I learned this recipe from a woman named Lena in Moscow in 1983. This was a time when the ingredients–potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, cabbage–were all sold from small produce stores…

This recipe brings together several things I grow in my garden each year–squash, bird peppers, cilantro. Coconut milk is an essential ingredient as well, which used to be hard to…

Garlic chives are one of the earliest things to come up in an Iowa spring, and they are an essential ingredient in mapo tofu, a famous dish in China. “Mapo”…