satiate the soul

Every year that day before Mother's Day in early May is SUCH a treat – walking into Depot Park in Rutland on that first Summer Market Saturday, greeting old friends and discovering new – friends, farmers, and, at this time of year, foliage. This year, however, there had never been more miserable weather than we had that day – rain and wind and mud and cold! Nevertheless my eternal axiom had to hold true – the Farmers are going to be there and, thus, so am I!

We had radishes this year! It's always been a joke that the mayor will throw out the first radish at the first Farmers' Market, and someone has to go over to the supermarket to buy one! This year we had a splendiferous display of radishes – most notably at Foggy Meadow's stand – and the Herald got a great photo of young Ben Horton and those radishes to display on the front page.

As difficult as it is to be transported when you are hunching against the rain, racing through mud, icy rivulets streaming down your neck and up your sleeves, we shoppers managed it, and were able to greet some great new vendors as well as all the old beloved ones.

Here are a few of the former and one of the latter.

***

Lindsay Arbuckle and Scott Courcelle are new vendors this year, and their Alchemy Garden stand is a work of art, so beautiful that you might not gather how much sweat of the brow it demanded and got. From their smiles and easy-going manner it seems that it effortlessly, as its name suggests, sprang into being.

Not so, though, as the Arbuckle/Courcelle duo are busy people who are also the managers of the new co-op at Pierce's Store in Shrewsbury. No doubt they were able to polish their farming talents when they acted as Paul Horton's interns last summer at Foggy Meadow Farm in Benson, and they're putting those skills into practice now that they farm/garden on a piece of land at Greg Cox's Boardman Hill Farm in West Rutland. Lindsay also coordinated this year's Locally Grown Guide (just out – look for it) for RAFFL.

Note the lovingly-created seed packets and signs by Lindsay. Whew, that lady is a busy bee!

***

Another new vendor is Larson Farm from Wells, selling, most notably, pasture-raised veal. Some of you readers have asked about humanely raised veal, and here it is. It is rosy colored, very tasty. I made cutlets out of it last week, pounded thin, lightly breaded, sauteed in butter and olive oil.

Erin Seward woman's the enterprise, and brings along, so far, her own wildcrafted ramps, fiddleheads and, these few weeks green garlic.

Probably many people don't realize that garlic can be eaten at any stage of the game. Right now it is simply bulbous, like a scallion, so tender it can be eaten all the way up the stem. Soon you will find cloves being formed, the outer skin toughens, and the skin surrounding the individual cloves easily splits to uncover the tender cloves inside.

Erin also offers a pesto, made out of green garlic, and homemade hummus. Soon she will add her own garden-grown produce.

One of the things that is most heartening about these new vendors is the pure joy they take in what they're doing.

***

This splendid new vendor is Radical Roots Farm. We have watched Dennis Duhaime and Carol Tashie all this long spring sweating it out on their land out on Creek Road. That sweat has paid off with, among other things, broccoli raab at the very first market on May 8.

Now there's a story behind that raab that dates back to when Dennis was the Co-op's produce manager and I urged him to get some in, offering to do a tasting of it if he would. It's one of my favorite vegetables but most people had never heard of it. Dennis fell in love with it and now, finally, we have it available at Market.

Here's the way I wrote about its preparation last year:

….. toss the raab into boiling salted water and bring it just back to boiling, hold it there maybe a second more, then drain it. In the meantime you’ve warmed about a quarter of a cup of olive oil in a sauté pan with a finely chopped clove of garlic. When the raab is drained, and the garlic has had time to flavor the olive oil without turning a bit brown, turn the heat to high under the pan, and when the oil is hot (don’t let that garlic turn) throw in the raab and shake, rattle and roll until the raab is hot, has cooked a couple minutes more and is, my goodness, coated with the oil. Sprinkle with salt to taste, then a teaspoon or so of hot pepper flakes, and there we go! Serve it warm or even cold, or put it in a sandwich of crusty whole-grained bread.

Don't you love that sign? It's the work of Carol's brother.

Carol and Dennis also had the earliest regular broccoli ever on May 22. Here's Carol with it in her hands.

