It's lavender harvesting season in our neck of the woods, and we have plenty of culinary lavender on hand especially since we went to an organic, U-pick lavender farm last weekend. In addition to making some fabulous lavender shortbread, I'll be making sure I have plenty of Lavender Honey Lemonade on hand for those hot summer days.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, head up to the Olympic Peninsula for North America's largest lavender event, the Sequim Lavender Festival, July 17 to 19, 2009. If you do go and harvest some lavender yourself, you can easily dry it by wrapping the bundles with rubber bands and hanging them upside down with a paper clip in a cool, dark room.

Lavender Honey Lemonade

Ingredients:
1 cup honey
5 cups w ater
1 tablespoon dried culinary lavender (or 1/4 cup fresh lavender blossoms)
1 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice, strained
Ice cubes
Lavender sprigs for garnish 

Directions:
Combine honey with 2 1/2 cups water in a medium pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the honey.

Add the lavender to the honey water, cover, and remove from heat. Let stand at least 20 minutes (and up to several hours).

Strain mixture and discard lavender. Pour infusion into a glass pitcher. Add lemon juice and another 2 1/2 cups of cold water. Stir well.

Refrigerate until ready to use, or pour into tall glasses half-filled with ice, then garnish with lavender sprigs.

I don't know about you, but I love foods made with mascarpone cheese, even though I inevitably always mispronounce it. It's that triple-cream cheese that's used in making tiramisu and a whole host of very tasty sweet and savory Italian dishes. You can also serve it with fruit or it can be mixed with cocoa or coffee.

Unfortunately, it's also very expensive to buy, that is, if you can find it in stores. However, luckily for us, it's actually quite easy to make yourself.

Homemade Mascarpone Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:
16 ounces (not ultra-pasteurized) organic whipping cream
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Preparation:
Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a wide skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the water is barely simmering. Pour the cream into a medium-sized heat-resistant bowl, then place the bowl into the water in the skillet.

Heat the cream, stirring often, to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. It will take about 15 minutes of gentle heating. Add the lemon juice and continue heating the mixture, stirring gently, until the cream curdles. The whipping cream will become thicker and will cover the back of your spoon thickly.

When the cream reaches the temperature, keep it at that temperature for 5 minutes. Then remove the bowl from the water, and let the mixture cool for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, line a sieve with four layers of dampened cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Pour the mixture into the lined sieve. Once it is cooled completely, cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate in the sieve overnight or up to 24 hours. Transfer to a sealable storage container or your mouth, whichever comes first.

Yields about 12 ounces.

You can check out my other homemade cheese recipes in my easy cheese series.

It's been getting around the playground at my son's school that I bought a $95 turkey for Thanksgiving this year. The consensus has run somewhere between general disbelief and the statement that my turkey sure better be laying some golden eggs to justify the expense. So, let me back up and explain.

Late last spring I heard a local farmer discussing his pasture-raised beef on our local NPR station. The farm, Thundering Hooves, also offers pasture-raised, heritage turkeys, but you'd better get your act together because they sell out as soon as they go on sale in July.

Who wants to think about Thanksgiving in July? Well, I for one, and it certainly appears that plenty of others do as well. So, we dutifully ordered our turkey as soon as we could and have been diligently waiting ever since. The turkeys were processed a few weeks ago and we picked ours up last weekend. We'll be roasting it rather simply since we want to be able to really taste the meat and see how it compares to the standard breeds.

How's it Heritage? 

This bird is a rare heirloom Unimproved Standard Bronze. Thundering Hooves keeps their own flock so the eggs are produced and incubated on site (rather than chicks purchased from another grower). According to their website:

"There are extremely limited numbers of breeding flock [of unimproved turkeys] left in the country. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy estimated that in 1987 there were 'less than 300 breeding hens' found in America with the possible exception of a limited number of turkeys used by hobbyists and show goers."

These birds are becoming endangered simply for the fact that turkey growers are breeding birds that have larger amounts of white meat. I'm sure you've heard of some commercially grown broad-breasted birds that are so busty they can barely walk and are so far removed from nature that they don't know how to mate and must be artificially inseminated in order to breed. A more thorough examination of the issues with commercial turkeys is made in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Out to Pasture

Most commercially grown turkeys are raised in confined and cramped quarters, given little access to the outside (if at all) and are fed a limited and unnatural diet. This makes for a very low-quality life for the turkey and some argue that it results in a less flavorful and nutritious meat.

