Quick

Elote—roasted corn on the cob spiked with salty cheese, creamy mayo, lime, and chile powder—is traditional Mexican street food, slightly exotic but homey enough to anyone who has scarfed roast corn at a state fair. It’s also solid party food: guests can garnish their own, and because the pulled-down husk is used as a handle, it can easily be eaten standing up. Cotija cheese, widely available in supermarkets and Mexican tiendas, is a crumbly aged cow’s-milk cheese, weirdly similar to both feta and Parmesan, and either can be substituted here.

These are good as a savory side or drizzled with honey or sorghum for breakfast.

Whenever we get a bucket of lemon verbena from Bill Dow, former doctor and for thirty years now a farmer on his Ayrshire Farm, its powerful scent takes over the kitchen and has me woozy trying to come up with different ways of using it. It’s one of those delicious aromatic herbs like winter savory, lavender, and rau ram (Vietnamese cilantro)—intoxicating when held in a big fresh bunch but tough to take as the main flavor in a meal. Lemon verbena goes well with summer fruits like watermelon and peaches, adds a mystery flavor when stuffed inside a roast chicken, and makes a fine sherbet. It’s easy to grow, and if you find yourself with a bumper crop on the eve of the first frost, it is simple to preserve it by grinding the leaves along with some white sugar in a food processor until it combines into aromatic, bright green sand. The sugar will last perfectly for months in the freezer and can be used to flavor drinks, ice creams, custards, and fruit compotes.

Frying fish in peanut oil (like using lard for fried chicken) gives catfish the crispiest, least greasy coating imaginable.

Pea greens are the immature green tendrils of the pea plant and often have a fresher “pea” flavor than garden peas themselves. Chive blossoms appear here for a few weeks in early spring and add a mellow onion flavor to everything from salad greens, to fresh sashimi, to buttermilk mashed potatoes. To use them, just pull the individual lavender petals off the chive blossom and sprinkle them directly on top of the salad after it is dressed.

This was one of the coldest winters here anyone can remember and many producers harvested root vegetables from underneath a cover of snow. It was hard on the farmers but great for the carrots, which didn’t get prettier but definitely got sweeter while resting in the cold winter earth. Carrots aside, early spring is the time to eat raw vegetables, especially at Fickle Creek. Gather as many colors, textures, and flavors as you can, such as small fennel, carrots, and radishes but also sweet scallions, baby turnips, and hearts of butter lettuce. Good on their own, they are of course also delicious with homemade mayonnaise. If you have an immersion or stick blender, you can make your own mayonnaise in 2 minutes.

This dish is all about timing: poach the eggs first and keep them in a warm spot.

I ate this magical meal at Girl Scout camp and then thought about it for the next thirty-odd years until we went camping in the mountains near Joe’s. It’s a full breakfast in a paper bag, easy to make if you already have a campfire burning (or hot embers in a charcoal grill or fireplace), portable, and delicious. As the bacon in the bottom of the paper bag renders and becomes crispy-chewy, the fat protects the paper from burning and gently steams the egg. This cannot be prepared in advance: after the eggs are cracked, the bags should be dangling over the hot coals within a minute. If your mess hall prefers scrambled eggs, they work well, too.