Cold Garden Warm Kitchen is filled with gardening advice and recipes for people who love to cook and eat locally grown, seasonal foods, but live where it dips below freezing six months of the year. If you’re looking for a recipe for Rose Petal Jam, or advice on raising Black Jersey Giant hens, or a profile of Pineapple tomatoes, this is the place for you.
Cold Garden Warm Kitchen was created by me, Hillary Nelson. I’ve loved to write, cook and grow things since I was a little girl, which explains why I’m a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, the Plant Production Program at the New York Botanical Garden and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

For many years I was a pastry chef at The Cleaver Company in New York City, but in 1994 we moved to my husband’s childhood home, a New Hampshire farm built by the Shakers in the early 19th century. This is what it looked like in 1950 – it still looks pretty much the same. Now that our children our grown, I am lucky enough to split my time between Hell’s Kitchen and New Hampshire.

Over the years we’ve raised everything from Red Devon cattle to Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs. I’m happiest though, with my hands in the dirt, especially when I’m planting or harvesting heirloom vegetables and flowers. Most of the edibles and ornamentals you’ll find on these pages were grown on our farm.

The recipes on these pages (unless otherwise noted) were developed, tested and photographed by me. Many of them appeared previously in the local foods column I write for The Concord Monitor, “Home Plate.”

If you’d like to drop me a line, you can do it here: