A Seminole pumpkin in a CSA box a decade ago got me thinking about squash diversity. Market bins and seasonal displays that autumn overflowed with squashes, gourds, and pumpkins in a dizzying array of sizes, shapes, and colors, but I had never seen a Seminole pumpkin among them. My pumpkin was squat, round, and the ..read more

Where have the botanists in the kitchen been? In our writing rooms, working on other ways to bring you this content. We can’t wait to share what we’ve been doing! Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy our substantial archive and follow us on Bluesky (katherineapreston.bsky.social, jldosnas.bsky.social ..read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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