• red cabbage
• Chinese broccoli

Now i've had red cabbage before, but I've never cooked it myself - so this is something new, in a sense. And the Chinese broccoli is completely new to me, so that'll be fun.

Nettles are a family of flowering plant that's native in the greater DC area. The plants are covered in small, brittle hairs that contain a chemical cocktail that stings if it pierces the skin - they're the embodiment of the attack plants in the Harry Potter series of books. This is a natural defense for the nettle in the wild, and a deterrent to many amateur chefs. The sign over the basket containing bags of nettles said "wear rubber gloves when handling them."

And they're correct: the things do sting, even through thin work gloves. Apparently it is possible to avoid the sting with careful handling, but better safe than uncomfortable. And the best thing: cooking or crushing the nettles destroys the defense mechanism, and they're very tasty, nutrient-rich, and their deep green color adds a nice contrast to soups and sauces.

So last night, I donned the gloves and made my first nettle dish. A big tip 'o the hat to Chocolate & Zucchini for the recipe.

Nettle Soup (Soupe aux Orties)

• A dab of butter
• One medium onion, peeled and sliced
• Two small potatoes for mashing (or one large), peeled and sliced*
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• One bunch of young stinging nettles
• Freshly ground pepper

* - I didn't peel the white potatoes I used, and the soup's consistency was fine. I'd imagine that a tough-skinned russet might be a bit too fibrous, though.

1. Melt the butter in a medium soup pot over medium heat.
2. Add in the onion, and cook for five minutes, until softened, stirring regularly to avoid coloring.
3. Add in the potatoes and salt, and pour cold water or stock to cover by about an inch. Cover with a lid, bring to a simmer, and cook for ten minutes, or until the potatoes are soft (test this with the tip of a knife).
4. While potatoes cook, put on rubber gloves and pluck the nettle leaves from the tough, fibrous stems (discard the stems). Rinse the leaves thoroughly in cold water.
5. When the potatoes are cooked, add in the nettles (they'll shrink rapidly once in the presence of steam), and cook for five more minutes, until the leaves are soft and wilted.
6. Purée with an immersion blender (or in batches in a blender).
7. Grind in some pepper, taste, and adjust the seasoning.

Serve hot, preferably with fresh, crusty bread.

Notes:

I used thin vinyl "handyman" gloves, and still got stung in a few places, so if you're using something thin, double-layer. The sting wears off in about a day, give or take. Aloe and cortisone creams can help alleviate the itch and burn.

Also, the amount of salt listed in the recipe was a bit too little for the batch I made - thus the call to adjust seasonings in the end. If you want more kick, add a little cayenne pepper toward the end, before blending.

A big tip 'o the hat to Chocolate & Zucchini for the recipe.

This week we celebrated their return by buying:

• Milk
• Eggs
• Golden beets
• Watercress
• Grape tomatoes
• Spring lettuce
• A cucumber
• Pink lady apples
• A variety of cooking apples
• An onion
• Hon tsai tai (an Asian green particularly good in the spring)
• Red spring onions
• A baguette
• Croissants
• Apple tartes (these were especially tasty!)
• Cheddar
• Strawberry yogurt
• Orange poppies
• Daffodils
• A purple hyacinth

Next week, we're looking forward to blueberry scones and microgreens and some other spring Asian greens. And as the weather gets a bit warmer, we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for rhubarb, wild mushrooms, and ramps.

The Heurich family is finally shuttering the last vestiges of their brewing empire, effective immediately. It's been many years since the beer was brewed in the District, at their once landmark factory at the Watergate (since replaced by the infamous apartment and office complex of All The President's Men fame). Even though the beer was being brewed out-of-District, it still used the old family recipes.

But now it is no more. Buy some if you find it, because this is the end.

We trekked out into the perfect Indian summer late-Sunday-morning sun to find something to fill our tummies and our souls.

