I came late to the quinoa love-fest. Technically, this high-protein, high-fiber, gluten-free superfood from the Andes is not a grain, although it acts like one in the kitchen. When I was a UCSC farm and garden apprentice, we made a lot of quinoa pancakes (not bad) and quinoa tabbouleh (surprisingly good). But too many times, I've had it served plain as plain and here, I must tell you: Quinoa, You're No Rice. Sad to say, you're not even couscous. To me, unadorned quinoa tastes like it came out the wrong end of the flavor-extraction machine, pleasantly fluffy but free of taste.

So, the trick with quinoa is to treat it like tofu: as a nice, neutral backdrop just aching to become a Jackson Pollack. In other words, throw a lot of big, bright stuff at it, and you'll get something worth eating. Unlike, say, pasta, which gets exponentially tastier the more cheese, sausage, and cream you toss into it, quinoa's best partners are stubbornly healthy.

Which brings us to that staple of Bay Area life, the potluck. And especially, the potluck with the vegan/vegetarians, half of whom have recently gone gluten-free. I've already given out my potato-salad tips, which could be adapted to use a vegan egg-free mayonnaise like Nayonaise, or the tofu version in Mollie Katzen's Still Life with Menu.

The tininess and cool purplish color of cooked adzuki beans work well with the colors and general small scale of everything in this salad, but you could, if pressed, use another small bean from your Mason-jar arsenal. If at all possible, soak and cook the beans yourself; canned beans are really too mushy to make a decent showing in any salad.

But who am I kidding? You're already looking at those half-dozen cans of organic black beans in your pantry and thinking, "Burn through gas and raise my blood pressure angling for a parking spot at Berkeley Bowl just to get a half cup of some weird bitty bean? Not a chance!" Okay, sister, I hear you. But at least drain and rinse those beans really, really well to get all the slimy can-muck off. (And by the way, if you've ever had a moon cake stuffed with red-bean paste, you've had adzuki beans; in Asia, where this bean originated, its nutty-sweet flavor is highly prized for use in desserts and other sweets.)

This recipe is a mash-up of inspiration from two different recipes, Tangerine Quinoa Pilaf from The Sunset Cookbook and Curried Couscous Salad in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. A small amount of beans and quinoa turns into a satisfyingly generous (and protein-rich) amount of salad, and it can easily be made a day or two in advance. If your favorite farmers' market vendor has carrots in groovy colors like purple and burgundy, by all means buy them instead of the usual orange ones. You'll lose a lot of the color if you peel, so just wash well and dice.

Sugar Snap Pea Salad

Spring Fever has officially hit. Mulch is in the air, mini-skirts are on the streets, and farmers' markets are in full bloom.

I couldn't resist these brilliant green sugar snap peas the other day. Sweet, crunchy, and juicy, I've even been chomping on them raw. Grassy and tender, they taste like pure Spring.

Sugar Snap Peas

Snap peas are a cross between snow peas and garden peas. Like the snow pea, the pods are edible; like the garden pea, the pods are round rather than flat. When sugar snap peas are young and in-season like they are now, you don't even need to "de-string" them (removing that pesky fibrous strand that runs lengthwise from tip to tip), making them perfect for an easy, light salad.

Snap Pea Prep

I blanched the snap peas first for a few minutes before shocking them in an ice bath. This made them tender but still delightfully crunchy. For texture, I shelled half of them, popping out the little round peas, and then julienned the empty pods into matchsticks. The remaining half of the snap peas I left whole, although, you could certainly continue slicing up the whole bunch.

Select the plumper/rounder snap peas to shell, they have larger peas inside.

To the sugar snap peas, I added a handful of refreshing mint, toasted almonds, and sweet caramelized onions. The dish is finished off with a simple, brightly acidic vinaigrette of lemon, rice vinegar, and olive oil.

Onion to be caramelized

This vibrant, fresh green salad is an interesting alternative to your normal leafy salad. It would also make a great substitution for coleslaw given all the crunchy textures.

California grass is here! Fat or slender, steamed or roasted, even deep-fried: it's just a week until the official beginning of spring, and that means, after a long winter of kale, kale, collards, and kale, beautiful asparagus--called 'grass' in the produce biz--is reappearing this month, right alongside the daffodils, tulips, and magnolia blossoms brightening every front yard.

Asparagus, you might be surprised to find out, used to be considered a member of the lily family (Liliaceae), which also included onions, garlic, leeks and the rest of the edible and ornamental alliums. But the botanical powers that be have since split that family, making a separate Asparagaceae genus of some 300 mostly ornamental species. However, unless you have a botany geek among your midst, it's still fun to amaze your friends with your mastery of obscure plant facts by mentioning the asparagus-lily connection, should conversation around the buffet need a goose.

What's really interesting, however, is how asparagus grows. It's a perennial plant, for starters, growing from a tangled, ring-like "crown" planted some six to eight inches below the surface of the soil. Once an asparagus patch is well established (it generally takes about 3 years to become fully productive), it can last for decades. The asparagus spears work like bulbs--in the same way that tulips and daffodils push up their stems and leaves from their storehouse underground, so an asparagus patch can be bare dirt one day and a forest of insouciant little tips the next. The spears come up in leaps and bounds, an inch one morning and practically full-size the next.

