Make Lunch Not War

And in my backyard is a simple garden.

2012-01-31T12:32:00.001-05:00

"My Simple" by F. Stokes

Special Sauce!

2012-01-27T08:07:00.001-05:00

"Gingrich, as he showed in a gasping effort in Thursday night’s debate in Florida, is a demagogue distilled, like a French sauce, to the purest essence of the word’s meaning."

- Tim Egan's January 26 take on Newt Gingrich...and sauce

Widower Food

2012-01-21T14:03:00.003-05:00

"Each season, my balance gets worse, and sometimes I fall. I no longer cook for myself but microwave widower food, mostly Stouffer's. My fingers are clumsy and slow with buttons."

- Donald Hall, in "Out the Window," a stirring essay in the January 23, 2012 New Yorker magazine

Pizza Days

2012-01-20T14:03:00.012-05:00

A simple mozzarella and tomato sauce pizza, made with a dough that included spent grain, left over after brewing a batch of beer (a Belgian Dubbel). The spent grain added a lovely nuttiness, depth and chew.

There's nothing quite as satisfying and simple as pizza, and making it well really comes down to three basic principles.

A screaming hot oven, a really solid dough recipe, and bright, high quality ingredients.

In my opinion, pizzas are often overdone. Too much cheese. Too much sauce. Too many toppings. Just too much. If I want a tomato sauce, I'll drain some canned, peeled tomatoes, whiz them briefly in the blender, and spread a few tablespoons onto the dough. If I want cheese, instead of smothering the entire crust with pre-shredded mozzarella out of a plastic bag, I'll tear apart a ball of fresh mozzarella and spread those chunks around, or I'll drop a few crumbles of feta here and there. Topped with some other ingredients - whatever is on hand and looks good - a healthy sprinkle of salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes and into the oven, which should be heated "to full whack" as Jamie Oliver might say, it goes.

A recent pizza night. Notice the differences in the crusts. These, unlike the one on top, did not have spent grains in them and were totally tasty but less complex.

The India Imperial Stout Revisited

2012-01-19T17:35:00.004-05:00

Bottled in early January, 2011.

Just a few bottles left.

Back story.

Eating Out

2012-01-18T17:01:00.000-05:00

"At restaurants, people eat more depending on how many people they are dining with. People eating alone eat least. People eating with one other person eat 35 percent more than they do at home. People dining in a party of four eat 75 percent more, and people dining with seven or more eat 96 percent more" (David Brooks, The Social Animal, 172).

Oranges

2012-01-17T09:14:00.001-05:00

"In 1870, a Riverside resident had planted three Brazilian navel orange seedlings in the front yard of her house. One of the trees was trampled to death by a cow and another died of unknown causes, but the third tree survived and flourished, and in time it became the parent tree of the entire California navel orange industry" (131).

- Susan Orlean, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend, 2011

Preserved Lemons

2012-01-16T14:20:00.009-05:00

In The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, Claudia Rhoden describes three methods for preserving lemons, an ingredient which, she writes, lends a "unique and distinctive flavor to North African dishes" (459). One method involves pickling the lemons in brine, another involves boiling them in brine and then preserving them in oil, and the third - the method that I have chosen to take - involves preserving the lemons in salt and lemon juice.

Wash and dry lemons.

Slice the lemons into quarters, but not all of the way through, leaving about a half inch uncut at the stem end.

Pack the lemons with kosher salt.

Stuff the lemons into a clean jar.

Cover the lemons in lemon juice.
(The lemons will soften after a day and should be submerged. If not, I'll add more juice.)

Lid it.

Soon-to-be preserved lemons; zest from juiced lemons; and two glasses of cold water with de-zested, juiced lemon halves (for drinking up now, on this chilly January day).

Lemon zest on a parchment lined baking sheet. Into the freezer for a bit, then into a ziplock bag before going back into the freezer for zest at-the-ready.*

Now we wait. About a month.

Mourad Lahlou, in his brilliant Mourad: New Moroccan, places preserved lemons front and center. He asserts, "I'm going to go out on a limb here - the limb of a lemon tree - and say that preserved lemons are Morocco's greatest culinary contribution to the world. No, wait, I'm going all the way with this: they're Morocco's greatest contribution to the world, period" (42).

Culinary adventures await.

*Nod to Lahlou who recommends this method for making use of, and extending the life of, the lemon zest.

Cheese!

2012-01-15T17:30:00.003-05:00

The cheese from the recent quince paste and cheese post unmasked: Delice de Bourgogne.

In the cheese section at Russo's Market in Watertown, Massachusetts, its information card reads: "A wonderful triple creme from Burgundy. Rich, with a smooth, heavy texture. Slightly salty, a lasting finish, often paired with complex Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays."

Good with quince paste as well.

Quince Paste and Cheese

2012-01-14T09:37:00.003-05:00

I can't, for the life of me, recall what kind of cheese this is: something French with a rind and super creamy. Perhaps even a triple cream.

Quince Paste

2012-01-13T20:11:00.010-05:00

I picked up the quince and turned it in my hand, brought the flower end up towards my face and inhaled. A rich and complex floral sweetness flooded my nose and lingered. It was wonderful.

This even from a quince that was likely picked weeks ago somewhere in South America (or perhaps California) before making the arduous journey north. I can't imagine what the smell must be, wandering through a quince orchard around harvest time. In the Autumn 2011 issue of The Art of Eating, Melissa Pasanen, a food writer from Vermont, in an article about quince, writes, "The flavor is often an afterthought to the scent, which has elements of rose, honey, vanilla, pear, guava, and pineapple" (30).

When I saw them at the market last week, soon after reading Pasanen's piece, I knew that I needed to buy a few. I have only ever had quince in paste or preserved form, eaten as an accompaniment to cheese, but I had never actually cooked with it myself.

So I turned to Claudia Rhoden, one of my favorite go-to writers for all things Mediterranean*, who writes in her beautiful new book on Spain, aptly named The Food of Spain, "I adore everything made with quinces" (524). In that book, she includes a recipe for quince paste, known as dulce de membrillo in Spain.

I decided to try it out tonight.

Three quinces

The baked quinces

Uncooked quince paste

Cooked quince paste

After baking the quinces in the oven at 300 degrees until soft, for about an hour and a half, I peeled and cored them, tossed them into the food processor, and blended them with a half cup of sugar "to a soft, creamy paste" (524).

Rhoden continues: "Pour the quince paste into a wide nonstick saucepan and cook gently for about 30 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the paste thickens and turns pink. Keep scraping up and stirring in the paste that caramelizes at the bottom of the pan - it will give the paste a stronger color and enhance the flavor" (524). I ended up cooking the paste for longer than 30 minutes, probably more like 50, and I don't agree with her description of the color that you're looking for. Pink doesn't seem right. A roasted pumpkin color seems more like it.

After cooking the paste, I let it cool, spread it onto the bottom of a ceramic dish and covered it with plastic. There is so much pectin in the fruit that the paste produced is really quite dense. It would, in fact, be pretty easy to cut into slices.**

It's really wonderful stuff. Now, off to find a cheese to go with it.

Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber by Juan Sánchez Cotán, 1602

* Quince is featured in cookery all over the Mediterranean, from Spain to Morocco to Turkey and beyond. Pasanen explains, "Cydonia oblonga, a close relation to apples and pears, is named for the city of Cydon, in Crete, where it grew wild, as it did across the Caucasus, including modern-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and the current largest producer, Turkey" (30).

** Pasanen writes, "Joseph Postman, the USDA's quince expert, says the fruit is so high in pectin that simply soaking the seeds in water can produce a gel. In early America, he said, 'Everyone had a quince tree as a source of pectin before we had little packages'" (29-30).

Sanctimonious Salami!

