I love Bolognese. Strike that – I love MY Bolognese! I order it out all the time to see if there’s a Bolognese sauce (if you don’t know, this is a classic Italian meat sauce) better than my homemade, and I have yet to find it.

We have two established grape vines in our fenced garden. One has Concord grapes, the other Niagara. The Concord grapes are fully ripe right now and we’re looking for any and every way to use them, because there are a TON of grapes. Enter: experimenting making grape juice!

We have an obscene abundance of kale in the garden this year. You guys, I am so tired of kale. SO TIRED. But, on the plus side, apparently boredom is the mother of invention, because in order to not keep putting my taste buds to sleep I’ve found some creative ways to use up this extremely healthy, fiber-rific, vitamin-packed (blah, blah, blah I’m still planting less kale next year no matter what the internet tells me) veggie.

Here are three different recipes that heavily feature kale, allowing you to get those benefits when another plain old salad makes you sad.

I never thought I could be so furious at a critter as cute as a chipmunk, but the fact that they ruin almost every single tomato on our vines just before they ripen by taking a single chipmunk-sized bite out of them is teeth-grittingly maddening. Because of these sneaky, teeny, fluffy-tailed monsters, I’ve had to get creative with how we use our tomatoes, which has led me to grilled green tomatoes!

I love growing Serrano peppers in the garden because (1) they are super easy to grow – all you need is the plant and a lot of sun, and (2) they are delicious! Here are five easy ways to use Serrano peppers at a heat level that’s right for you…

One of the best things about gardening is being able to use unusual ingredients that you never see in the store (or even in restaurants)! One item I grow where you can truly use so much of the plant is fennel.

This was my first year growing fennel. We had incredibly dry weather, which, with our drip irrigation, the fennel loved. Then, over the last four weeks, we’ve been deluged. This is when I should have picked the fennel, because it immediately began to bolt (flower) and the bulb began to rot. I completely missed my window – or so I thought…

Purslane is a weed, and grows like a weed, meaning that we have a ton of it in our garden starting in early June. I love it, but the rest of my family, to put it mildly, does not. So most of my purslane prep involves quick and easy purslane salads or lunches that I can make quickly for myself.

Two great things about Spring and Summer: artichokes and grilling. And artichokes + grilling = grilled artichokes, my absolute favorite way to prepare them. The nice thing about this recipe is that you can do it for a crowd, because you do 90% of the work ahead of time, and then just finish them off on the grill when you’re ready to serve. A great make-ahead item for a party! They may not be quick to make, but they are incredibly easy.

I’d never had garlic scapes before we started growing garlic. A scape is a shoot the garlic sends up in late Spring that you can cut and eat without harming the development of the plant. It tastes like if garlic and onion had a baby (which means, obviously, delicious).