Grow City Food and Cooking from the Garden

  Tao Salad Dressing – from the Tao of Cooking Tao Restaurant style dinner with green Tao Dressing This will be the freshest-tasting, most vibrant, delicious salad dressing you have ever had. This is another recipe from the book The Tao of Cooking , which contains recipes from a great vegetarian restaurant that was in Bloomington, Indiana, for a number of years, mostly in the 1970's. The recipe in my previous blog entry, Butternut Squash and Leek Soup, also came from this book. As mentioned before, my husband Richard and I would go to the Tao Restaurant and have a collection of foods that we came to call a “Tao Supper” (a recreated one at home is shown in the photo at the top). This book is still available for purchase. I guarantee you'll want to try the Creamy Parmesan dressing, too. Both salad dressings were immensely popular at the restaurant and at the associated Rudi's Bakery and Deli, where I worked for a year. And they are easy to make! On to the green Tao Dre...

  Butternut Squash and Leek Soup – recipe from the Tao Restaurant Sucrine du Berry Squash Bonjour!! A special treat with this blog entry! Not only is this a very simple and delicious soup, but also the history of the particular squash is fascinating!! Though this recipe calls for simply “butternut squash”, I'm using a special type of butternut squash that we grew in the Grow City Teaching Garden this year – Sucrine du Berry. I got the seed from a friend, and I think she originally got the seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, which was the first seed company to offer seeds of this very old heirloom. Here is the Baker Creek description, from their web site: “ (C. moschata) 100 days. A famous old traditional variety from the heart of France. It has a sweet, musky fragrance and a delicious, sweet flesh that is used in jams, soups, and many French recipes. Small 3-5 lb. fruit is perfect for roasting and has deep orange flesh. Oblong, bell-shaped fruit is tannish-orange in color wh...

  Dilly Beans! Here's another canning post – but with beans this time. Dilly Beans are a nice, fresh-tasting snack, and are also good for salad/veggie platters, charcuterie boards, and things like that. I have made Dilly Beans before, but with the usual green beans. But we were not growing green beans in the Grow City Teaching Garden this year – we were growing purple ones and striped ones! Let's go to the Garden … Fresh, Purple-podded pole beans, ready to harvest Here are the Purple-podded pole beans, which we have grown in Grow City from the first gardening year (2019) and ever since. They are perfect! The plants grow and vine well and are very productive. The beans themselves are very good size and shape, overall, and very tender and delicious. We leave some especially nice ones hanging every year to mature and dry and save the seeds to plant the next year. Later - Purple-podded pole beans maturing and drying, for seed-saving They are also “magic beans” - when you c...

  Sweet Pickle Spears We are ready for Installment #2 for this new blog! This one is also about cucumbers – but in this case we are canning some. I started making Sweet Pickle Spears many years ago, using the recipe instructions from the Ball Blue Book for canning. These pickles became a favorite at our house for using in various salads – tuna, egg, potato, etc. This is the first blog installment that includes canning instructions, so I'll be getting into detail on the procedure for “hot water bath canning”. This method is used for pickles and other items that have a high enough acidity, such as tomatoes. It can also be used for things like jams and jellies. For lower acid foods (green beans, okra, plain beets, carrots, corn, peas, etc.) that are not being pickled, you must use the pressure canning method for food safety. Consult with a current canning guide (such as the Ball Blue Book, or USDA canning book) or with your area Extension Service for current guidelines. Sometimes rec...