Last week, my cousin-neighbor watched a couple of my kids while I did Something Or Other. When I picked them up, she said, “We planted a cover crop of lambsquarters. Would you like some?” And then she handed me a grocery store bag packed full of weeds.

I wasn’t completely thrilled, I must admit. Weeds sounded rather sub par. Inferior. Like trashy real greens. But I said Sure, and How do you cook them, and then I took the bag home and stuffed it in the crisper where I mostly forgot about it for several days.

But then Sunday noon rolled around. I was heating up leftover rice and chicken (a meal that I will be telling you about in very short order because it is THE BEST CHICKEN EVER), had pulled some na’an out of the freezer (a little shop in town sells real na’an, not that fake stuff Costco sells), and was fishing around for a vegetable that wasn’t green beans when I remembered the weeds.

What the heck, I thought, and grabbed a big handful of weeds and commenced a-plucking leaves from stalks. My hands got sandy-gritty from the leaf fuzz (though the plants didn’t seem that dirty), so I gave them a good washing and salad-spinner spinning before tossing them in a skillet along with some sizzling butter. The weeds cooked down lickety split. I sprinkled them with salt, gave them a hearty drizzle of lemon, and you know what? They were fabulous. Texture-wise, they’re like a cross between tender spinach and baby kale and something else…maybe celery leaves? Flavor-wise, they’re like any other mild-tasting, sweet green: utterly delicious.

We feasted on those weeds all week long. I cooked them up to eat alongside our beans and rice, and another time I threw a couple large handfuls of the chopped leaves into a pot of soupy beans, spinach, and salsa. I sautéed a bunch to use as a stuffing for a light sushi supper. And last night I cooked up the very last of the weeds and stuffed them into spicy pork-and-feta tortilla wraps.

Lambsquarters would be a splendid addition to countless dishes—think quiche and soup, for starters—anything that calls for cooked greens, really. Packed with protein, iron, calcium, and vitamin C, A, B1, and B2, they are super healthy, even more so, in some regards, than spinach and cabbage.

Moral of the story: If someone ever offers you a bag of weeds, snatch those babies up.

Sautéed Lambsquarters with Lemon

a large bowl of lambsquarters
1 tablespoon butter
salt
lemon wedges

Pluck the leaves from the thicker stems (just because they can be a little tough), but don’t bother to separate out the tender baby stems. Wash well and spin dry.

Sizzle a pat of butter in a skillet and then toss in a great mountain of the weeds. Push them around for 1-2 minutes until wilted and dark green. Sprinkle with coarse salt and lemon juice. Serve hot.

Add skillet-cooked (or steamed) greens to any number of soups and pots of beans.

Note: my cousin-neighbor said not to eat the lambsquarters raw. I can’t remember why, and since I didn’t taste them raw myself, I don’t know. Maybe because of the fuzzy texture? Or perhaps they have a bitter flavor? (Oh wait. Right here it says that the leaves have oxalic acid which can make your throat burn. So there you go.)

This same time, years previous: after one year: Costco reflections, finding my answers, the quotidian (5.20.13), up at the property, the boring blues, and fowl-ness.

Just a few weeks after my husband finished putting in the fence, my husband’s co-worker purchased a bunch of steers and then offered to sell a couple of them to us. The timing was perfect, so we jumped at the offer.

It’s about time we put those couple extra acres to good use. For awhile there, I wondered if it’d ever happen. When I credited my husband’s farming plunge to his friend’s push, my husband said, “No, it’s not because of him. It’s because we finally have fence. I told you we’d get animals when I got the fence up.”

So now we have two steers, numbers 20 and 26. The plan is to sell them once they get big. Or maybe we’ll have one butchered for ourselves (and our beef-eating friends)? We’ll see. In the meantime, the field gets mowed and the animals get fat. It all feels terribly productive, but in a deliciously lazy sort of way.

My daughter wants to train the steers to do tricks and go over jumps. I wouldn’t be surprised if she figures out a way to ride them, too. Less than twenty-four hours after they arrived and she’d already coaxed them into letting her give them hugs.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (5.18.15), campfire cooking, the quotidian (5.19.14), my favorite things, rhubarb streusel muffins, and caramel cake.

We came home from the hospital to a stocked fridge, thanks to my sister-in-law. She had bulked it up with all sorts of nourishing casseroles and goodies, including a bag filled with six chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookies. After lunch one day, I handed out the cookies to the kids for their snack before settling down on the sofa to eat mine with my coffee.

One bite and I was awash in regret. Why, oh why, had I shared the cookies? If I would’ve kept my big mouth shut and pretended they didn’t exist, the kids would’ve been none the wiser and I could have had them all to myself! But it was too late. The cookies were out of the bag, so to speak. So I settled for quickly tapping out an email recipe request to my sister-in-law in between bites.

She emailed right back. The recipe, turns out, came from my aunt’s cookbook. A quick skim of the recipe and I was on board. But from there, things went downhill. The recipe called for chocolate syrup of which I had none, and since I wasn’t about to run to the store for a bottle of sludgy chemicals, I had to make it from scratch. Then the recipe my mother recommended (from my aunt’s daughter’s—i.e. my cousin’s—blog) called for evaporated milk of which—you guessed it—I had none. So I had to make that, too.

At least I didn’t have to milk the cow.

The recipe did eventually come together, though. And one afternoon while a friend was visiting, I baked those cookies right up. My friend, bless her heart, took it upon herself to document the Jennifer-assembling-the-cookies moment with my camera. This is what I look like while making cookies and yakking my head off, thank you, friend.

The cookies remind me of whoopie pies, for obvious reasons (chocolate cookies with a filling, duh), but these—the cookie part, anyway—is completely different: chewy and tender, not at all cake-y. The cookies are rich and dark, and they do a dandy job of meeting the peanut butter-and-chocolate craving. The kids love them, my husband loves them, and I love them. Win.

Oh, and did I mention they’re one hundred percent whole wheat? ‘Tis true! ‘Course, doesn’t mean a thing, considering how sweet they are and all. But still, kinda cool.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies 
Adapted from Baking With Whole Grains.

I recommend making a double batch. In fact, I recommend it so strongly that I’m doubling the recipe for you, right here, right now. Freezers and friends exist for a reason, though you probably won’t need either in the case of these cookies.

For the cocoa, I used Wilbur Dutch Processed Cocoa. It’s delicious and devilishly dark.

for the dough:
2 sticks, plus 2 tablespoons, butter
1 cup cocoa powder
½ cup chocolate syrup
¼ cup natural peanut butter
2 eggs
2 cups brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1½ cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat bread flour
1½ teaspoons baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt

Melt the butter over low heat. Stir in the cocoa, chocolate syrup, and peanut butter and remove from heat.

Beat together the eggs and brown sugar. Add the cocoa-butter mixture. Stir in the dry ingredients. The dough will be slightly runny, like a thick brownie batter. Cover tightly and chill in the fridge overnight.

Dollop small scoops (or large, if you want giant cookies) of dough onto greased baking sheets and bake for 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees. The cookies should be set in the middle, but just barely. They are chewier if slightly under done.

Cool completely and sandwich together with the filling. Individually wrap cookies in plastic before piling them into a bag and freezing.

for the filling: 
4 tablespoons butter
½ cup natural peanut butter
½ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
5½ cups powdered sugar, sifted

Beat together the butter and peanut butter. Add the remaining ingredients and beat until smooth. This makes plenty of filling—I even had a little leftover—so be generous when assembling the cookies. 

This same time, years previous: baked brown rice, strawberry spinach salad, and cinnamon tea biscuits.