***

Not a new vendor but one of my favorite old ones is Rebecca Worthing of Poultney who offers her incredible made-from-scratch-and-lots-of-butter pastries almost every week, winter AND summer at her Rebecca's Kitchen stand at the Market. They're fresh each day! You know what this means? She's up most of the night before Market.
The reason I haven't written about her before or even, I think, mentioned her, is that I was saving her for a feature article. Well, I just don't seem to get around to features anymore, so it's high time to tell you how wonderful she is while I'm writing about other wonderful people.

My favorite is that bearclaw. I've never eaten better – flaky and rich and perfectly balanced between shaley savory crust and nutty, sweet filling. Perhaps an interesting sidelight here: a year or so ago I asked Rebecca how she made her pie crusts. She uses sweet butter in everything else, but she said that was too expensive for pie crusts so she used a no-trans-fat shortening. I was probably visibly disappointed, because, as you all know, I advocate for natural fats – preferably half butter and half lard in my crusts – and she was also visibly distressed, as any artist is at even a hint of criticism.
Recently, though, she confessed to me that she had taken my advice, and now all her pastries, including pies, are butter rich. Right on, Rebecca.
She picks all of her berries and apples fresh and in season. She has a young family, too. I don't think she sleeps, ever.

***

What else is new at the Farmers' Market?

These lovely little salad turnips (from Foggy Meadow) are exquisite out of hand – halfway between a radish and an apple; sweet and juicy – or simmered slowly in butter, with a bit of tarragon, along with their greens. What an unctuous, sweet, meltingly fresh, lovely vegetable this is, either alone or curled around a perfectly grilled porkchop.

And these beauteous young beets:

Really, there's nothing better in spring than young beets and greens. Last night I cut the stems about 2 inches long and simmered the beets until they were almost tender – for as little as 10 minutes, really – then added the greens to the pot and simmered for perhaps 10 minutes more. I drained them, slipped the skins from the beets (but saved the stems), and added the quartered beets, stems, and greens to a saute pan in which I had steeped over a low flame some fresh green garlic in a plethora of olive oil, turned the heat up a bit and tossed just until the beets had absorbed that lovely, garlicky oil.

At that point I may have sprinkled them with a few drops of vinegar, showered them with grated hard-boiled egg, salted and peppered them, or strewn them with hot pepper flakes, but whatever I did (and I've done all for different suppers this month), they all satiate the soul!

***

Okay. What's missing here? Oh, of course, Greg Cox, the Grand old Man of the Farmers' Market, the Philosopher-Farmer. Where's Greg?
Well, Greg's recuperating from long-delayed and well-deserved knee surgery!
About time you took care of those knees, Old Man! You're going to need them for many years to come, and maybe now that you're pain-free and agile as a gazelle you'll quit grumbling like an old bear and accomplish even more for Rutland and its food and farmers!

***

Satiate the soul. Hie yourself to the Farmers' Market wherever you be!

Farm to Plate Initiative

being a report/review of the recent Farm to Plate Statewide Food Summit held in Rutland. Thank you to India Burnett Farmer for allowing me to publish it.
Below, Greg Cox is about to nibble on one of his luscious greens. Greg and India are a big part of RAFFL (Rutland Area Farm and Food Link), which sponsored the summit.

From Farmers' Market Farmers

The auditorium of the Rutland Middle School was packed with at least 300 people this Saturday to hear Kenneth Meter’s keynote address at the Farm to Plate Statewide Food Summit. Meter, an experienced food system analyst, presented the findings of his study of the farm and food economy of Southeast Minnesota, Finding Food in Farm Country. Meter’s study identified disturbing trends that mimic the Vermont farm situation. Most dispiriting perhaps was the loss of independence and autonomy farms are facing – decades of diminishing farm profits directly related to commodity prices and expenses that are out of the control of farm operators, the increasing rate of money flowing out of farm communities in the form of interest payments as farmers become more dependent on non-local financial institutions and the decreasing share of the retail dollar farmers realize for their product.
Meter was quick to note that even though the economic hardships plaguing the nation’s farm families are also hitting home in Vermont, he also sees a lot of promise for farms to thrive here. Meter noted the significance of the Farm to Plate planning process to strategically guide agriculture at a statewide level. This, coupled with the grassroots groundswell of support for local food and the presence of so many innovative farmers, bodes well for our agricultural future.
The short of it: the current food system takes wealth out of local communities, while community based food systems provide a path towards economic recovery.
The Farm to Plate Initiative, and the work of the numerous farm and food organizations like the Rutland Area Farm and Food Link, supports the strengthening of community-based food systems here in Vermont.

