lazy

Ahhh. This hot weather is right up my alley and, lucky for me, coincides with a time when I have no onerous deadlines, meetings, easily identifiable tribulations, or haunting trials. Gardening and reading are about it, and trying to catch the latest little red squirrel in a compromising, no-exit situation.


And, of course, attending the Farmers’ Market. Last Saturday provided that gorgeous haul you see above:

Two cheeses (bottom left), Mettowee, from Consider Bardwell – a fresh goat cheese from the first batch of the summer – and a pepper-clad Camembrie from Blue Ledge Farm, both highly, highly desirable. Let's keep going counter-clockwise: There's Radical Roots' artichokes (I lucked out) 4 of them; the remains of a cut kohlrabi that Paul's interns were sampling to Foggy Meadow's customers – sweet and crunchy; then Alchemy Garden's iceberg lettuce – sweet and juicy and crunchy. Then – you can’t see anything but its shine – a black/purple eggplant from Dutchess Farms; Chioggia beet greens that Paul slipped into my basket; and a bulb of fennel and a tomato – the first of the season – from Dutchess Farms. Not shown are thin French green beans from Foggy Meadow, a chicken from Sunset Farm, and a big loaf of multi-grain bread from Connick’s Sandwich Shop booth. And the scattering of green peppers? All from MY new garden. So flavorful, especially the Hungarian Wax.

Am I crazy, or what? How were two people to eat this plethora before next week's Farmers' Market? And not even two – who knew when Leo would return from the canoe retreat!

Well, I made a pretty admirable beginning, if I do say so myself, with thin sliced bread slathered with bits of the little button of Mettowee. While I sat on the porch reading – you can guess can’t you, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – with one eye and watching that naughty, saucy little squirrel avoiding my trap with the other. And the sun pouring down, and the sounds of my tomatoes turning red. And the basil yipping in the dooryard.

(I always take a great deal of satisfaction when I include that timely last phrase in my July columns, since the first time I wrote it maybe 20 years ago my editor deleted it, saying, “Basil doesn’t yip. Avoid hyperbole.”

Now I ask you – where would I be without hyperbole?

Now, of course, I have a wonderful editor who says, “It’s a column. You can say what you want to... within reason.”

It reminds me of a piece I did on a fishing resort a few years ago in which I wrote about a ghost, and also wrote that I fled screaming back to my cabin. The editor balked at the screaming. “Did you really scream?” he asked. No, I said. “Well don’t say you did,” he said, “avoid hyperbole.” Wellahhh, I said, very hesitantly, what about the ghost? He didn’t mind the ghost.)

I was not hungry after that for a long time, until, in fact, dusk obliterated Kalle Blomkvist (my editor made me omit Lisbeth’s middle name for him) on the page and I began thinking about that eggplant sliced thin and fried crisp. Mmm. Oh yeah. One nice thing about being alone is that you cook – and eat – when you’re hungry, not when somebody else is, or at some other arbitrary time.

Into the kitchen, Pandora playing Phillip Glass, sliced that firm little eggplant thin, sprinkled the slices with Wondra (do they still sell that stuff? My canister of it must be 15 years old if a day, used only for a bit of crispness at times such as these), when I heard footsteps on the deck and Leo arrived home, just in time, trailing a little duct-taped-together-canoe behind him.

I made a salad of slices of kohlrabi, mango, Hungarian wax pepper, and tomato sprinkled with sea salt, coarsely ground pepper, and chopped parsley and cilantro, then drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then I fried the eggplant slices in a little lard and butter.

Leo was happy. What luck that I should be cooking my little heart’s delight just when he walked in the door.

The eggplant was über eggplant, sooooooo much eggplant taste. It reminded me of an anecdote a friend told me about her mother’s husband who could not eat eggplant anymore, so her mother – both of these people are Italian to the core – substituted zucchini in the Parmesan and “They. could. not. tell the difference.”

Let me tell you right now that zucchini could in no way have taken on the characteristics of THIS eggplant, so fresh and firm and, well, über in pure taste!

