As we change seasons, we’re talking seasonal foods with chef Zane Dearien at a unique restaurant in St. Louis’ Central West End — Bowood by Niche. The restaurant is paired with a garden center, providing a perfect patio environment to enjoy a relaxed meal with friends and family. Our conversation focuses on the importance of utilizing seasonal foods and the on-site herb garden at the restaurant, and ways home cooks can up their game too.

A full transcript created by Castmagic AI is available.

Chef Zane Dearien fanning the flames at Bowood by Niche. Photo by Matthew Holleran.

Infusing Food & Seasonality

Zane acknowledges that the farm-to-table buzz may not be the same as it was years ago, but the philosophy and practice of having respect for how food is produced and stewarding it is still near and dear to the heart of many.

And if you are there to enjoy a meal, you can’t help but feel it too, especially if you sit in the patio area. As Zane says, it feels more old world thanks to the abundance of plants in the nursery and the community feel.

Look at the view from my side of the microphone during our interview.

Looking at the menu, the first thing that catches your attention is their unwavering commitment to working with seasonal ingredients. The menu is a reflection of the incredible flavors that each season brings, and it’s awe-inspiring to see how dishes are crafted dishes that truly capture the essence of each ingredient’s peak freshness.

From vibrant spring salads to hearty fall stews (and Zane is looking forward to comfort foods that come with cooler weather & live fire seasonal cooking!), the creativity that emerges from Bowood’s kitchen is nothing short of spectacular.

The view of the outdoor kitchen is also pretty spectacular.

Raising Herbs on the Roof

One aspect of cooking that I’ve always been intrigued by is the use of fresh herbs. Whether it’s a sprinkle of basil on a caprese salad or a pinch of rosemary in a hearty stew, herbs have the power to elevate flavors and add a touch of freshness to any dish. I’ve even been known to have a planter right out the front door so it’s just a few steps from my kitchen.

Zane shared with me his passion for growing herbs right at the restaurant. He explained that having a herb garden is not only practical but also allows them to provide the freshest ingredients to their customers. There are huge planters of herbs on the patio and a much larger herb garden on the roof. 

When it comes to using herbs in the kitchen, Zane believes in the power of simplicity. He emphasized that a sprinkle or a small handful of freshly chopped herbs can completely transform a dish. Whether you’re adding them at the beginning of the cooking process or using them as a final garnish, herbs have the ability to provide a burst of aromatics and bring life to any meal.

I asked Zane about the herbs that he thinks are a must have and he gave a list: basil, mint, chives, parsley and thyme with two additions that stood out. He added chevril which is closely related to parsley but adds in some complexity that he tends to choose over cilantro. And one that we’ve talked about a lot — lavender which is especially good at attracting pollinators that help keep that herb garden thriving outdoors. As the temps drop, indoor growing means a bit of additional light. 

Speaking of indoors and light… the indoor dining rooms are pretty awesome too!

A Culinary Niche in St. Louis

Is it wrong to feel like I need to confess a love of all foods Niche-related before I sign off on the blog post? I moved to St. Louis around the time Gerard Craft, the chef who started Niche more than a decade ago began to get noticed. I started going to his restaurants there and am a forever fan. Absolutely every meal has been fantastically prepared at each and every place in the Niche Food Group, deserving each and every accolade from James Beard and everywhere else.

But there is a lot more than great food whenever you visit Niche restaurants, you feel welcomed in & comfortable. The staff is friendly but some how senses whether this is a day to chat much or let you focus on the guests you are with. Everyone seems to enjoy the work they do and want you to really enjoy your meal. You get that in the restaurants but it also is felt throughout social media too. I have well over a decade of proof in blog posts and social media shares!

Give them a follow and you will see what I mean! You can find Bowood by Niche on their website bowoodbyniche.com, Instagram at @bowoodbyniche and Zane’s chef account @zdearien. You can also check out the other locations, including: @pastariastl, @brasseriestl, @pastariadeliwine, @fordoskillerpizza,
@brasswellstl, @cinderhousestl and for those visiting Tennessee, check out @pastarianashville.