Some commercial asparagus growers have to harvest their fields several times a day to keep a consistent size and shape. The spears come up without distraction--no leaves, no flowers, no frills. Once they're long enough to harvest, out come the knives, cutting them off just below soil level. Like peas, asparagus are most tender and succulent straight out of the garden, which makes them worth seeking out straight from the farmer rather than at the supermarket.

The stalks should be turgid and smooth, not flaccid, pithy, or ridged. The tiny leaves should still be tight against the stalk, and the tips should be firm, the leaf tips closed with no sign of rot or sliminess at the top. The best way to judge freshness is to look at the base: really fresh asparagus will look moist, almost translucent. A day later, it's chalky; after that, it's solid white, with woodiness moving up the stalk.

You can feel where the tenderness of an asparagus stalk starts, just by bending it gently about three-quarters of the way down the stalk. Hold it with the tip pointing to your right, and you'll feel it: tender over to the right, woody to the left. Snap it right where the stiffness gives, keeping in mind that the fresher it is, the less you'll have to take off.

Cooking asparagus is a lot like cooking corn: you're not so much cooking it as just heating it through, nudging it gently over the line from raw to tender. Asparagus moves very quickly from green and tender to khaki and mush, and once gone, there's no bringing it back. You can steam-simmer it in a wide, flat saute pan, spreading it out in a bare half-inch of boiling salted water, moving it around with tongs to keep it cooking evenly, whisking it out into an ice bath the moment it starts to give.

Or you can flash-roast it, my favorite method. Preheat your oven to 450F. Lay your asparagus out on a baking sheet, drizzling olive oil over the tips, rolling the rest of the spears around in whatever's left. Go lightly: you don't want the stalks to dry up like paper in oven's blast of heat, but neither do you want them dripping and soggy with oil. Sprinkle with sea salt and grind on some coarse black pepper. Pop in the oven for 5-7 minutes, depending on your oven. They should be supple with perhaps a little ambered charring here and there. Again, don't overdo it, otherwise the lovely succulent tips will end up shriveled and chewy-brown.

To serve them as is, add a generous squeeze of lemon juice and perhaps a little flurry of finely grated lemon rind. (Meyer lemons are very nice, should you have a backyard tree.) Tangerine or even blood-orange juice can make for an interesting change. I find that roasted asparagus tastes best still warm; if you're planning to cook ahead, I'd stick with steaming, and don't put anything acid (citrus juice, vinegar) onto it until just before serving, as the acid will turn your grass from bright green to a muddy pea-soup shade very quickly.

Hollandaise sauce, in my opinion, is the most perfect accompaniment to asparagus, a suitably rich gilding for the season's first crop. But with its tricky-to-make reputation and Mad-Men ingredient list (butter, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, butter), it's pretty much fallen out of favor among home cooks, reserved only for eggs Benedict at birthday brunches. Instead, here's a lovely spring salad to green up your table, just in time for St. Patrick's Day this week.

Curried Quinoa Salad

In a world where rice and wheat reign supreme, sometimes you want something more. Maybe you have a food allergy, maybe you have special health needs that your regular diet just isn't meeting, or maybe you just wanting more exciting than the status quo. Regardless of your reasons for upgrading your grain options, you've got an entire rainbow of whole grains to choose from besides rice and wheat.

Take, for example, the humble millet. Often thought of as only bird seed, millet is actually very much edible by humans. Mentioned in the Bible, people have been eating millet for many thousands of years in countries such as China, India, and Africa. What's so great about millet? Well, first of all, it's not acid-forming and is known for being easy to digest, so those who deal with any number of digestive ailments can usually enjoy millet without aggravating their GI. Taste-wise, Millet is mildly sweet with a nutty flavor and contains many beneficial nutrients, such as protein, fiber, B-vitamins, iron, magnesium, potassium, and more.

Another alternative grain you might consider is quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah). Another old-world grain, quinoa has also been cultivated for thousands of years in South America. The Inca revered quinoa as a very important part of their culture, and used it to make breads, cereals, and other dishes. Not technically a grain, quinoa is actually a grass seed, much like buckwheat.

Quinoa has a nutty, hearty flavor that makes it ideal for both savory dishes and sweet breakfast recipes. It is high in protein, calcium, iron, vitamin B, and vitamin E. The protein in quinoa a "complete protein" due to the presence of all eight essential amino acids, something that's not often seen in cereals or grains. Note: Before being eaten, quinoa grains must be rinsed to remove its bitter coating, called saponin. When rinsing quinoa, be sure to keep the water flowing until there are so soap-like suds when you agitate the seeds with your hands. Once the water runs clear, the saponin is gone.

Where can you buy millet and quinoa? You'll be happy to hear that both grains are readily available at health food stores, and if you like, you can even buy them online. While you can buy boxed millet and quinoa, you'll usually find them cheaper by shopping in the bulk section of your local natural foods store.