2012-01-10T11:10:00.005-05:00

"A charge of 'pious baloney' from the king of sanctimonious salami: that was the taste of Debate Weekend, during which Newt Gingrich of all people called out Mitt Romney for larded self-aggrandizement. Takes one lunchmeat to know another," writes Frank Bruni in his most recent New York Times column, "Please Hold the Cheese."

Bruni, onetime restaurant critic of The New York Times and one who has struggled throughout his life with eating, food and weight, knows a thing or two about sliced meat.

And increasingly, as one of the more astute and articulate columnists on The New York Times Op-Ed pages, about the current political circus.

The Pickles Are Coming!

2012-01-05T23:10:00.006-05:00

Travis Grillo makes a serious pickle.

(The Grillo's Pickles Story from Sam Hamad on Vimeo.)

According to their Twitter feed, Grillo's, in addition to being all atwitter - ha - over super climber Alex Honnold*, is opening a store in less than a week. (On January 2, they tweeted, "One week...store opens.") It'll be right near the intersection of Cambridge and Elm Streets.

Based on what I've read, it sounds like it will be a temporary, pop-up operation. I hope that it lasts. And I can't wait.

Biting into one of their Italian Dills: what a crispy, lovely snap.

* On January 1, Grillo's tweeted, "I want to sponsor Alex Honnold this guy is a real spider man."

Oh, Iowa

2012-01-01T14:38:00.003-05:00

"Beyond the speeches and television commercials, this unglamorous ground war is unfolding with hidden intensity inside forlorn office parks, under pale fluorescent lights and amid grease-stained pizza boxes."

- from "Over Phones and Greasy Pizza, a Battle for Iowa," by A.G. Sulzberger and Michael Barbara for the New York Times (December 31, 2011)

Scenes from Taza

2011-12-31T09:32:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, we went on a tour of Somerville, MA's own Taza Chocolate.

Awesome place.

Spectacular chocolate.

Mario Batali and Durian

2011-12-27T11:41:00.007-05:00

Mario Batali (@Mariobatali)
12/26/11 11:30 PM
“@agentfortyfour: Hey Chef! We always hear about the food you love, so tell us, what's the one thing you absolutely will not eat?

Durian

Well, I can't say that I am surprised. Mario definitely is not alone in his aversion. That durian inspires such reaction is probably what I like most about it. Like Marmite, the New York Yankees and Sai Baba, it has the power to attract zealous devotees at the same time that its very existence acts to mobilize the forces of opposition (forks at the ready for anything but durian).

Time to revisit an old Make Lunch Not War durian-devoted post from 2006.

A Box of Chocolates

2011-12-24T16:31:00.003-05:00

"The forest burned, and she had only a minute to gather a few things and her baby and run from the cabin as the fire smoked down the hill. Of what she'd snatched up, less and less seemed worthy, and she tossed away clothes and valuables as the heat drover her to the river. At the lip of the bluff she held only her Bible and her red box of chocolates, each pinned against her with an elbow, and the baby clutched against her chest with both hands. She stooped and dropped the candy and the heavy book at her feet while she tied the child inside her apron, and then she was able to pick them up again. Needing a hand to steady her along the rocky bluff as they descended, she tossed away the Bible rather than the chocolates. This uncovering of her indifference to God, the Father of All- this was her undoing" (77-78).

- Denis Johnson, Train Dreams, 2011

Education and Fast Food

2011-12-20T15:23:00.006-05:00

"We have built our education systems on the model of fast food. This is something Jamie Oliver talked about the other day. You know, there are two model of quality assurance in catering. One is fast food, where everything is standardized. The other are things like Zagat and Michelin restaurants, where everything is not standardized. They’re customized to local circumstances, and we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.”

"So I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish."
- Ken Robinson, February 2010, TED2010

Another Mysterious Collapse

2011-12-18T10:28:00.003-05:00

"And it isn't just almonds. All monocrops - which means virtually all our food - are part of a system of industrial agriculture whose astounding yields are predicated on the continued supply of a number of resources - groundwater, honey bees, functioning pesticides, migrant workers, and cheap oil, to name a few. As Kirk Webster wrote in American Bee Journal, beekeeping has the honor of being the first part of that system to fall apart. But none of the other parts are looking too spiffy right now, either...[U]ntil local agriculture replaces global agriculture, there will always be another parasite, another virus, another mysterious collapse" (181).

- Rowan Jacobsen, Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, 2008

Khubz

2011-12-02T17:23:00.000-05:00

On our second day in Fes, Morocco, Amber and I hired a guy named Rami to guide us through the medina, in which we had already wandered and gotten lost the previous day. He proved to be an expert, offering insight into the history and organization of a place that, at first glance, seemed labyrinthine and chaotic.*

On the contrary, the souks, or markets, are arranged neatly by type - the silk thread shops here, the spice shops there, and so on - and the medina, as a whole, is organized around clusters of mosques, hammams (baths), medersas (schools) and bakeries.

Like quilting points across the city, these clusters form the core of each neighborhood. As Rami, who as a young boy left the countryside to attend one of the medersas in Fes, explained, the mosque forms the core of each section of the city. The mosque supports the school, and the mosque funds itself through its hammam and through the largesse of wealthier people in the community. As a young student, sleeping many to a tiny room and studying the Koran and Islamic history and letters with intensity, he and his classmates paid no tuition and were given a token for the neighborhood bakery. With that token, he could receive two loaves of bread per day. Members of the community, who could afford to do so, paid the bakery to prepare bread, or khubz, for students and for the poor.

Rami inside the magnificent Bou Inania Madrasa in Fes

In the old city in Fes (and in Marrakech, where we also visited), these institutions live on, though the medersas, which we visited, no longer operate as schools and are more like museums. The mosques are lively (though we weren't, as non-Muslims, allowed into any of them), the hammans are steamy and frequented, and the bakeries run long hours. Women and children navigate the narrow, winding lanes with cloth-covered trays on the way to the bakeries. Peaking out from underneath the cloths are proofed loaves of flat, round, unbaked bread. For a few dirhams, the bakers bake the bread for their customers, leaving the loaves on shelves for pick up later. (In Marrakech, I also saw a woman enter a bakery with a tray of cookies and little sweet pastries to be baked off.)

Shelves of bread inside the bakery near Bou Inania

At the same time, as the newer parts of the cities continue to grow, these traditions will likely become more isolated. On a visit to a bakery in Marrakech, I learned that the number of community bakeries in that city is dwindling. Where there had once been dozens, there are now about ten, I was told. Nowadays, more people are able to bake their own bread at home and more people buy their bread at cafes.

Joan Nathan, writing in the New York Times in 2007, reminds us that community "ovens have been a part of Mediterranean life for thousands of years. People in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, in French country towns and in Middle Eastern medinas baked their bread in them, and later, when the ovens were cooler, cooked casseroles and other dishes...Today many people have gas stoves or propane cooktops at home, and the communal ovens are disappearing. In my travels I have found them only rarely: in Jerusalem’s old city; in Arab villages in Israel and the West Bank; on the Caribbean island of Montserrat."

Later in the article, Nathan quotes Paula Wolfert, the great translator of Moroccan cooking to American audiences: "These bread ovens are a link with the past...It was part of the community, an extension of the home."

Khubz

That all may be true, but from what I could tell, the community bakery still plays an important and key role in the present social and commercial life of the city, most noticeably in Fes. Wood-fired ovens burn bright there, and the steady stream of children ferrying loaves through crowds and around donkey-pulled carts continues.

Life in the bakery near Bou Inania

* "Within the apparent insanity of the medina there is a surprising level of order. Its confounding sprawl is really a mosaic of distinct squares, each with its own mosque, Koranic school, fountain, hamam, or bath, and, of course, a bakery" (13), writes Susan Seligson in her 2002 book Going with the Grain: A Wandering Bread Lover Takes a Bite Out of Life.

So, what utensil do you use for steak?