Meter stressed that the key to strong community-based food systems is the presence of direct relationships between a wide variety of players. This is where I see Vermont excelling - we are a small state, and these relationships are already strong. Examples abound - diversified farms know their customers by name, Vermont Fresh Network introduces farmers to chefs, RAFFL mixers build community between beginning farmers and link farmers and institutions like the local hospital.
As our food systems strengthen and expand, new relationships will develop. As processing and distribution hubs come on-line, farmers will know the face of brokers, distributors and specialty food processors. Brokers and distributors, in turn, will better know the food service directors at our schools and institutions. It is these relationships that stimulate creative partnerships between producers, processors, consumers, and more that increase demand for and value of agricultural products. This web of economic activity, when focused on local, statewide and regional relationships, will capture the dollars running through Vermont’s agricultural economy and help rebuild the wealth of our rural communities.
I found the success stories that Meter shared from across the country most inspiring. Examples that I’m excited to see folks explore here in Vermont include:
• Farms that are pushing the envelope in season extension (12 month greens production), marketing prowess (hydroponic operation capturing majority market share in the Twin Cities) and exceptional sales numbers at intensive scales (CSA with $70,000 sales/acre)
• Restaurants that are truly committed to impacting the farm economy (Cafe that sources 59% of inventory locally from over 50 producers)
• Institutional sales successes (University leadership to buy locally has led to 25 stores & institutions in Northern Iowa buying $1.8 million of local food)
• Regional food processing center (involves community players, stimulates new markets like hospital, food co-op and schools)
• Producer and buyers co-op that includes farmers, hospital food service, distributors and truckers as owners.
• Co-operative marketing models (Poultry business cluster addresses scale issues - co-op allows independent small scale production with larger scale processing)

A slideshow of the Farm to Plate planning process updated us all on the effort thus far. Break out sessions throughout the day allowed for input and discussion on the many sections of the Farm 2 Plate Strategic Plan, including the proposed 20 Goals for 2020. The draft of the plan is set to be competed by the end of June (incorporating everything they’ve heard during this summit and many other focus group sessions around the state).
A fantastic lunch sourced from many local farms was served. Pulled pork from Brown Boar Farm, fresh salad greens from Vermont Herb & Salad Company, Beet Salad from Foggy Meadow Farm and more from Brown’s Farm Stand, Thomas Dairy, Boardman Hill Farm, Perry’s Potatoes, Green Mountain Coffee and Dellveneri Bakery.

by India Burnett Farmer

textures... cast iron & perfect pork chops

Sad but true – that you can love something so passionately for so long, and then one day you imagine how they could be better, and it’s hardly a breath before they’re moldering in the cellar and a bright new thing, better than the old, becomes the apple of your eye.

Oh, don’t worry – Leo’s fine – I haven’t found anything better than he yet, but your thoughts and commiseration might light on my flat little cast iron grill pan. Poor thing.

I always really loved that small pan that I got down in Boston’s North End a couple of years ago. Now that I think of it, what’s wrong with that statement? Now that I think about it that pan has resided in my kitchen for 20 years or more, that’s all. That’s what a ‘coup’la’ refers to as you get older. It was a time when several women friends would do weekends in Boston, go to the Faneuil Hall Market on Saturday and slide freshly opened oysters down our gullets, pick up fresh garlic (gasp) shoots in February, and other at-that-time esoteric things, and lug gallons of Italian olive oil back to the hotel. I found the pan in the front of a great little combination Italian ingredient/utensil/eating place where we’d stopped for dessert after a winey dinner elsewhere. We went to Jasper White’s restaurant then, and the food was top-notch and so was the service, and Jasper would always come over to say hi. We went to Lydia Shire’s Biba, wonderful food, extraordinarily expensive. As well, we went to Legal Seafood and other Boston tourist attractions. I lugged that heavy little pan back to the hotel and back to Vermont.

