It's a veggie thing

I'm starting a project: I'm going to write a cookbook for the kosher gardener. Not just a cookbook, but one that takes the beautiful vegetables that the gardener has grown and elevates them to something holy.

I have to admit, I'm reading Julie and Julia by Julie Powell, and it's given me that bug that I should be doing something ambitious, clever and foodie. So, here goes - it's gonna be bumpy and delicious, I hope!

A few notes before I begin:

1) I keep a kosher home. This isn't a problem for my garden, but a lot of the recipes I find for gardeners fall back on the heavy use of shellfish. I find this frustrating when I read those cookbooks and so I hope to remedy this.

2) Throwing a handful of halved cherry tomatoes into a frittata or tossing them with a pound of pasta isn't a very inspiring way to use my amazing garden produce. Yes, I sometimes fall back on these techniques, but I don't find I need a whole recipe to tell me how to do this. I call these recipes "cookbook fluff" - they're filler recipes. When I use the vegetables I've grown, I want them to be the stars! I want them to shine! I don't want to hide their flavor under a pile of eggs or in a nest of pasta.

3) I want a cookbook organized by quantity of vegetable. When my peas start to produce, I'll be able to pick a few each day. What do I do with 6 pea pods? (Well, I usually just eat them before I leave the garden...) What will I do with 100 pea pods when production really starts to pick up?

4) My favorite, and most inspiring cookbook is Molly Katzen's Vegtable Heaven. I hope to live up to the standard for eating that she has set, be inspired by her use of spices, and inspire others to eat the most amazing produce on the planet - that which has been coaxed from the ground with their hands. Inch by inch, row by row.