Potato Salad with Herbs, Greens, Cheese & Munchin’ Mix

Crazy Mixed up Preserved Lemon Tabouli with Sprouts

EDIBLE PLANET, A Year of Herbs, Weeds, Greens and Grit at Eva’s Garden, by Didi Emmons

SUMMARY of EDIBLE PLANET

This is a cookbook about a farm, a farmer and a cook.  Eva Sommaripa is a brazen 69 year-old farmer.  Forty years ago, she began growing herbs and greens for her family.  A few years later, her garden evolved into a bucolic commercial 2-acre organic farm, growing over 200 uncommon herbs, greens, and edible weeds that are highly sought out by Boston’s top chefs.  This unconventional farm is a visual and culinary odyssey, impossible to absorb in just one day, with dozens of cultivated plants that were once wild.  After hearing many chef friends talk about Eva’s farm, Didi Emmons decided to visit herself.  As a chef and author, Didi was very familiar with quality produce, but nothing prepared her for Eva’s garden. The soil was a deep black purple.  The plants were so alive they seemed to inhale in unison as if they were plugged into one giant set of earthly lungs.  When she walked into the first greenhouse, the fragrances of the herbs were so potent they made her unsteady. She nibbled on lemon balm, rosemary, and many herbs she didn’t recognize, all setting off explosions of bliss in her mouth. In the ten years that have followed that fateful day, Didi has been visiting Eva regularly, cooking up original meals in the tiny galley kitchen for Eva’s flowing stream of friends, which makes for a farm that is as much about community as it is about selling herbs and greens.

But is the food that Eva grows and forages that impresses Didi the most.