I've just come in from the garden. The weather is so glorious, sparkling fresh after Sunday's long, steady downpour. Hummingbirds zipped around me as I weeded the beds. Chipmunks chased each other around the rocky borders. The peony bushes are weighed down with tight buds about to burst open. Late-blooming lilacs perfume the silky air. June is busting out all over! Our farmers market is already offering us many delights: radishes galore, feathery fronds of tarragon, hardy stalks of green garlic, tart sorrel leaves and sweet little carrots with bushy greens still attached. From my own garden, the lovage, rhubarb and mint are faithful first responders, and tender greens—mustard, spinach, kale, lettuce—are ready for picking. I wake early to the complex melodies and syncopations of what sounds like a thousand birds and am filled with energy for the day ahead. Which is good because these days are coming at me fast and furious, requiring all my focus and creativity and determination.

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Don't go out for dinner on Valentine's Day. Unless you're on your own and just want to be defiant and sit at the bar somewhere twirling some delicious noodles on your fork and sucking down an excellent glass of red. Everybody in the world will be cinched into little black dresses, drinking overpriced bottles of Champagne, crowded into candlelit two-tops and contemplating fussy tasting menus. If you want to celebrate with your beloved, do it at home. That's where the true romance happens anyway, right? If you pour your heart into your cooking, you can really taste the love.

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I turned 52 last week. It seems like only yesterday I was confronting the milestone that is turning 50. As much as I believe that age is just a number—as opposed to something that defines us, inside or out—it can feel a bit alarming when the clichés become increasingly relevant. When I texted a friend recently to ask him how his photo shoot was going and he wrote back complaining about "the concrete floors," I had to chuckle. Until being out snowshoeing for hours in the freezing cold resulted in my knee suffering from what I think might be a little bursitis. Tell me that word doesn't conjure up your grandmother. How do I weather the changes? With a sense of humor, a healthy dose of denial and a stockpile of resilience. Which is not to say I don't occasionally stare aghast at the loosening skin on my neck. But I think Nora Ephron covered all that more than adequately and so I'd rather talk to you about another thing I stockpile: winter squash.

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I cook a lot and I own a vast number of cookbooks but, paradoxically, I don't cook from them very often. Mostly, they serve as inspiration for new ingredients, new techniques, new flavor combinations. There are exceptions, of course. Anything to do with baking and I need a recipe. Everything I know about Southeast Asian cuisine, I learned from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, and I have cooked my way through Suzanne Goin's entirely wonderful Sunday Suppers at Lucques. Come fall, Braise by Daniel Boulud is always at hand, as is Tadashi Ono's invaluable Japanese Hot Pots. Nourishing Traditions is a touchstone. These favorites are now dog-eared and annotated, their pages stained with drips and spatters. But it's not so often that a new cookbook becomes part of my weekly repertoire, much less captures my heart. And yet, less than a month after it arrived in the mail, Amy Chaplin's At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen: Celebrating the Art of Eating Well has managed to do both. Read on for the juicy details and a chance to win your very own copy.