And the salad, too, was utterly delicious.

***

It’s hot. I need an appetizer. I don’t want to turn the stove on. I have shrimp that I have steamed during the cool hours. I decide to pickle it, and to that end I pull out Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking: Recipes and ruminations from Charleston... It’s one of my favorite books about a fascinating food area that is home to, among many other shining food items and traditions, the shrimp trade. This is his take on pickling shrimp.

Pickled Shrimp

(I adapted a bit – halved his recipe and added the peppers:)

John Martin Taylor (aka Hoppin' John)  writes: "Throughout summer and fall, huge bowls of pickled shrimp grace the food tables at cocktail parties. I like to keep a jar in the refrigerator. The true Lowcountry shrimp salad is composed of pickled shrimp atop a bed of fresh lettuce, with no pasta or mayonnaise in sight...”

• about 1/3 cup of thinly sliced onion

• 1 Hungarian wax pepper, thinly sliced

• 1 bay leaf

• ½ teaspoon salt (or to taste)

• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

• the juice and zest of 1 lemon

• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

• 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds

• 2 garlic cloves, minced.

• 1 pound cooked shrimp, peeled, tails intact

Combine all the ingredients and pour over the shrimp in a quart glass jar with a lid. Store in the fridge for at least 24 hours before serving. [mine steeped for 6 hours and it was very good] Keeps for up to 2 weeks.

***

I was struck by the pertinacity of this thought from one of my favorite books and writers to our local food culture of today:

Good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality...[i]t is born out in communities where the supply of food is conditioned by the seasons. Once we lose touch with the spendthrift aspect of nature's provisions epitomized in the raising of a crop, we are in danger of losing touch with life itself. When Providence supplies the means, the preparation and the sharing of food takes on a sacred aspect. The fact that every crop is of short duration promotes a spirit of making the best of it while it lasts and conserving part of it for future use. It also leads to periods of fasting and feasting...  Patience Gray in the introduction to Honey from a Weed (New York: Harper & Row, 1986)

There is a wonderful essay by Corby Kummer about Gray here, and if you scroll down you will read Gray on Weeds.

***

And, just to make things perfect, and just like his predecessors the little red squirrel could not resist the peanuts in the no-exit birdhouse and, as soon as he flips into the hole, I’m there stuffing a sock in it, and off we go to the woods to make him a new home.

Farmers' Market Haul

Imagine this: Two cheeses (bottom left) Mettowee, from Consider Bardwell, which is their fresh goat cheese –  this is the first batch of the summer; and a pepper-clad camembert from Lake's Edge Farm. Both absolutely delicious. Let's keep going counter-clockwise: There's Radical Roots' artichokes, highly prized, 4 of them; a cut kohlrabi that Paul's interns were sampling to Foggy Meadow's customers – sweet and crunchy; then Alchemy Garden's iceberg lettuce – sweet and juicy and crunchy. Then, you can hardly see it – a black/purple eggplant from Dutchess Farms; Chioggia beet greens that Paul slipped into my basket; then fennel and a tomato – the first of the season – from Dutchess Farms. Also bought French green beans from Foggy Meadow, a chicken from Sunset Farm, and a big loaf of multi-grain bread from the place that used to be the Yellow Submarine on Terrill Street – I think It's called Connor's Sandwish Shop now.

Am I crazy, or what? How are two people to eat this plethora before next week's Farmers' Market?

Those green peppers – So flavorful, especially the Hungarian Wax – all from MY garden!

an assortment of weeds

  

I love these few hot days mid-summer when the house is dim and cool and the garden is bright and hot and I wander between the two with stops each way for the hourly-changing shady reading spot on the porch or deck, happily torn between writing, weeding, and reading. There's dirt under my nails, sweat running down my neck, and streaks of lily pollen and blackcap juice on my shorts and tee. I am minimally ecstatic.

