If you stroll through just about any farmers market, you’ll see signs announcing leafy greens you’ve probably never heard of: Tuscan black kale, mizuna, komatsuna, mustard greens, turnip greens, even wrinkled, crinkled, crumpled cress. The odd names and odd look of these greens put some people off, but don’t let them deter you! Greens come […]

Besides being different colors on the outside, there’s not much difference . . . after all, they’re just beans, right? Henry David Thoreau, and anyone who has ever grown their own, or had fresh-picked beans from a local farm, would beg to differ. In Walden, Thoreau writes about his “singular experience” of “planting, and hoeing, […]

A plant that thrives on cold winters and humid summers, the gooseberry may just be the ultimate Illinois fruit. The season is short, but it can be extremely prolific, with a single bush being capable of producing several pounds of fruit. And the fruit can be harvested at almost any stage–meaning you can pick it […]

It’s a fruit, it’s a vegetable, it’s a BERRY! Eggplants are not only botanically fascinating (no, they are not a vegetable) but they also come in all sorts of colors and shapes (including a small white one that looks like an egg). And they are delicious. Don’t be fooled by that mushy eggplant parmesan of […]

As a child, I often wondered what sort of monstrous creature would lay a huge, purple-black egg, for surely the eggplant was named after such an egg laid by such a creature. Imagine my relief, tinged with disappointment, when I eventually learned that the first eggplants, grown in China, were small, ivory, and egg-shaped, with […]

Edamame (eh-dah-mah-may) are sweet young things — sweet, young soybeans, to be exact. And they are perhaps the world’s easiest and most nutritious snack food. Popped from the pod directly into your mouth, the slick orbs have a pleasing toothiness, followed by a sweet, buttery taste that makes it impossible to eat just one. In […]