The secret is to get that pan really hot (turn on the exhaust fan), until heat waves are distorting reality and then slap on your perfectly formed hamburger patties (2) or pork chops (2), either rubbed with garlic and sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper, and let’er rip. For the hamburgers I do 4 minutes on one side, flip ‘em, cover them with a deep pan cover and turn the heat off. When the sound of sizzling fat quiets you will take off the cover and find perfectly caramelized and marked meats, the hamburger will be perfectly (medium) done. The pork chops, if thick, the way I like them, are grilled sizzling 4 minutes per side and then will be ready to do 20 minutes in a 375° oven to be juicy and done just right – to me that means the juices run brown, not pink. Sorry, can’t get around pink pork, which some cooks are calling for now that the danger of trichinosis is deemed to be over.

What you’ll also have is spattered grease in a three foot aura around that great little grill pan to clean up.
So after all these years, I had an idea – why not replace the flat grill pan with a larger grill pan with frying-pan sides? Lodge made one that I’d seen, and wouldn’t that do a lot toward containing the mess, especially with a spatter screen. Which wouldn’t work with the flat pan.

Well. Good idea. But I did not act on it, would only think of it when I was cleaning up the mess. Then yesterday I went down to the basement to get a package of hamburger out of the freezer, and what should my eye rest upon? Why, upon a high-sided cast-iron grill pan, part of my daughter’s storage while she’s off conquering the world. It’s been sitting there for three years. My eye must have ignored it several thousand times.

I cleaned it up – it was a little rusty and dusty from the damp and dusty cellar – anointed it with olive oil and let it sit on the pilot light for most of the day, then grilled up some pork chops that very night. It was the BEST pork chop I’ve ever had. I voiced those sentiments, and Leo said, “I believe it might be.” It was tender. Juicy. FULL of healthy pork flavor. I began to think about it. I’d gotten them at the Farmers’ market on Saturday, from Greg Cox at Boardman Hill Farm. “Why do you suppose they’re so good,” asked Leo. Well, Greg is the only pork producer I know of who lets his pigs forage in a forested hillside, which is how pigs like to live, and which means that they don’t have to eat as much grain or slops (sorry about that, but those are the facts), and maybe their bodies make healthier, better-tasting meat when they live and eat as they are made to live and eat. In addition, Greg tells me that his pigs are free-feeders, which means that there’s always organic grain for them to eat when they like, AND his pigs are not pushed to slaughter weight. They grow naturally and are killed later.

I trust that is enough of a recipe for making great pork chops. I like to grill some fruit with them, some halved and cored apples, maybe, a slice or two of pineapple. That’s it.

We and the pigs thank you, Greg!

bamboozlement, or naught?

Greg Cox leads the Farmers' Market from the Co-op into the sun in Depot Park last May. For more pictures of the Farmers' Market move go here.

We spring out of the double naughts with a vengeance, some of us, calling it “an era best forgotten,” as Paul Krugman did. He also called 2009 “a year of zero gains.” Frank Rich marveled that we the people could have been so easily “bamboozled” by so many shallow, crooked, greedy powers-that-be over the last decade that came in with Enron and went out with housing foreclosures.

I like that word, bamboozled. It’s the only way to explain how we felt as the ‘big lies’ came at us faster and faster. Fools told them and the fool media reported them without question.

We were stymied, left juddering in place with frustration by the shoddiness of the era.

Bamboozle. Such a comic word. Reminds us of ‘shyster’ and ‘country bumpkin’. But we were not country bumpkins, were we, when we paid the banks to get back on their feet, those shysters, and they continued to pay out billions to their glassy-shod CEOs? We were just people, standing there sputtering, “But... but... but...!”

“Fool me once,” as the fool said!

And on the food front? Oh my goodness! E-coli in schoolchildren’s meat. Salmonella in the widely disparate crops of peanuts and spinach. The death of coral in the Caribbean because of the green-paving of the country’s mid-section and the resultant use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides seeping from field to river to sea.
Meat cattle, raised in bliss for mere months on grass in fields and then sent to huge concentrated animal feeding operations to wade in their own manure and feed on enormous amounts of antibiotic- and hormone-infused grains.
Dairy cows, who love to amble under the sun snatching green-grass for their feed, made to stand on cement floors all day, under roofs, surrounded by green fields, eating genetically modified grain.
Pigs, who love to forage in the forest and roll in the resultant dust, raised all their lives indoors in pig-squeezing grate-crates.
Chickens de-beaked for crowded living instead of scratching in dirt and grass for their bugs and worms. Lagoons of effluent.
Fallen cows prodded, kicked and dragged to the abattoir. Our food animals treated as machines instead of animals sharing the same biological life we super-special humans experience.

