Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, is more than the founding editor of the home cooking website The Kitchn. She is a cooking inspiration. The Kitchn was born out of Apartment Therapy, a website started by Sara Kate’s husband Maxwell whose stated mission is to “Save the world, one room at a time.”
In The Kitchn, (mission: Inspiring cooks, nourishing homes), experienced cooks and newbies alike swap recipes, tips, tricks, and tales in a chatty, well edited and lovingly curated forum shaped by Sara Kate and her devoted team. But Sara Kate’s world doesn’t revolve entirely around the kitchen. She’s also a passionate home gardener, a fact that comes out in Sara Kate’s list of her “Favorite Things” for holiday gift giving.
Written by Burpee Home Gardens Team. Burpee Home Gardens was a Supporting Sponsor of The Edible Garden.
Getting kids to make healthy food choices can be a struggle. One of the best ways to encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetable is to provide them with a sense of ownership and understanding of where their food comes from. Children-focused vegetable gardens are a great way to start.
In 2010, Burpee Home Gardens was happy to sponsor a handful of community and youth gardens all over the United States through its “I Can Grow” initiative. We saw the excitement in the participants’ eyes, and we were honored to be a part of programs like The New York Botanical Garden’s The Edible Garden, where the interest in cooking with home-grown produce was celebrated.
Now we’re thrilled to be offering even more chances for youth- and education-focused gardening programs to get the funding and plants they need to be successful and fun. The 2011 “I Can Grow” Youth Garden Award will support and sponsor urban school and community youth gardens with vegetable and herb plants, garden layout expertise, event promotion, and of course money for supplies!
Just before thrilling the audience with his amazing food, anecdotes, tips, and tricks, we got a few minutes to ask Mario what he likes about the Botanical Garden.
Turns out: He likes the Garden quite a bit. We’re blushing!
Mario loves us! He really loves us!
Stay tuned for more from Mario’s demo. We’ll be posting another video soon, and recipes, too.
Only people who leave a comment on both pages by 1 p.m. Friday, October, 15 will be entered into a drawing from which one winner will be chosen at random. We’ll announce the winner on Friday afternoon on Facebook.
What’s the prize you ask? If you’re in New York City, we’ll reserve two front-row seats at Batali’s cooking demonstration just for you and a guest, plus you’ll receive a special gift from Mario. Not in New York? Never fear! You’ll still get the gift from Mario Batali, plus a little something from us!
So remember: Don’t leave a comment here, leave it on each of the two Facebook pages. Buona fortuna!
Mario Batali loves food. I know. I once, quite by mistake, was fortunate enough to follow him and his wife around the Union Square Greenmarket here in New York City. My husband and I were shopping for dinner and were quite focused on the task at hand, but we kept bumping into the chef and his wife. His love of the market, the farmers and the community surrounding it was obvious. Here was a man who truly loves food.
I see this same love, dare I say gusto, in Mario’s selections for his raised garden bed in the Home Gardening Center here at The New York Botanical Garden. The inevitable waning of the growing season has naturally dwindled the selection remaining in the garden, but everything that is still in there is beautiful, fragrant, delicious and just begging to be cooked. When I go to visit the Home Gardening Center (it’s quite near the Cafe, and a lovely place to stroll around for a few minutes after lunch) I love playing a game with the Celebrity Chef gardens planted in conjunction with the Edible Garden: If so-and-so were to come to my house tonight to cook me dinner, what out of this garden would I ask them to cook?
Daisy Martinez is host of Viva Daisy! on the Food Network and author of Daisy Cooks! Latin Flavors that Will Rock Your World. She will present a cooking demonstration on Sunday, The Edible Garden’s final weekend.
When I was a little girl, I used to marvel at how my mother and her mother could grow anything and everything in their garden. Mama Clotilde, my maternal grandmother, would grow medicinal herbs in her garden along with a variety of beans, a banana tree, a prolific breadfruit tree, mangoes, achiote, grapefruit, yucca, and avocados. She would send us out to the garden before dinnertime to collect whatever she needed to create delicious meals. When my family moved to Staten Island in 1964, it was no small wonder that Mami’s first order of business was to set up her vegetable garden in the backyard…and what a garden it was!
Mami, like her mother before her, was born with a green thumb. I mean, the woman just has to wave her hand over anything green and she charms it like a snake charmer! In no time flat (and after a trip to a nearby stable to pick up some manure), Mami had rows of lettuce, tomatoes, beans (against the backyard fence), eggplant, sweet peppers, ajicitos dulces, cilantro, culantro, basil, rue, scallions, zucchini, sugar beats, radishes, and even watermelon! We had a peach tree in the yard that yielded juicy, delicious yellow peaches, and a plum tree that yielded sweet little black plums that we would eat by the dozen!
Mami would tend her garden with everything from coffee grinds to eggshells and involved me in the weeding, harvesting, and pest control (pie plates full of beer for slug control, anyone?). And although I assumed that I would pick up a lot of her skills through osmosis, when I got married and felt the need to start my own garden, I found that I did not inherit the green thumb that my mother, and her mother before her, had waved in my face with impunity! Not to be outdone, I headed to my local botanical garden and library, and although I cannot compete with my grandmother’s or Mami’s garden, I find that I can fend for myself these days.
I grow my own herbs, of course: I keep thyme, lemon thyme, cinnamon basil and regular basil, cilantro, chiles, sage, and parsley. This year I grew jalapeno, Madagascar hot chiles, plum tomatoes, and sweet fennel. I have a couple of blueberry bushes that my children hit up around breakfast time everyday during the summer, and my raspberry bushes aren’t too shabby either. It is a humble, if inadequate homage to Mami and Mama Clotilde’s gardens of paradise, but an homage nonetheless. I can only hope that my simple little garden serves to inspire my daughter (and sons!) to one day have one of their own.
Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, is more than the founding editor of the home cooking website The Kitchn. She is a cooking inspiration. The Kitchn was born out of Apartment Therapy, a website started by Sara Kate’s husband Maxwell whose stated mission is to “Save the world, one room at a time.”