2011-12-01T11:02:00.002-05:00

I know there’s never been a man in the awful shape I’m in.
I can’t even spell my name. My head's in such a spin.
Today, I tried to eat a steak with a big old table spoon.
You got me chasing rabbits, walking on my hands and howling at the moon.

- Hank Williams, "Howlin' at the Moon"

Axl Rose, Destruction and Doughnuts

2011-11-28T18:01:00.002-05:00

"[R]ecent sightings suggest that the focus of his appetite has changed - from destruction to doughnuts."

- from the November 21, 2011 New Yorker blurb on Guns N' Roses November 17 concert at the Meadowlands in New Jersey

Bubbling Kefta Tagine

2011-11-27T14:51:00.002-05:00

Compost

2011-10-30T09:10:00.003-04:00

"I put a handful to my nose and inhaled. There was an odor, but it was not overpowering or unpleasant; the smell was at one lighter and more fully rounded than soil. It was one of those smells that resonates on your tongue, and it didn't taste bad, actually. I tried to imagine that what I was holding to my face had only weeks ago been cow shit and orange peels and leftover lasagna and even the cow itself; I tried to be repulsed by this. But the transformation had been as utter and complete as the seed that grows into a tomato plant or the sperm and egg that make a child" (125-126).

- Ben Hewitt, The Town That Food Saved

Zombies and Arugula

2011-10-24T14:18:00.004-04:00

"When I was conceiving the novel I just had the idea that people are pretty much the same after the disaster, they're just a little more bummed out. And so it seems that marketing will come back pretty quickly, bureaucracy, all those sorts of things. And if you are trying to marshal a very depressed populace towards a new future, you are going to need a song, "Stop, Can You Hear the Eagle Roar," which is, you know, the uplifting anthem that people are humming under their breath. You're going to need a name for this new class of people, the American Phoenix, we're rising from the ashes. So it seemed that that kind of corporate sloganeering would come back pretty early along with the desire for gourmet coffee, fresh arugula and all those sorts of nice things that we associate with contemporary society."

- Colson Whitehead, talking with Terry Gross recently about his new novel Zone One, set in New York, which explores what happens in the aftermath of a zombie plague

The Esperanto of the World

2011-10-15T00:01:00.001-04:00

On October 13, 2011 the chef, writer, activist and National Geographic Fellow Barton Seaver gave an engaging and passionate talk at the New England Aquarium.

Though it was titled "For Cod and Country," the title of his new book, the talk didn't touch on cod. Seaver focused, instead, on the broader topic of dinner.

Dinner is a full-contact relationship with the world around us, he said. "Delicious is the Esperanto of our world," he claimed. Food is a universal. It is, of course, a language that all people understand. And it is through dinner - through the choices that we make about what and how to eat - that we have the power to work towards a better world. Eating is, in addition to being the agricultural act that Wendell Berry describes, a political act, as Michael Pollan and others have pointed out.

But the "sustainability" solution, Seaver argued, is not the right answer. Consuming the right fish on the list is not enough. "Sustainable" implies perpetual consumption, and the quick green fix that delineates those products best used and those best avoided doesn't address the deeper question of expectations. Seaver proposes a paradigm shift and a way forward defined by the notion of "restoration" rather than "sustainability": the restoration of community, of dinner, of a more conscious and reasonable set of expectations.

Ben Hewitt, in his book The Town That Food Saved, expresses similar distaste for the current state of "sustainability." It "has been willfully corrupted by people who would very much like to sell you a hybrid SUV or an Energy Star-rated flat-screen TV..." he rightfully complains. "There is very little about agriculture that is truly sustainable," he continues. Agriculture is a reshaping of the natural order of things, and the remedy to current problems with our food system, he proclaims, is a move toward lower-impact and lower-input food production and distribution. But let's not call it sustainability. "Let's just call it what it is: a desperately needed step in the right direction" (2009, 14).

Cod. From Cape Ann Fresh Catch community supported fishery.

Pizza Days

2011-10-14T21:10:00.003-04:00

"So how did Cain float to the top, at least for a week? He’s a motivational speaker, and a good one. He’s glib, optimistic, likeable, and has a great personal story. But he has zero governing experience. And his business forte was running a national food chain, Godfather’s, when they made truly awful-tasting pizzas."

- from Tim Egan's recent essay, "Cold Pizza from Herm Cain," from October 14, 2011

The One-Bowl Meal

2011-10-13T16:26:00.003-04:00

"When he was in America, he was compelled to procure his own food. Because he didn't want to waste time on choice or preparation, he developed rigid routines that he could follow without thinking. For years, according to a colleague, he made the same meal every morning for breakfast, which he conceived of as a recipe for maximum health: sausage links, green peppers, yogurt, and a banana, all in one bowl"

- Larissa MacFarquhar in her profile of philosopher Derek Parfit, "How to Be Good," in the September 5, 2011 New Yorker (47).

Hm.

What's your favorite one-bowl meal?

A Great Nutritious Drink

2011-10-12T09:09:00.006-04:00

"It is as though Coca-Cola, as it spread across the globe, turned out to be a great nutritional drink."

- Blake Gopnik, "Revolution in a Can," November 2011, Foreign Policy

Blake Gopnik, art critic and brother of prolific New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, currently has a piece in Foreign Policy on graffiti. In it, he juxtaposes the two worlds of graffiti: graffiti as "aesthetic exchange," exemplified by the New York art establishment's co-option of graffiti in the 1980s - think Basquiat - and graffiti as a "true means of communication."

Art in the West, he writes, is an "insider's game, thrilling to play but without much purchase on the larger reality outside." In societies in crisis - Lybia, Haiti and Palestine to name a few - we see that images "can be used for much more than game playing."

Graffiti can, and does, give voice to the voiceless.

"The most elaborate images from Egypt, Libya, and Haiti today look very much like the 1980s paint jobs on New York subway cars and warehouse facades, and yet their point is not to function as art but to work as carriers of content and opinion," he writes.

Here, Coca-Cola.

There, a great nutritional drink.

Hen of the Woods

2011-10-03T12:43:00.002-04:00

Hen of the Woods in the office!

Next to Linda Darling-Hammond's Preparing Teachers for a Changing World and Preparing Principals for a Changing World.

Truth and Hot Dogs

2011-09-23T16:50:00.003-04:00

"Newt Gingrich, who is never far from a bad idea, has called for the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency. Bachmann, whose ideas have roughly the same relationship with truth as a hot dog does with health food, has said similar things."

- Tim Egan, writing recently in his regular commentary for The New York Times.

Oh, snap!

Read on here.

Food Numbers

2011-09-21T13:13:00.005-04:00

A few numbers culled from the first few pages of The Town That Food Saved, Ben Hewitt's look today's food movement through the story of Hardwick, Vermont:

1. The average piece of American food travels nearly 1,500 miles from farm to table (4).

2. "On average, every calorie that lands on your plate soaked up 11 calories of fossil-fuel energy as it was sown, grown, harvested, processed and shipped" (4).

3. "In 1930, the average American family spent 24.2 percent of its income on food. That number has declined in every single decade since; by 2007, it had fallen to 9.8 percent" (4).

And, forgetting the numbers for a minute, setting the stage:

"The cheap-food boom has been seductively comfortable for us all. Let's face it: Farming is damn hard work, typically done for damnable pay. By relinquishing this burden, by handing the reins to the corporations, we relieved ourselves of a lot of backaches, sunburns, and financial strains. We struck a deal: The agribusinesses got a guaranteed chunk of our income and our full faith in their ability to keep us sustained. In return, we got to pursue lifestyles that don't revolve around soil and toil and that allow us a measure of leisure time unprecedented in human history" (6).

Tomatoes on Sidewalk

2011-09-13T17:29:00.001-04:00

Apple and Peach Picking

2011-09-11T20:47:00.004-04:00

Apple and peach trees at Nicewicz Family Farm in Bolton, MA.

The first pick of the season yielded a ton of apples and peaches.

Everywhere.