You can buy millet and quinoa in several different forms, as well:

• Puffed Millet Cereal
• Quinoa Pasta
• Quinoa Flakes for Hot Cereal
• Millet Flour for Making Bread

To get you started, here are a few recipes for these awesome grains. Once you give them a try, they might just become your new favorite carb!

Nutty Millet Porridge

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 cup raw millet
5 cups water
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
4 teaspoons butter
6 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup fresh blueberries or dried cranberries

Directions:
1. Heat a medium pot over medium heat. Add millet, stirring grains until they become fragrant. Add water and salt, and bring to a boil.

2. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until millet if soft like oatmeal. Add butter and honey, stirring well. Serve hot, topped with fruit.

Curried Quinoa Salad

Serves 6 as a side or 4 for lunch

Ingredients:
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lime juice
2 teaspoons yellow curry powder
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/3 cups uncooked quinoa
4 cups water
2 mangoes, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch chunks
1 fresh serrano chile, seeded and minced
1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped
1/2 cup salted roasted cashews or peanuts, chopped

Preparation:
1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together yogurt, lime juice, curry powder, ginger, salt, and pepper. Slowly drizzle in oil, whisking until fully combined.

2. Rinse quinoa in a bowl for 5 minutes, using fingers to agitate grains and the water runs through it. Agitating while rinsing will help remove the bitter saponin.

3. In a large pot, bring 4 cups of water to a boil with a few pinches of salt. Add quinoa to boiling water and cook for 15 minutes, until grains are almost completely cooked through but still just a little crunchy. Strain and rinse with cold water. Let sit to drain for 15 minutes.

4. Mix quinoa with curried yogurt and stir well. Stir in mango, bell pepper, Serrano chili, mint, and nuts. Serve at room temperature.

If you like these grain recipes, check out these other healthy, protein-rich posts:

• Peanut Butter Quinoa Cookies
• Quinoa Salmon Burgers
• Perfect Coconut Millet
• Millet Flatbread Tortilla
• Chickpea Spinach Curry Recipe
• How to Cook Dried Beans When You Don't Have Time to Cook Dried Beans

Here we are again, the holidays… gastronomy’s ultimate do over time of the year. Everyone’s getting fired up about brining birds, smoking hogs, roasting vegetables, buttering breads and sampling sweets. But it’s the same old tired stuff as last year… and the year before that. Maybe a few culinary twists but for the most part the menu doesn’t change. We’re creatures of habit, and you know what? I’m okay with that. In the past I used to fight it, but that got me nowhere. I was thrilled when two years ago my friend made goat stew for a pot luck holiday get-together. And I told everyone “See see, isn’t that great! Something different and interesting.” Some of my guests liked it but most vetoed the notion! The holiday menu will never budge, so why bother.

So you might be asking the question “What can I do to change it up a bit...add some sass to the meal without everyone screaming foul?”

How about making a few changes to your side dishes. After all, it is really the sides that steals the show on the holiday table -- the supporting cast that props up the celebrity bird, robust ham, crab or vegetarian main-- the unsung heroes. Here are two easy-to-make dishes that will add unique yet familiar flavors to the holiday meal.

The first one is a beet salad with pear and Mandarin oranges. The pear adds a wonderfully unique texture to the salad while the floral acidity of the orange helps to complement the fatty quality of the mains. It’s a great dish for people that SWEAR that they don’t like beets.

Roasted Beet and Pear Salad with Satsuma Mandarin Orange

Serves: 6

The beets can be cooked one or two days in advance.

Ingredients:
3 lbs medium to large sized Chioggia beets. Conventional is fine
1 ripe pear, cut into to thick match sticks
5 mandarin oranges, 4 for salad and 2 for juice
½ red onion, thinly sliced
2 heaping tablespoons, champagne vinegar
1 tablespoon, extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

2. Cut off beet stems and wash really well. Place beets in a baking pan and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper.

3. Cover dish with aluminum foil and bake for 1-1 1/2 hrs. At the hour mark take out and pierce with the tip of a paring knife or toothpick to check if finished. Some larger beets might need an additional 15-25 minutes depending on how stubborn they are. When cooked, remove and let cool.

4. When cool, simply take an old kitchen towel and rub off the skin. Cut off both ends and then cut beets into 4, 6 or 8 piece wedges, depending on desired size. Place into bowl.

5. Juice the 2 oranges and set aside. Peel and rough chop the other 4.

6. Slice the pear and then cut into thick match sticks.

7. To finish, place all the ingredients into a bowl and toss.

Notes:
* It’s very important to not over mix the salad as it will look distressed.
* Try to mix the salad while the beets are still warm as it will absorb the juices better.
* The salad should be made and consumed on the same day as the pear will start to get mushy and discolor.

The next recipe is a breath of fresh air to the good old classic, green bean casserole. Most of us remember this dish as overcooked green beans and fried onions saturated in canned mushroom soup.