And ignorance? I can think of no better example than Garrison Keillor becoming euphoric about the glorious healthiness of ... Cheerios. Why does he do this? Well, he needs a sponsor, for one thing, and I suppose Cheerios is better than Fluff. So he hides his head in the sand.

But hiding one’s head in the sand does give one’s neighbor a broad rear canvas on which to launch any of a myriad of unsavory actions almost guaranteed to be unwelcome. Among those with proboscis most sandy, backsides most prominent, are, for instance, nutritionists who still recommend You-Know-It-Ain’t-Butter and its common tub-companions.

This is no longer a butter substitute, since anyone growing up in the last twenty or thirty years has forgotten, or never knew, that it was supposed to be, or that butter was ever considered to be a food. Tub spread is that kind of chemical sludge that a humongous not-a-food-company made a place for on our table. It is approximating and substituting for real stuff that people have forgotten ever existed. Why do we stand for it? Hmmph! Our noses are more than a little sandy as well.

The question is why don’t nutritionists, or even we, the common people, have enough basic interest in their work (or we in our health) to keep up with those scholars and writers who are checking the backstory of our declining health and the catastrophic fall of our food system? Have we even heard of Marion Nestle? How about Susan Allport? Gary Taubes? Surely we’ve read Michael Pollan?

***

And here is where the story of the decade takes a giant leap towards the light. In 2006, Michael Pollan published The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the backstory to our food plight, a most fascinating and very generous book. It brought the tale of our ravaged food system within reach of everyone. It was a beginning.

And here in Vermont, here in Rutland and in the county, we had Greg Cox and the Rutland County/Vermont Farmers’ Market, one of the most splendiferous in the state; it possibly would not be too much of an overstatement to call it world-class. Yes, we’ve had it for thirty years or more, but during this past decade it came into its majority. It became glorious.

Around Greg, the philosopher/farmer and kingpin, gathered a group of people who reasoned that on the national front we could only do what we could do and cross our fingers, but as for what happens here in Rutland County and in Vermont – well, we could make a great deal happen to improve our quality of life and we began to do that. We began to act locally even while thinking globally.

Now, for the third year, as well as the twice-a-week summer market in Depot Park, we have the Winter Farmers’ Market, accessed through the Co-op on Wales Street. We have been thrilled by that – by the festive Medieval atmosphere, by the year-around availability of fresh local vegetables, meats, cheeses and eggs, and by the web of friendships and loyalty growing up between vendor and customer. Here is food we can trust, that is delicious and fresh and healthy. Here is food that we grew up with, if we are old enough, and that we have been losing ever since.

In this last half decade we have given the Co-op new life, as we recognized that it is a necessary and potentially glorious link in that safe and, as much as possible, local food chain. We have supported RAFFL in its efforts to create a food hub and find land on which to create a learning venue for new farmers. We have participated in the marketing study that showed the Farmers’ Market and the Co-op as key in bringing national status to Rutland as the hub of farm and city. As well, we have supported the Paramount, the Chaffee and Brick Box and numerous other galleries to support our local artists and our hunger for the creative. The Creative Economy has done wonders for Rutland, as has an energetic and plain-speaking new government. Mr. Mayor Louras? Chris and Judy shop at the Farmers’ Market every Saturday and the Co-op in between, and not just because it is a festival – they shop there Very Seriously indeed.

Mayor Louras with radishes ready for the first radish toss to open the summer Farmers' Market

So we have not allowed a perfectly awful decade to go to waste, and we have been lucky in having the raw materials to work with to make it glorious in our own way. When Michael Pollan wrote in In Defense of Food, “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he was not taking a vegetarian stance, but working on the assumption that most people in the world, in this country, do not have access to good grass-fed or pastured meat, but must rely on grocery store meat, unlocal meat, meat that has come through the big CAFOs and is therefore unsustainable to our health and our environment. CAFO meat does not only come from grocery stories, it comes from your favorite little butcher shop where the guys are so nice and such good cutters. That’s what it comes down to.