Pasture raising is a method of raising flocks that is more than just "free range," which generally means that the birds have access to a small outdoor area that they may or may not actually use. On the other hand, our pasture-ranged turkey roamed freely in the fields, eating bugs, grasses and vegetarian feed. The birds on the farm are free to roam about as they please and their roosts are periodically moved throughout the field. This is generally referred to as pasture rotation and it allows the birds access to new areas of grass and bugs for their dining enjoyment.

Eat Local for Thanksgiving 

Not only was it important for us to purchase a turkey that is raised sustainably and preserves a heritage breed, but it was important for us to buy local. Each year I host an Eat Local campaign urging individuals and families to choose local foods for their Thanksgiving table. Not only does it help support local farmers, but the reduction in transportation of foods also results in lower carbon emissions, some say as much as 2.2 lbs of CO2 per plate of local foods chosen.

So, if you are interested in joining the movement to Eat Local for Thanksgiving, stop by and sign the pledge!

Two items that we seem to buy every week from the grocery store are cream cheese and sour cream. Why I haven't already started making these myself sooner is beyond me. Most likely because I didn't realize how extremely easy it was to do both. For the cream cheese, I've read several recipes that call for fancy equipment or hard-to-find ingredients, but there are other ways of making it that won't make your throw your hands up in frustration. And, considering the amount of plastic packaging involved with both items, making them at home will also limit the amount of waste involved (although we do recycle both kinds of containers). These recipes are so easy, you'll wonder why you never tried them before.

Homemade Cream Cheese

1 quart homemade or store-bought plain yogurt (whole milk or low-fat, depending on your preference)

Instructions

Place a clean kitchen towel or clean muslin in a colander. Place the colander in a bowl that is large enough to hold it. Add the yogurt to the lined colander and wrap the towel over the top to cover (or use a plate). Leave this to drain for about 5 hours in the refrigerator. If you want a thicker consistency, leave it longer, making sure to empty what is draining so it doesn't reach the bottom of the colander and get reabsorbed. Store your finished cream cheese in a resealable container in the fridge. Better yet, use one of your old packaged cream cheese containers to do the job!

Your cream cheese will last as long as your yogurt would, so if you used purchased yogurt (rather than making it yourself), check the expiration date and use that as your guide. (I highly recommend trying to make the yogurt yourself since this will cut down on additional waste especially if you can get your milk in returnable glass bottles.) If you want to get fancy, you can add flavorings to your cream cheese. Try adding homemade strawberry jam for strawberry-flavored cream cheese. If you spent time dehydrating onions, then adding those (or fresh green onions) and chives from your garden will make a tasty chive-and-onion cream cheese spread.

Homemade Sour Cream

1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup sour cream or buttermilk (or even white vinegar will work)

Instructions

In a screw-top jar or mason jar with lid, combine the heavy cream and sour cream (or buttermilk). Shake the ingredients up a bit to thoroughly mix and let stand, covered, at room temperature for about 24 hours or until it becomes very thick. You can store your sour cream in the refrigerator in the original jar you mixed it in (or use some other resealable container) for up to one week. Make sure that your sour cream is well chilled before using.

If you want to make a lighter sour cream, substitute whole milk for 1/2 cup of the heavy cream. 

Looking for homemade cheese recipes made with easy-to-find ingredients? You can find homemade ricotta and the like in my Easy Cheese Series.

See also: Easy Cheesy: 4 Super-Simple Recipes, You Can Make Yogurt at Home and How to Make Your Own Yogurt, Kefir, Chevre 

“North Americans now devote 40,000 square miles to lawns, more than we use for wheat, corn or even tobacco.” —The Lawn: North America’s magnificent obsession by Robert Fulford

If you are planning on replacing your lawn with something that requires a lot less water and maintenance, but you also want to plant something in its place that is more than ornamental, you have a few more choices than you think. If you can’t or don’t want to plant a full-on vegetable garden, consider planting edible ground cover instead.

