted coconut.

for cupcakes, line 2 muffin tins with cupcake papers and spray the papers with nonstick spray. Scoop the batter into the cups (use an ice-cream scoop if you have it) and fill the cups fairly full; the cupcakes don’t rise much because of all the carrots and fruits and nuts weighing down the batter. Bake them at 350 degrees, testing them for doneness with a toothpick after about 20 minutes. When the toothpick comes out clean, remove from oven, let cool in tins for 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack. Wait until completely cool before frosting, as for the cake.

4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
two 28 ounce cans whole tomatoes, or diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons dried oregano
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Coarsely chop the tomatoes if using whole ones.
2. Saute the garlic in the olive oil until fragrant (30 seconds or so). Add the tomatoes and cook the sauce until nicely thickened, about 30 minutes.
3. Crush the oregano between your palms as you sprinkle it into the pot. Stir to combine, and add salt and pepper to taste. If you want a smoother sauce, put some of the sauce into your blender, or use a hand-held immersion blender to puree some of the chunks out of the sauce.

3 cups of sliced, quartered, or diced tomatoes
1 shallot or ½ a small white onion, minced
1 large garlic clove, minced
small handful basil leaves, slivered, or 1 teaspoon thyme, minced (whatever fresh herbs you have hanging around, or growing in a pot on your deck—oregano, maybe?)
1 tablespoon olive oil
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
a drizzle of balsamic vinegar

1. Toss the tomatoes with the onion or shallot, garlic, herbs, olive oil, and a pinch of salt. You can let the mixture marinate for up to 2 hours or use it right away.
2. Just before you’re ready to eat, heat a skillet and when hot, add the tomatoes. Swirl the pan around to warm them through, add a few drops of balsamic vinegar and some pepper. They should just warm up and release their juices, not fall apart.

It makes a big batch, but I’m betting you won’t have any trouble finishing it off as leftovers. It tastes even better the second day, after the flavors have had time to meld. This recipe is a variation of one in Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets.

beans:

2 cups white beans, soaked for 4 hours or overnight
1 onion, peeled and quartered
4 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole
2 bay leaves
sea salt or kosher salt

vegetables:

2 large onions, finely diced
2 bunches dino or Tuscan kale or collard greens, leaves stripped from the stems and sliced into ½” slices
1 small cabbage, either Savoy or green cabbage, quartered, cored, and sliced thinly
4 plump garlic cloves, minced
1 cup of chopped parsley
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper

toast:

thick slices of hearty whole-wheat bread (1 or 2 per person)
garlic
extra-virgin olive oil

1. Drain the soaked beans, then put them in a pot and cover with cold water by at least an inch. Add the quartered onion, garlic, and bay leaves and make sure the water covers the onions. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the beans are tender. This could take 45 minutes to 1 ½ hours, depending on the size of the beans and how old they are. When the beans are tender enough to easily squish between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, turn the heat off. If you have time, let the beans sit in their liquid with the aromatics until cool. Remove the quartered onions and whole garlic and discard. Add salt to the beans to taste.
2. While the beans are cooking, chop all the vegetables and bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the kale or collards and boil them until tender. The boiling time could be as short as 3 minutes in the summer, or as long as 10 or 12 minutes in the fall, depending on how big and old the greens are—just keep tasting them. Drain the greens.
3. Warm the olive oil in a heavy, wide skillet or pot (non-stick works especially well). Add the onion and cook over medium heat with 1 teaspoon salt until the onion is soft and golden brown, about 12 minutes. Add the kale or collards, cabbage, garlic, parsley, and 2 more teaspoons salt. Cook over low heat with the pan covered until the vegetables are soft and the volume greatly reduced, about 15-20 minutes.
4. When the beans are done, add them, along with a cup or two or their cooking liquid, to the pot. Simmer until the greens are completely tender. Taste for salt and season with pepper. (You may have to add quite a bit of salt—kale and collards need a lot of salt, as do beans.) Save the rest of the bean broth for vegetable stock in soups and stews—just freeze it until you need it.
5. Toast the bread slices. Rub the toasts with a peeled clove of garlic. Spoon the beans and greens over the toast and serve, drizzled with a little olive oil, if desired.

This recipe freezes magnificently, so I’ve given you the recipe to make quite a bit. Put what you’ll eat in a week in the refrigerator, and freeze the rest in containers for later! Yum!