This is also why Susan Allport suggests using an arcane mixture of canola oil and flaxseed to provide Omega-3s. Omega-3s are found most richly and providentially in animal fats, but animal fats from CAFOS are full of very bad things. The author of The Queen of Fats assumes most people do not have access to good animal fat. And she is right.

But WE do. Locally, within forty miles of Rutland, we have access to half a dozen sustainable meat operations. Actually, make that a dozen. And we should buy that meat unless we are already vegetarians, because if we don’t buy it it won’t be there. The farmers will go out of business. It’s that simple. So, lucky us. We should take advantage of that fact.
We can’t become complacent – we still have much to do. We need to support RAFFL – volunteer time or donate money – in putting their Food Hub in place and to find and buy land for the incubator farm.

Talk to your favorite meat cutters and restaurants and entreat them to use, and offer, more local food. There is a tremendous reluctance to do so on their part, usually attributed to their customers not insisting on local food at the cost of a few pennies or dollars more. Let them know that you DO want it.

Get out and enjoy – and buy your food from – the Farmers’ Market (Saturdays 10-2), and the Co-op. Attend the Paramount and the Friday night Art Hops. Laugh a lot. Support the train. Dance. Volunteer. Help out! Do what you CAN do to make this next decade a success, and to assure yourself that in 2020 you don’t look back and say, “I feel so... USED... so... Bamboozled!”

To heck with that! Act Local! Beet the System!

This piece was published originally in the Rutland Herald 01/05/2010

a jar of dandelion jelly

Here we are again, starting yet another gift-giving season, but thinking it over I find that I have been the happy and grateful recipient of many toothsome gifts all summer and fall, all year, in fact, and I want to talk about some of them. Yes, I realize this is a dangerous subject. Someone is sure to come up to me just slightly irate to say, “So you didn’t consider my gift of genuine Amazonian sperm oil important enough to write about, huh? See if I ever save you a bit of exoticism again!” But I’ll persevere. When was the last time you know me to flinch from confrontation? Canola oil, anyone?

I began to think about this when I was roasting vegetables for Thanksgiving and to that end went through my fridge and pulled out all the root vegetables I could find. There was a very large and beautiful Gilfeather turnip I’d bought at the Middlebury Co-op the week before, a month old rutabaga that I’d bought from Paul Horton’s Foggy Meadow Farm at one of September’s outdoor Farmers’ Markets, and way at the bottom of the crisper a bag of 3 or 4 gigantic parsnips that Paul had given me last spring. They had grown hairy in the intervening months, but were, if anything, and with a little trimming, better than freshly harvested ones. Too, I hauled out a bag of funnily shaped carrots that Paul had sorted into a bag for me last summer as he said, “Here, take these, Sharon. They don’t sell well.” Paul is a very generous person, and I think that’s not all due to the fact that he loves to see his name in print! Of course I'm only kidding about that. Paul is a humble man, though rightfully prideful in his work.

Sally Beckwith, Paul’s partner, has been generous (in absentia) to us all these last couple of weeks at the Winter Farmers’ Market – she’s been making Crispy Kale Chips for sampling at the booth and they’ve been the talk of the town. She even provides recipe cards:

Crispy Kale Chips

Tear a bunch of kale ruffles into a large bowl. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt, maybe sliced garlic if you like. Keeping a light hand, toss so the kale is coated with the oil and salt. Spread the kale on a cookie sheet and bake in a 250 degree oven for 20 minutes. Fluff the kale to distribute the crispier edges with the damper center, return to the oven and bake 20 minutes more. They should be quite dry. Pile into a bowl for appetizers and your guests will rave. I’ve made these twice now and they are the first times I’ve bought kale without a good amount of foreboding.

***

Many of us were incredibly disheartened that the Kilpatrick boys had decided not to attend the Winter Market this year. I almost cried to see their big space taken up with other vendors, however excellent they might be. For the Kilpatricks could, these last two years, be counted on not only to have the widest variety of root vegetables all winter, but also spinach and other greens, and early spring vegetables, too. So that when I walked into the big indoor space a couple of weeks ago and stopped to talk to Greg Cox at Boardman Hill for a bit, then turned and caught a glimpse of a great spread of vegetables, and looked up to see one of the regular Kilpatrick vendors, I screamed! I really did. I screamed and then I slavered all over her with thanks and questions about how it had come about, and more thanks. I excitedly bought a bunch of stuff from her to show my appreciation and, perhaps to send me off to slaver on someone else, she stuffed two bags of spinach into my bag as thanks for my thanks.

