This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

David and I are wandering the Northwest Flower and Garden Show this week. The display gardens are beautiful, as always. Some are even spectacular.  But only two garden installations serve to truly inspire an urban gardener in these times. Since David and I are particularly interested in sustainable, organic food production for urban dwellers we found that these two gardens had the most to offer: “A Family’s Little Farm in the City” and “The Truck Farm.” (More on that in my next blog). “A Family’s Little Farm in the City” certainly lives up to its promise: to “demonstrate how a family can live sustainably in the city.” A small dwelling – actually a barn, but it could be modified – with solar panels, a quiet patio serving as a front porch, vegetable beds, an edible forest, compost bins, rain barrels, and bee hives. All thrive on this tiny plot of land.

I love this chicken tractor. The hen industriously scratches and pecks, tilling the soil for you. She can retire to her little shed to lay her eggs. Talk about a valuable partner!!  This is probably my favorite item in the display.

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We have a new cookbook coming out this spring—The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook. I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat a mostly plant-based diet. This is more due to my lack of interest in cooking meat than anything else, but it works.

I’ve been looking through the pages this week to get a better understanding of the book. (As an aside—getting paid to read is maybe one of the best parts of publishing.) Though several recipes pique my interest, one really stood out: Black-Eyed Pea Chili. It sounds like a perfect Superbowl meal.

Though my beloved Patriots are not in it, I still love the Superbowl. I like the commercials, the silly halftime show, the energy, and the excuse to have people over to cheer, boo, eat, and drink. I always make a chili, and this recipe sounds like a perfect fit.

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

David has been talking about storing summer bulbs, and it got me thinking about all the things we who live in cold climates do to prepare for winter.

As gardeners we store bulbs, corms, tubers, and tuberous roots. These plant structures store the net photosynthate that the plant produced during the growing season. Which means: plants store food to survive the winter and grow again in spring.

Somewhere in our pre-history we learned a lesson from plants and started storing these same plant parts for our own food. We “lift” tubers like potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) from the ground, shake dirt free and, in former times, placed them in root cellars. Today we might store them in cardboard boxes or burlap sacks in our garages. We also gather tuberous roots like sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and bulbs like onions and garlic, and store them through the long months of cold when we cannot grow food outside.
As November proceeds in the northern hemisphere, we prepare for festivals at which we gather and share our stored bounty from the garden. Storing food is all about coziness, feelings of safety, belonging, and abundance. Despite the hardships of the season – driving rain, cold, and, snow – we enjoy our winter feasts.
David’s family cherishes traditional winter feasts. Mashed potatoes are a must. Close relatives of tomatoes, eggplants, chili, and bell peppers, potatoes come from high in the Andes of Peru, and have been grown for over 6,000 years. Breeders have mixed the gene pool to create the multitude of varieties we have now.

We all have favorite potatoes, but I particularly love the ones with tender skins and flavorful flesh, such as Yukon golds. I also like to mix it up with the newest – or oldest, depending on how you look at it – Peruvian blue and purple potatoes. But tradition often dictates the good old russet. No matter which potato we choose, I use a recipe I learned long ago:

Simple Mashed Potatoes (serves 4)
Potatoes: 2 lbs
Milk: enough to barely cover potatoes
Salt, pepper, butter to taste
Scrub the potatoes and leave skins on. Cut them in half inch cubes.  Boil them in milk until tender. As you mash, add butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Sweet potatoes come from lowlands throughout the Caribbean and South America, and people have been mixing genes from these gems of the earth for a long time to create many tasty cultivars. Some of these cultivars are also called yams by grocers in many areas of the U.S.

Still, our favorite bounty from the root cellar through the winter is:

Root Cellar Bounty:
Bulbs: Onions, Garlic
Tubers:  Potatoes
Roots: Sweet potatoes, Beets, Carrots, Parsnips
Olive oil: enough to drizzle the vegetables in a thin coating
Favorite herbs:  such as thyme, rosemary, and sage.
Cut all the vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Lay them in a single layer in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Drizzle them with the olive oil until thinly coated. Roast them in a 350 degree (F) oven until fork tender.
Yum. Oh, you should probably let them cool for a bit before you bite them.