We came home an hour later with:

• A new kind of soap the scent of which Ruth Ann's daughter Rachel described as lying down on a forest carpet of pine needles and fall leaves
• A half-gallon of whole milk (Rudi has promised me tapioca this week)
• A half-gallon of apple cider (because the house smells so nice when it's cooking on the stove)
• Jicama (a South American root vegetable that I'm eager to try)
• Turkish eggplant
• Peppers in fall colors
• Tomatoes from a greenhouse
• Broccoli for soup
• Leeks for soup
• Gigantic red beets (almost as big as your head!)
• Suncrisp apples
• A yellow onion
• Young, fresh garlic
• Brussels sprouts
• Mascarpone
• Blueberry scones

Next week I'm going to pick up nuts (if they still have some) and winter squash. I just wasn't ready to switch seasons quite yet!

To me, a whiff of the aroma of roasting coffee reminds me of teenage days and nights spent at Salt Lake Roasting Company, where their huge roasters filled the air with the pungent and arousing odes of freshly-cracked Guatemala Antigua, Tanzanian Peaberry, or their Morning Thunder blend (still a fave).

A well-brewed pot of coffee is one of the closest things to true perfection I can imagine. The problem is that it's very tough to find the ideal cup from a home pot. Add to that the challenge of making a top-notch espresso or frothy cappuccino, with perfect crema on top.

Fear not! Help is a mouse-click away!

The folks at GimmeCoffee have created one of the best online resources for the hobbyist brewer: LearnCoffee has PDF guides (with pictures) that provide step-by-step instructions for brewing the perfect coffee, espresso or steamed milk.

Granted, these guides are not without fault - as Kirstin points out, the steamed milk guide doesn't cover the delicate issue of adding flavor shots to steamed milk (it sometimes results in curdled milk - blech!). But they're a wonderful resource for those wishing to improve their "game" with coffee.

I started off with the best of intentions and self-restraint, but as the morning wore on (and I got hungrier), the basket began to get heavier until finally it overflowed and I was forced to accept a bag or two, as well.

I came home with:

• blueberries (the last of the season)
• peaches
• nectarines
• two kinds of lettuce
• Red Malabar spinach
• red and orange cherry tomatoes
• a yellow tomato
• two green tomatoes (for frying)
• seconds tomatoes (for gazpacho)
• Thai eggplants
• a giant head of cabbage
• beans (they might be something closely related to a cranberry bean, but I can't remember what kind they said they were)
• corn on the cob
• leeks (the first of the season; of course, I forgot to buy brocolli to make soup with)
• squash (five pounds -- including pattypans, bicolors, dark yellows, and star-shaped ones -- it got cheaper the more you bought and I figured I could make five pounds stretch to two, maybe three, weeks)
• blueberry scones
• milk
• a giant double sunflower

Enter Cook's Thesaurus, a great site that serves an important purpose: finding substitute ingredients when you are missing that certain, special, essential ingredient. In this case, I was missing asefetida, a spice that falls somewhere around an onion and garlic mixture. It turns out that I can use onion powder and/or garlic powder as a substitute - recipe saved!

(Note: I'm working on fixing the links along the sidebar, as we have lots of good sites that deserve a link - like Cook's Thesaurus. This will be fixed shortly.)

On a hot and sticky summer day, a cold salad is often the best form of light fare. When you already have a diminished appetite due to the human tendency to shut down when it's oppressively hot, the salad is a welcome delight. The summer brings with it a lot of green salad-friendly ingredients: lettuce of all shapes and sizes, tomatoes in various hues, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, bell peppers, avocado, endive, berries, edible flowers... this list could go on and on. The Dupont Circle Freshfarm Market is a sea of flavors and colors during the summer, with local and semi-local farmers displaying a cornucopia of incredients, many of which would be most tasty in a salad.

So what I'm looking for is salad recipes. It could be a green salad, an egg salad, a new twist on a tuna salad, or possibly a Utah-friendly Jell-O salad. Anything goes - have fun!

And please post your recipes in the comments section! Don't be afraid - we don't bite.