26 Apr Serving Local Food in Reno: What Ingredients Do We Consider Garden MUSTS?

Excellent chefs know to forage for high-quality foods locally. Cooking with locally grown produce encourages the use of seasonal ingredients and guarantees the most flavorful foods for your table. Not only do Josh and Whitney forage for the freshest local food in Reno, they grow them too! Here is a list of their favorite seasonal staples from their own bountiful, high-desert garden.

Zucchini and Other Summer Squashes: They are high yielding and much more flavorful than store bought varieties.

Tomatoes: We love the sungolds because of the high yields. Whether you’re eating them raw, cooked, dehydrated or sun-dried, sungold tomatoes are super sweet and versatile.

Peppers: We really like the variety that grows well where our garden is, off of Callahan ranch at 5700 ft. Our favorites are shishito, jalapeño and poblano

Herbs: In our garden, heartier herbs like rosemary, sage, thyme and zaatar seem to do better than the softer ones such as basil and cilantro.

Edible flowers: Borage, a bright blue/purple flower that tastes like cucumber has a very high yield and is a beautiful topping to salads and raw fish dishes in the summertime. We let our onions go to blossom too! The flowers have a very strong and floral onion flavor which is a great topping to grilled steaks and other meats.

Root vegetables: All root vegetables do really well in our garden.  Our favorites include a wide variety of carrots, turnips, radish and beets.

Asparagus: Our asparagus has been in our garden for almost 15 years and we eat them raw right after we pick them. We grill them as well, but nothing compares to the sweet and nutty flavor of just picked asparagus.

Ducks and chickens! They are a ‘must’ in our garden because they love to forage for bugs that are unwanted in the garden and honestly, what is better than fresh eggs? We just got 7 chicks and 2 ducklings.

(All heirloom varieties will begin to lay at around 6 months.)