On one of those trips inside I inspect my friend El's excellent blog, Fast Grow the Weeds dot com, wherein a professional woman lives (close to where I grew up) in Michigan with her husband and child and various animals and gardens. She works from her home office at an entirely separate job while experimenting with eating close-to-completely-off-the-land -- mostly her own -- with local and area supplementation. This involves season-extension and preserving and what does not sound like, but we know is, an immense amount of work. Her latest addition is a goat, her latest activity is making cheese. It seems no hardship to her and hers, but, conversely, a joy. 

On her blog she has quoted Patience Gray in a permanent sidebar:

Good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality...[i]t is born out in communities where the supply of food is conditioned by the seasons. Once we lose touch with the spendthrift aspect of nature's provisions epitomized in the raising of a crop, we are in danger of losing touch with life itself. When Providence supplies the means, the preparation and the sharing of food takes on a sacred aspect. The fact that every crop is of short duration promotes a spirit of making the best of it while it lasts and conserving part of it for future use. It also leads to periods of fasting and feasting...

Patience Gray in the introduction to Honey from a Weed (New York: Harper & Row, 1986)

It is not the first time I have found like-mindedness between us. I was struck by the pertinacity of this thought to our local food culture of today, and in no time at all I had put my hands on this book so lovingly perused over the last two decades. It will stay out of the bookcase for weeks now as I taste its sweetness once again. Until, in fact (if I know myself), the snow flies.

On another topic, Michael Ruhlman posted a Zucchini Fritter recipe just now and he has several curves on it. It is here.

a nice culture of food

Last Tuesday I demo-ed zucchini fritters at the farmers’ market congruently with Jill Corey and cohorts from the Vermont Department of Health signing up a steady stream of WIC (Women, Infants, Children) recipients.

Fecundity was rampant, with babies both born and not yet born, women with high bulging bellies on which they rested their arms as they waited in line – as though leaning on a fence –  and chubby children.
The women seemed shy and shrank from my proffered wares – perhaps because they didn’t know they were free – but some children said “I’ll take one.” And, with a small dot of maple syrup on the top of the fritter – I think I called them pancakes – they liked them, and came back for more, and with their example others became less reticent. I had recipes for them – simplest thing in the world, cheap, easy, good food. Tasty. Great way to get zucchini down kids’ gullets.

Others stopped by, too, and said they recognized me from that glamorous picture with my Rutland Herald column, and were eager to talk about this fascinating thing – food! One of them, M, is a person I’ve known for many years but not well; not least, perhaps, because he lived in Italy for some years (in a 13th century house that he restored from ‘stones’). While I fried fritters, we chatted, and he rhapsodized about the food in Tuscany that “you would die for” – truffles, for instance, and local sausages and cheeses. Olive oil. M’s yield of olives came just over the brim of the amount needed to have his own olives crushed into oil that came exclusively from his own trees. How many of us can say that?

We talked of just the incandescent life of food from a place that has grown and made its own food for centuries the same, with very little industrial food or indeed food from “away”.  “These excellent zucchinis came from Radical Roots,” I tell him, “and the unsurpassed maple syrup from Smokey House.”

We grin at each other, he snaps a couple of photos (see above) and is on his way. Later he posts one of the pics on Facebook  but, most importantly, below the photo he commented with on-line punctuation, “theres a nice culture of food that gravitates around the farmers market and coop great world class cheeses breads and veggies and organic meat.”


Those words shook me to my very soul. They made me happy. We’re so used to keeping our noses to the grindstone, keepin’ on pushin’ that old boulder up the mountain that sometimes we forget to pause and just  recognize and enjoy what has been accomplished, tip the bottle of Vermont wine over the glass that is sometimes also made locally, and drink it with the pastured and gardened food, and realize what these last thirty years have wrought.

Then, of course, we need to put our shoulders (nose?) back to the (let me continue to mix my metaphors here – all about pushing heavy things uphill) grindstone, wheel? and make sure it keeps going. We never reach the apex of the hill, but we reach plateaus, and then if we get too involved in enjoying the plateau we might begin to slide down again instead of... well you get the gist.


