Homegrown greens

photo, Diane Carnevale

Growing your own veggies are a source of enormous pride. I don't grow too many—ridiculous amounts of various tomatoes, tri-colored string beans (purple, green, and yellow), French breakfast radishes (the fastest crop ever!), yellow patty-pan squash, pickling cukes, and sometimes artichokes when I'm luck eough to find them at the nursery. I grow a pumpkin or zucchini, but mainly for the blossoms, to stuff with ricotta cheese the way he Italians do. Some years I grow carrots, purple, yellow, orange, and red ones, but they never really grow very big. Sometimes I grow onions. And lettuce. I always grow lettuce. The beautiful baby leaves, a true mesclun (mix) are polka dotted with chive blossoms, which have a lovely mild onion taste. I pull them off the stem and sprinkle them over salads like confetti. The herb garden is packed with a huge variety—more on that some other day, time to make a salad!