I wanted to give this dish a unique flavor without altering it too much. I found that fennel, leeks and a shot of Pernod did just that. The sweet leeks and slight liquorice flavor paired nicely with the earthy mushroom cream and fresh green beans. I also removed the tired old onions and replaced them with toasted pecans and buttery breadcrumbs. The last thing to note is that it’s not as rich and creamy as you might remember. I purposely made it so that the beans are coated in the cream but not drenched. It makes for a more vibrant textured dish.

Green Bean Casserole with Fennel, Leeks, Pernod and Toasted Stuffing

Serves: 6

Ingredients:
2 lbs. blue lake green beans
1 lb. button or cremini mushrooms, washed and sliced
1 bunch leeks, chopped and washed
½ fennel bulb, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
Teaspoon, fresh picked thyme
Shot of dry white wine
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup vegetable stock
3 heaping tablespoons, Pernod
½ cup, chopped and toasted pecans
2 cups stuffing mix (cubes of bread)
Olive oil
Butter
Salt and pepper

Preparation:
1. Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees

2. Cook beans in salted boiling water, roughly 4 minutes. Remove and shock in ice water. Cut the beans in half.

3. Place a sauce pot on high heat and add a teaspoon of cooking oil. Get it super hot and then add the mushrooms. Sauté the mushrooms quickly and then remove from pan. You want them to be brown, crispy and somewhat dry.

4. Turn down heat to medium low; add another teaspoon of oil and a small amount of butter. Add leeks and fennel. And cook until soft. At that point add garlic and thyme and cook for a couple minutes more.

5. Deglaze the pan with wine. Stir and let cook for 30 seconds. Add heavy cream and turn down to low. Stir mixture and let the cream reduce by almost ¾. This will make the mixture thick and sweet! Add vegetable stock and reduce by half.

6. Season mixture with salt and pepper.

7. In another pan melt a tablespoon of butter. Cook until it starts to turn brown. Add bread/stuffing mixture and stir. Remove from heat.

8. In a large bowl toss the beans, mushrooms, fennel cream and pecans together. Add a titch more salt.

9. Place in a casserole dish and cover with stuffing mixture. Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes. Then crank up broiler and crisp up stuffing. Depending on your broiler I would think that 30 seconds would do the trick.

10. Remove and serve hot!

Notes:
* The salt in the bean cooking liquid is twofold. It flavors but also helps retain the green color.
* Make sure not to overcook the beans! A little under done is better than over cooked.
* Taste the mixture before you add stuffing and bake. You might want more Pernod or seasoning.
* You can also use stale bread and make your own topping.

At long last, our Indian summer has arrived. July, August, even September plodded through dankly chilly, cottony fog, but now, October's pumpkin-and-apple splendor is bursting forth with hot days and mild, even balmy nights. At midday, you might think you're still ankle-deep in August, ice-chunked agua fresca in your hand, shorts cresting your thighs and flip-flops on your feet.

Stroll a few hours closer to sunset, though, and you can feel it: the days are shorter, the nights drawing in. A long wet spring and a lingering cold summer meant everything was slow to arrive this year. Which means we've got the bounty of both summer and fall happening all at once, the vivid reds and oranges of winter squash making a brilliant splash against the sun-painted golds of the Autumn Flame peaches and Emerald Beaut plums.

Normally, my East Coast-bred internal clock is turning towards the deeper, richer foods of autumn by now, the pears and apples, figs and kabocha squash and multi-hued carrots. But this year, there's still a little more precious summer to bask in, a few more strappy sundresses to take out for a spin.

Not to mention more watermelon to enjoy. Seeing huge bins of watermelons sharing curb space with jack o' lanterns is just one of the quirkier joys of our California calendar. Watermelon, zucchini, cucumbers of all shapes, and sweet-fleshed melons are still piled high at Berkeley Bowl and the Temescal and Lakeshore Farmer's Markets. Some are sugary and dripping-luscious, others cool and crisp, but all share a botanical family, the Curcurbitacea, which also includes the vast array of hard-shelled winter squashes, from lumpy-bumpy gourds to acorn squash to Halloween pumpkins. Watermelons and pumpkins, seedy sisters under the skin.

There will be dark months ahead to welcome the comforting starch of the hard squashes. Right now, these last hot days demand something piquant and refreshing, rolling like a breeze over your tongue. Ceviche, gazpacho, lemonade, the tangy brine of seafood. Waiting for the bus on a hot Oakland sidewalk, I think longingly of a salad I had at the now-closed Chickenbone Cafe in Brooklyn on a hot July night. The chef, Zak Pelaccio, who'd trained at the French Laundry, built a crisscross stack of watermelon batons topped with whorls of grilled squid, interspersed with frilled shreds of mint and cilantro, salty bits of feta, and down at the bottom, tiny, tiny sweet-sour cubes of pickled watermelon rind. It was delicious, and also witty: watermelon two ways, both of them unexpected.

And then there was Bangkok melon salad created by John Beardsley when he was the chef at Ponzu in the Tenderloin a decade or so ago, an irresistible mix of honeydew and cantaloupe tossed with fresh ginger, lemongrass, lime, Thai basil and fresh chiles. (Yes, when it comes to deliciousness in all its forms, my palate's memory is a long one, its recall effortless.)

