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Tacos de Carnitas

Craig & Cora came over a few weeks ago for a nice supper. I made tacos de carnitas, Cora brought some wonderful black beans, and we made a yummy savoy cabbage slaw for the tacos.

I've never made carnitas before but they were terribly simple. You should try it. My friend Eben emailed me his [...]

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What we talk about when we talk about green chile


Fresh chiles at the Westwind Gardens stand

Growing up in the Southwest, I took green chile for granted. I didn’t even really know what it was, other than a ubiquitous, delicious, spicy stew that was served in a bowl with tortillas on the side, over eggs, over a burrito, or countless other ways. The dish [...]

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Harvest season musings and a chile pickle


Chiles pickling in the late summer sun


A lot has changed in our lives since we started this blog in 2004. For one thing, the term “urban homesteader” has become a lot more common. For another, we’re not really doing much in the way of urban homesteading, lately. At least not in the sense that we [...]

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Nettle soup: The taste of spring

I’ve recently decided that spring is my favorite season for food. There’s something so exciting and delicious about all of the greens and sprouts and shoots that arrive with the last of the rains. Everything has an earthy flavor along with a mild vegetal sweetness; a lovely balance to take us out of the deeper [...]

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Yummy Lentil Soup

I’ve made this a couple of times and it totally hits the spot when you want a comforting hearty pot of lentil soup. Last night we hosted our weekly community supper at our house, so we made a big pot of this soup, a fabulous colorful crunchy salad, and spaghetti squash with sage butter and [...]

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Savory Bread Pudding with Winter Greens


I’ve been wanting to try this since we had a bread pudding with dandelion greens at Higgins last year. I got so excited about that dish at the time that the bartender said “You want the recipe? Lemme go ask the cook!” and brought back a scrap of thermal paper with a rudimentary recipe scribbled [...]

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Broiled Chicken



I seem to have discovered our broiler recently, and we’re really enjoying it. We’ve not had a very good broiler in the ovens in our previous houses. This one is a good old-fashioned salamander — a big hot flame emanating from the ceiling of the oven.

This recipe is an adaptation of Mark Bittman’s version of [...]

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A Good Solstice to All

I know that part of why I felt warm riding home, despite the dropping mercury, was the casual, friendly human contact of all of our interactions over the afternoon. Good people, doing what they do well, stopping to talk for a moment, making light in the [...]