2 cups red lentils, rinsed
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, finely diced
sea salt or kosher salt
½ cup pine nuts
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground caraway seeds
1 teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
freshly squeezed juice of one lemon

1. Combine the lentils and 8 cups water and bring to a boil. Skim and discard any foam and add the bay leaves. Simmer for 20 minutes, or until the lentils are tender. Drain for 5 minutes or so in a sieve.
2. While the lentils simmer, sauté the onions and 1 teaspoon salt in the olive oil for 5 to 7 minutes, until onions are softened. Add the pine nuts and sauté until the onions are golden and the pine nuts begin to color. Stir in the garlic, tomato paste, coriander, caraway seeds, cumin, cayenne, and 1 more teaspoon of salt. Continue to sauté for 5 minutes. Stire in the lemon juice to deglaze the pan.
3. REMOVE THE BAY LEAVES from the drained lentils. (It’s very important to find the bay leaf and get rid of it at this stage. Bay leaves do not puree well—they just turn into hundreds of tiny sharp shards.)
4. In a food processor, combine the cooked lentils and the onion mixture and puree until smooth. Transfer to a serving bowl and serve immediately, or if you have time, chill in the refrigerator overnight and then bring to room temperature before serving.
5. Serve with cucumber slices, on pita bread, on toast, on celery sticks… whatever suits your mood or whatever happens to be hanging around in your refrigerator, needing to be eaten!

You can buy cases of cabbage from most of the vendors at the farmers’ market, and sometimes farmers will be willing to give or sell you split heads of cabbage cheaply. The cabbages are so fresh and sweet and full of moisture right now—the perfect time to make sauerkraut! Then you can make delicious sandwiches (like Reuben sandwiches—using pastrami or roasted mushrooms), or eat it with sausages or as a side dish. 

Check out our YouTube video for the step-by-step process!

I’ve given you the recipe to fill a 5-gallon bucket, but you can make a smaller amount if you want, using the proportions I’ve shown, below.

sea salt or kosher salt
16-17 pounds of green cabbage (this amount will fill a 5-gallon bucket)

1. Clean out a 5-gallon bucket very well. If you don’t have a food-grade bucket, clean it and then line it with a sturdy plastic food-grade bag.
2. Wash your hands thoroughly. It’s important to keep your hands and equipment very clean when you’re making sauerkraut, because it is made by fermentation at room temperature, and you don’t want to introduce contaminants to the process.
3. Quarter each cabbage, cut the core out, and then shred the cabbage, using a food processor and a fairly thin slicing blade. (Or you can do this by hand, if you like.)
4. Weigh the cabbage, so you know how much salt to add. For each pound of cabbage, you’ll need 1 ½ teaspoons of salt. Measure the salt you’ll need into a small bowl.
5. Layer the cabbage into the bucket, sprinkling each layer with salt as you go.
6. As it sits, the salt will take most of the water out of the cabbage—so much will come out that it will cover the cabbage with briny liquid! 
7. Leaving the bag containing the cabbage open at the top, folded down over the top of the bucket (or just leaving the bucket open, if you didn’t line it with plastic), put a double-bagged bag of water on top of the cabbage. This bag of water keeps the cabbage submerged in the briny liquid, but it also lets the carbon dioxide that results from the fermentation escape around the edges. It’s a perfect fitting top!
8. Let it ferment in your house at about 70 degrees. Stir it once a week, tasting every week! I stopped mine after just a week, but Mark lets his go for about 5 weeks to complete the fermentation. Just taste and see, and decide when you want to stop it from getting any more sour. 
9. Take the sauerkraut out of the bucket and pack it into ziplock freezer bags and pop it in the freezer!

When you’re toasting the almonds, you might as well toast a whole tray-full of them. They make such great snacks and toppings for salads and other vegetable dishes!

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
2 pounds fresh Swiss chard, cleaned and stemmed (do not dry)
sea salt or kosher salt
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ cup golden raisins
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest, from 1 lemon
¼ cup almonds, toasted in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes

1. Wash the chard and cut the stems off each leaf. Holding the stems in a bundle, cut them into ½-inch slices. If the leaves are large, slice them into 1-inch wide ribbons, but if they are small, you can leave them whole. Drain the leaves, but don’t dry them.
2. Heat oil in a large saute pan. Add onion and ½ teaspoon of salt, sauté for a minute or two until starting to soften, then add the chard stems. Cook until stems are tender and onion is cooked. How long this takes will depend on the age of the chard. If the pan is drying out before the stems are tender, just add a bit of water to steam them and finish cooking them.
3. Add the red pepper flakes and garlic, and when garlic is fragrant (after a minute or two), add raisins and wet greens. Cover and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until greens completely wilt, but are still bright green, about 5 minutes. Uncover, season to taste with salt and add lemon zest. Cook over high heat until some of the liquid evaporates, and greens are completely tender. Top with almonds and serve.