Yes, as cooks in hot climates know, melon goes better with salt and savory than you might think. Think of the Greeks' watermelon-and-feta salads, or the Italians' classic, unbeatable combination of ripe cantaloupe veiled in sheer slices of prosciutto.

What you want with melon is something salty and a little sweet--that proscuitto, for example, or seafood that lies somewhere between silky and bouncy, like shrimp, octopus, scallops, or squid.

Squid is a particularly fine choice here. The locally caught stocks around Monterey Bay replenish themselves easily. Squid is cheap and adapts easily to a host of flavorings and ethnic bents, equally at home in a soy-saucy stir-fry as in a garlicky tomato sauce.

Like I said, squid is inexpensive. Whole, it can run as little as $2/lb; cleaned, $4 or $5/lb. Which kind you buy depends quite frankly on your tolerance for squid eyes, guts, and goo. I vowed, after cleaning my first bowlful of squid sometime back in 1991, that my first time would also be my last. But somehow I came home with a pound of complete squids last night, eyes and all. It's still, shall we say, a visceral process, but possible, if you're really committed to having a hands-on, tentacle-to-tail relationship with your squid. A sharp knife, some loud music, and someone ready to take out the garbage immediately afterwards all helps. Start with about 1 1/2 lbs if you're buying whole squid, to account for all the innards you'll be discarding.

So, here goes: Rinse squid well. If desired, trim off the tentacles (the bits on the top of the head that look like crazy hair) and set aside. There's no real neck to go by, but cut off what passes for a head below the eyes and discard. Reach into the body and pull out the hard, spine-like quill. Starting from the tip, squeeze downward toward the open end like you’re squeezing a tube of toothpaste. Squeeze out whatever's inside, rinsing frequently. Peel off the thin speckled membrane from the body. Trim off the triangular-shaped wings.

Once the body is reduced to a clean, translucent tube, slice it into thin rings. Repeat as needed. Pile rings and tentacles into a colander and rinse thoroughly one more time. (Children with a high gross-out tolerance may find this whole process amusing, and should be put to work immediately.) Pat dry.

If you have a mandoline, use it to make pretty, translucent ribbons of cucumber and radish, and see-through slices of red onion. As for cucumbers, the thin-skinned Armenian or Persian ones are particularly nice, since they tend to be less watery and seedy than your typical waxed-up supermarket cuke. You could also use a few small pickling or Kirby cukes instead.

End of Summer Squid Salad
You can mix and match melons to your taste and visual sensibility. I like some combination of watermelon, honeydew, and cantaloupe, but experiment with whatever you find the most pleasing. You can chill this salad for a few hours before serving, but it's best the day it's made. A mix of lime and lemon juice is fine, if that's what you've got on hand, but don't, under any circumstances, use bottled lemon or lime juice. Not even the organic kind! They all taste like bitter battery acid and will wreck your beautiful salad.

Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 small red onion, peeled and sliced very thin
6 cups mixed melon chunks
1 large or two small cucumbers, peeled if waxed, thinly sliced
a handful of radishes, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 lb cleaned squid, including tentacles if desired, bodies cut into thin rings
2 tsp Thai fish sauce, or to taste
a small handful of chopped roasted, salted peanuts or cashews
1 jalapeno or serrano chile, green or red, sliced very thinly
2 tsp peanut or canola oil
2 or 3 limes
1 tbsp honey, if needed
generous handful of Thai basil, mint, and/or cilantro, or a combination, roughly chopped

Preparation:

1. In a small bowl, cover onion slices with ice water, and set aside.

2. Toss melon, cucumbers, and radish together with juice of 1 lime. Refrigerate.

3. Toss squid with fish sauce, nuts, and chiles.

4. In a wok or saucepan over medium-high heat, heat oil until very hot. Add squid mixture and cook, stirring, until just opaque, firm but not rubbery. This should take less than a minute. Remove from heat and add juice of 1 lime.

6. Drain onions, rinse, and add to melon mixture. Add squid and chopped herbs. Toss and taste for seasoning, adding more lime juice or fish sauce to taste. If it seems too tart, add honey to taste. Divide between plates and serve.

Want to know more about local melons? The Crane family farm, longtime Sonoma melon growers, is offering a tour and tasting on Saturday, Oct. 9th, 2pm-4pm.

Two Halloweens ago, I bashed baby costumes, and heaped quite specific vitriol on the infamous Martha Stewart lobster baby costume.

Little did I know that a year later, I'd be knocked up (the planned kind of knocked up), and that two years later (meaning now), I'd lie awake at night lactating and plotting my baby's first truly public embarrassment: his 2009 Halloween costume.

I've actually hated Halloween for years -- to me, it's no more than excuse for otherwise pleasant adults to turn into masked assholes. The few times in the past 20 years that I've deigned to go out in costume on Halloween, I've resorted to my cactus get-up, which consists of green clothes + clothespins. The cactus get-up is perfect for those, like me, who are: 1) lazy, 2) cheap, and 3) open to the possibility of foreplay à la clothespin.

