Tag: Kitchen Garden

AI Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut butter cookies made with a recipe created by artificial intelligence.

Suddenly there were three open jars of peanut butter in the house. I had to do something with them, and had been fancying a peanut butter cookie the way Mother used to make them. It started simply enough. I typed “Recipe for vegan peanut butter cookies” in the artificial intelligence chat box. It returned this recipe in a couple of seconds:

Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup brown sugar (or coconut sugar)
1/4 cup plant milk (almond, soy, oat, etc.)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a bowl, mix peanut butter and brown sugar until smooth.
Stir in plant milk and vanilla.
Add flour, baking soda, and salt and mix until a dough forms.
Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on the baking sheet.
Press each with a fork in a crisscross pattern.
Bake 10–12 minutes until edges are lightly golden.

Let cool on the pan for about 5 minutes before moving them.

Resisting a temptation to change the recipe, I made them and mentioned in my chat bot: “I tried. Cookies seemed heavy.”

In its “that can happen” way of hiding failure while attempting to placate me, it responded, “Vegan peanut butter cookies can easily turn out heavy or dense. A few small things usually cause it. Here are the most common fixes and a lighter recipe that tends to work better.” With all the large language modeling, couldn’t you have done something to deal with this before posting the recipe? No. AI can’t help itself.

Back and forth we went, refining the recipe I eventually wrote in the workbook with culinary experiments. I will bake them again before putting it in the permanent cookbook. Finally, I said what was on my mind:

To address texture issues, would I be better off to consult cookbooks that place this recipe in the context of a specific culinary culture, such as Regan Daley’s In the Sweet Kitchen: The Definitive Baker’s Companion?

The chat bot immediately searched the internet, presumably to read Daley’s book before answering. There was no indication the machine was stunned by the threat of my leaving its environment to consult actual food authors on the same problem.

In what can only be described as a smarty-pants response, AI came up with this:

Yes — consulting a cookbook like In the Sweet Kitchen: The Definitive Guide to the Baker’s Pantry & Craft by Regan Daley is a very good idea, and your instinct about culinary context is sound. But there are actually two different kinds of cookbooks that solve texture problems, and they help in different ways.

I can’t say how much more I detest the word “but.” It went on to say my whole premise of “vegan peanut butter cookie” was a problem. It responded, “Your specific case (vegan peanut butter cookies) adds another layer.” Didn’t you know that from jump street, I thought.

Artificial intelligence displays little idea how we humans cook. If it were paired with a robot chef, the results could be generic and unsatisfying to the simplest palate.

Next time I’ll know to contact my sister and ask her if there is a copy of Mother’s recipe.

Tags cooking, Kitchen Garden, recipes

Local Food Renewal

Three trays of seedlings on Feb. 28, 2026.

After five planting sessions, there are seven trays of seedlings between the heat pad, grow light and table in the dining area. This year, indoor planting is proceeding well.

My foundational experience in gardening improved dramatically during the period 2013-2020 when I worked on area farms. 2026 is the year I introduced artificial intelligence into the process.

The results of ai have been surprisingly good. Because the large language model has so much information in its database, without hesitation, it can give me planting schedule adjustments, ways to use two spots on the heating pad, and two more under LED grow lights. The rest of my process from seed to seedling to greenhouse to planting has fewer uncertainties this year compared to last. Optimizing use of the heating pad has been a boon to productivity.

On the second day of March, I am of to a good start.

Tags AI, artificial intelligence, Kitchen Garden, local food, Sustainability

Kitchen Garden

Food Algorithms — Getting Started

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date February 24, 2026

Stack of garden seeds. — Seeds arrived for the 2026 garden.

It’s cold outside, the kind of cold that stings my cheeks while walking on the state park trail. I’m standing at my workbench sorting seeds for early planting. The heat pad is already plugged in. Grow lights hang overhead. In front of me is a cabinet with last year’s leftover seeds, sorted by variety. On the bench are two dozen packets with this year’s seeds. I’m still looking through seed catalogues. It’s time to decide what to plant first, what to wait on, what to try for the first time, and what to abandon. Each small seed packet represents a choice made long before anything reaches the kitchen.

