Open View Gardens

Just a short while ago, I thought I’d be sitting in a fabulous Indian restaurant in London right about now, during a two-day stopover on  the way to Fes, Morocco for a month to think, to write, to cook, to take photos, to taste living in that incredible city. And then on to Italy for […]

The sun lifted itself high into the sky this morning and has stayed there, for once not cloaking itself with a thick grey blanket, instead letting the clouds wash over and away in quick waves. The breezy warmth has pulled some local residents out of deep slumber, hungry, to compete at the bird feeders. In […]

When I first dreamed up Open View Gardens, I wanted to help expand our sense of what we grow and eat locally, and to encourage community building by exploring our culinary diversity. As our mission reads: “Growing food grounds us in the relationships between earth and nourishment; preparing food brings us into relationship with our […]

This is a meandering post.  Just so you know. Whenever I head to New York City–and head there I do often to visit my daughter–I take canvas shopping bags and a big old cooler to haul back as much food as possible. I dream of the ingredient shopping possible at the greenmarket, the spice shops […]

Wouldn’t you know it–just as I vow to rein in my sprawling gardens this season, even more gorgeous and enticing seed catalogs arrive from suppliers, some of which I haven’t even heard of before.  The Natural Gardening Company of California, for instance, which touts its position as the “oldest certified organic nursery in the United […]

Outside the weather continues to flirt with winter, temperatures careening between yesterday’s 40s and today’s single digits (first real cold), snow dancing about the sky but refusing to lay down a fluffy quilt to insulate the gardens. Yesterday the fennel, artichokes and rosemary were still alive and well inside their light tunnel.  We’ve had a […]

I eat seafood only when I’m on a seacoast.  Never in Vermont. Or at least not by choice. I know that this rather severe, absolute rule flows from having grown up six miles from the ocean, and from spending childhood summers in a cottage overlooking the salty water–water that was once filled with lobsters and […]

Apart from the five inches of snow that fell the day before Thanksgiving and the very few nights of 20ºF frostiness we’ve had this fall, the weather has been, well, ridiculous. Yes, ridiculous. Okay, there’s some good in this consistent warmth: I am still picking greens and herbs–the ones the deer do not like, that […]

I’ve stopped buying pine nuts–except when I find fresh Spanish ones at Sahadi’s when I visit my daughter in Brooklyn.  The only sort available around here are flown in from China–too far for something that needs refrigeration and careful handling–and the $30/pound price is beyond affordable.  Perfect pine-nutty pestos and some Italian cakes and cookies […]

I know I know… I own too many cookbooks.  Even I have to admit it now that I can no longer fit my collection into the kitchen bookcase and the shelves in the pantry cleared for the overflow. And yet I just bought another cookbook, a big heavy one.  Do I have a cookbook-buying disorder?  […]