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The market has been full of beautiful peppers. The usual bell peppers in red, orange, yellow and green, jalapeños, Hungarian wax, Trinidadian perfume, poblanos, and fiery habañeros. They are bright and inviting, but to be honest, I hardly know what to do with most of them. Oh, I use bell peppers in all sorts of …

Read More about Garlic habañero hot sauce (Homemade Sriracha)

I don’t do well in the heat. On days when the mercury pushes 90 degrees F I wilt. I can go for weeks without cooking anything substantial. I drink big glasses of lemonade mixed with iced tea. I stick my head in the freezer in search of some refreshing sorbet. I sip on gins and …

Read More about beets and blues

If I ever doubted that garlic is a member of the lily family, I am a skeptic no longer. The bulbs tend to garner the bulk of the attention when we think about the stinking rose, but these lovely “garlic flowers”–as the sign at the farmers market identified them–caught my eye with their crooked necks …

Read More about in bloom

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches– William Carlos Williams, “Spring and All” Spring comes to Chicago in fits and starts. We swing from freezing temperatures to upward of 70-degrees and back again, sometimes within the same day. The sun teases us into thinking we barely need jackets, but the wind off the lake reminds …

Read More about in search of spring