A Beer, a Cigar, Canoeing, and a New Environmentalism

2011-09-09T12:43:00.007-04:00

"We pull over on a small wooded island next to Quiobequin Cove and sit in the shade below a red maple. Sipping on a Long Trail IPA, I reach into my dry pack and pull out a cigar - a Macanudo - while staring out at the water. We feel better, and not just due to the hair of the dog. The sun slices down through the trees and morning's exertion has lifted the mood" (127).

- My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism, 2011, by David Gessner.

I've got my coffee and book at hand for a bit of lunchtime reading.

Great read.

"I don't want to overstate the meaning of Dan walking down the river and seeing the herons when he felt defeated, but I do think it is important. If I am ever going to cobble these stray thoughts into a green manifesto, then I will need to include Dan's herons. But manifestos are meant to be prescriptive, and, if I were to complete one, what would I prescribe? Explore your territory, I've said already. What else? 'First, be a good animal,' said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Look at the nonhuman creatures in your neighborhood. Go for walks now and again, walks when, for at least short periods, you think about things other than your private ambitions and your things-to-do list. Try brief experiments in caring about the world" (151-152).

Moose

2011-09-08T19:59:00.000-04:00

Poor drunk moose.

Twinkies

2011-09-08T09:44:00.003-04:00

Yeah, can I get change?
Uh, where're the Twinkies?
What's on sale?
I'm a customer.
I'm a customer.
I'm a customer.
I love you.

- from the song "Customer" by The Replacements, the opening line of which is a rapid fire "I'm in love with a girl who works at a store where I'm nothing but a..."

Customer.

Pickle Time

2011-08-27T08:56:00.002-04:00

It's pickle time!

Tomatoes and the Changing Light

2011-08-26T17:56:00.003-04:00

I am utterly unable to temper my love affair with these things.

Plucked right off the vine, these cherry tomatoes are easily one of the most concentrated bursts of sweet and tart, aroma and juiciness.

Basil Ice Cream? Yes, Indeed.

2011-08-26T15:11:00.006-04:00

Surveying the unruly and fecund garden recently, I wondered what the heck we were going to do with all of the basil and tomatoes bursting at the seams.

Why not make ice cream?

Basil ice cream with halved cherry tomatoes and balsamic vinegar

How this works.

1 pint of heavy cream, brought to the boil. A few fist-fulls of basil leaves thrown in. Covered. Heat turned off. Steeped for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, 1/4 of honey creamed with 2 egg yolks. Strained the basil leaves out of the cream mixture, and poured a little bit of the basil infused cream into the egg and honey mix. Stirred. Added more. Then poured the whole thing - the cream, the eggs, the honey - back into the sauce pan and brought the heat up. Stirred and cooked until I could swipe a clear line in the ice cream base on the back of my stirring spoon.

Took it off of the heat and strained it into a bowl set into an ice bath. Cooled it down. When cool, I tossed it into an ice cream maker and turned it on.

When set, I scooped the ice cream into a container and popped it into the freezer. Pulled it out 30 minutes later. In a bowl it went with a few sliced tomatoes and a quick drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

Summer.

Beautiful.

Dinner

2011-08-24T21:33:00.002-04:00

Sliced Cherokee Purple tomato with salt and olive oil, Maine mussels in a green coconut curry, and some crusty bread.

Cherokee Purple

2011-08-24T17:51:00.004-04:00

According to the 1975 Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart extravaganza "Muffin Man", "Some people, some people like cupcakes exclusively, while myself, I say there is naught nor ought there be nothing so exalted on the face of God's great Earth as that prince of foods: the muffin!"

While I love a good muffin, I disagree.

There is nothing. Nothing. Like a tomato plucked off of the plant in the middle of the summer.

A Cherokee Purple from the garden

American Lunch

2011-08-19T13:37:00.004-04:00

One of the culinary traditions that interests me most is that which lies at the confluence of New American and Native American. On the surface, each of those terms can either mean a lot or very little, but to me, the confluence implies a fresh focus on ingredients endemic to North and South America. It is, in my thinking, a cuisine defined by flavors that reach back and yet very much exist in the present.

As such, here's an attempt at a lunch mostly utilizing ingredients that reach back into the pre-Columbian American palate: a slice of just-picked tomato topped with a corn and roasted red and poblano pepper relish; black beans simmered with epazote, ancho and pasilla chiles, and jalapeno peppers; boiled and salted new red potatoes; and a chicken egg, over easy, on top of sourdough toast with fresh goat cheese and fig jam.

One of the great resources on this particular aspect of American food, as it existed and as it exists, is Fernando and Marlene Divina's Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions, which was first published in 2004 with the assistance of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

"Most people don't pay close attention to the origins of the foods they enjoy today. Many foods commonly found on our shelves are credited to European or Asian origin - Irish potatoes, Italian tomatoes, and Thai chiles. But all of these foods originated here in the Americas. Potatoes were domesticated and bred by pre-Inka civilizations. Tomatoes and chiles were widely grown throughout South, Central, and North America before the arrival of the conquistadors. The Americas are also the source of turkey, buffalo, corn, squash, amaranth, wild rice, avocados, pineapple, papaya, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes (also called sunchokes), pecans, peanuts, cashews, black walnuts, hazelnuts, tapioca, chocolate, and vanilla. After 1492, America's native foods transformed most of the world's cuisines," explain the Divinas in the introduction to the book (xiv).

Peaches!

2011-08-18T22:26:00.000-04:00

This guy loves his peaches. Two minutes in: amazing.

Sugar Coated Satan Sandwich

2011-08-01T10:39:00.004-04:00

For the last few weeks, the news media has been worked into a frenzy over the debt ceiling debate.

And now that we've all woken up to find out that the White House and Congressional leaders reached some kind of deal in the middle of the night, the commentary machine is, yet again, on.

The New York Times editorial page declares it a "terrible deal...a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists." Paul Krugman, writing in that same newspaper, calls it a disaster for the president and for the Democratic party, for the economy and for politics - "[T]he most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status."

On the other side of the aisle, the editors at the Wall Street Journal believe the deal to be a "triumph." "The big picture is that the deal is a victory for the cause of smaller government, arguably the biggest since welfare reform in 1996," they write, applauding the absence of tax increases and lamenting that spending cuts aren't deep enough.

And, drumroll, please...

In a Make Lunch Not War-worthy turn of phrase, Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri tweeted a few hours ago, "This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see."

Cherry Frangipane Tart

2011-07-31T05:46:00.003-04:00

A tart making all-nighter.

Chef Amber is hard at work.

She's entering the Boston Pie Experiment in a few hours.

I'll be there to help out.

Tabasco Slide

2011-07-28T09:16:00.004-04:00

Living Colour
Memories Can't Wait
May 16, 2010
Virada Cultural
Sao Paulo, Brazil

At about a minute and a half in, the camera turns to bass player Doug Wimbish, Tabasco bottle in hand.

Somalia

2011-07-27T09:33:00.005-04:00

Somalia, long on the brink of collapse (or long existing in a state of collapse) is currently facing a food crisis - a famine - of epic proportions.

Interviewed by the CBC yesterday, K'naan, the great Somali-Canadian musician, gave his take on the situation. It's worth a watch, at the very least because he's actually talking about it.

Today, the first hour of WBUR's On Point is devoted to the story. Jacki Lyden is in for Tom Ashbrook, and she'll be talking with Jeffrey Gettleman, East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times, Sinead Murray, an aid worked with the International Rescue Committee, E.J. Hogendoorn, Horn of Africa Director for the International Crisis Group and Semhar Aria, Horn of Africa Regional Policy Advisor for Oxfam.

For those within range of WBUR's signal, it's on live in about five minutes.

"Today, pastures have dried up, and the animals that Somali nomads survive off of are dying in droves. Food prices are escalating, and after 20 years of anarchy, coping mechanisms are collapsing, with many families driven from their land and many breadwinners cut down in Somalia’s endless iterations of civil war," wrote Gettleman for a July 20 piece that appeared in The New York Times.