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Every year, as the holidays roll around, all the gift guides start popping up, and I have so much fun going through all of the ideas folks offer up. I love gifts from the farm, handmade gifts, and other kinds of gifts that people don’t see every day. Unique gifts that leave folks smiling and asking, “Where on earth did you find that?”

This year, I’ve been thinking through all the farmers we’ve interviewed here on the podcast, and there are so many that provide gifts that are bound to make the people in your life smile. So buckle up for the Grounded by the Farm Holiday Gift Guide! You can get these great gifts from the farm & share the farm’s story too!

Lavender Luxury

What is more luxurious than lavender? Lavender from Long Row Lavender Farm, just west of St. Louis, Missouri. Their online shop has everything from bath and body to food and cooking items (made with lavender, of course) to items for the home, like linen sprays and sachets. They’ve even got a men’s line of personal care products.

Tracy Smith, her husband Chad, and their four children started the farm several years ago as a way to spend time together outdoors. They would take things to local farmers markets and eventually decided to build a gift shop. Later a cafe was added and with seating around the farm, it’s become a popular destination. If you are nearby, make a next trip and get gifts from the farm!

• Visit the online shop: Long Row Lavender
• Listen to the Interview (includes a video tour!): Longing to Visit a Lavender Farm? Get to Making Plans!

Hams, Bacon & Other Southern Favorites!

Broadbent Foods seems to take over the steering of my car whenever I’m driving through Kentucky and my stomach says thank you. That was happening before I met and interviewed Ronnie & Beth Drennan. Since then, I may have been accused of starting a friend’s addiction to ordering online from Broadbent.

Whether I “need” bacon or not, a few packages of peppered bacon is always in order and I love the small end pieces for seasoning various things I may cook up. And putting some hot pepper jelly in a thank you gift for a weekend with friends may have earned me a forever welcome invitation.

• Visit the online shop: Broadbent Country Smokehouse meats and don’t forget to check out the pantry items, etc.
• Listen to the interview & see a behind the scenes tour: Hickory-Smoked Country Ham & Bacon on the Menu with Broadbent

Breakfast and Beyond

If you’re looking for something they really won’t find anywhere else, take a look at the Funks Grove offerings! You may remember Jeff Hake from our episode on pawpaws. Well, Jeff does more than just forage. We talked about the fruit leathers, but you have really got to take a look at their pancake and muffin mixes, sweetened with their very own pure maple sugar. If you’ve got a bread baker in your life, be sure to take a look at their heritage wheat which they sell either already ground or as whole berries for folks who either want them whole or want to grind the flour themselves. And then, of course, there’s the Maple Ramp seasoning blends, the maple black raspberry sauce, their very own, handmade fruit leather, and more. This is a small operation, so they don’t sell from their website, but you can reach out to them via email or phone and they will ship!

• Check out the Funks Grove offerings: https://www.funkspuremaplesirup.com/
• Give them a call or email to check availability: ​​(309) 874-3360 • info@funkspuremaplesirup.com
• Find shops that sell their products (in Illinois)
• Listen to the interview and take a tour: Foraging Pawpaws, Fruit Farming and Making Fruit Leather in Funk’s Grove

Fresh Avocado Delivery

The search for the perfect avocado is a familiar one for many of us. But avocado farmers like Mimi Holtz, who is known simply as Mimi Avocado online, know what to look for and what impacts the tasty goodness we all crave. Mimi and her family run a fourth-generation farm outside of San Diego, California, and they can take the pressure of finding the perfect grocery store avocado off by sending you the very best, perfectly picked and packed avocados directly from their farm. So if you know someone who loves their guacamole or avocado toast, an avocado box might be just the perfect gift!

• Shop for Avocados: CaliforniaAvocadosDirect.com
• Listen to the interview: Getting the Perfect Avocado For Our Kitchens & The Farm
• Take a video tour of the avocado farm

Gourmet Popcorn? Yes, PLEASE!

