Cathy Carpenter firmly believes food should be one of the joys of life.

Whether it is, or isn't, often comes down to what goes into the finished product.

"Fresh ingredients are very important. Food just tastes so much better," Carpenter said, and besides, "it's hard to screw things up if you have stuff that tastes good to begin with."

Carpenter, a master gardener, needs to go no further than the backyard of her Quincy home to find fresh vegetables and herbs during the growing season supplemented with purchases from farmers markets and grocery stores.

What's fresh at the time helps guide Carpenter's cooking choices.

Snowpeas fresh from her garden star in a springtime favorite, Asian Cabbage Slaw.

Unlike traditional coleslaw, which gets color from carrots, Carpenter's dish relies on red pepper for color and Napa cabbage for mild flavor.

"You can't use regular cabbage. Regular cabbage is too strong," she said. "It's not authentically Asian, but it has an Asian flavor to it."

Carpenter's husband, Gary, is half Japanese, which inspired an Asian approach to eating and cooking. She cooks Japanese, Chinese and Southeast Asian foods along with Indian, Italian and Mexican dishes popular with the couple's three daughters, two sons-in-law and four grandchildren.

"I really enjoy good food. I'd rather have less good food than more edible food-like substances," the phrase coined by Michael Pollan in "In Defense of Food," Carpenter said. "Americans seems to be programmed that if they go out to eat should have a huge plate of food. I like the Asian idea to eat with your eyes before you eat anything with your mouth."

Peak tomato season means it's time for colorful Spanish-style Gazpacho, jazzed up for Carpenter's taste with jalapeno pepper.

Classic gazpacho is completely blended and thickened with breadcrumbs. Carpenter purees about half the recipe, then stirs it back into the remaining chopped vegetables and tops it with croutons.

"I like a little texture in my mouth," she said. "It's sort of a liquid salad."

Making Cucumber-Tomato Salsa, flavored with dill and cilantro, "is a way of using up stuff in the garden," she said, and chunky-style Guacamole is another favorite served as a dip with tortilla chips, as a sauce for tacos or tostadas or as a salad heaped on shredded lettuce.

In the summertime, Carpenter also looks for "cool" dishes that require little time on the stove or in the oven. Caponata, a favorite Sicilian dish, needs only a brief time in the oven to roast eggplant and onions, then is served at room temperature or cold as an appetizer, side dish or relish.

Pickled Red Radish with Ginger offers another option for garden-fresh radishes and adds a burst of flavor and color to meals.

Another favorite, Ed-amame, or fresh soybeans in the pod, cooks quickly on top of the stove and provides 40 percent of an adult's daily protein requirement with a 3.5-ounce serving. Carpenter's on a campaign to boost interest in the popular Japanese snack she describes as "to field soybeans what sweet corn is to field corn."

They're hard to find locally, so Carpenter grows her own. Plain salt sprinkled over the boiled pods is a classic seasoning, but other spice combinations can be used.

A simple Mint Punch, tastiest when made with fresh mint, adds a refreshing touch to meals or special occasions.

Carpenter, a retired Army nurse, picked up a lot of cooking skills on her own, but learned a few basics by watching her mom.

"As a military officer's wife, she had to entertain. To her, the worst tragedy would be to run out of food at a party. I always overcook," she said.

Season to taste is one of Carpenter's own cooking basics.

She uses a recipe, but only as a guideline for combining tastes. Adding a little more of one thing, substituting for another, Carpenter knows a dish will work. "I do a lot of stuff by just looking -- when it looks right," she said.

Good cooks need "an appreciation of flavor and balance in cooking, in other words, kind of getting a feel for what will taste good and in what proportions will it taste good," Carpenter said. "Obviously everybody's taste is different. But you can put something together in such a way that even somebody who doesn't like (an ingredient) will taste it and recognize it works together."

-- dhusar@whig.com/221-3379