Zucchini Cake with Honey Cream Cheese Frosting

Squash Never Looked So Good

Recipe by Leslie and Robin

Anyone who has grown zucchini knows the agony and the ecstasy of a bountiful harvest. Even when planted near other squash or in a square foot garden, zucchini tends to entangle the entire area. It crowds out all other plants. Tiny zucchini hide beneath large leaves and become huge monsters in no time. That’s why this recipe was written. My beloved ex-roommate Leslie perfected it throughout two growing seasons—a number of decades ago—when our garden zukes were going crazy. I’ve enhanced the honey flavor by adding a bit of salt and sugar. The cake is extremely moist, without using a lot of oil. Maxing out the zucchini content does the moisture magic.

Quick Marinated Beets

Colorful Addition to Meals

Recipe by Robin

Long before I started Seasonal Eating, I loved making up recipes. Most of the time I just cooked them, but sometimes I wrote them down. I was not an organizer by nature, and had recipes scattered throughout my hard drive and on miscellaneous odd sheets of paper here and there. Often the notes were cryptic, scrawled so that I couldn’t read, much less interpret, my own writing. I lucked out on this recipe though. Hidden as it was in the depths of an old hard drive, it recently surfaced after a major crash and restoration. Perhaps the only reason I suffered the hard drive crash was to lead me back to this simple beet recipe. Maybe.

Parsley New Potatoes

Just Like Mom Used to Make

Recipe Inspired by Mom

My mom had a thing for parsley potatoes, especially parsley new potatoes. Back when I was growing up, most New Englanders simply boiled their potatoes, but Mom insisted that parsley improved both flavor and eye-appeal. At the time I didn’t appreciate her obsession, but now have grown nostalgic for those days and for my long-departed Mom. And she was right, parsley is the perfect enhancement for young potatoes. The flavor and aroma of this dish take me back in time. Or perhaps it brings Mom forward, since I can feel her looking over my shoulder as I work, and imagine her eyes widen with delight when the dish is completed.

Live Earth Farm Solstice Celebration

Organically Grown Strawberries are Farm Worker Friendly

Watsonville Farm Specializes in Community Outreach

Any frequent visitor to Santa Cruz county Farmers’ Markets knows about Live Earth Farm—if not by name, then by berries. Look for a booth with a large tiered table full of organic strawberries and raspberries in front—that’s Live Earth Farm. They’re the best berries ever—try the samples and you’ll see. This weekend we’ll have a chance to visit the source of these berries, and to “U-pick” as many as we like at the Live Earth Farm Solstice Celebration on Saturday, June 21. This event features activities and fun for the whole family, starting at noon. 

Spring Chopped Salad with Tarragon Vinaigrette

Dressed for Dinner

Recipe Inspired by Salad for Dinner

Chopped salads are frequently found on Los Angeles menus, and I can see why. Consisting of hardy fresh vegetables topped with assorted cheeses, meats, and condiments, these wilt-proof salads are perfect in hot weather. As temps top the high 80s in the Santa Cruz mountains—and we get lots of fennel and cabbage in our CSA share—it’s time to get chopping. The idea of chopped salad is that a variety of veggies are cut into a similar size and shape, then goodies like chicken, capers, olives, onion, and cheese are added. A quasi-Mediterranean invention, this salad is usually dressed with an herby vinaigrette. Sturdy ingredients make leftovers stay fresh and crunchy.

Spring Peas with Mint

Fresh Green Spring Ingredients

Recipe Adapted from The Secret Garden Cookbook

Peas are the quintessential springtime crop. One of the earliest harvests of the year, springtime peas are particularly favored in snowy climates. Where few fresh veggies are available in winter, people particularly appreciate signs of spring. In Victorian England, before large-scale transportation of foods, peas were even more popular to grow and eat. According to The Secret Garden Cookbook, the pea plant was dubbed “prince of the vegetable garden,” and Victorian recipes called for up to 4 cups of peas per serving.  This delightful recipe pairs peas with perky mint, another favorite springtime flavor from the garden.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

Treats for Two

Recipe Inspired by Field of Greens

The short rhubarb season is here! When I was young, my parents cultivated a rhubarb patch. Just about anytime, I could go outside and grab a few stalks, remove the poisonous leaves, and eat the raw stems. Dunking the wet stem into a small pile of sugar before every bite made for a fresh, juicy, sweet-and-sour treat. These days it’s more popular to combine strawberries with rhubarb and bake it into a pie. Since piecrusts are not yet my forte, and the laziness of a late spring Friday is upon me, the simpler idea of making a cobbler came to mind.

Asian Kale Salad with Strawberries and Apricots

Fiesta of Color and Flavor

Recipe by Robin

Kale is trending, plus we get some every week in our CSA share lately. I must confess it is not our favorite vegetable. We’ve tried all the usual recipes: ginger garlic kale, Portuguese soup, bean & bacon soup, Italian braised kale, and massaged kale salad.  We’ve created some more unusual dishes: shrimp braised with kale and carrot, mushroom, and kale stir-fry. With kale’s popularity these days, I asked myself, what have I never seen done with it? Kale with fruit came immediately to mind, possibly inspired by early ripe apricots on my counter. And so, I was off to explore the non-intuitive combination of tough, cruciferous kale with sweet, squishy fruits.

Polish Shredded Beets: Buraki

Buraki with Greens

Recipe adapted from Polish Cooking

Once again I’ve become obsessed with exploring my Polish cooking heritage, largely as a result of my new cookbook, Polish Cooking, which jogged memories of family feasts from my childhood. Plus we received beets from our CSA this week. What could be more Polish than beets? Not the most popular vegetable in its simply boiled state, the beet can be modified in simple ways to look and taste more appealing—as it is in this simple recipe.

Italian Style Braised Kale

Colorful and Flavorful Fun

Recipe by Robin

Versatile home cooks know that spinoffs are not just for sitcoms. Recipe spinoffs, aka tweaks, allow us to substitute on-hand ingredients while adding variety to our favorite dishes. This kale recipe is a spinoff from Simply Braised Greens, a summer recipe of mizuna, bok choy, and spinach flavored with garlic, onion, red bell pepper, and thyme. The spinoff employs springtime kale, green garlic, and leeks, dried tomatoes from last year’s garden, and oregano. These few ingredient switcheroos create a new dish: same method, but new and different flavor and texture.