rob, I've done both all my life. I grew up on a farm and we always had a big garden and we always canned and cooked what we got from that garden.

I didn't start branching out in my cooking until maybe 10 or 15 years ago, before that it was plain old cheap and filling country cooking. Good, but not fancy and usually with the same readily available ingredients.

When I started getting more adventurous in my cooking I got more adventurous in my gardening. Radicchio? Fennel? Not at that price, I'll grow 'em! Yeah.

Some things stayed the same, I love butternut squash, I've always grown it and I probably always will grow it. Now, though, I'm as likely to make it into soup as I am to eat it baked with butter and brown sugar.

My gardening and cooking, it seems, has gone hand in hand.

Annie

I started out in an apartment with no yard. I had to cook to feed us, so cooking came first. Even after we moved to places with outdoor space, I was more interested in cooking because, again, I had to feed us and now we were four. Between raising and feeding kids, there wasn't a lot of time for gardening.

At some point, gardening began to win the race and now I much prefer to garden than cook. I raise grass and flowers, plus one pot of basil, so I am not growing food. I can buy much nicer at the local farm market, plus I can buy as much as I will use rather than an entire crop at once.

I am never happier than when I am playing in the dirt.

Eating came first. I've always loved good food and different foods than the other members of my family. So when I moved out I just started cooking. I've never been into gardening, except for herbs. The last couple of years I have planted a vegetable garden but have decided that except for tomatoes and herbs, I'm not really interested in growing anything else.

Ann

I started out cooking, and wanted better and cheaper produce. I thought I only wanted to grow tomatoes, and then it was like-- maybe just one pepper plant for variety-- in case I want to make a salad. . . well, I better grow zucchini, because I'm buying it all the time at the market. And maybe just one cucumber plant-- I love cucumber sushi and I'd love to make pickles.

They were both early me for. Not only was I not allowed in the kitchen but I also wasn't allowed in the garden unless it was to water it. So, like my cooking, I did it on the sly. I would find spots and plant whatever seeds I could find. I would always hear my mother talk about her wild radishes and such. Right now, I have to two kids old enough to do both and I have to beg them to participate - funny, isn't it! Living on my own, cooking really came first because my first place was an apartment so I had no land to play with.

I have always done both....never had a big veggie garden but always had herbs and tomatoes...often beans and peppers, often greens and broccoli, but I grew up with chives parsley etc outside the back door....and jars and baggies of strange green stuff in the cupboard. My son just about got ousted from his student apartment because of a bag of tarragon, from mom's garden!! LOL!

I also grew up on a farm, but I did not do any of the gardening then, except for a bit of harvesting. I started cooking when I was about seven, and so I guess that came first. My father set aside some land for the maid (who was also our cook) to grow vegetables for us, and I would pick okra and dig up turnips when I was about five or six. I was a little older before I would pick corn, and the corn scared me because I was afraid of finding caterillars. I liked digging up potatoes when I was small because I never knew what I was going to find, and so it was like a treasure hunt.

I didn't start my own gardening until I was in my late 30's. I lived in San Francisco in my 20s and early 30s and never had space for gardening, although there were plum trees in my back yard at one place where I lived. I didn't really start gardening on my own until I moved to Venice and had a big back yard (rare for Venice), and that was in 1994, two weeks after the Northridge quake. I'm not that good at growing things from seeds, but my friend who moved with me to Venice grew everything from artichokes to zucchini. He also had 80 different orchids growing all around the house and hanging from every eave. They were a pain to water when he would go to Vermont on vacation.

Lars

Cooking came first, I've rarely had a garden and never harvested enough to cook much with it. I have done the pick-your-own route with fruits for jam and preserves and farmers markets for tomatoes and peppers and onions - for salsa.

I've had a very small garden for the past few years, not much to harvest, though. I'll have one this year, the grandkids will be up for the summer. We planted sunflower seeds when they were up at Easter (Dad was home from Iraq for a week), and my grandson is quite excited about the garden. We'll have tomatoes, big ones for me, little ones for the kids, and peppers and maybe a few other veggies and some herbs. Should be a fun summer, especially when my DS and DSIL come over in August to make a hundred jars of salsa.