Every decision reflects a value. Food is no exception. In this series of posts, I will discuss the idea of a “food algorithm” to see where it goes.

Simply put, an algorithm is a repeatable sequence of steps used to accomplish a task. With food, this could be a recipe, yet that’s not what I mean. The intent is to take food from the seed, seedling, or cutting as the first in a series of decisions about what goes on a table.

Agriculture is a large field to consider, but food algorithms are individual. An active agent — a person — decides whether to plant a bean seed, use raw beans from a farmer, rely on prepared, canned beans from a retailer, or use beans that have been prepared with other ingredients. This decision is elemental and part of a discussion most cooks have when preparing a dish. My focus is at this entry point, not to gather and analyze recipes, although one could.

An algorithm is simply a structured way of getting from here to there. We use them constantly in many aspects of our lives. Following food from seed to table is a more comprehensive look at a process we follow, yet do so largely unawares.

I see three interlocking layers:

Biological logic — the natural requirements and rhythms of the plant or animal.

Human practice — the gardener’s labor, the farmer’s tradeoffs, the cook’s improvisations.

System forces — markets, logistics, regulation, energy use, and scale.

By showing how these layers interact, the discussion could make visible the hidden structure beneath everyday meals.

Taking steps in the process from seed to table represents ordinary choices that shape resilience, community, and ecological health. It could create awareness and the quiet power of understanding the paths food has taken before it reaches us.

The adventurer in me wonders what will be next. I hope readers will too.

Tags Food Algorithms, Kitchen Garden, local food, Sustainability, Writing

Living in Society

With Spring a Month Out

Winter is escaping, and with it the best time of year to write. It has become a household meme that “I am losing more darkness every day!” There is so much to get done on the book project. Monday the ground was frozen, yet soon it won’t be. Putting the garden in is also a major undertaking.

That said, posting here will slow down as I focus on completing the current editing pass on my book. If all goes well, it will take a few weeks. A photo one day, maybe a video of a favorite song, a few kind words. All place holders until the book is where I need it to be come spring.

Thanks for reading along.

Tags #amwriting, Kitchen Garden, Shopping, Writing

Living in Society

Trip to the County Seat

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date February 15, 2026

Photo by Edmond Dantu00e8s on Pexels.com

I’m from the government and I’m here to help. Now that I on-boarded with the county auditor to be a poll worker, I can truthfully say that. Ronald Reagan made a joke about those nine words, yet voting is no laughing matter.

On-boarding consisted of driving to the county administration building, locating the appropriate area, entering data on their system, and providing my I-9 documents for photocopying. I completed a time sheet with ten minutes and 20 miles. Easy-peasy.

About eight of us used IBM Think Pads for data entry. IBM sold that business line in 2005 and the company that bought it soon discontinued the product. I’m glad to see our county government using technology to get every last penny from the investment. I had forgotten how to use the track pad, so needed help.

As is usually the case, I ran into people I know from politics. I maintain a friendly relationship with everyone I helped elect at the administration building.

I made two other stops while in the county seat.

On the way in, I stopped at the used book store to see if they had certain titles by John McPhee whose Draft No. 4 I just finished. They had a McPhee reader with parts of the essays I sought for five bucks. A while ago, I had asked them if they had a copy of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. I gave my copy to our child and wanted a replacement. When they said they didn’t have it, I procured it elsewhere. On Friday, they had been unexpectedly holding a copy for me. I declined it in person, yet on the way home, reconsidered it. Surely I could find a home for it. I emailed I would buy it if they still had it.

The other stop was at the grocer. It is conveniently located on Highway One which leads to our home near the lake. It has long been a stop when I have something to do in the county seat. I like the wholesale club better, yet they don’t have the granularity of item selection a home cook needs to run a kitchen. This produce section is particularly loaded with organic fruit and vegetables, all in a single location with non-organic. Too, when I fill my cart, the total is usually less than $100. At the wholesale club it can be double or triple that with less items overall.

