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!
I know that when people hear that there is eggnog they just turn in disgust thinking of that yellow, slimy stuff that is sold in stores. But I make this eggnog every year for my open house and it is the hit of the evening! This is not for those of you watching your cholesterol. […]
In our household, there’s a golden rule: everything goes better with bacon. And when it comes to transforming even the most skeptical taste buds, bacon-wrapped Brussels sprouts take the crown. There’s a magic that happens when the sweet, nutty essence of Brussels sprouts meets the smoky, earthy embrace of bacon. Today, let’s embark on a […]
The holiday season is not the right time to start worrying about “eating right”. At least, it’s not for me! I love pies, cookies, my chocolate advent calendar, stuffing, warm rolls, and all of those other things that are not considered part of a healthy diet. Each year, I say that I will leave healthy […]
Everyone wants to pronounce Samhain like Sam Hane. In reality is it pronounced Soh-Win. So exactly what is Samhain? It is more commonly referred to in modern times as Halloween when children get to dress up as their favorite characters. But it is actually an ancient Celtic holiday that is the mid-point between the fall […]
Growing up, Sunday dinners at our house were always something to look forward to. While many dads spent their weekends lounging on the couch, my father, a hardworking man who ran a small diner during the week, transformed into a culinary magician in our kitchen. It was his time to shine, and he never missed […]
There are several things that scream fall to me…colorful leaves, brisk mornings, fresh apples everywhere, and pumpkins! As soon as fall arrives, so does my need to fire up my stove and get baking. It warms the house and our tummies! When it comes to fall baking, my number one item is apples, but pumpkins […]
The winter months are such a joy for cooking, especially if you grew winter squash the year before. Since winter squash, like butternut, honeynut, and delicata, can last months in the right environment, you can grow enough to feed your family all winter long—and that’s exactly what I like to do. It’s also why I have a dozen roasted delicata squash recipes up my sleeve, but today I’m going to share with you the one my family loves the most.
Have you ever made homemade strawberry soda? In our home, we try to limit the amount of processed foods we bring in, and that includes everything from bread to soda. We almost never have soda in the house, though I do worry that my husband has a mineral water addiction that’s being left untreated and may need intervention.
I’ll be honest, I’m not a cucumber sandwich kind of person, generally, I don’t eat cucumbers un-pickled at all, and if I didn’t love pickles so much I probably wouldn’t have them in my garden. But I sure do love pickles, in fact, I like them so much that I rarely bother with canning them.
Everybody loves a butternut squash soup, but what if you have a variety of sweet winter squash nearing the end of their shelf life, and you just want to use it all up at once? Good news – you can! In the roasted winter squash soup recipe below, I’ll show you an exact recipe for using up a bulk of your different varieties of winter squash, but fear not – if you don’t have the exact squash I do, it’s totally adjustable, just use 6lbs of any type of sweet winter squash you have.