With the arrival of Henry, the erotic possibilities of clothespins have dramatically receded, and even I'm not mean enough to dress my child up as a cactus (imagine the "Oh, he's a prick!" jokes). I am, however, still lazy and cheap. And I love to kill two birds with one stone.

So, here was the suite of conditions for Henry's costume since he's more fun to dress up than I am:

1) Food-related so it could be BAB'd

2) Super easy because I'm exhausted

3) Cheap because we're in a recession

4) Handmade because I'm a snob

5) Green because it's his color and my color, and because these days you just can't go wrong with green

6) Wearable as a winter-layer long after Oct. 31 because I can't find a winter jacket for a 12-month-old that I don't think is horrid, and I’m sure as hell not going to sew TWO different things this fall when I could just sew ONE.

So, taking all of those factors into account, the only real solution was a poncho that could be interpreted as a costume. A fleece poncho. A green fleece poncho.

With this vague green fuzzy vision, Henry and I headed off to Stonemountain and Daughter Fabrics to cruise. And little by little, notion by notion, we assembled the materials that would prevent the erroneous perception of Henry as a Bolivian Kermit or a marijuana leaf fit for the Jolly Green Giant.

Photo and Photoshop by Wendy Goodfriend

Presto: A salad costume! Throw him around and he's a tossed salad. If he's tired, he's a wilted salad. Put him on a horse and he's a Cobb salad. Not only will this costume get a kid through the cold months, but it can also double as a Christmas tree blanket.

Ingredients: Fleece, buttons, rickrack, thread, brazen enthusiasm for humiliating your child.

No, I don't have a back 40. Maybe I have a back four like you, a 4x4x4 chunk of concrete back patio in Bernal Heights, ancient cactus in one corner, Wizard-of-Oz cyclone cellar door in the other, a few beat-up chairs, windchimes, and ashtrays filling in the rest. Perfect for a garden! Last summer, my gardening lust didn't get tripped until July, when I came home with high hopes and a couple of leggy tomato plants, only to find myself running a soup kitchen for a hungry neighborhood of whiteflies and aphids. Embarassing for someone with a certificate in ecological horticulture, to say the least.

This year, I put that hard-won CASFS knowledge to use. To wit: pests prey on weak plants, plants growing out of season, deprived of the nutrients they need. A healthy eco-system is one that supports beneficial bugs and pollinators, with a mixed palette of plants and bugs that can overwhelm destructive pests. Food not lawns, sure, but flowers can be just as hard-working as veggies, pumping out the nectar that feeds the bees and wasps, and in the process both enabling plant sex and elbowing out less desirable insects. Bachelor's buttons, borage, sweet alyssum, morning glory, cosmos, sunflowers: they all bloomed and did their part, along with the stunning salpiglossis that was just there to look gorgeous.

So, what was growing in the back four by four? Tomatoes, of course, which no summer gardener can be without, even in too-chilly, too-foggy San Francisco. Not having the willpower of the Zen gardeners at Green Gulch, who bow to the powers of their surrounding cool marine winds and don't even try, I compromised with a couple of cherry tomato plants, a Chadwick Cherry (named after Alan Chadwick, mad genius and founding UCSC gardener) and a Golden Nugget, both birthed from thumb-sized starts from the Free Farmstand. The rest of the veggies came from seeds, thanks to my conviction that unless it's grown from seed, you didn't really earn it and it's not really yours.

Now, I'm not a spiritual person. Planting seeds is the closest thing I get to an expression of faith: you hold these tiny specks, all shapes and colors, and trust that they contain everything to rise into life. You slip them into the dirt, water them every morning, and the day after you've skeptically succumbed to doubt, they pop up, all fresh and new, eager to spin the whole wheel again. Samsara, sure, only it all tastes really, really good.

What I grew, all in containers using just potting soil, encouraging words, and (no, I'm not proud, but I'm honest) the occasional dose of Miracle-Gro, along with size-10 sneakers unashamed to stomp on lettuce-munching caterpillars: French Baby Nantes carrots, which stayed pinkie-sized but were amazingly sweet and crunchy; sugar snap peas, prolific and delicious, despite a leaf-devouring case of fog-borne powdery mildew; the aforementioned Golden Nugget and Chadwick Cherry tomatoes; African blue basil, skimpy-leaved but prolific in pretty mauve flower spikes; tiny whorls of green and red container lettuce, mostly eaten by those effing caterpillars; and of course, early summer's fingerling potatoes.

My old pals Sally and Christina, who came over to photograph, then eat, that first potato crop, came by again to dine on the fruits of the Summer Salad Project, augmented by a variety of local items. There was some crusty sourdough flatbread I'd made from locally grown and milled grains: whole-wheat flour from Eatwell Farm and cornmeal from Erin at Ridgecut Gristmills, glossed with olive oil from McEvoy Ranch near Petaluma and flavored with summer savory from a Marquita Farm mystery box.