The situation is unbelievably complex. And heartbreaking.

Recipe: Grilled Figs, Goat Cheese and Honey

2011-07-22T15:38:00.007-04:00

Grilling today?

Then read on!

I love these things.

They are, quite possibly, the perfect bite.

Grilled Figs Stuffed with Fresh Goat Cheese and Drizzled with Honey

(Serves 6)

Ingredients

Fresh figs, 6
Olive oil, 1 Tablespoon
Rosemary, 6 stems
Fresh goat cheese, 2 Tablespoons
Honey, a few Tablespoons
Lemon, 1 wedge

Procedure

Snip the stem off of each fig. Drizzle or brush with olive oil. Skewer the figs onto fresh rosemary stems. Grill over medium-high heat until the figs are heated through and begin to soften. Remove from the heat. Score the top of each fig in an “x” pattern, cutting halfway to the bottom. Slightly open each fig. Place a dollop of goat cheese into each fig, drizzle with honey, and finish with a squeeze of lemon juice. Remove the rosemary stem and eat.

Lovely.

Tea, Tobacco and Whiskey from a Tin Cup

2011-07-20T15:05:00.003-04:00

Tea and tobacco
Whiskey from a tin cup
When I had one good coat
I was warm

- an excerpt from Jeffrey Foucault's song "Tea and Tobacco", which appears on his album Horse Latitudes (2011)

Definitely check him out. He's the real deal. And I cannot stop listening to him.

Le Jardin

2011-07-20T11:01:00.002-04:00

The state of the garden: tomato plants, pepper plants - the Scotch bonnet is fruiting nicely - basil plants and cucumber plants.

Rose Water Lemonade

2011-07-12T13:56:00.014-04:00

It's a hot day. 93 and sunny. A great day for some rose water lemonade, a drink that has become one of my recent favorites.

Get together a handful of lemons, a few tablespoons of rose water, a handful of dried rose petals, some honey and a pile of fresh mint leaves.

Chop up the lemons and squeeze the juice into the pitcher, tossing in each piece, rind and all, as well. I might throw in five lemons, but it all depends upon the juiciness of the lemons. Sometimes, it's four. Fill up the pitcher with cold water. Add the honey - sometimes, I use agave syrup - rose water, rose petals and mint.

Rose petals

I prefer lemonade that is tart with just enough sweetness to take a bit of the edge off of the lemon, so I might only add four tablespoons of honey. You've really just got to play it by taste. The same goes for rose water and rose petals. I think that the fragrant, flowery flavor of rose pairs really well with the bright acidity of the lemon. That said, too much and it begins to taste like soap, so you've got to find the balance that works for you. As a general guide, I would add two tablespoons of rose water, a handful of petals, give it a mix and then test it. With the mint, I rip and bruise the leaves before I add them; it releases the essential oils in the same way that muddling does.

You really can't go wrong. With everything, add and taste, add and taste.

It's seriously brilliant stuff, and I have to give credit where credit is due. The inspiration for this comes from the cherbat, or lemonade, served at Baraka Cafe, an Algerian-Tunisian restaurant in Cambridge, MA. Theirs has a different flavor profile and is much, much sweeter than I like - I suppose that's hinted at by the name cherbat, which etymologically ties right into sherbet, basically frozen fruit juice and sugar, often syrupy sweet.

Paneer Burgers

2011-07-11T09:04:00.001-04:00

"Next is 'culture training,' in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one."

- in Andrew Marantz's article "My Summer at an Indian Call Center," in the July/August issue of Mother Jones.

The State of the Garden

2011-07-10T20:03:00.002-04:00

Independence Day?

2011-07-03T12:21:00.004-04:00

"As we set out along a sandy path, he told me that it was wrong to view slavery in Florida's fields as a series of isolated cases. Rather, he explained, slavery is an inherent part of an economic system built on the ruthless exploitation of its workers" (Barry Estabrook, talking with Geraldo Reyes of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, in Estabrook's new book Tomatoland, p. 98.)

An Omnivore, Really

2011-06-29T14:15:00.003-04:00

"He has a passion for food and likes nothing more than cooking for people; he's a baker, a chili maker, an omnivore, really."

- Hugh Howard writing about musician Darrell Scott in the Summer 2011 Tufts Magazine. (They are both graduates of the University.) Scott is a great player of many instruments - guitar, mandolin and banjo being but a few - and a beautiful songwriter. Along with the great Tim O'Brien, he also recorded one of my favorite albums of all time, Real Time.

Rhubarb Time!

2011-06-29T08:05:00.006-04:00

The first sentence of the 1901 book The New Rhubarb Culture by John Elliot Morse and George Burnap Fiske, who also wrote extensively about poultry, reads: "The cultivation of rhubarb, like some well established laws, extends back to the time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary" (1).

Huh? How's that for some confusing wording and syntax?

At any rate, rhubarb, originating in Siberia and long cultivated for use as both food and medicine, is truly an early summer treat. These beautiful chocolate cupcakes, made by none other than baker extraordinaire Amber Linnette Holloway, are filled with a tart and tasty rhubarb compote.

Beautiful Bread

2011-06-28T22:39:00.005-04:00

Beautiful sourdough round from A&J King Artisan Bakers in Salem. Yes, the city of witches. Some of the best bread around. By far.

Finished the last slice tonight, simply slathered with some warm kitchen-softened butter.

A Pear, a Banana and an Apple

2011-06-27T15:32:00.004-04:00

"Goldstein celebrated with a pear, a banana and an apple but no Champagne," writes Dave Seminara in today's New York Times.

Leah Goldstein, the woman doing all of the celebrating with the pear, banana and apple, just finished the RAAM or Race Across America, an, ahem, 3,000 mile bicycle race from coast to coast that riders must finish in 12 or fewer days.

The second place finisher reached the destination in Annapolis, Maryland in 9 days. The first place finisher in just 8 days, 8 hours and 6 minutes. The winner, Christoph Strasser, averaged 400 miles per day and slept for seven and a half hours. Total. Goldstein, no slouch - "a former professional cyclist, a champion kick boxer and member of the Israeli military’s commando training unit" - finished the race in just over 11 days.

Another racer, Katie Spotz, broke her pelvis a few weeks ago, but that didn't deter her. She decided to ride a hand cycle. (Spotz, by the way, who is 24, rowed solo from Senegal to Guyana in early 2010. It took her 70 days.) A couple of days into RAAM, she had a wreck, went to see another doctor, who "said her healing was going well enough for her to get back on her regular bike," and hopped on her foot-pedaled bike for the remainder of the route.*

Um. Wow.

Ginger Juice and Crossiants

2011-06-26T17:29:00.004-04:00

While the rest of us nurse cooling cups of coffee and think about doing the laundry that festers in the hamper, chef Marcus Samuelsson's Sunday routine includes an early morning run out for ginger juice and croissants, a game of soccer in Chinatown, calling mom, cooking for 350 at his restaurant Red Rooster, and a whole lot more.

Read on.

Paved with Cinnabons

2011-06-22T15:20:00.004-04:00

"But let's begin tonight, perhaps, in America, a land of opportunity where the streets are paved with, let's say, Cinnabons."

- Jon Stewart, from the June 21, 2011 episode of The Daily Show

The Cooking Ape and kwai

2011-06-21T18:32:00.033-04:00

There's nothing quite as primal-feeling as cooking food directly over fire, flames lapping at the meat and vegetables above. And for good reason: surely something akin to this method of dry heat cooking - minus the Weber grills, tanks of propane gas, and stainless steel tongs - reaches the furthest back into our relationship with the application of heat to our food.

"Fire, scientists agree, helped give rise to a successful, thriving human population by providing heat for cooking and protection from the cold," writes Sindya Bhanoo recently in The New York Times. What they don't agree on is when humans actually figured out how to domesticate fire.

While conventional anthropological understanding has long held that early humans and pre-humans lived on, alongside foraged vegetables and fruits, raw meat, Harvard University biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham has more recently argued that early humans must have cooked their meat. In that cooking, he explains, they became more human.

Recently, presenting a picture that is more in line with prevailing evolutionary theory, two archaeologists, Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in the Netherlands and Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder, claim that there is no substantive evidence to suggest that humans regularly used fire until about 400,000 years ago. Wrangham, on the other hand, argues that cooking began about two million years ago, with the transition from Australopithecus afarensis to Homo erectus.*

While I find all of this scientific inquiry on the part of Wrangham, Roebucks, Villa and many others fascinating and quite important, I'm getting a little off track here. Ok, a lot. A lot off track.

This is a rather lengthy - and entirely indirect - introduction to a few photographs of some early summer grilling and some areca palm leaf plates from kwai, a cool new company out of D.C. devoted to "creating a better business model for a fragile planet". In so many ways, they're trying hard to do just that. Sounds splendid to me. (That and Joe Green, a great guy that I've known since the Grinnell College days of the late 1990s, is behind kwai.)

The plates are beautiful, lightweight, durable, and compostable.

Definitely check them out.

kwai plate

Awesomely crunchy horseradish pickles from Pickles, Olives Etc. in NYC

Grilled baguette topped with St. Pete's Select blue cheese (from the great blue cheese caves in my hometown of Faribault, Minnesota), an Aleppo pepper-sumac-mint beef kebab, salted yogurt, and mint and parsley leaves

Again, in its glory

And, lastly, a trio of photographs of the kebab and company, a salad of greens picked straight from the garden and tomatoes, and grilled asparagus and grape tomatoes

This particular grilling feast was held this past Sunday in honor of my dad. He and my mom were out visiting the Boston area from their home in Minnesota. Hence the traveling blue cheese.

*From Australopithecus to Homo erectus, Wrangham explains, the sizes of three key things decreased: the rib cage, pelvis and molars. Homo erectus' small ribs and small pelvis are indicative of a smaller gut, Wrangham argues, and access to high quality food - in this case, cooked food - allowed early humans to have a smaller gut. A raw food diet would have required a larger rib cage, pelvis and molars. This shrinking stomach then allowed them to store energy elsewhere: in their brains. And of all primates, modern day humans have the smallest stomachs and the largest brains. Looking back at the evolutionary record, in other words, clearly indicates, according to Wrangham, that Homo erectus was the first cook in the proverbial kitchen.

A Merrier World

2011-06-14T14:27:00.001-04:00

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien by way of Thorin in The Hobbit.

Perhaps I should read some Tolkien.

Malört!

2011-06-13T12:40:00.002-04:00

Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! drinks him some Malört.

And the pour.

Listen.

This is hilarious.

Of course, for some context, you should really revisit a few words that I penned on the subject back in February of 2007.

Hot Sauce and Scorpions

2011-06-13T11:28:00.002-04:00

"Upon arrival we are told that the camp is overrun with scorpions of many kinds, and that Zach has already been stung on the hand while reaching into a bag of supplies. After a brief, lighthearted discussion about whether the finger should be removed, one of our drivers immediately applied a local remedy of hot sauce (sakay) to draw out the venom, and Zach is recovering nicely. Given the strength of the sakay, it’s possible that the cure hurt more than the venom. Within an hour of arriving at camp we are off to explore our first cave in the matrix of Ankarana."

- John Sparks, curator of ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, reporting from Madagascar, where he is studying blind, pigmentless cave fishes that live in subterranean limestone caverns

Mustard!

2011-06-12T09:35:00.002-04:00

Huge mustard green haul from the garden.

Out go the greens. In go the tomatoes as soon as we get a break from this incessant rain.

Cereal

2011-06-12T08:52:00.002-04:00

"The most important thing for me is to have my cereal. I have milk and granola and cheese. And that’s it. I have a lot of cereals that I eat all day long, and I have a big appetite. All over the planet I carry my cereals!"

- Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado interviewed by John Bowe for The New York Times

On a recent trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska - a slideshow of some of his amazing work there can be found here - in addition to endless cereal, Salgado, who lives in France, also had very good fish. "It was fabulous! We had an incredible life there," he said.

Tuna and the Untamed Ocean

2011-06-11T21:18:00.003-04:00

"If salmon led us out of our Neolithic caves in the highlands down to the mouths of rivers, if sea bass and other coastal perciforms led us from the safety of shore to the reefs and rocks that surround the coasts, and if cod and the gadiforms led us beyond the sight of land to the edges of the continental shelves, tuna have taken us over the precipice of the continental shelves into the abyss of the open sea - the final frontier of fishing and the place where the wildest things in the world are making the last argument for the importance of an untamed ocean" (200).

- Paul Greenberg, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, 2010

Breakfast at Malema's

2011-06-08T09:44:00.009-04:00

When the South African African National Congress' Youth League convenes for its national convention later this month, you can join them for a price.

50,000 Rand (or $7,431.40 at the current exchange rate) will get you access to the five-day event, its discussions and closed door sessions, and, yes, to breakfast with Julius Malema, head of the Youth League. Malema, varyingly viewed as an outspoken voice of poor, disenfranchised black South Africa and as a corrupt, dangerous hatemonger and bully in the mold of Robert Mugabe, a man for whom he has repeatedly declared admiration.*

No mini muffins here. The breakfast will feature bacon, eggs, muesli, fresh fruit, yogurt, pap, and halal foods.**

Recently accused of hate-speech for leading his followers in renditions of the song "Shoot the Boer!," Malema recently took the stand and testified in his defense in the Johannesburg court. Describing the scene, Celia Dugger wrote, in an April 30 article for The New York Times, "It seemed like a throwback to the days when a white minority ruled South Africa. Inside a colonial-era courthouse that was once a stage for the political trials of anti-apartheid activists, a white lawyer in robes and frilly bib accused a black leader of being a Communist and fomenting hatred of whites."***

Addressing a group of followers outside the courtroom, Malema, flanked by Winnie-Madikizela Mandela, Nelson Mandela's ex-wife, exclaimed: "We are going to take their land whether they like it or not!" reiterating his support and desire for the redistribution of white-owned land to black South Africans.****

* In reference to Zimbabwe and Mugabe's rule there, “It’s a democratic country...They have been holding elections every five years,” Malema is quoted as saying at the trial, as recounted in Dugger's article.

For more, check out this piece from April, 2010 on Malema and the controversy over the song and his rhetoric from NPR's Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

Sausage Making with Justin Vernon

2011-06-06T09:35:00.002-04:00

"In February, he was back in Eau Claire, driving his mother’s old Honda CR-V, looking for an industrial park on the outskirts of town to pick up some processed venison. Snow was still on the ground from a huge storm the previous week. Just before the storm, he finished the second Bon Iver record, titled 'Bon Iver, Bon Iver,' which will be released this month."

"Though Vernon has been navigating Eau Claire his whole life, he had to rely on a G.P.S. to find Mike’s Star Market: a blissful-smelling oasis in a sea of warehouses about a mile from downtown. In the back, the shop was making its own brats and sausages, which were dangling from racks. Up front were refrigerator displays full of pungent, vividly red steaks, moist pork chops, walleye filets."

"His father killed the deer the previous November, and it had been waiting at Mike’s ever since. After a few minutes of rustling around in the rear freezer, an impassive clerk handed over an icy cardboard box about the size of a toaster oven, marked VERNON. Inside were loin chops, jerky and scrap, which Vernon had asked for so he could begin to experiment with making his own sausage."

- From Who, What and Where is Bon Iver? by Jon Caramanica (June 3, 2011, The New York Times)

Trump, Palin and Pizza

2011-06-02T16:52:00.002-04:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Me Lover's Pizza With Crazy Broad

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

John Stewart on the art of eating pizza in NYC.

