Is there anything more soul-soothing than going out into your garden to pick fresh peppers or tomatoes to wash and chop up for dinner? Garden-to-table dining is right at your fingertips when you become a food gardener and start making our easy healthy recipes.
Beyond the delicious benefits of growing your own food to make easy healthy recipes, you benefit from choosing what to grow and the unique varieties you can’t find in a grocery store, which can lift your culinary spirits. Take heirloom vegetables, for example. Even though they aren’t bred for it specifically, heirloom varieties are adaptable to their environment, meaning you can save seeds, and each year you’ll likely get healthier plants that are more resistant to disease and pests. The more you grow them, the better they get.
Even if you don’t have a lot of space to work with, you can start a kitchen garden (a smaller garden that mostly has herbs and a few choice veggies) or a container garden (great for growing indoors, on patios, and balconies). You’d be surprised how much you can grow in a small amount of square footage, especially with plants that climb.
If you love to cook easy healthy recipes, you’ll do well to plant an herb garden and even a spice garden so you can always harvest fresh herbs and spices on hand. Then, let your palate guide the rest of what you plant. Tomatoes become tomato sauces and catsups, cucumbers become pickles, lettuce becomes salads, onions and garlic go with just about everything, and a bounty of squashes will serve roasted squash all winter long!
We have lots of garden-fresh easy healthy recipes below, and we welcome you to also read our Recipes from Your Garden freebie. Enjoy!
Green beans are such a delight to have in the garden. They don’t require a ton of sun to grow, pole beans can double as decoration on a trellis, and in terms of a side dish for dinner, they’re one of my favorites. Probably because they go so well with my other two favorite ingredients: lemon and garlic. And this roasted lemon-garlic green beans recipe is so easy to make—especially necessary when you have a heaping portion of green beans harvested—that it’ll become a weeknight staple in no time!
Did you ever think you’d be looking at a green juice recipe for kids? What’s wrong with the “purple stuff” we all grew up on, huh? Let’s talk about it.
If you ever wanted to play Russian Roulette with peppers, Shishito can be a bit of fun, my fellow daredevil. One in 10 Shishito peppers are hot while the others are barely hotter than bell peppers. They range from 50 – 200 Scoville Heat Units on the Scoville Scale, with 200 being more like pepperoncini, so still not Jalapeno level. They say the peppers that get the most sun are the ones that get the hottest.
Tis the season to celebrate summer squash! I know if you’re growing this abundant crop, you’ll soon be searching for recipes on how to use them up, and maybe a few ideas on how to get your neighbors to take them off your hands if you don’t want to preserve them, too.
Root vegetables are notoriously shamed for their high starch and sugar content, but coming up with balanced meal ideas is easier than you think! Below are three really easy recipes you can make on the fly with just a few added ingredients.
Butternut squash noodles aren’t the typical type of voodle (vegetable noodle) that comes to mind when you think of gluten-free noodle alternatives. And if we were talking about covering it in tomato sauce, we’d be on the same page. However, a gluten-full recipe I’ve always loved is butternut squash raviolis in a maple cream sauce, so I thought to myself: why not just use butternut squash noodles?
Have you ever made pesto before? How about a pesto that isn’t just basil, garlic, and pine nuts? If you want to try using up excess broccoli from your garden or refrigerator, this broccoli pesto pasta is just the ticket!
If you didn’t think you could have your cake and eat it too, then you clearly haven’t had what I consider the ultimate New England lobster roll recipe. See, in these parts, some people look at lobster rolls in black and white. Either you get it with mayonnaise (Maine style) or you get it with butter (Connecticut style). As someone from Massachusetts who is squashed between the two states, I’ve always been a “how about both?” kind of gal.
Maybe I’m biased, but there’s just nothing like a sun-ripened tomato straight from the garden. I always try to keep a stash of summer tomato recipes around so I can take advantage of these delectable pieces of heaven. They’re so rich and full of flavor. And there are so many varieties to try. You’ve got the heirloom Brandywine Pink beefsteak tomato, with its sweet, old-fashioned flavor.
Before I tell you the best potatoes for home fries, let’s talk about what you want to do with them. Different strokes of potatoes for different folks, but the kind I like in my home fries are white potatoes and sometimes sweet potatoes added for complexity of the flavor, especially if I’m adding in something savory like bacon, or cooking with the bacon grease I’ve saved on my countertop.