With it went garden antipasti: the five ripe cherry tomatoes we could pick, a handful of sugar-snap peas and baby carrots, sheep's milk ricotta from West Marin's Bellwether Farms and a bowl of homemade mayonnaise. And Julia Child's advice aside, you don't even need to warm the bowl; as long as you go slow whisking in the oil in the beginning, making mayonnaise is a snap. All it takes is olive oil, lemon juice, salt, egg yolks, a little mustard, a whisk and three or four minutes' worth of patience.

There were also deviled eggs made using more of that mayonnaise, because who doesn't love a deviled egg? For dinner, garlicked-and-lemoned greens, made from a mixture of erbette chard, radish and beet greens, all pulled from the mystery box, and the piece de resistance: a succotash of Brentwood corn mixed with roasted serrano chiles, heirloom tomatoes, basil and savory from Mariquita, plus roasted torpedo onions and fresh flageolet beans grown by Annabelle at La Tercera Farm. In our glasses went pink vin gris from Bonny Doon, bought on sale at Good Life Grocery up the street.

Now, I'm name-checking for a reason. This isn't brand-naming just for some kind of locavore dirt cred. The dinner was local on purpose, but it also wasn't particularly hard to put together, thanks to the agricultural abundance surrounding us. What was on our plates was also community through commerce; all these vegetables were the livelihoods of people I've gotten to know, even just a little, through buying their vegetables week after week, visiting their farms, walking through their fields or orchards. It doesn't take much time to put a face on your food, and to make it part of a larger web of interlocking stories and histories, a personal geography marked by olives and zucchini, the taste of a milky green wheat kernel or the sight of two tiny leaves poking up out of the dirt.

And that night, looking around the table, Christina said grace to thank the earth, the farmers, the cook, and friendship, for making it all worth it.

Look at me, I'm eating peas. I'm nearly 40 years old and I'm eating peas. Who says middle-aged men don't have growth spurts?

I never cared for peas as a child. Perhaps that's too mildly put. I had always hated peas. No, still not enough. I had a terror of peas as a child.

That's more like it.

I would not touch them, I hated looking at them, and I certainly would never eat them. If I saw them on television, I would either cover my eyes or run from the room, just as I did anytime I saw two people kissing. Peas, for no good reason, caused me acute emotional distress. When it was beef stew night in our household, I thought my mother was making it specifically to torture me.

I would spend the hours before dinner time hiding in my room, wondering what I had done to deserve something as hideous and traumatizing as beef stew made with a heavy dose of frozen Green Giant peas. When finally lured to the table with threats of punishment, I would sit quietly with my eyes puffy from crying and my hands sore from wringing, and think to myself, "What greater punishment is there than a plateful of stringy beef dotted with disintegrating potatoes, carrots, and grey-green peas?"

I couldn't think of anything.

I would drink several glasses of milk trying to get the stuff down without having it immediately brought back up. Nights would be sleepless knowing those little green monsters were inside of me.

As I grew a little older, I learned to work my way around the peas. My place at the dinner table was closest to the Tomorrowland-blue napkin holder. I would line my lap with three or four napkins and, when my mother wasn't looking, dump a forkful onto my semi-protected pants. The warmth of the stew caused an unexpectedly pleasant sensation, which I will not go into here.

When my lap was full of warm stew, I would quietly fold up my bundle with one hand while trying to keep the dogs' noses out of my crotch with the other, and politely ask if I might be excused to go to the pantry cupboard, which was where we kept our trash bin, cereal, dog food, and was, coincidentally, very near my mother's seat at the table. I would walk around the table, past my brother who was more than likely too busy separating all the ingredients on his plate and then eating each one in alphabetical order to notice what I was doing in my lap, past my sister and her glass of Mountain Dew that she could not seem to drink without tinting it some even-more-unnatural color with Schilling food coloring, and over to the cupboard, where I would pause and give a thoughtful look at the childhood growth markers that covered the inside of the door. When I thought my mother wasn't looking, I would drop my bundle into the garbage.

This ritual would be repeated at least two more times during the meal.

I don't know who I thought I was kidding. Certainly not my mother. Apparently, she just go tired of fighting with me over the peas and the stew, so she let me carry on my charade-- it freed her from an annoying confrontation, it freed me from having to eat peas, and it freed everyone from having to listen to me cry and gag.

Win-win-win.

And now, I am an almost-40 year-old man eating peas. Why? I have no real idea. Perhaps I just grew out of hating them.

Then again, I may have this salad to thank...

Green Pea and Feta Salad

Serves 4

There are a few seasonal dishes we obsess about at work. This is one of them. Towards the end of every March, someone will ask our chef, Erik Cosselmon, this question: "Are peas in season yet?" The question will be repeated about every two days until peas do finally make their appearance. I never thought I would join the ranks of pea-loving waiters, but I have.

It's an embarrassingly easy salad to make (apart from shelling the peas). The saltiness of the feta that has been creamed together with good olive oil mixes with the sweet burst of the peas as they pop inside your mouth (which is one of the things I hated about them as a child) makes for a remarkable combination.

