Peter Schaar stands in his back yard garden at his home in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday, July 6, 2023. Photography by Emil T. Lippe.
Lakewood neighbor Peter Schaar was giving me the grand tour of his garden recently when he plucked a leaf and handed it to me. “Here, taste this,” he says.
There’s a certain level of trust involved when someone encourages you to eat a plant you can’t identify, but Schaar, a longtime gardener and retired mathematician and scientist, knows his plants. He cooks with them several times each week.
But don’t bother asking him for recipes.
“My cooking is spontaneous, using well-known techniques and combinations I think will work,” Schaar says.
Yes, he browses through cookbooks, but he says he uses them only as inspiration and general guidelines.
Now 86, Schaar took over in the kitchen out of necessity in the 1980s: He received medical test results he wasn’t pleased with and decided to tackle the problem with a healthier diet.
He approaches cooking as a scientist: “I see connections and patterns” in recipes, he says.
It’s no surprise he views cooking through a scientific lens, given his background and education. Schaar’s Ph.D. in biophysics from UT Health Sciences Center enabled a career at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, followed by years as a rocket scientist — quite literally — at LTV in Grand Prairie.
Peter Schaar scrapes freshly cut basil into a bowl for a salad at his home in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday, July 6, 2023. Photography by Emil T. Lippe.
“I designed and led teams in building real-time simulations that tested missile guidance and control systems,” he says.
The end of the Cold War brought an end to his work there, at which point he took an improbable turn into a second career as a garden designer and horticultural consultant.
He had begun gardening back in 1969, when he and his late wife, Julie, bought a house.
“I was faced with maintaining the grounds, which forced me to start learning about gardening.”
Schaar is largely self-taught, but he picked up tips by joining the Dallas Area Historical Rose Society and the Native Plant Society of Texas. As he learned more, he shared his expertise by teaching organic gardening at Brookhaven College and waterwise organic gardening at Texas Discovery Gardens.
Over time, he began to include edible plants here and there in his lush green spaces. As he walks through the garden, he points out familiar herbs: rosemary, sweet basil, Mexican mint marigold, spearmint. They’re all put to good use in Schaar’s salads and sauces.
He’ll frequently flavor cooked meats, pasta sauces and stews with his Mediterranean oregano, Mexican oregano and autumn sage. And his roast chicken is likely to be stuffed with hierba anis or culinary sage plucked from his backyard.
If fish is on the menu, Schaar might add flavor with black and blue sage. Or he’s been known to wrap and roast it in hoja santa leaves. His large turmeric leaves also serve as a wrap for steaming and flavoring fish and chicken.
Peter Schaar adds olive oil to his salad at his home in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday, July 6, 2023. Photography by Emil T. Lippe.
Schaar stuffs and fries the blossoms from his yucca plant, cooks down his Swiss chard for healthy greens, and creates salads with his harvested arugula, jewels of ophir, and oxalis crassipes. Sometimes he’ll add a bit of flair and dramatic presentation to salads with a sprinkling of begonia flowers, which taste distinctly lemony.
He cooks not only for himself, but for others, too. As part of the meals team at First Unitarian Church of Dallas, he delivers dishes such as caldo de pescado, Brazilian stew, and tortas de huevos to those in the congregation who need support. Not surprisingly, he enjoys hosting dinner parties, and he delights in bringing his culinary creations to potlucks at his Cook and Tell Book Club.
For those new to gardening, Schaar has this advice: “Plan to garden organically. Seek advice from those who already do it successfully. And remember that no one is born knowing how to garden; we are all on a learning curve.”
And cooking?
“Cooking isn’t about recipes. It’s about ingredients, combinations and techniques. Once you’ve mastered those three things, you can wing it.”
