Garlic Scape Herbed Cream Cheese

A fast and flavorful spread for appetizers or snacks, this zesty cream cheese marries fresh herbs with garlic scapes for a Spring treat. Spread this on crackers or tortillas, pipe it into peppers, or dunk a carrot for a fresh from the farm share appetizer.

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To make a more useful website for my fellow farm share eating folks, I periodically ask food bloggers for recipes so I can add their photos (and links back to their sites) to my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

It's mean, rude, poor form, and illegal to take recipes and photos someone else has created and publish them on another website. Want to print off a recipe to hang on your fridge and refer to? Rock on! Here's how to print from my site. Want to copy and paste this post to publish somewhere else? No, you do not have my permission to steal my work. You're most welcome to link to this page instead.

When I was gathering garlic scape recipes I came across this Grilled Crostini with Garlic Scape Cream Cheese and Tomatoes from Kim of Kiss My Smoke. Her recipe reminded me that I hadn't tried making a savory cheese spread using farm share ingredients.

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This is not that spread that my kids keep asking me to make--I think I need to use some ricotta and more pepper to make it a bit drier/firm it up, to come closer to Boursin, but much more testing is needed. Rule #3, something to look forward to. 

[What are Rules #1 and #2? Rule #1--you need someone to love. Rule #2--you need something to do. Rule #3--you need something to look forward to. I learned these from my spouse shortly after we met.]

Wild Violet Muffins with Wild Violet Sugar #MuffinMonday

Tender light muffins sweetened with wild violet syrup and sprinkled with wild violet sugar. Edible flowers baked into a Spring floral treat.

I'm reposting this recipe because the violets have appeared in the yard. Enjoy!

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About the only thing worth foraging in my yard these days are violets.

The garlic has woken up from it's deep winter slumber though it's nowhere near harvesting. The chives and raspberry canes are just beginning to stir. Some red leaf lettuce and celery from the compost miraculously survived the winter and is peeping up from a raised bed--though I suspect bunnies might nibble it off.

My spouse took this bug's view of a violet in our front yard yesterday.

I'm pretty much over playing with the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, and I'm sick of eating down the put up vegetables in the freezer and pantry before we move. I want to forage with something fresh.

Wild violets it is.

A Recipe for Compost

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): Use a mulching mower or reversible leaf blower to shred Fall leaves, save them in bags or bins, add them to your kitchen scraps to create nutritious soil.

Please enjoy this post from several years ago--relevant now more than ever!

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I've added a gardening tip here and there over the past few years, but I've always included a recipe for a food that uses whatever vegetable or herb I've been discussing.


Today's post is a little different. I feel strongly that an appreciation of fresh food leads invariably, inevitably, inexorably back to the source: where your food comes from.

More folks getting interested in fresh local food means more folks trying their hands at growing some portion of it.

Maybe it's a windowsill with some herb pots in an apartment, or maybe it's rotation planting of your annual garlic and basil crops in raised beds.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to make your gardening efforts succeed is to make compost.