In short, I’ve learned that if I am open to the at bounty lies outside the kitchen door, I can connect with what eating truly fresh food in season is all about. I can free myself  from the trap of thinking it’s reasonable to eat tomatoes and lettuce during the dead of a Pacific Northwest winter or fresh strawberries outside of their luscious, local June season. I can revel in the joy of anticipating new potatoes, of discovering that fava beans that are ready by June when not much else is, and of putting up my own roasted red peppers for winter.

Growing your own comes at a cost of course. Some years things don’t produce well.There’s turning the compost piles, if you’re low tech like me and just use a pitch fork. And then there’s straightening up from yet another row and leaning wistfully on your hoe to watch your neighbors heading off to something spiff like a farm-to-table dinner in wine country or a luxurious yoga class.

My experience is, though, that the garden brings its own enduring joy. It’s own peace of mind. The beauty of the garden is simply and undeniably luxurious. Then there’s the exercise you get, all without having to pay for a class or head off to the pool. And we haven’t even gotten around to the savings on our food bills. Or how by being less dependent on the cash economy, we can trade in our 40-hour weeks for part-time work.

Quite the deal a kitchen garden is. Mental health therapy. Significant cash savings. (As in I’ve probably spent all of $20 on fresh produce over the past year.) Physical exercise. And fresh delicious food.

On the stove at the moment is a clam chowder. Potatoes and frozen green beans from last summer’s harvest, fresh pulled leeks and carrots, and a can of clams. I even have a few leggy fronds of parsley from the kitchen window pot to add right before serving so it keeps it’s “somewhere-over-the-rainbow color” as I put it in one book or another.

All in all, not bad for the eve of winter solstice when it’s all we can to do keep the home fires burning.

Warm salads are another favorite of mine. Here I rely on garden spaghetti squash that’s keeps all winter in the basement or even in right in the kitchen–and is easy to bake. Then some freshly picked kale, flash cooked with garlic and red chile flakes. Dress with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and coarse salt. Garnish with ruby pomegranates jewels and a polite chop of walnuts.

Pretty tasty no matter what carb and protein you pair it with. And it even works for the vegans in the crowd. Merry Howdy!

Here’s my driveway in the spring before the arbor I’ve been nursing along kicks in.

Then in early summer.

Finally in full on summer.

And then in all its glory before the end of the season comes.

And then, as Jackson Browne sang, When the spring ‘light comes streaming in, I’ll get up and do it again’ next year…

Once we tasted her pumpkin pie and declared it a home run clear up, over and out of the park–every bit as good as the ones mama used to make–she divulged her secret.

“Acorn squash from the garden.” To her husband’s lifted brows, she explained that she was darned if she’d buy official pumpkin when she had perfectly good winter squash in the house.

Laura with some of her Liberty apple harvest a couple years ago

Yes! This is the kind of talk thrifty, innovative cooks understand. Cooks who are primarily concerned with where their ingredients are sourced. Cooks who realize that threads running through flavor and sustainability and health will make whole cloth if we just let them.

Speaking of health. Laura didn’t stop with the filling for her pumpkin pie. She made her butter crust from 100 percent whole wheat pastry flour–flour that I’d bet half a hundred, came from the organic bulk bins.

Yah. My kind of eating. My kind of cook. Laura gets it.

(Camera was nowhere in sight to capture Laura’s acorn squashes or her 2009 pie, but here’s one of my own winter squash harvests. Those spaghetti squashes are such charmers piled up in their basket.)

Kitchen gardens aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, of course. So Bion Bartning, who also thinks farmers markets price many of us out, has come up with a new model. He runs a little store in Manhatten, Basis Market, that carries local produce, dairy, and meat products–all at prices substantially lower than farmers markets and all labeled by the farm from which they came.

This is what he told Food and Wine: “We’re finding producers who are willing to be fair in their pricing, and we’re being fair in what we charge.”

Here’s one I just got from Bob, friend in Northern Arizona, who has grown a four-season organic garden for years with his wife, Beth:

“I put some throw-away skylights over the spinach in the garden. So we have had fresh spinach to go with our sprouts all winter.” Bob’s a carpenter and roofer–not to mention a climber and caver. He and Beth have salvaged and recycled since the Sixties. As a result, they’ve had enough funds while raising two boys and building a home to hike, ski, and raft the best of the West. That’s the Bohemian live for you.

He even included a photo. Pretty hip cold frame, Bob. Thanks.

Longtime family friend Matt Loggins was here over the weekend so we grilled. It was such a snap.

I brined the shrimp for a half hour in salty water, made a salad out of leftover quinoa, garden lettuces, onion, and cashew cilantro pesto (Cooking Beyond Measure, page 75).

Other than that it was just making the rounds in the garden for squash and peppers–all of which went directly onto the grill without even venturing into the kitchen first. (They were washed well enough from the mornings watering, needed nary a speck of oil, and I had a pocket knife handy.)

Yes. From the garden to the grill. My kind of cooking.

There’s a reason we all love carrots. They’re sweet and flavorful. Especially fresh carrots.

Then if you’re lucky and have a planter full of pink zinnias–like I do compliments of my neighbor Sarah–all’s left to do is take your salad out by the flowers and enjoy.

Linda’s my new pal. She knows about computers and business and such. So what could I do when she arrived once again to help the cause, but offer a munch.

It was mainly leftovers that took me 15 minutes to pull together. Mahi mahi (because when I talked to Gary last week that was what he was making) and crook neck squash from the grill that I’d done the night before, lettuces from the garden, and warmed corn tortillas into which to fold the fish along with some blue cheese.

The usual suspects were there: fish sauce and red chile into the warmed mahi mahi, olive oil worked onto the lettuces with my hands, fresh cracked pepper, pinches of coarse salt.

Linda ate with the same relish I do. She loved my simple, affordable measurefree food. She can come to dinner at mi casa any time.

Speaking of the living being easy, you might notice the braids of garlic in the photo. I spent a joyful evening a couple weeks ago harvesting. It’s a first for me to grow a year’s supply of garlic and the feeling of provisioning the larder is quite nice. My braids ain’t half bad either for a newbie, don’t you think?

I have to credit the farmers’ market vendors for getting me hip to green garlic. And once again, now I’m growing my own. You plant garlic in the fall, and each clove you nestle down into the earth will return the favor by becoming a whole bulb.

This time of year when the garlic is starting to really grow, you can find it anywhere between the size of a scallion (spring onion) or larger in circumference as the plants inch their way into maturity. What’s missing, though, are the papery husks around the tiny forming cloves. That makes green garlic a cook’s delight, since all you do is slice it up just a like a scallion.

Expect green garlic to be mild as well. No loud aroma at all. Just a hint of garlic that does so much for most anything primavera: whole grains like quinoa, whole grain bruschettas, whole grain pizzas, and of course, trusty spaghetti squash (so vastly superior to pasty white flour pastas).

Also–and here’s the real scoop behind green garlic as far as I’m concerned: In the spring when the fall garlic you planted is maturing, sometimes you need to think the patch some–weed out the plants that ended up too close together to allow the winter bulbs plenty of room to form. That’s why green garlic comes into my kitchen–and I why I suspect it winds up at farmers markets.