An editorial in Monday’s paper  rhapsodized about farm-fresh food and buying local from farmers’ market and farmstand, and pointed out what economic sense it makes to shop that way. Certainly the Rutland Farmers’ Market has matured beautifully into an every Saturday festival of lovely food, music, and crafts, with a smaller market taking place on Tuesday afternoons. And the Boardman Hill Farmstand out on rt. 4 West, as well as the Radical Roots Farmstand on Creek Road, are conveniently chock-full of beautiful produce. I stopped at the Timberloft Farmstand in West Rutland last week, too, for some of the last strawberries available.

We are lucky people in that, beyond the fact that we need not rely on industrial food, we also find a very genuine social structure when we visit with the farmers. For these are people with whom you, not occasionally but often, have eye to eye conversations. All the shades of social confusion are torn down and tossed streetward as you speak with like souls about the bones of life, really. It’s not passion as much as it’s basic stuff. We are talking of our births and our deaths when we talk of soil and food, and in these conversations we find real connection.


The Rutland Co-op was one glaring omission in the editorial’s laudation of local food, one that I am not sure was intentional but that some of us find deserved. For while our Co-op’s mission statement stresses a partnership between it and local farmers and the exhortation to offer to its members and other shoppers Local First, recently we find it is sadly falling short of that goal, as well as in the quality control of less local foods.

I try to do all my shopping at the Co-op, or at least 90% of it, but a few Saturdays ago I had to go to the supermarket for onions, of all things. The ones at the Co-op were sprouting and browning, while the kale – which was vibrant and plentiful at the Farmers’ Market I had just left – was, in the Co-op’s sparse presentation, yellowing and limp. I think we can all agree that the produce section of a co-op must be at the same time its lovely face and passionate heart, and ours has been let fall far from that ideal.


And it’s not just produce. Last week I went in to buy a bag of Smokey House charcoal. That charcoal is an amazing thing – not only is this old craft learned and practiced by the young people at Smokey House in Danby, which is something we should support, but we benefit by that support because the charcoal is excellent, burning with an even, intense heat down to the barest skim of ashes. I have not found any as good.


I feared I would be unsuccessful when I saw bags of generic charcoal ranged in front of the entrance. “No,” I was informed by the woman in charge of that department, they would no longer be stocking Smokey House charcoal, and if I insisted on having that particular charcoal I could always buy it at the Farmers’ Market!

Great marketing, huh? And one less reason why I would need to enter those Wales Street doors. But enter them I will, and I hope you do too, because we need to make our Co-op a strong link in a sustainable food system that is so important to our, and our children’s, very survival, and to that end we need to keep pushing that boulder up the mountain. I say “our Co-op” because if you are a member – $10 or $20 a year – then you are an owner, as I am, and you have a say in how our dear Co-op is run.  You’ve seen the bumper sticker: The Co-Op: We Own It! Well, it’s true.


We in this area are food centric in the way that other regions are who know their food from beginning to end and who go out of their way not to rely on industrial food. It’s timely and seasonal, so that when something comes along that must be captured and dealt with immediately or never we drop everything and... render some lard from a freshly killed pig, say, or drive up to Shoreham for a day of picking sour pie cherries in order to make a rare cherry pie; and to macerate some of them in rum and sugar for a Christmas liqueur and a New Year’s surprise of potent cherries.

From 6-24-2010 Pie Cherries

We have the opportunity to do that because we have a solid base in this state of producers of rare and decent foods – it’s food that demands respect. The wife of the owner of the orchard (Champlain) was thrilled that we had come to pick sour cherries instead of sweet because her husband had just remarked that nobody wanted sour cherries and he “might as well pull those trees out.” This is just one more instance of Use it or Lose it!


Yes, there is a nice culture of food here and in the greater Vermont and adjacent lands, but it is a young culture, burgeoning, and it needs tending and weeding and constant attendance. It is like a garden. If you only look out the window and smile to yourself how fecund it is, suddenly the weeds begin to strangle out the zucchini – and it is all because you did not walk among the rows and notice the first signs of danger. You did not give it your presence and presence is all.

By the way, the recipe for the zucchini fritters or pancakes can be found in the Co-op recipe area.