Eating With The Season: Broccoli Rabe

Have you planted your garden yet?  If you live in the Northeast of the United States like I do, it is just about time to begin planting warm weather vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant and peppers.  Cold weather vegetables - salad greens, leafy greens, cabbage and broccoli - should have been planted a month ago.

People ask me often my reasons for why I love (obsessed might be a better word!) gardening and I easily rattle off several.  As a culinary nutritionist I see the huge benefit in growing my own herbs and vegetables.  The nutrient content is higher in freshly picked organic produce and vegetables taste better this way.  My vegetables will also never be seen on any dirty dozen list.

It also forces me to get inventive.  When you pull a bumper crop of 60 cucumbers off the vine, cucumber recipes need to get created!

Gardening taps into my need to de-stress, relax and renew (I go into more detail here).  In a world of moving, shuffling and multitasking, gardening forces you to be in the quiet of the plants and settle into something that doesn't require a whole lot of brain power. Hmm, feels relaxing just writing about it.

This year I decided to try my hand at broccoli rabe, a dark leafy green that is also know in other parts of the world as rapini (..read the rest of this post by clicking here. Then jump over to the recipe for Broccoli Rabe Pesto)