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.