Something about popcorn just feels festive. But you’re not going to want to string Ella & Ollie popcorn and hang it on a tree. You’re going to want to eat every last, fluffy, delicious piece of it. Matt Helms and his family run a popcorn farm just east of St. Louis, and their popcorn is just *chef’s kiss* the best. Of course, you could string it to decorate your tree, but I prefer it drizzled with a little truffle oil or just simply air popped in their handy microwave popper and lightly salted. Seriously, this is good popcorn. In addition to giving it as gifts, I just keep it on hand for when I want a quick snack. (And yes, popcorn IS a whole-grain food!)

• Shop for popcorn, poppers, and accessories: Ella & Ollie Online Shop
• Listen to the interview: Popcorn… family legacy and local future
• Take a video tour of the farm: Family-Owned Popcorn Farm Has Quality Focus

Gifts for Teachers

The joy of discovery paired with the growing interest in where our food comes from makes food and farming a perfect way to enjoy learning. The Grounded by the Farm curriculum has a great fit for teachers, parents, troop leaders and others who spend time trying to unlock the magic of science, the utility of math, the comprehension of our language…. even ideas for entrepreneurship! It’s really limitless how many things the world of farming and food opens up.

• Grounded by the Farm Lesson Plans on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT)
• Grounded by the Farm Lesson Plans on Etsy
• Listen to our interview with Whitney Choate, the teacher who worked with us to develop this curriculum

The post Holiday Gifts from the Farm! appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Imagine the smell of a lavender farm…. it is something that will captivate your imagination for all sorts of things!Lavender farms may not be everywhere, but thanks to Long Row Lavender, just west of St. Louis, Missouri, it’s an easy drive for much of middle America. Tracy Smith shares the lessons learned about growing lavender, cooking with it, and bringing the great look and scent into your homes!

Tracy, her husband Chad and their four children started the farm several years ago as a way to spend time together outdoors. They would take things to local farmers markets, etc and eventually decided to build a gift shop. Later a cafe was added and with seating around the farm, it’s become a popular destination. Two of the kids are adults and doing their own thing but all of the family comes together now and then to get projects done, etc.

An ai-generated transcript of the podcast episode on growing lavender is available here. 

Different Varieties of Lavender

Tracy tells us there are more than 400 varieties of lavender! Long Row plants several of them but acknowledges they hardly touch the surface. And part of that is because of the location… most lavender varieties like a more temperate climate than Missouri offers.

The hybrid Phenomenal seems to best fit this farm with its slight hills. But they plant several varieties — Monstead is the second variety that does pretty well for Long Row and they try different English Garden types and love showing guest some of the various colors that come with the beautifully fragrant plants. I went out to the farm before the plants were blooming to be sure I could give people a good heads up, but even then I could see some of the differences like with the two varieties I mentioned above.

Planting Lavender

I love how encouraging Tracy is about having people grow lavender at home. And while it frightened me learning that lavender is related to mint, Tracy says the trait that means mint will spread everywhere isn’t present with lavender. With that in mind, I bought some and have decided to plant it in a pot for the summer. This fall I may find a place to plant it in a flower bed…. fingers crossed it overwinters well. I want to see how much it grows in the coming year.

Tracey said they have been playing with planting times and all at their lavender farm. She laughs saying lavender doesn’t like having wet feet anymore than people do. That is part of the reason I went with the recommendation to have it in a pot this year. so I can be sure it is draining well. The challenge of too much rain has been a problem for Long Row Lavender. In fact, the heavy rains led Long Row to make a number of changes at the farm in the past year and the rows they have planted are shorter. She thinks the rows are still plenty long and there are even more rows.

See, the rows were going north to south, but the hill slopes going east to west. When they had a lot of plants damaged last year, they moved the older plants to raised beds and decided to change the row pattern on the rest of the farm while they replanted. The rows now run east and west and have plastic mulching down to limit the amount of water that soaks in or runs further down to peony beds, etc. that do better with more rain.

If you look closely, you can see different varieties as well as different planting times. Some went in the ground last fall and the winter seems to have treated them quite well Tracy points out.

You can see some of the video we captured while touring the lavender farm in this piece we did for the Grounded by the Farm YouTube channel.

