I love garlic with a passion — vampires beware. This pesto might be a little bold to eat by the spoonful (though you’ll probably catch me doing just that), but tossed with roasted vegetables or stirred into freshly cooked pasta, it’s absolutely divine. Try spreading it on a warm slice of bread… that loaf won’t last long.

A happy childhood memory of the morning light streaming in through the kitchen window. Woken up by the smell of something delicious baking, I stumbled barefoot and butt-ass naked to the kitchen. My momma handed me a little slice of cornbread hot from the oven with a pat of butter and some honey drizzled on top. Happiness.

This cornbread’s different from that memory but it still makes me happy. It has some kick. Adjust however pleases your palette.

A few tips for this recipe: If you cannot find fresh nettles, you can substitute spinach, or your favorite dark greens. Also, make sure you wring out as much water as possible from the cooked nettles.

I know you have probably heard of Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread recipe. It makes a great loaf, and for many people, the recipe revolutionized their beliefs about the quality of bread they could produce at home. With one loaf, they understood that they too, the home baker, could make beautifully crusted bread with an open crumb, at home, in their own oven. I love it.

This process is an adaptation of his loaf.

Not everyone enjoys a good raw radish pulled straight from the soil. However, I have not met anyone who hasn’t enjoyed the good ol’ cooked radish. These little bundles of joy can be roasted in the oven, grilled, or sautéd in a hot pan. Delicious. A game-changer, for sure.

This week I decided to make a batch of habanero hot sauce with some of the habaneros I have sitting in the freezer from last season. I use this master hot sauce recipe as a guideline to make almost all of my hot sauces because I believe it creates the perfect base for you to create your hot sauce masterpiece.

Surprisingly delicious, unless told, most people have no idea that these fruit leathers are that different from the store-bought ones. Maybe they have a little bit more sourness and zing to them, but honestly, I find them way better than that over-processed, dyed, sugar-filled store version. The tangy flavor and chewy texture of SCOBY is perfectly suited to these on-the-go probiotic-rich snacks.

A 6-hour drive with no air conditioning across the Mohave desert in over 100-degree heat brought us to our new front door. We didn’t even unpack a thing. We were sweaty, dusty, windblown, and exhausted. I grabbed our camping stove, the camping kitchen set, and the soup.

We set up on the back stoop, overlooking our beautiful green backyard as the sun set, and ate this soup. It will remain on my favorite soup list forever.

One of my absolute favorite springtime soups, this bowl of emerald green feeds my soul.