I won’t be lording my new government employee status over too many people. The small bit of income will easily find a home in our budget. In fact, even though the general election is not until November, the money is already spent.

Tags cooking, Kitchen Garden, politics, Sustainability, worklife

Kitchen Garden

First Day in the Garden

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date February 12, 2026

After struggling to get the fork into a pile of grass clippings, I gave up for the day. Everything was frozen solid, even after a few days with ambient temperatures well above freezing. Highs in the 40s and 50s are forecast the rest of the week. Maybe I will accomplish my goal of clearing one plot this week to use as temporary storage. Not that day, though.

I am in the garden way early this year, so there is time for preseason work. I seeded the first indoor trays last Saturday and by Tuesday some of the varieties already had leaves. I hope they all germinate by this Saturday when I prepare the next tray of seedlings. Warming pad space is at a premium the next eight weeks.

When we moved to Big Grove Township there were scrub grasses and a lone mulberry tree on the vacant lot we purchased. The tree appeared to have been planted by a bird’s droppings while it perched on a surveyor’s re-bar marker. The ground had a high clay content which suggested the farmer who made his farm into a subdivision had removed the topsoil before selling plats.

From that clay I built soil in a garden that now occupies one fourth of the 0.62 acres we own. When I started, the first plots were small with a large grass border around them. Today I can’t get the mower between the plots to cut foxtail grasses and other weeds that grow there. I got big after working on a vegetable farm for eight years, bringing home the skills and techniques I learned there. After years of expansion, it seems time to bring order to what I do. This is likely why I am outdoors in the garden the second week of February.

We did not set out to build habitat when we moved here. The decision to site the house closer to the north property line — as opposed to in the center — mattered more than I knew. Placement of the foundation determined what remained open, how wind would move, where trees should be planted. We were thinking of how to build additions when finances permitted. Now, a deer path runs the length of the lot on the south side of our home. When winds come from the west, there is a corridor on the north side where it sweeps through the fruit orchard, and into the back yard. Over the years wind has taken a toll on the many trees we planted here. We never built an addition, nor even a deck.

The abundance of wildlife remains mostly unseen. There have been birds of all kinds, opossums, foxes, and after many years of waiting for trees to grow, there are squirrels. There are too many deer, although by developing a path from their space in a nearby woods to an large apple orchard to the west, they mostly leave me alone.

As I contemplate today’s schedule I plan more time in the garden. Maybe the dead vegetation will have loosened enough to move it. Maybe not. In either case, there is plenty of time for preseason garden work.

Tags Kitchen Garden, Sustainability

Kitchen Garden

Garden Beginnings

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date February 8, 2026

Markers for kale, collards and chard in a tray of soil blocks on Feb. 7, 2026.

The first day’s seeding session went quickly and well. I bought soil mix and garden seeds last fall, and cleared the table I use indoors — with a heating pad and grow light — last month. Experience pays as I was able to find and put together everything else in a couple of hours on Saturday morning, producing two trays of 50 soil blocks each. Mostly, I planted cruciferous vegetables.

We’ve been saving plastic yogurt tubs and today I drilled holes in a dozen of them for an indoor herb garden. It will be a new experiment. If successful, it will have been worth trying. Bread on the water.

I’ve been looking at photographs from previous gardens and was inspired by this one to grow leeks again. We returned to leek-potato soup in the kitchen and prefer our own leeks over store bought because we understand all the inputs. I ordered a bundle of leek starts from a new to me seed company.

When it is cold outdoors, I put kitchen scraps in a 5-gallon bucket in the garage until it warms and I can dump them in the composter. Because of the cold, the composter is not doing much work and is two thirds full of kitchen waste. The other garden waste composter has hardly anything in it. When I make my indoor herb garden, I won’t use garden compost in the soil mix because it hasn’t decomposed enough and therefore might be stinky.

Part of apple sorting is putting low grade ones in a pile for wildlife. By spring they will be gone. (Update: when I took the compost out on Feb. 7, 2026, they were all gone.