The summer between by junior and senior year of college, I worked at my old high school in the school garden. One of the perks (really!) of the job was being introduced to Colorado potato beetles, which I took particular pleasure in destroying. It is my firm belief that Colorado potato beetle larva are the grossest pests on the face of the earth. They’re so — orange and shiny and revolting. I am not a violent person, but a plant full of Colorado potato beetle larva awoke in me the urge to destroy.

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Only a few short weeks ago I was complaining that my scarlet runner beans were not providing me with the green beany-ness that I was expecting. They had lovely red flowers, and the hummingbirds seemed to like them, but where were the beans? Nowhere. How was I going to practice making pickled green beans if I had no beans to pickle?

My green bean plant rose to the occasion. First, it assumed an intimidating Godzilla-like shape and loomed over my carrots.

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Last night I made the Double Trouble Chocolate Truffle recipe from The Complete Chile Pepper Book.

It started easy — I had all the ingredients on hand.

The instructions were pretty easy to follow. First I put the milk and dark chocolate in a small pot.

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I was reading through The Complete Chile Pepper Book and came across this useful warning:

Capsaicin, the alkaloid responsible for the heat in chiles, is wonderful for making bland foods interesting, but it is far less welcome in large doses on the skin, or in any amount in your eyes. We urge everyone to who processes chiles in any form to wear gloves when handling them. This is especially important when handling the hotter varieties, because chile burns can be extremely painful and even cause contact dermatitis, redness, and blistering of the skin.

It made me think of the funny segment Jeff Gillman had on The Martha Stewart Show earlier this year. You can watch Martha’s laughter-inducing warning here.

Here’s another bit from The Complete Chile Pepper Book about what to do if you burn your mouth with a pepper:

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The Pacific Golden Chanterelle, or Cantharellus formosus if you’d prefer, is one of the most commonly foraged mushrooms. They are easy to find in the moister parts of Pacific Northwest and in season from early summer until late fall. If you are planning a weekend foraging trip, find a few to make this recipe.

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Eight days after I planted the seeds in a plastic flat on my windowsill, I noticed my tomato and basil plants had popped their little green heads out of the soil. This was the first time I had ever sown a seed and seen it sprout. I clapped my hands and shouted out something about how I hadn’t failed my first test as a gardener. My friend Jeff, watching TV in the next room, yelled back that I’d have plenty of time to fail as a gardener once the plants are moved outside.

Well, Jeff can take his pessimism and compost it. I’m excited about this whole planting thing. And in my rush of enthusiasm, I’ve decided to name my plants. Do people ever do this? We name our cars, our guitars, our iPods. And those things don’t even turn into food. So, anyway, my taller, kind-of-sideways-growing basil sprout shall henceforth be known as Fawlty. The (for now) shorter basil plant is Napoleon. The three tomato plants that have popped through the surface: Brandon, LaMarcus and Rudy (because those are my three favorite Portland Trailblazers and because calling a vegetable LaMarcus is hilarious). Then I have one more tomato plant that has yet to sprout. I’m calling that one Hope.

Historically, Timber Press has published books almost exclusively devoted to ornamental plants–annuals, perennials, trees, shrubs, bulbs, and more. Unfortunately, plants enjoyed for their aesthetic traits aren’t the coolest kids at the table now that everyone is growing a vegetable garden.

So, for those of you that have been growing vegetables for years and already have a productive garden, now is about the time you should be able to harvest your peas. Once you do, enjoy eating them in this delicious recipe, from The Family Kitchen Garden, available now:

Risotto with Fresh Peas
*Serves four

1 medium-sized onion
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ¾ cups Arborio rice
juice of ½ lemon
4 cups chicken stock
¼ cup Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon butter
salt and pepper to taste

Finely dice the onion and garlic. In a large saucepan, add the olive oil and sweat the onion and garlic over a medium heat until soft. Add the rice and stir until coated with oil. Add the lemon juice and stir until liquid has evaporated. Add one ladle of chicken stock and lower the heat. As you stir, add the stock ladle by ladle as it is absorbed by the rice. After about twelve minutes, add the peas and continue cooking rice. The rice will take about 18 minutes to cook. Before serving, add the Parmesan and butter. Season to taste.