Four Fish

2011-05-27T07:31:00.002-04:00

"Season by season I would take my surplus catch to the parking lot of my junior high and sell my fish out of the trunk of my mother's Cordoba for a dollar a pound. The miserably paid teachers would crowd around, and by the end of a sales session I would have enough cash on hand for the next trip out" (5).

- Paul Greenberg in Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food (2010), recalling his childhood fishing forays in Long Island Sound

Afternoon Snack

2011-05-25T16:27:00.001-04:00

Perfect.

Bread (from Hearth Wood Fired Bread in Plymouth, MA)

Butter

Radish from the garden

Rabbit in the Log

2011-05-25T10:06:00.006-04:00

The old time traditional tune "Rabbit in the Log," which the Monroe Brothers recorded as "Have a Feast Here Tonight" in 1938, gives us a good sense of what to do when you're hungry and tired and you come upon a rabbit, but you haven't got your hunting dog.

Performed here by the exceptional Chris Thile and Michael Daves. They played a show in Boston last night, and it was brilliant.

Gonna build me a fire and I'll roast that old hare
Roll him in the flames so nice and brown
I'll feast here tonight when the moon's shining bright
Find me a place to lie down

Pizza Night

2011-05-24T18:48:00.002-04:00

Mozzarella

Anchovies

Sage

Thyme

Farming in a Nutshell

2011-05-23T21:21:00.002-04:00

"Farmers toil. Nature laughs. Farmers weep. There's your history of agriculture in a Nutshell."

- Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life, 207

Coffee

2011-05-23T15:02:00.004-04:00

Recently, Oliver Strand, Coffee Curator (Really?) for the New York Times "T" Magazine, wrote about coffee in Philadelphia. He embarked on a "coffee crawl" that took him "to a handful of shops where the baristas aren’t just tremendously skilled, they’re disarmingly sweet-natured."

I love coffee, and I appreciate that people take the art of good coffee seriously - like Boston-area George Howell of Terroir - and yet it all feels a bit overblown and absurd. (In much the same way that my own dropping of Howell and Terroir do.)

Hesitations and insecure backtracking aside, I like this notion of coffee setting the mood for the day, wherever one may be, at home or discombobulated in an unfamiliar place.

"I didn’t fully appreciate the coffee scene until the following morning. Walking along the city’s 18th-century streets to get from Spruce Street Espresso to Elixr, I was reminded of something the chef René Redzepi of Noma told me earlier this year: if coffee sets the mood for the day, it’s even more true when you’re traveling — finding an exceptional cappuccino or espresso when you’re bleary-eyed and in an unfamiliar city can be a divine experience. It’s a gift, he said, to be told where to go," Strand writes.

Little Patch of Beans

2011-05-21T09:35:00.004-04:00

"I guess we'd wrecked the bird's nest with the plow the day before. I tried for a minute to imagine a way of eating that involves no suffering and came down to Thoreau next to the pond with his little patch of beans. Then I remembered that he walked to his mother's house in town every day for lunch" (Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life, 174).

Yanni, Yanni and Yanni

2011-05-16T17:35:00.009-04:00

In the recent Nature film "Salmon: Running the Gauntlet," novelist David James Duncan comments on the decline in variation among Columbia River salmon, fewer than 1 out of 5 of which are born in the wild. Duncan quips, "The image I like to use is that the hatchery programs are trying to replace Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart with Yanni, Yanni and Yanni and it's not gonna work."

It's a story of human intervention in and management of nature - in the lives of salmon, at every step of the way. It's complex, unbelievably so.

A cedar spindle whorl carved with a salmon design, created in 1964 -1965 by Don Morse Smith, a Cherokee artist from Ariel, Washington. (At the National Museum of the American Indian. More information here.)

It's worth revisiting writer Rowan Jacobsen for a moment. He's proven to be an invaluable travel guide lately, and his commentary on the dramatically important role that salmon have played in the ecology of the Pacific Northwest follows:

"When the Ice Age relinquished its grip on the area ten thousand years ago, and its glacial fingers retreated, it revealed a barren landscape. The millions of salmon wriggling upstream helped engender new life, as if the ocean were impregnating the land. Up to a third of the nitrogen on the valley floors of the Pacific Northwest was once salmon, and Sitka spruce along the salmon streams grow three times as fast as spruce along non-salmon streams. When those spruce eventually fall across the streams, they help create the deep pools that salmon need to rest in during their spawning run. The salmon make the river, and the river makes the salmon" (American Terroir, 171).

Greens From the Garden

2011-05-15T22:17:00.011-04:00

Picked a few hours ago.

Loving the garden.

Mustard

Red Russian Kale

Mizuna

Red Mustard

Escarole

French Breakfast Radish

The Salad Days

2011-05-10T23:44:00.001-04:00

Harvesting salad greens for dinner.

Foraging for Lunch

2011-05-07T14:16:00.004-04:00

I went in search of morels again this morning. No luck, but I did bring home the following.

The common violet, Viola odorata, and the Largeleaf Aster, Eurybia macrophylla, made their way into lunch today.

Tending the Flock

2011-05-05T19:31:00.001-04:00

Not so related, but this guy is amazing.

Morel Hunting

2011-05-03T13:01:00.007-04:00

I came across this passage the other day as I was thinking about heading off into the woods to look for morels.

"I filled two grocery bags, took off my pants and tied knots in the bottom, filled my pants with morels, and same with my shirt and came out of the woods with a shirt full, pants full and two grocery bags heaped, walking past morels too many to pick. I actually came out of the woods and had on a pair of underwear, socks and tennis shoes."

If you'd like to read more of this interview with a Michiganer morel hunting expert, read on here (though I've obviously excerpted the best part).

Fiddleheads for Dinner

2011-05-02T22:13:00.005-04:00

Ricotta and sage ravioli, oven roasted purple potatoes, poached yellow and purple potatoes,
and sauteed fiddleheads.

Fiddlehead Recipe

Parboil cleaned and rinsed fiddleheads in salted, boiling water.
In a saute pan, melt a slice of butter and a drizzle of olive oil until the butter begins to foam.
Turn down the heat on the saute pan.
When fiddleheads become tender, drain and quickly add to the butter and oil.
Toss.
Squeeze in a bit of lemon.
Give a few grinds of black pepper.
Salt to taste.
Cook until tender, but leave some toothiness.
Taste.
Adjust.
Done.

Fiddleheads

2011-05-01T19:25:00.021-04:00

This weekend, in beautiful southeastern Vermont near Lake St. Catherine, I did some trout fishing and turkey hunting with a friend.

Actually, I lie.

The only fish that I caught were a few sticks and stones. And the only turkey that I saw was sliced, shrink-wrapped and hanging in a cooler next to some Old Fashioned Loaf at an area Price Chopper. In fact, I've never hunted, had no gun in hand and only occasionally scratched out some high-pitched shrieks on the turkey call as Rich scouted around, camouflaged shotgun slung over his shoulder.

What I did come across in our wanderings in the woods were some fiddleheads. Beautiful. Bright green. Curled, coiled and ready to unfurl.

So I harvested.

In early spring, as the plants that have slumbered over the winter wake up, come the new ferns. Found along streams and in other damp areas, all ferns actually go through fiddlehead stage, and the immature fronds shoot up and uncurl as they grow. Tom Seymour explains in Foraging New England, "New Englanders, being frugal of words, simply call immature Ostrich Fern fronds fiddleheads. Suffice it to say, in New England fiddleheads means 'Ostrich Ferns'" (22).

A few other varieties of ferns are apparently edible, while some are believed to be carcinogenic, but it's really only Ostrich Fern fiddleheads that make it to tables in New England.

To my taste, fiddleheads are best parboiled and then quickly sauteed with olive oil and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, and brightened with a dash of lemon or cider vinegar. (Seymour again: "Never, despite what others may say, use raw fiddleheads in a salad; they have a profound laxative effect" (24).)