2 large onions
6 large carrots
6 celery ribs
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
16 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
16 parsley branches
1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 12 sprigs of fresh thyme)
4 bay leaves
sea salt or kosher salt

1. Scrub the vegetables and chop them roughly into 1-inch chunks. Heat the oil in a large soup pot and add the vegetables and herbs and 1 teaspoon salt and cook over high heat for 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently. The more color they get, the richer the flavor of the stock.
2. Add 2 more teaspoons salt and 4 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, uncovered for 30 minutes. Strain.

This recipe is easy, but it’s REALLY easy if you already have a couple of the key ingredients. I had vegetable stock & white bean cooking liquid in my freezer already, so I used a combination of them to make the soup. If you use store-bought stock, make sure you use one you really like the taste of, because the cauliflower is pretty mild—so you’ll want to use stock that won’t overpower it.  But I just want to take a minute and encourage you to try making your own vegetable stock—it’s so easy to do, it’s quick, very cheap, and when we’re able to get such delicious celery and carrots at the market right now, it’s really a no-brainer. I’ll put the super-easy recipe at the end of this recipe, so you can do it if you feel inspired. I always do a HUGE pot of vegetable stock at a time, and freeze lots for future soups.

I happened to have an extra bulb of roasted garlic in my refrigerator, so I squeezed out the cloves, mashed it up and stirred it in, just for fun—and I think it’s very successful—but I wouldn’t have roasted it up just for this recipe. You may already have a pint jar of the “roasted” garlic from the infused olive oil in your refrigerator… use some of that!  Or just leave it out—the soup will still taste great.

And one more thing—a good blender is a great investment. Using a food processor to puree this soup will probably make a huge mess, plus it won’t get it nearly as smooth as a good blender will. I use my blender all the time for salad dressings and soups.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
sea salt or kosher salt
¼ cup white wine
2 medium heads cauliflower, stems discarded and florets cut into bite-sized pieces
8 cups vegetable stock (see recipe below, or low-sodium if store-bought)
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper (you can grind the whole seeds with the coriander)
1 tablespoon whole coriander seeds, lightly toasted in a skillet, then ground in a coffee grinder, OR, 1 ½ teaspoons ground coriander
1 head of roasted garlic, or the equivalent in olive-oil poached garlic (optional), mashed
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2 teaspoons minced fresh chives , or minced parsley

1. Heat oil in large Dutch oven or heavy soup pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and ½ teaspoon of salt and sauté until golden, about 5 minutes. Add white wine and stir-cook until the wine evaporates, about 30 seconds.
2. Add the cauliflower, stock, salt, pepper, coriander, and roasted garlic to saucepan; bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer; cover and cook until cauliflower is tender, about 12 minutes.
3. Let the soup cool for a while, then ladle the cauliflower mixture into blender in batches. Don’t overfill the blender as you do this. Then blend until very smooth. Return soup to soup pot and cook over low heat until warmed through. If soup is too thick, stir in a bit of water or stock to thin consistency. Adjust seasonings. (Soup can be refrigerated for 3 days and reheated just before serving.)
4. Ladle soup into individual bowls. Garnish with minced chives and serve immediately.

basic vegetable stock
I always make a big batch of this very easy stock, and then freeze the extra. You can make a half batch if you like, but why would you want to? Don’t be tempted to boil it longer than 30 minutes—it can turn bitter, and it doesn’t need any longer than that, anyway.

2 large onions
6 large carrots
6 celery ribs
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
16 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
16 parsley branches
1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 12 sprigs of fresh thyme)
4 bay leaves
sea salt or kosher salt

1. Scrub the vegetables and chop them roughly into 1-inch chunks. Heat the oil in a large soup pot and add the vegetables and herbs and 1 teaspoon salt and cook over high heat for 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently. The more color they get, the richer the flavor of the stock.
2. Add 2 more teaspoons salt and 4 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, uncovered for 30 minutes. Strain.