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh English or Snap peas (typically, one pound of peas in their pod yields 1 cup of shelled peas)

About 1/3 cup feta, crumbles (Greek. Use Greek feta. Really.)

2 to 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (I will give you a pass if you don't use the Greek stuff here)

The juice of 1/2 lemon

a small handful of both chopped mint (or cilantro) and scallion for garnish.

Preparation:

1. Blanch peas is simmering water for 1 to 2 minutes (they should appear bright green). Remove the peas and place them in an ice bath to prevent further cooking. Cool and drain.

2. In a medium-sized bowl, cream together the feta cheese and olive oil, but not obsessively. lumps are both texturally necessary and attractive. Add peas and mix enough to coat them thoroughly with the feta and oil.

3. To serve, place pea mixture in a serving-appropriate dish, squeeze the lemon over it, and garnish with mint and scallion. If you are making this dish in advance, I would advise you to add the lemon only just prior to serving. If left in contact with the peas for a long time, the lemon will turn them an unappetizing color. Just think about what lemon juice does to very dark-haired people when they rub it in their hair and then go out in the sun. Sort of like Sun In, but organic.

Sure, I love chocolate truffles and Valentine's Day goodies, but February has another sweet treat: pea shoots. If you haven't tried these lovely greens before, you're in luck because they’re all over the farmer's market right now. And, at $1 or $2 a bag, you can feel the love.

Pea shoots are simply the leaves of the pea plant. But that description doesn't do them justice. The leaves are bright green and succulent, with accompanying tendrils that curl up like wavy Mohawks and have a subtle sugary flavor that is delicious both raw and cooked. Like peas, pea shoots have a sweet crispness that goes beautifully with just about anything. They have a pleasant sweet pea flavor that works well on its own, or as an accent with meats, pastas, or beans. Some things I like to do with pea shoots are:

• Use as greens in a salad
• Incorporate into omelets or frittatas
• Include in soups as you would spinach or chard
• Stuff inside chicken breasts or flank steak with lemon zest and garlic
• Mix with pastas

On Saturday, I was so excited pea shoots were in season, I bought two batches at the farmer's market. The first night, I made pasta with pea shoots and crumbled bacon, and then the next night we had a pea shoot salad with cured chorizo, Marcona almonds, couscous, and lentils. The saltiness of both the bacon and chorizo nicely accented the natural sweet flavor of the pea shoots, as did the Marcona almonds and Parmesan.

When cooking pea shoots, be sure not to oversteam them as they'll lose some of their flavor and texture if they're cooked too long. I like to toss them into a very hot pan with a little olive oil so they crisp up a bit before they cook down. If eating raw, make sure you thoroughly trim off the woody ends, and then dress as a salad green. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Below are the recipes for the dishes I made this week with my pea shoots. Both are easy and relatively fast to make. If you're looking for further inspiration, I found a site called pea shoots.com, which has a number of eye-catching recipes that made my mouth water. I haven’t had time to cook any yet, but am especially looking forward to trying the pea shoot and smoked bacon soup (yes, I know, again with the bacon); although the pea shoot bubble and squeak also looks enticing.

So if you're looking for a unique Valentine's gift for your sweetheart, how about a bouquet of pea shoots?

Pea Shoot Salad with Chorizo, Almonds, Lentils, and Couscous

Makes: 2 large or 4 small salads

Salad
Ingredients:
1 large bunch of pea shoots (washed with ends trimmed)
1/2 cup cooked lentils, white beans, or fava beans
1/3 cup roughly-chopped fennel
1/3 cup cured chorizo or soppresetta, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1/3 cup Spanish Marcona almonds
1/3 cup cooked couscous
1 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Dressing
Ingredients:
Juice from one medium Meyer lemon or 1 1/2 Eureka lemons
Zest from one lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Chop pea sprouts into 1-inch pieces, discarding large tough stems, and set aside.
2. Heat olive oil in a medium sauté pan and then add the chopped fennel.
3. After the fennel begins to soften, add the beans and parsley and then toss together, adding salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
4. Lay pea shoots onto plates and then evenly scatter beans, couscous, chorizo or soppresetta, and almonds onto each plate.
5. Drizzle dressing on top of each plate and serve.

Pea Shoot Pasta Sautéed with Bacon and Lemon Zest

Makes: 4 - 6 servings

Ingredients:
1 bunch of pea shoots, cleaned, dried and cut into 3-inch long pieces
2 cloves garlic
1 lb cooked pasta
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp lemon zest
1 ladle of hot pasta water
2 -3 slices cooked bacon or 1/4 cup cooked cubed pancetta
Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Clean and dry your pea shoots and remove any hard stems. Cut shoots into 3-inch pieces.
2. Heat olive oil in a large skillet or wok until oil starts to sizzle.
3. Smash and then chop garlic into medium pieces and add to the olive oil.
4. Add pea shoots and lemon zest and sauté for about 3-5 minutes, or until pea shoots start to wilt.
5. Stir in cooked pasta and pasta water.
6. Crumble bacon and add to the pasta.
7. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil on top along with a sprinkle of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.