Enjoying Lavender in Many Ways!

When I talk to farmers, they always have ways of using their crop I’ve never considered, and Tracy wasn’t about to disappoint.

Walking through the show you can find all sorts of personal care, home decor and kitchen products that you will want to try (I sure did!) The team at this lavender farm make quite a few of the products in house, and they work with some suppliers on other pieces too. They offer opportunities for people to cut and create their own bundles of lavender. My niece is slowly building up a bouquet at her house… made a few cuttings already and has them hanging to dry! (She is further south.)

The cafe at Long Row offers lunch and hearing some of the things they do made it clear I need to go back when they are open.

• Ever thought of mixing a bit of lavender or herbes de provence (lavender, oregano, marjoam thyme, basil, rosemary, tarragon, and bay leaf) in on a ham sandwich?
• The idea of lavender chocolate chip cookies was a show stopper! And wow. She’s right. Lavender really compliments chocolate! It’s like mint or salt compliment chocolate.
• And I had to buy the brownie & lemon bread mixes that include lavender for Molly and I both! She loves cooking with lavender so I knew she’d love it since she didn’t have a chance to go. She even wrote a separate post on some of the ways she uses lavender in the kitchen.

Finding a Lavender Farm

I love that Tracy talks about how the family would search for lavender farms online as they were thinking about getting into this.

So often you think of lavender in the English countryside from movies, and the climate there is really better for many types of lavender. That’s why most larger lavender farms are in the Pacific Northwest. But there are lots of smaller farms like Long Row Lavender around the country. And there is even a map of US Lavender Growers who open their farms to the public!

And you can find Long Row Lavender Farm online! You can shop and learn a lot about Long Row on their website longrowlavender.com. The Long Row Lavender Instagram quickly caught my eye, the farm’s Facebook is updated regularly too.

And if you think Long Row is a good destination for you, they are just off Interstate 70. The farm & gift shop are open 10 am to 4 pm Wednesday through Saturday, and the cafe is open 11 am to 2 pm the same days. You can get dessert and coffee/drinks whenever the gift shop is open.

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When most folks think lavender, they imagine soaps, lotions, a few drops of essential oil on a pillow to help them sleep. Of course, I think of all of those things, too. I love lavender, and if something smells like lavender (actual lavender, not just weird and sweet and purple), I’m all for it. But I also like to keep lavender in my spice pantry because what a lot of folks don’t realize is how easy and delicious cooking with lavender can be!

Lavender is actually wonderful in a variety of dishes, both sweet and savory, and while I typically cook savory main dishes with it (keep reading for my pork chops recipe!), Janice brought back a couple of baking mixes from her visit to Long Row Lavender farm for me to surprise my family with over the weekend, and they were a hit!

Lavender & Chocolate?

I didn’t realize what a perfect match lavender and chocolate are! The Lavender Brownies were phenomenal, with the lavender adding just enough brightness to the flavor to elevate the whole dish from plain after-dinner brownies to something that felt fancy. It turned our dull Tuesday dinner into a special occasion. Then on Saturday, I snuck out the Lemon Lavender Bread. What a bright, fresh breakfast! Topped with a lemon-powdered sugar glaze, it was like lavender lemonade on a hot day! A perfect start to our weekend.

Now here’s the thing to remember about cooking with lavender. It compliments sweet dishes, but that is precisely because it isn’t sweet. The flavor of lavender is bright and almost astringent, similar to fresh rosemary.

Cooking with Lavender

In fact, if you aren’t sure where to start with incorporating lavender into your cooking, look for recipes that include rosemary. Many times, lavender can make a good substitute for the more familiar kitchen herb. If you want to go even easier, grab yourself a jar of herbes de Provence! Herbes de Provence is a simple blend of herbs – usually things like rosemary, thyme, basil, tarragon, and of course lavender – that is great on everything from fish to chicken to pork to salads and pasta sauces.  You can make your own, but Long Row Lavender sells a blend that is made with culinary lavender, so you know that one will be delicious and fool-proof. A great, all-purpose spice mix that can make a simple meal feel so elegant.