Following some of the basics of xeriscaping, ground cover plants are good alternatives to turf grasses since they can be more drought tolerant and, if you have covenants or other restrictions requiring you keep your yard landscaped, they are a good way to sneak in food crops without being noticed. Even just replacing a few feet of lawn around the borders will provide food and add variety to your yard.

For fruiting ground cover, try planting a mix of lingonberries, strawberries, American cranberry, Creeping Oregon grape (tart but edible) and wintergreen. With the wintergreen you can use both the leaves and the berries that appear during the winter.

If you want to stick with herbs your best bets are sage, mint, oregano, chamomile and thyme. All of these grow low to the ground and are good spreaders.

You can interweave a number of these different edible cover crops into attractive patterns or around walkways, stones and pavers to achieve a well-manicured yard that is also edible. And the neighbors won’t even notice.  

Photo by  Deanna Duke   

Even though it's October, I'm canning away the last of the summer berries. We've still got raspberries coming in from a local farm and I wanted to do something a little different than the standard raspberry jam recipe. When I spice up a jam it usually includes some interesting addition or flavoring and some sort of liqueur or liquor. Most of the alcohol gets burned off and you are left with a very complex flavor profile. This recipe makes ordinary raspberry jam seem, well, ordinary. Since I've started tinkering around with jam recipes, I really have a hard time going back to the basics. This recipe can also be used as a dessert topping as well if you lower the amount of pectin and keep it a little more liquid.

Ingredients

5 cups raspberries, crushed  (use a potato masher or other implement to crush the berries)
6 cups sugar
1 pack pectin
1 cup white chocolate chips (spring for the Guittard or other gourmet chocolate if it's available in your area)
1/4 cup coffee liqueur (Starbucks or Kahlua)

Heat raspberries while slowly adding in the pectin. Once the raspberries are at a full boil that you cannot stir down, add in the sugar. Return to a full rolling boil, stirring for one minute. Take the raspberry mixture off the heat and add in the white chocolate. It will take awhile to melt, so be patient (unless you want chunks of white chocolate in your jam). After the white chocolate has melted, add the coffee liqueur and stir until well blended. Because the raspberry jam is quite hot, the alcohol will burn off, so if you want to have more of the alcohol flavor, add it in at the very end. Pour jam into sterilized canning jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. That is, assuming you haven't eaten half of it already. Yields 10 pints.

If you are interested in other concoctions that I've made with my jams, check out my favorite strawberry jam recipe (Spiced Sangiovese and Strawberry Jam) and my favorite peach recipe (Cognac Vanilla Peach Preserves). All of these make for great holiday gifts as well.

My backyard grown sugar pie pumpkins are finally ripening up in spite of the steady rains we've been experiencing here in the Pacific Northwest. A few of the pumpkins ended up being somewhat small and weren't worth the effort to process into pumpkin puree. So, what to do with these little guys? I wanted to do something new and, not having grilled pumpkins before, I was quite excited to give it a try.

During grilling, the sugars in the pumpkin caramelize. The combination of sweet and salty, coupled with crisp rosemary, will give you a different way of thinking about pumpkin. After trying this, you just might find yourself dreaming of expanding your pumpkin patch next year.

Make sure you use sugar pie pumpkins or the equivalent for this recipe — you really don't want to eat a jack-o-lantern type pumpkin as they are stringy. If you aren't growing your own sugar pie pumpkins you should be seeing them available in stores and farmers markets this month or, better yet, make a fun trip out of it and head out to a U-pick pumpkin farm. Don't forget to pick up a few extra for making your own pumpkin puree for pies and breads later in the year.

Ingredients:
Sugar pie pumpkins (preferably on the small side)
Olive oil
Fresh rosemary, chopped
Sea salt

1. Heat grill to medium-high.

2. Wash and cut the pumpkins vertically into 3/4 inch slices. Remove the seeds and stringy parts. Brush both sides of each slice liberally with olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt and rosemary.

3. Place the slices on the grill for about 5 minutes a side or until dark grill marks appear. Turn and grill the other side until you can easily pierce the pumpkin slice with a fork. You want to make sure that the pumpkin is tender.

4. Since some of the salt tends to fall off during the grilling process, serve with a small dish of additional sea salt.