This year seems different in that the pace of everything from the garden to finishing my book to politics is swift and deliberate. As long as I remember who I am, I’m okay with that.

Tags Kitchen Garden, winter

Living in Society

Sunrise at Month’s End

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date January 31, 2026

Sunrise over Lake Macbride on Jan. 30, 2026.

This January I’m thankful to have gotten back into the writing groove so quickly. I finished the first draft of my book and am a third finished with the first major edit. The narrative and language keeps getting stronger. If I did nothing else, that would be an accomplishment.

I managed to get outdoors for my 30-minute walk every day but one. In past years I struggled to get exercise during winter but I remedied that. Among other things I remedied was sleepless nights. After using artificial intelligence to generate some ideas, I developed my own process to fall asleep and stay asleep until it is time to get up. I’ve now been getting seven to eight hours of sleep each night.

Reading seven books this month was in line with my plans. February should be another good month, especially if it stays cold.

Friday I attended a visitation for a friend’s spouse. The older I get, the more I feel a sense of loss regardless of how long or how well I knew the deceased. Luckily several other people I knew were there and we were able to talk about more than a few common things. We could go on living.

The current schedule is to start the first garden seeds indoors on Feb. 7. The year is rushing toward us with unrelenting fury. A lot remains to be done before spring’s promise arrives.

Tags Kitchen Garden, Reading, Sustainability, Writing

Kitchen Garden

Using Apple Butter

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date January 20, 2026

Although 2025 was an “on year” for apples — all five trees bore fruit — I skipped making apple butter because there were more than three dozen pints in the pantry. I need more uses for the thick, sweet, and tasty condiment than spreading on toasted bread and muffins, dolloping on applesauce cake, and spooning it on pancakes. It turns out there are more preparations I hadn’t thought about.

As a vegetarian household, using apple butter in meat cooking, while popular elsewhere, is not viable. That isn’t the end of the discussion. One must change their way of thinking about apple butter. It is good as a spread, yet can be considered as a fruit-based sweetener, thick apple concentrate, or a spiced apple paste. These considerations open a whole new world. It could be used as a replacement for honey, molasses, or applesauce without much recipe variation. Following are some ideas to try.

The first thing I did was to dish up a serving of plain Greek yogurt and swirl two tablespoons of aronia berry apple butter into it. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, yet after trying it, apple butter will be a recurring breakfast menu item to pair with yogurt.

We already use applesauce as an egg replacement in baking. Our corn muffins, or any other muffins serve as a useful home for it to replace an egg. The texture is always moist, firm and tasty. I will just substitue apple butter and use a bit less.

Using it on grilled cheese sandwiches hadn’t occurred to me. It might pair well with the sharp cheddar cheese I use to make them. I make about one grilled cheese sandwich per month, and next time I will spread some apple butter on it to discover the flavor.

We are not big cake eaters or bakers. We do have a recipe for a spice cake. Next time we make it, we will try substituting apple butter for the oil. Based on the experience with applesauce cake and muffins, I bet it will be moist and delicious, as well as change the spice profile.

I found a recipe for a barbecue sauce or ketchup that includes apple butter, tomato paste, vinegar, onion and garlic powder, and spices. There is nothing to lose by making a batch and trying it.

There was a recipe for a salad dressing made from one tablespoon each of apple butter, extra virgin olive oil, vinegar and mustard. Simple. The way we like our recipes.

Substituting apple butter for the sweetened, condensed oat milk I use when making steel cut oats is a possibility. The spices will add a variation in flavor. I make this dish about twice per month and will try it next time.

The next “on year” for apples is forecast for 2027. Hopefully I will use most of the apple butter in the pantry by then and make new.

Tags apples, cooking, homelife, Kitchen Garden, local food

Creative Life

Photos from the Vault

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date January 18, 2026

It was four degrees Fahrenheit and snowy this morning so I’m posting some garden images from 2008 as a reminder of what spring and summer can be. These are part of my larger A Life of Photos project. I did the initial sort of my digital images from 2008 last week. Posts like this one are part of the work product of that project.