Howdy! My name is pronounced keer (like beer)-sten and I?m a seasonal eater. Since 2006 I?ve been eating with the seasons via Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares.

At home I cook for my kids and my frequently-vegetarian sometimes-deployed spouse, as well as baking for my book group and donating to the PTO-sponsored teacher luncheons. I work as a prep cook in the scratch kitchen of a local Italian restaurant.

I write the website Farm Fresh Feasts where I share how I feed my family year round using fresh (and preserved) produce from the farm share. Typically my recipes involve some sort of locally-sourced ingredient?but not always! Sometimes it?s just a great deal at the store. To help other folks like me, wondering what the heck to do with kohlrabi or beets or a case of oranges from the marching band Fruit Fundraiser, I created a Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This alphabetically-structured resource helps folks use the fruits of their farmers? labors, not waste them, because I hate to throw out food. I even compost the vegetable waste from work!
Eating local, seasonal produce means that my cooking changes over the course of the year depending on what?s grown nearby. We eat salads and grilled items in the summer, soups and baked items in the winter, and on warm Fall or cool spring days anything goes.

One entree I cook year round is pizza. In the summer, when my 1920?s era house cannot cope with a blazingly hot oven, I grill my family?s...