Botany lab of the month – August edition: Rocky Top Corn Soup
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
1y ago
It’s August, and everyone from the American Midwest knows that late summer means fresh sweet corn, and a lot of it. When I was growing up in Indiana, every few days during corn season we would pick up a dozen ears from my family’s favorite roadside stand, just hours after harvest, and cook them right away, before the kernels could start converting their sugar into starch.  Corn season typically peaked the final week of the Indiana State Fair, which always fell between my sister’s birthday and mine. We felt like the whole world was celebrating with us since the Indiana State Fair really is ..read more
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The adoration of the pine nut
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
2y ago
It’s the winter holiday season, when halls are bedecked with garlands of evergreens, sprigs of holly, and bunches of mistletoe to remind us that there is life in the darkness and love to be shared. This year, Katherine has added another symbolic plant to her own holiday list – pine nuts. They are more precious this year than ever. I first started using pine nuts in holiday baking for the simple reason that they taste like pine and thus add a Christmas-tree note that almonds do not. A deeper significance was not on my mind. But pine nuts are so interesting botanically that I always slice some o ..read more
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Chasing pickled peaches
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
2y ago
Regular readers may have noticed that I (Katherine) sometimes go on a rant the week before Thanksgiving. This tradition is probably nothing more than a small annual outburst of snarky impatience that has accumulated over a long academic quarter, but I prefer to pretend that I am clearing space in my heart for gratitude. In past years I’ve gotten worked up about cooked celery, green bean casserole, and, most righteously, pecan pie. This year, my target is pickled peaches. Anyone unfamiliar with pickled peaches should immediately banish the nasty idea that they are salty or puckered. No, they ar ..read more
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The Botanist in the Root Cellar
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by Jeanne L. D. Osnas
2y ago
How much actual root is in “root vegetables”? The wintertime pantry is a study in vegetable dormancy. Our shelves brim with structures plants use to store their own provisions. Each embryonic plant in a seed—the next generation of oats, quinoa, dry beans, walnuts—rests in the concentrated nutritive tissue gifted to it by its parent. The starchy flesh within the impervious shell of a winter squash is alive, as are apples, hopeful vessels of seed dispersal. Maple and birch syrup are stored energy made liquid and bottled. And then there are the so-called “root vegetables.” The term covers a surpr ..read more
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Some favorite Christmas posts from the past
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
3y ago
As we celebrate the solstice and count down the days until Christmas and the New Year, we Botanists in the Kitchen are looking back at some posts of Christmas past. Unwrapping some figs for Christmas2016 A Holiday Pineapple for the Table 2017 Winter Mint 2015 Sugar! 2015 The Chestnut Song 2018 Angelica: holiday fruitcake from a sometimes toxic family 2018 The Holidays Mean Persimmons 2012 Dreaming of White Cocoa & Hibiscus 2019 ..read more
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The leftovers of 2020
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
3y ago
Do you still have a bunch of celery leftover from Thanksgiving in the back of your fridge? With no holiday parties this year, you won’t be able to sneak it onto a holiday crudités platter. You could assemble silly little peanut butter and celery reindeer snacks, but that would just generate messier leftovers. Katherine tells you why you should put it all into a very elegant silky soup for the grownups. Some of my happiest teaching days begin when I drag a rattling cartload of vegetables and razor blades over the paving stones and across the quad to my classroom. Then, for a couple of hours, ed ..read more
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An update: Buy me some peanuts!
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
4y ago
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about peanuts, and only partly because of the long delayed return of the baseball season. No, this spring I was trying very hard to channel one of my botanical heroes, George Washington Carver. Sculpture in the George Washington Carver Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Sculpture by Tina Allen. Photo KPreston Carver’s best known legacy is his work with peanuts and the 105 peanut recipes he published in a bulletin for the Tuskegee Experiment Station. Inventing over a hundred distinct recipes for one plant is a triumph of creative genius in itself, but he ..read more
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The Botanist Stuck in the Kitchen With You (and Peas)
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
4y ago
I am about to start an 8th week of online teaching and my county’s 11th week of sheltering in place. While the (essential and life saving) sheltering is getting really old, the academic quarter has sped by as usual, along with its relentless parade of deadlines and grading. Our current crisis may have no definite end, but the academic quarter must wrap up on time, ready or not. Some people are reporting really vivid dreams right now, however, for me, the most noticeable side effect of working and teaching from home is that I never stop thinking about it. Like midway through a Saturday night sc ..read more
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The Botanist Stuck in the Kitchen, rummaging for beets
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
4y ago
Over these many weeks, humans have been forced into an uncomfortably close study of our own species’ behavior. Observations haltingly stream in through the internet and the TV, through hurried forays into the sparse public square, and through sometimes painful introspection. We are finding what we’ve always known, that humans are petty and petulant, compulsively social, and surprisingly sublime. Meanwhile, without our clueless interference, non-human animals have gone about their business as normal. The male bi-colored redwing blackbirds where I live are putting on the biggest and flashiest re ..read more
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Sheltering in the kitchen with oatmeal
The Botanist in the Kitchen
by katherineapreston
4y ago
My first week of trying to teach remotely has wrapped up, and I finally found a quiet moment to record another video from my kitchen. That moment was 5:45 am. Most of the US has already spent weeks sheltering at home, and people are getting creative and socially expressive. Thus, apparently, I am already late to the oatmeal video trend. True, oatmeal is exactly the sort of food we need right now. It’s comforting, affordable, nutritious, easy to make, and ripe for virtue signaling. No wonder people want to share. But really, do any of those other videos give you three botany lessons in under 6 ..read more
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