Roberta Paolo (a.k.a. "Granny") is the founder and executive director of Granny's Garden School in Loveland, OH.  GGS, launched in 2002, is a separate non-profit organization that collaborates with the school district to offer a plant based environmental education program to all of Loveland's nearly 1,600 1st-4th grade students.  Teachers have their own class gardens and bring their students out weekly to work in the gardens where the process of growing plants is used to teach across the curriculum.  The program that evolved from Roberta's gardening experiences with her own grandchildren is now the largest and most comprehensive program of it's kind in the Midwest.

Kentucky native Maggie Green lives in suburban Northern Kentucky with her husband (the best male cook she knows), their 3 growing children, a cat who sleeps by day and a devoted, shelter-adopted doggie also named Maggie. Maggie trades her time for money as a freelance cookbook editor, recipe developer, food and nutrition writer, industry consultant, and author of a soon-to-be-published cookbook One Year in My Kentucky Kitchen (University Press of Kentucky). Maggie’s life in her kitchen focuses on cooking and eating whole, real food with occasional Cheez-Its and store-bought cookies thrown in just to keep things real. Maggie values family, good health, and fueling her passion for the marriage of nutrition and cooking. Maggie believes our health is tied first and foremost to how we feed our bodies.

Chef, Maggie Green shares an easy dinner idea for a busy season...

In the middle of December, fresh basil gets a titch hard for me to find, at least from the garden. Those small plastic boxes of basil tend to cost a bit more than I want to pay. Plus, in my opinion, fresh basil is one of those herbs best picked on a hot summer day and it’s anything but summer right now.  The outdoor temperature hovers around 30 °F and I’m sipping hot tea.

With that in mind, I’m heading to my kitchen to make a batch of pesto with some baby arugula I found at my local supermarket. Ground to a paste and seasoned with the ever-popular, heart-healthy walnut, and a small amount of garlic, arugula adds the bright green color and peppery bite of basil, without the licorice overtones. Served over hot pasta this quick and easy pesto should make a filling meal on a cold winter night.

Maggie steps out her back door and encounters a garden full of stops and starts. While she waters and weeds her raised vegetable garden, cuts and chops patches of culinary herbs, stuffs and sticks colorful annuals in containers, she sits in amazement at her crazy perennials and the never overflowing compost bin where she throws pounds of scraps which fall off her cutting board. Maggie is proud to be a graduate of the University of Kentucky and the National Center for Hospitality Studies. Maggie can be contacted through her blog www.frommykitchentable.wordpress.com, or her company website www.greenapron.com