Join chef and author Miriam Rubin for this Farm-to-Table cooking class series. In this once-a-month series, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., participants will work with the BBG’s vegetable garden to harvest fresh vegetables, then will head into the kitchen with Miriam to make a multi-course meal. 

May 12: For our first class, we’ll bake up a frittata with fresh-laid eggs from the garden’s chickens, filling it with baby spinach leaves, kale and other veggies just emerging in the garden. We’ll also make flaky, herbed buttermilk biscuits and a salad with new lettuces, mache and edible flowers. Also in the plans is a quick kimchi with an early Asian cabbage. Rhubarb, spring’s first fruit (really a vegetable) will be for dessert.

June 9: June brings us beets, sweet peas, greens, garlic scapes, green garlic and sweet strawberries. We’ll quickly pickle some beets for a salad. Planned is a casserole or savory pie or an easy hand pie with Swiss chard, green garlic and feta. Strawberries will star in our dessert.

July 14: Celebrate cucumbers, fresh onions, zucchini, summer squash, and beans, such as Dragon’s Tongue and Amethyst. We’ll whip up a refreshing cold soup with summer squash and herbs, and make dilly beans or another easy refrigerator pickle. For the main event, chicken salad with a snappy herb dressing and gorgeous pink celery, a special treat from the Garden. A blueberry galette for dessert, perhaps with sour cherries.

August 11: August brings plentiful bounty including new garlic, tomatoes, and light purple Fairytale eggplant. Plans include a roasted eggplant dish and a tomato bread salad with creamy mozzarella and tons of basil. We’ll make our dessert from summer’s sweet peaches or plums.

September 15: With September comes corn, sweet and hot peppers, late lettuce, zucchini, butterscotch butternut squash, shelly beans, Christmas Limas and the first tart apples. We’ll make a soup or maybe a casserole with corn, a pasta and a late-season greens salad. Dessert will most likely be an apple tart.

Miriam Rubin was the first woman to work in the kitchens of New York City’s famed Four Seasons Restaurant. A food writer, avid gardener and tomato grower, she wrote a cookbook about tomatoes, her favorite vegetable (really a fruit). For many years she wrote the “Miriam’s Garden” column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A contributor to Edible Berkshires, her work has appeared in many other publications including Organic Gardening. She and her husband, the artist David J. Lesako, live in Ghent, N.Y.