We always had a little garden when I was growing up. Not like a farm, but just a little plot behind the house, down the hill a bit, under a giant cottonwood tree with a swing tied to its branches. I didn’t really have much to do with the garden, aside from harvesting. My parents would plant potatoes and tomatoes. Probably some other things, too, but that’s all I really remember. Too busy swinging on that crappy old swing I guess, getting splinters in my booty.

When the birds or bugs would get to the tomatoes before we could – when we’d find those hard, little green tomatoes with a big hole in one side – mama would make fried green tomatoes. Cut off the bad, fry the rest, make it good. I loved them so much. And even though, yes, I know the film by the same name (and cry every time I see it still…) I somehow kinda always thought no one else ate fried green tomatoes? I know it doesn’t make any sense. Obviously, anyone with a half a lick of sense and a green tomato in their hand is gonna know about fried green tomatoes. But still…

So I was kind of surprised when several people requested the recipe from me. I don’t know. Maybe I just seem like a person who makes good fried green tomatoes. It’s true. I am. I have no difficulty writing that. But honestly, they’re easy. The hardest part is finding green tomatoes if you don’t have your own garden.

Enter, Johnson’s Backyard Garden: a 200 acre, 100% organic farm just outside Austin. We’d visited this lovely paradise last year – actually almost exactly one year ago – and had a great time taking a farm tour from Brent Johnson: Head Farmer (not sure if that’s his official title or not, but it works for my purposes). This year I contacted them about green tomatoes. As it turns out, with 30 thousand tomato plants, they had … how do you say? … a buttload of green tomatoes. So we took another farm trip!

And, DUDE! Whoa! Let me tell you, JBG is blowin’ up! They added 146 acres in the last year and have plans to build a barn and commercial kitchen on site so they can preserve bumper crops of produce when needed.

Brent is a calm, kind, hard-working person. He runs his business as if every employee were family and strives to make the farm a community in itself. His reason for farming is to feed the people. And he means all the people, not just the yuppies. Right now, JBG is awaiting finalization of 501 c-3 status for a non-profit organization called FarmShare Austin whose mission is to make fresh, local, organic produce available to people who could not otherwise afford it. By partnering with other non-profits such as the Settlement Home for Children and the Salvation Army as well as other farms in and around Austin, FarmShare will bring Brent’s dream of feeding the people to life. Knowing that there are such good and capable people in the world as Farmer Brent makes me happy to be human. That he and his organic farm are here in Austin makes me lucky to be a human who loves vegetables. And I’m not just saying that because he let me take as many green tomatoes as I needed AND gave Chris and I each a full box of that day’s produce picks. Ahem. But he did.

And it is AWESOME.

If you’re in the Austin area and would like to support local farmers and take care of your health, please consider JBG’s Community Supported Agriculture program. You can sign up for weekly or bi-weekly deliveries of seasonal, fresh-picked produce to your home or office. There is an incredible crop of amazing produce ripening out in the fields right now: 60 varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, pattypan squash (my favorite!), colorful potatoes, Texas 1015 Sweet Onions, broccoli, cabbage, DELICIOUS watermelons and cantaloupes, specialty melons, plus so much more variety in the coming months.

AND… Bulk Tomato Sale! Pre-order different varieties of tomatoes for a huge discount! Personally, I’m hosting a salsa-making party thanks to this great offer. Me and some girlfriends are gonna order a mess of JBG tomatoes and make a mess in my kitchen with them. This is a great bargain! Get together with some friends and can or freeze your own salsa or tomato sauce. It’s fun and healthy.

Your cooking questions answered, info on LIVE cooking shows, plus my NEW cookbook!

Check out my new book! http://caveladycooking.com

Chicken Fajita Salad

Blueberry Muffins!

I wrote a new book, dudes! See? I TOLD you I was gonna write more books after I quit my job!

This one is called Cavelady Cooking: 50 Fun Recipes for Paleo, Low-Carb and Gluten Free Diets! Honestly, we had the idea for the title before we had the idea for the book. Isn’t it just silly? But we’ve had a lot of requests for Paleo diet recipes, and you know everyone – including us – knows at least one person with celiac disease or gluten-intolerance, and plus I’ve gotten many requests over the last two years for low-carb recipes so it seemed like it was about time.

If you’re familiar with Hilah Cooking, you know I don’t focus my show recipes on any particular diet – I just like to keep things simple, good, and pretty much Texas by default – but my cookbooks can be something else. I know this one won’t automatically appeal to everyone who watches the show and uses my recipes, but I think it will appeal to anyone who’s adhering to a gluten-free, low-carb, or Paleo diet, as well as anyone who just wants some new ways to cook vegetables and meat!

Cavelady Cooking covers breakfast, lunch, dinner, sides, snacks and desserts.

Some breakfast highlights are: Crabcakes Benedict; Potato-free hash; Counterfeit Lara bars; plus several more recipes, not even including 6 funky smoothies!

For lunch, I got real. Real life. So we’re talking lots of make-ahead soups and salads and re-purposing leftovers into deliciousness! Plus some pretty brilliant ideas on making sushi rolls sans rice and tuna salad sans mayonnaise.

The chapter on dinner is ten brand-new recipes including easy homemade Italian sausage (so you can avoid added sugar and preservatives), Cuban chicken, Indian kofta, and pesto-olive roasted chicken. Each main dish recipe offers serving suggestions from the side dishes chapter, which is my personal favorite of all the chapters!

These side dishes are anything but pedestrian. Simple but unusual ways to prepare familiar vegetables like chard, cabbage, spinach, and okra will brighten up your plate and then your face! I even included a recipe for mushroom-stuffed acorn squash that could double as a vegetarian main-dish, should you ever need one.

I also offer a quick chapter on snacks and desserts. From no-cooking-snacks to baba ganoush, I got your snacking needs covered. For dessert, how about some plantain fritters or a peach crumble!

All of the recipes offer shortcuts and substitutions when possible to keep it as easy as possible on you, the cook! I hope you enjoy this collection of recipes as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Cavelady Cooking is available exclusive via Amazon. Don’t own a Kindle? No problem! Kindle books can be read using the Free Kindle Reader App for your Web Browser, PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, or Android. In addition to reading the book, the Kindle format lets you make notes, highlight text and bookmark your favorite recipes.

People been asking me to do a baked beans recipe for their summer barbecues and picnics and whatnot, but I already have a recipe for baked beans in my Learn to Cook book. So I one-upped em and came up with this SUPER DELICIOUS ranch-style beans recipe.

Man alive, these are good! Way, way, waaayyy better than canned ranch-style beans which I’ve never even really liked. To me they’ve always had an overly-chili-powdery-taste. These beans, though. These beans, I tell you, will be a frequent guest star at our dinner table this year.

I used Mayacoba beans (aka Peruvian beans) which are similar to Pintos. You could use either of those and Great Northern would be good, too. In fact, pretty much any of the light-colored beans will work, I believe.

So you guys, I used to make my own iced coffee the old-fashioned way, with two vessels and a strainer and I made a video about that a long time ago to share my infinite knowledge on the subject of being “thrifty”.

But then guess what happened. Chris showed up with this fancy-pants Iced Toddy maker thing and all of a sudden… I. could. not. stop.

Rather, we could not stop. We were drinking iced coffee all the day long and into the night. We were going through a gallon of the shit a week. We were SO productive. So focused! It’s so simple! You have a jug with a handle. Inside the jug is a filter. In the bottom of the jug is a hole. In the hole is a rubber plug. You fill the jug with coffee and water. You let it sit overnight. The next morning, you take out the plug and out comes the deepest, darkest, smoothest coffee you ever poured down your maw. It trickles into the accompanying glass pitcher to be kept in the refrigerator and savored all week. BONUS – there’s no paper filters so you can just toss the grounds out into the compost!

But then guess what.

Chris lost the plug. Or Daisy lost the plug. Or ate the plug. At any rate, the plug was GONE. I even felt around the garbage disposal (gross!) and we looked in the compost bin. We looked everywhere. It done disappeared and life as we knew it was OVER.

IT WAS TEARING US APART.

But then Chris found out you can order replacement plugs and filters and things on the internet. So he did that. And guess what came in the mail today???

THIS!

I know it looks like drug-making supplies.

But it’s not.

Thank GAWD.

I’m going to make some more iced coffee now.

Step 1: Put a plug in it!

Step 2: Filter yourself.

Step 3: A little water, a little coffee, a little more water, a little more coffee, a little whiskey... Wait, what?

Step 4: You can't even tell what I'm doing here. This picture is pointless.

Step 5: Cover that shit and let it sit for, like, EVER. Or overnight.

All done! Pop the plug and out pours your coffee, ready for drankin'!

P.S. I have to tell you, if you end up buying this thingamajig through the link in my post, I will get about several pennies. All those pennies go to support this show! FTC rules: abided by.