And that is exactly what I use for my pork chops. These pork chops are one of my go-to recipes for when I need to get dinner on the table in a hurry after coming home from Taekwondo practice and before we head off to a band concert or Girl Scout meeting. It’s just as fast as frozen chicken nuggets and so much tastier.

Pork Chops de Provence

(Even the name makes it sound special!)

The keys to this recipe are the cast iron skillet and making sure you’ve got thick, bone-in pork chops. You can do this with boneless. Heck, you could even do it with chicken breasts. But the bone-in pork chops really taste the best. The other key is the brining. Brining the pork chops ahead of time ensures they are juicy and flavorful all the way through. Yes, it is an optional step, and one I sometimes skip, but the flavor difference is apparent. Brining makes an already good dish into a great dish.

For the brine:

• 1 cup boiling or very hot water
• 4 Tablespoons kosher salt
• 3 cups cold water
• Optional aromatics in any combination: a couple of smashed garlic cloves, 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns, a piece of lemon peel, a sprig of fresh rosemary, a bay leaf, juniper berries, etc – feel free to get creative here, or just follow my standard of garlic, peppercorns, and bay.
• 4 bone-in, thick cut pork chops

Add the salt and aromatics to the boiling water and stir until the salt is completely dissolved. Add the cold water and cool your brine to room temp. Sometimes the cold water is enough to do this, other times an ice water bath does the trick. Once the brine is cool, pour it over your pork chops (I use a big casserole dish for this) and refridgerate for 30 minutes to a couple of hours.

To cook the pork chops:

• Olive oil
• Herbes de Provence
• Freshly ground black pepper

Place your big cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat to 4oo degrees. A smoking hot cast iron skillet ensures your chops will get that all important sear. Give it at least 20 minutes to heat.

While the oven and skillet heat, pull your chops out of the fridge and dry them thoroughly. If you leave them wet, they won’t sear. They’ll just steam and get weird. No one likes weird pork chops.

Rub olive oil all over your pork chops. You won’t be oiling the skillet, so make sure you get a nice thin layer all over the chops. Season with the herbes de provence and the pepper. Really rub those herbs in, even around that strip of fat at the edge. They are going to taste delicious when they sear. Now you can let your pork chops rest and relax until the skillet is ready.

Once the skillet is blazing hot, carefully pull it out of the oven and place it over high heat on the stovetop. Lay your chops carefully into the skillet in a single layer. Once you put them down, leave them alone. Don’t scoot them around or flip them or fiddle with them or peek at the underside. Just let them sizzle and sear. They will smoke a little. You may need to open a window. This is all normal.

Allow the chops to sear for 3-4 minutes. Use tongs to flip them. Not a fork. A fork will let the juices out that we’ve worked so hard to seal in. The chops should lift effortlessly from the skillet. If they stick, let them cook a little longer until they release.

Immediately after flipping the chops, transfer the whole skillet to the oven. Roast until the chops are cooked through, with an internal temp of 140-145 degrees F. This takes anywhere from 6-10 minutes.

Remove the chops from the oven and allow them to rest for at least 5 minutes. This will allow the juices to distribute through the pork and will allow the temp to come up another 5 degrees. Tent them with foil to keep them from getting cold.

Serve with a wedge of lemon, rice, and a side salad! Simple!

Would you believe I have never taken a picture of these pork chops? Probably because I’m so focused on getting them on the table so we can get the kids fed and off to their evening activities. In fact, I’ve got this meal on my meal plan for this week. Tomorrow is another one of those crazy days, so we will be having these simple, but elegant-tasting pork chops. Way better than mac and cheese and freezer chicken nuggets!

If you try this recipe, let me know in the comments! Or if you have a favorite way of cooking with lavender please do share! I love new food ideas, and Janice’s lavender farm visit got me thinking about all things lavender. What do you think about a roasted chicken with lavender? I usually use rosemary and lemon, but I bet I could sub in the lavender for the rosemary. Or a garlicky lavender foccaccia! My imagination is running wild with all the ideas here. What ideas have you tried?

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