Definitely cooking. I learned to cook as a child and was responsible for about half the family cooking in high school. Mom had a garden, but it just meant work to me...weeding. It was used as punishment, so I never enjoyed it. I got in trouble one time for disobeying and pulling up a carrot (hey! at least I ATE it).
We lived in an area with only about a 60 day growing season, so anything actually harvested was a treat I'm sure.

I move to an area with a much longer growing season (can be year round with a little work) and was shocked at the waste of food. Apples, blackberries, pears, just left to rot on the ground. I couldn't stand it. From my first apartment window, in 1985, I could see apples falling. I finally worked up the courage to go knock on the neighbor's door and met the sweetest little old lady who said I could have all the apples I wanted, but they weren't likely much good.

I picked. I peeled. I cut out the worms.
SIX HOURS later, I had enough for A pie. I was so proud.

Since then, I've had at least a small garden every place I've lived. I currently have about 40 x 50 feet fenced off from the deer with about 10 raised beds. Some things I grow, some things I would rather buy locally to can all in one weekend! My planting depends heavily on the processing required. But always have something fresh to eat between May and September.
I love being able to step out the back door for salad, herbs, fruits and veggies!

Deanna

Gardening came first. I started gardening at 4 with my maternal aunt & uncle. My first experience was helping Uncle Mark graft a grapefruit tree to a lemon tree. The tree is still growing & producing lemons on one side & grapefruit on the other. I love that tree.

I taught DH how to love gardening. He had fiddled around in his parent's garden as a kid but never really thought of it as anything except work. I had to teach him that it could be a great hobby. Now, he loves it every bit as much as I. In retirement, we have lots of gardening plans.

Here, we grow mostly ornamentals in the English garden style which means we interplant herbs & veggies with the shrubs & perennials.

I didn't start cooking until I was on my own. It was either cook or starve since I couldn't afford to eat 3 meals/day in restaurants. Learning to love cooking was more arduous than learning to love gardening.

I became a good cook when we started keeping a one-year food pantry. Didn't have much choice. Learning to love cooking came in my 30s when we started doing a lot of corporate entertaining. I love to entertain dragging out all the china, sterling, crystal, etc. Had to have food to serve...so cooking became important. :) I still enjoy cooking for others more than myself. I'm quite content with a carton of yogurt & a piece of fruit for dinner most evenings.

We are doing lots more cooking now that DH is retired. I've been teaching him to cook & he's enjoying the process & seems to be a natural in the kitchen. We're having fun together preparing meals while talking about what we want to do in the garden.

/tricia

Cooking for sure. I've dabbled in vegetable gardening but to tell you the truth the farmers market is easier and the produce is wonderful. Besides which I have a shady yard and lots of visiting critters who got more than I did.

I do grow all my own herbs, some hot peppers in pots and this year I'm going to try one of those silly "topsy turvy" tomato things to see if I can beat the critters!

Cooking, I guess, although Dad always had a garden. We moved a lot when I was a kid and it seems like I always made the cooking semester of Home Ec and missed the sewing semester. I could bake a killer apple pie, but couldn't sew to save my life (still can't!)

Cooking became interesting in high school. I had a vegetarian boyfriend and made him some pretty awful food. He didn't last long, but it made me realize there was more to cooking than Mom's meat and potatoes.

The two came together after I moved here and started hanging out with the farmer ladies and the extension agent.

Since I don't have a green thumb, cooking comes first by default. I don't mind trying to grow some easy herbs in the garden during the summer, but cooking is definitely more my domain. Hubby says he will try growing some carrots and potatoes this summer, if the pocket gopher doesn't return. I wouldn't mind picking some fresh spinach and tomatoes. Dreaming on... LOL

Al

Rob:
Everyone knows the Chicken came first.
Then he fertilized the Garden.
Lou

Probably gardening-- at least from what I remember I was in the dirt with Dad before I was doing much in the kitchen.

Which do I enjoy more? gardening tho now that's become a real chore & is mostly Flower beds with a few veggies & herbs mixed in and in patio pots. But I'm still cooking everyday--gardening weather or not.