Chives is My Name, Don't Wear it Out!

Star of the Spice World

Wild about Rosemary

Kiwifruit – a Fuzzy, Flavorful, Fruit!
When Jen asked me about featuring kiwi for November, I have to admit I was a little intimidated. And if you visit my blog, Ordinary Recipes Made Gourmet and search for kiwi, you won’t find much. There’s a reason for that. I really don’t work a lot with kiwi and not because I don’t like it cause I like it a lot, but for me it’s usually the kind of ingredient that finds itself in a salad or in a crepe. Nevertheless, kiwi is a beautiful lookin

All About That Fuzzy Fruit You Have.
When I was going to school in North Vancouver we did our practicum at Park & Tilford Gardens. This is a tiny jewel which is now part of a larger shopping center. It is divided into several gardens which feature particular themes and styles. there are rose, herbal, oriental, native, white and a colonnade garden. The colonnade garden was a long curving walk which as under a massive pergola which was covered by enormous vines and flanked on both sides with many hanging baskets of Fuchsias. The vines had enormous green leaves which were covered with tiny hairs. To my surprise and delight discovered they were hardy Kiwi(Actinidia del

Pumpkin, Pumpkin Art Thou Beautiful oh Pumpkin!
I didn’t grow up eating pumpkin, we were more of a sweet potato family! I can’t ever remember my mommy using pumpkin at all. In fact, I was grown when I start eating it. Not sure if my mom just didn’t like it or what but I can certainly compare the taste of pumpkin vs. sweet potato:  to me, pumpkin’s flavor is more pungent, it’s sorta in your face like, “Notice me, I’m a Pumpkin!” Sweet potatoes have a more sweeter, more laid back flavor like it doesn’t have to be the star of the show! And, of course when you&#

Squash, that Pumpkin.
At this time of the year the rainy season sets in here and there are few crops left in the fields to harvest. What is still left to be harvested will need a few more cold nights to sweeten the crop. Driving along Pat Bay Highway into Victoria I am reminded of the time of year by the Pumpkins lying waiting for some lucky family to come and pick them up to carve them into a Jack ‘o’ lanterns for Halloween.

Tomatoes, A Well Traveled Fruit.
I used to have a vegetable garden when I lived in Prince George which is a cool climate. Lettuce, carrots, potatoes, cabbage and many others grow very well there. The challenge was to grow the more heat longer growing vegetable. I mastered them all with careful research on the best varieties for short season growing, sometimes as short as 1 month between frosts. One plant i especially wanted to grow was Tomatoes (Solanum lycopericum) which require lots of heat and sunshine.  Fortunately there are many special seed varieties of tomatoes just for northern climates and other tricky situations which grow just fine.