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We grew a cabbage this year. It may not sound that impressive, but it is. For years, our attempts at growing cabbages were foiled by one thing or another. Worms. Heat. Destiny. But this year one perfect dusky purple specimen prevailed. We haven't picked it yet. It sits there in its corner next to the collards as silent and perfect as the Buddha. Eating it will feel like a sacrificial act, so it must be prepared with reverence. This roasted version of a classic German dish is one possibility. Its sweet-sour balance is lovely. Stuffed cabbage also comes to mind at this time of year. Fall is in the air, my friends. A squirrel with the energy and determination of a Jack Russel terrier has been running back and forth across the yard all day, ferrying pine cones to his hiding spot. Good thing our cabbage is too big for him.
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Summer has such momentum to it. All that sunshine and daylight just winds you up and you go, go, go. Then suddenly the light begins to wane and all around things start to curl inward. Where green once predominated, yellow is now creeping in. The goldenrod has exploded, a few sunflowers still remain and the leaves are tinged with jaundice. We cling to the last vestiges of the season, even as we reach for our sweaters, lay the first fire in the hearth and prepare to hunker down. I want to share with you some photos of the garden I took that show the last blooms. And then I'm going to tell you about a rice salad I invented earlier this summer that was a big hit at a couple of different parties. So cheer up, there are good things ahead!
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It's the last day of July. Summer is peaking! And I'm about to bid you farewell as we drift into the dog days of August. It's been strangely cool in these parts and the nights have been downright chilly, which makes for some powerfully good sleeping under a fluffy duvet. But the garden needs a lot of heat right now to keep producing—those tomatoes especially!—so I'm hoping it's just a blip. Speaking of the garden, ours is featured on Gardenista today; come for a visit here. Even if you don't have a vegetable-producing garden of your own, summer produce is abundant at farms and farmers markets. I stopped in at the Union Square market last week and came away with a big bag of red okra (I love it sliced and pan-fried, sprinkled with salt and cayenne pepper), another of English peas and 6 ears of sweet corn. These tastes really define the season for me and I can't seem to get enough of them!
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Every year I take the month of August off from the blog and social media (well, mostly) so I can get in a little extra relaxation and outdoor time, which means this is the last week I'll be posting for a while. With that in mind, I have several juicy posts lined up for you over the next several days, jam-packed with images and ideas to get you even more fired up about these halcyon days of summer. Today I sat working by the open window as a storm rolled in, the gusts of wind carrying a spray of rain and the scent of crushed tomato leaves, fresh mint and ozone, and I took a moment to inhale deeply and remember that this is not forever. The day will end, the month will end, the summer will end...and all this lushness will be just a memory whose green contours will sustain us through the bone-chilling weeks that now seem so distant. So let's make hay while the sun shines, my friends, and not squander any opportunity to do whatever we like best: dangle feet off a dock, loll in a hammock, deadhead the roses, scream for ice cream, play Marco Polo, read in the shade of a big tree, go clamming, count the fireflies, and cook, cook, cook (eat! eat! eat!) the incredible bounty that is exploding all around us.
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I know a true vegetative state is no joke, but I couldn't resist this as the title for my current vegan existence. On day 12 of the Spring Detox/Cleanse, I am more than halfway through and I can officially say that this has not been about feeling limited or deprived. If anything, I have noticed how comparatively little food I need to feel nourished and full, and that is without consciously trying to reduce my intake. Although the cleanse calls for three meals a day—with the last one being a simple bowl of soup—G and I have mostly been satisfied with just two. I think this is because we eat our biggest meal of the day somewhere between 3pm and 5pm, something I doubt we'll sustain as it's just not that practical given our work schedule and our desire to socialize with others. Come Friday, I tend to like a cocktail, but have been content with my latest obsession of coconut vinegar with seltzer. Cinnamon tea and the occasional medjool date have been enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. As for some of the vegan dishes I've been enjoying (already previewed on Instagram @LauraSilverman), please read on...
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Are you eating your vegetables? It's becoming quite trendy to eschew meat at the center of your plate. This style of eating has long been embraced in Asia and out of necessity in many poorer countries. In fact, it's not so dissimilar from the Mediterranean diet, which was endorsed yet again in a study released last week. It's really no big news that a vegecentric diet is the way to go, as evinced by this 1819 quote from Thomas Jefferson: I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.

I love the notion of animal products as a condiment and often use them this way in my cooking. Small amounts of highly flavored meat or fish—smoky pork, spicy sausage, salty fish roe, pungent anchovies—add just the right hit of umami to salads, pastas and vegetables, raw or cooked. Look to what some of the more ingenious chefs are doing for ideas on vegetables dishes with heft. Consider the oven-roasted slab of broccoli I had at The NoMad. Daniel Humm made it the star, with a little bacon to keep things interesting. This cauliflower dish is from Dan Barber, who never met a vegetable he didn't like.
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