 What a year for radishes! A couple of months ago, I bought a mixed radish seed blend from Johnny’s Seeds called Easter Egg. I planted the seeds in mid-October and harvested this first bunch of radishes a week before Thanksgiving. I served the radishes on the relish tray and put the greens in my [...]
  I thought the lamb’s tongue lettuce in my little backyard organic garden was doing great. Then the leaves all started falling over and dying. Then the the other lettuces on either side of the lamb’s tongue started shriveling. Thanks to my bad gardening practices, my lettuce crop was destroyed. I had to pull [...]
read more The Winged Bean Wonder Boy »   State Rep Eddie Rodriguez One measure that everyone in the room got behind was The Texas Cottage Food Law, aka the “Bake Sale Bill.” We discussed this issue with Ag Commish Todd Staples and Senator Whitmire last week. 
The Go Texan Restaurant Round-Up kicked off yesterday. As part of the month-long promotion, restaurants around the state will be featuring local food products and donating part of their profits to the Food Bank. Grassfed beef meatloaf at Beaver’s in Houston sounded good. So did the shrimp at Eddie V’s. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples hosted a breakfast at Lola’s to kick off the Houston portion of the program. Staples is from Palestine. We started talking about disappearing East Texas restaurants at the press breakfast. There aren’t many Southern-style restaurants anymore we both agreed. “I used to eat at a place called Billy Burgers in Neches when I was a state rep.,” he said. “He got homemade pies from a lady that lived nearby.” The health department doesn’t allow that today. Over-regulation is one of the problems that makes it difficult for people to make a living, he said. Senator John Whitmire, who was also sitting at our table, agreed and said he found himself becoming more of a libertarian every day. I asked the two politicians if they would support an exemption from health department regulations that would allow home cooks to sell products like pies and preserves at farmer’s markets. (Such “Cottage Food Laws” already exist in many states.) Both Staples and Whitmire agreed that this was an excellent idea. read more Go Texan, Eat Local, Support Texas Cottage Food »  I think the Victory Garden Revival started last spring. Americans were going to tear up their lawns and plant vegetables in new home gardens in record numbers. I am not sure how it went exactly. I just know I missed this groundswell of garden activism on account of the fact that I live in Texas where people do most of their gardening in the fall. I was admiring the heirloom lettuce in the seed catalog at breakfast just this morning. read more Time to Tear Up the Lawn Again »
When I lived in Austin, I thought that the best peaches in Texas came from the Hill Country. Then I moved to Houston and tasted Cooper’s Farm peaches and peaches from other parts of East Texas. read more A Peachy Peachy Weekend » 
It was a long way to a grocery store and I had a lot of homegrown tomatoes and cukes. That’s when I discovered that Bloody Mary mix makes a pretty decent gazpacho base. When we vacation at Greer’s Ferry Lake in Arkansas, we get boxes of homegrown Arkansas tomatoes along with cucumbers, okra, peppers, and squash delivered to us courtesy of Bill and Rosie McBroome. The retired couple live just outside of Conway, Arkansas, and they maintain a quarter acre garden that Bill plows by tractor. Bill told me he had harvested around 400 pounds of tomatoes so far this year and his vines would be producing through the summer. Rosie makes tomato juice, canned tomatoes and salsa out of some of the overflow. Bill gave us a box with around 35 pounds of tomatoes in it, neatly stacked with layers of newspaper in between. read more Fish Camp Gazpacho » 
When Chef Alan Lazarus loaded me up with his homegrown tomatoes, he gave me a couple of purple Brandywine heirlooms. I used one of them along with some purple onions to make pico de gallo. It looked a little purple at first, but after a couple hours in the fridge the purple onions started bleeding into the lime juice and the whole thing got wonderfully weird-looking. If you have a purple tomato, try it yourself. Add some purple peppers or purple Thai basil if you have any. Here’s a recipe:  |
 
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