I first encountered and ate fiddleheads while living in Nepal about a decade ago. Known as ningro or niuro, they too emerge there in spring and flood the vegetable markets with their greenery, their evocation of a new season and the end of winter.

Hungry Ghost

2011-04-24T18:43:00.004-04:00

A beautiful loaf of crusty, rustic French bread from Hungry Ghost Bread in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Wonderful.

Thyme

2011-04-22T17:53:00.007-04:00

The back porch herb garden is back.

Common thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

Thyme is one of my favorite herbs. Paired with honey and vanilla ice cream, tossed onto a pizza with soft goat cheese, stuffed alongside lemons into whole trout, or added to simmering black beans and roasted chiles.

A key ingredient in the history of the ancient Mediterranean world, thyme was considered to be an aphrodisiac, so much so that Dionysius, the onetime despot of Syracuse, the ancient Greek city state on what is now Sicily, scattered his palace with thyme prior to parties, "always inviting a large proportion of toothsome young ladies," explains Waverly Root in his indispensable, odd, and appropriately named Food (508). The ancient Egyptians used it in embalming. The Sumerians and Romans used it as a medicine. "The Romans thought eating thyme promoted bravery, and this is said to be also why medieval knights setting out for the wars wore scarves on which their ladies had embroidered sprigs of thyme..." (Root, 508). The Romans and Byzantines believed that thyme could cure melancholy. It was thought to be a favorite with fairies. Hildegard von Bingen considered it a good medicine against leprosy, paralysis and body lice (Root, 509).

Though I love the flavor, it's the smell of thyme that stands out most to me. It's verdant and woodsy, fresh and citrusy. "It always denotes a pure atmosphere wherever it grows spontaneously, and it is thought to enliven the spirits, where it perfumes the air," wrote Henry Phillips, an early nineteenth century English schoolmaster and botanist, in his 1822 History of Cultivated Vegetables (328).

I should note that Harpy Thyme, a book by Piers Anthony, which I encountered in my investigation of thyme and which begins "Gloha flapped her feather wings until she was high above the harpy hutch. The land of Xanth spread obligingly out below her, so she could see all the way to its medium-far corners. There was Lake Ogre-Chobee, with its ogre tribe on the shore and its toothy reptilian swimmers," appears to have nothing to do with the kind of thyme that interests me.

Black IPA

2011-04-19T11:26:00.002-04:00

Bottled.

Orange

2011-04-08T12:17:00.000-04:00

I just ate an orange.

Sometimes that's all there is to say.

Focaccia By Late Afternoon Light

2011-04-03T16:54:00.000-04:00

Hauling Entenmann's

2011-03-24T13:30:00.001-04:00

SOLOMON, KS—Awakening to the lonely howl of a distant coyote early Tuesday morning, C.J. Hoppel climbs into his 18-wheeler and sets off westward across a barren stretch of unbroken prairie, the whipping wind his only companion as he pulls a rig full of Entenmann's baked goods and snack cakes across the plains.

"This load's gotta be in Arizona by sundown tomorrow," says this 63-year-old cowboy of the American road, gesturing toward his 500- horsepower Peterbilt tractor-trailer packed to the brim with Raisin Loaf Cakes, Apple Puffs, and Ultimate Cinnamon Pastry Twisters. "But I should be able to cover 700 miles today, so long as the weather holds."

- from a hilarious piece that appeared in the Onion back in January, "Modern-Day Cowboy Rides 18-Wheeler Full Of Entenmann's Products Westward."

Empty Corona and Hotel Coffee

2011-03-23T18:25:00.002-04:00

A few lyrical snippets from the spectacular Jeffrey Foucault song Mesa, Arizona.

"All alone in a Mexican joint
In Mesa, Arizona
With a mariachi band
On the jukebox
And an empty Corona"

...

"Out here working
In the neon lights
Where the temperature is falling
It's hotel coffee
Red-eye flights and Honey
I'm your midnight ringer calling"

Watch and listen here. It'll make your day.

Black Magic Bread Recipe

2011-03-22T16:30:00.004-04:00

Night 1

Mix until well incorporated.
11.5 oz white bread flour

11.5 oz water (about 65 degrees)

1/4 tsp of yeast

Leave covered in a bowl on your counter.

Morning 2

The next morning add...

8.5 oz of water

17.5 oz flour (13 white bread, 4.5 whole wheat)

1 tsp or less of yeast depending on how long you want to wait for the rise.

.5 oz salt
1 cup spent beer grain

Mix until semi-smooth.

If you added a full tsp of yeast, allow the dough to rise for 2 to 3 hours at room temp. If you added less yeast, let it go for longer. The dough should double in size.

Once your bread is ready, dump it on the table, dust it with flour, fold it, and let it rest for 10-15 minutes.

Divide in 2, pre-shape, and let it rest for 15 minutes.

Shape a bit more (try to approximate the size of the vessel you'll be rising in - I use woven baskets) and proof for 1+ hour while the oven warms up to 450). Since I proof in baskets, I dust the loaf and basket with bread and rice flour first. This prevents sticking. You could also allow the loaves to rise free form on a sheet of parchment, just make sure to cover them while they proof so they don't dry out. I usually just cover them with a food grade plastic bag, the kind you find in the produce section of your local food market.

Place loaf on peel and score with a razor or serrated knife.

Slide dough onto baking stone, which has been heating in the oven.

Put 1 cup of water in a preheated cast iron pan in the oven. (I keep the steam pan on the bottom of the oven, and I bake my bread on the middle rack.) Quickly close the oven door.

Bake until browned, 20-40 minutes depending on bread size, flour, oven, etc. (I like to rotate my loaves after 10 minutes or so, just to ensure an even bake. The bread is done when it reaches internal temp of 190+ degrees. (I usually pull it out of the oven at 185 or so and then let it carryover cook on the cooling rack.)

Big thanks to Peter, who passed this recipe along to me. I've tweaked it here and there, but the basic outline is still here.

Franconia Notch Smoke Jumper

2011-03-20T19:05:00.004-04:00

Bottled for two weeks.

First one cracked open.

In the glass.

Smoky, but not overly.

Taste and heat of chiles. Definite tingle in the mouth and on the lips, but not overwhelming.

Pretty light and drinkable.

Overall, really happy.

I imagine that it'll be splendid with the slice of bread and sharp cheddar cheese that I'm about to rustle up.

In-the-bottle pic here and, more importantly, the recipe here.

Black Magic Bread #2

2011-03-20T17:47:00.000-04:00

Mike Tyson and the Boring Life

2011-03-16T16:08:00.001-04:00

"As part of his cleaning-up campaign, he has been adhering to a strict vegan diet for nearly two years, explaining that he doesn’t want anything in him 'that’s going to enrage me — no processed food, no meat.' He says that he can no longer abide the smell of meat even on someone’s breath and has dropped 150 pounds since he weighed in at 330 in 2009. 'I’ve learned to live a boring life and love it,' he declares, sounding more determined than certain. 'I let too much in, and look what happened. . . . I used to have a bunch of girls and some drugs on the table. A bunch of people running around doing whatever.'"

- Daphne Merkin, "The Suburbanization of Mike Tyson," the New York Times Magazine, 3/15/11

Black Magic Bread

2011-03-14T20:17:00.004-04:00

About to come out of the baskets.

Cooling.

I can hear the crust cracking.

But a bit burned on the bottom.

Black Magic Bread In The Works

2011-03-14T17:20:00.003-04:00

We made an awesome looking Black IPA yesterday - Amber dubbed it Black Magic - so I decided to put the spent barley grains - Carafa III, Chocolate Malt and Caramel 80 - in the loaf of bread that I started last night.

Proofing in baskets now.

Now, we wait.

Bananas in Motion

2011-03-14T17:14:00.001-04:00