A few nights later I became hungry for creamed spinach, and I served it with a poached egg on top and some good toast. What a lovely, simple, satisfying little supper:

Creamed Spinach

Take a pound of cleaned spinach, stems and all, and put it into a saucepan in which you have brought a little water to boil, maybe an inch. Sprinkle with half a teaspoon of salt – you can add more later, if needed – cover, and cook until wilted, maybe only 3 minutes. Drain well, take handfuls of it, squeeze gently to get most of the rest of the water out, put on a cutting board and chop coarsely.
In a sauté pan melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. When it is melted, sprinkle in some flour – try 2 tablespoons. Stir, stir, stir, and when it is golden drizzle in a cup to 1 ½ cups whole milk or half and half, stirring all the while, and cook and stir until thickened. Add in the spinach. Add a scraping of nutmeg, to taste. Turn the heat to very low and partially cover while you poach an egg or two, toast some bread, grate some parmesan. Serve by spooning the spinach into a serving dish, nestle a poached egg on top, sprinkle with parmesan and serve with the buttered toast.

***

One of the most unique gifts I’ve received was from a neighbor with whom I exchanged some of the tarragon, that happens to’ve survived almost 30 years in my garden under less than optimal conditions, for some of the mammoth dill that grows in her garden, and has year after year. After the trade-off she whipped out a little jar of clear golden jelly. Dandelion! Now who woulda thunk? It is such an oddity that I have not opened it, nor tasted it, but kept it displayed prominently for that slight jolt it gives me each time my eye lights upon it.
More gifts! Annabelle thrust a head of radicchio into my hands straight from her garden, saying, “I knew I’d discover who this belongs to when I saw her. It is you!” Chris showed up on my doorstep one night with a bunch of beets straight from HIS garden, saying, “You wrote about the last sweetness in the garden, and here it is.” Julie handed me a pint of golden honey from the first season of Mark’s bees, and we opened it and dipped fingers into it. Sticky sweetness to our wrists. Bees: One of the wonders of our world. Skiing Fool (he emails a wonderfully scurrilous ski report starting when the snow flies) showed up one Saturday afternoon: “I missed you at the Farmers’ Market but I wanted to give you some of my grape jelly.” He’d made a most marvelous jelly from the grapes that twine up the pergola in his back yard. Somehow he’d left the velvety little skins in the otherwise clear jel and they hit the tongue most softly. And then there’s Janet , who gave me two quarts of lard she’d rendered a couple of years ago and sealed in a boiling water bath. I was just about to beg Monty for some fatback to render my own. Lard is a necessity in my life, but I won’t buy it from the supermarket – it’s full of trash that allows it to sit on a shelf far from the refrigerator case.

***

Sometimes you have to look for your gift, search it out, as I did with these little Whole Wheat Walnut Cookies. I found them on October 3rd.



You remember October 3rd! It was drizzly and cold and while we drove to West Haven it began to rain. Oh. Lovely! We were going to a wedding that was being held in the third meadow back of beyond, a half mile walk from the parking area, no house in sight. But once we got there, in the dining tent, I hadn’t seen so many trays of lasagna since the old hippy dippy days. And mac salads, and potato salads, and sauerkraut, and lovely little individual lobster quiches, and at the very end a platter of little rounded cookies, made with whole wheat flour, walnuts, and five spice powder. They were tremendous. I spent much of the rest of the time trying to find out who made them.
Finally I found Leah, who had made them from a recipe in the Tassajara Bread Book, one that I cooked out of with wonderful results back in the ‘70s. But they were in a newer edition, and so I had to haunt Leah again until she most graciously gave me the recipe:

Whole Wheat Walnut Cookies

Heat the oven to 350 degrees

Reserve ¼ cup of the flour and combine all ingredients in the order listed
• 1 cup softened butter
• 2 ¼ cups whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (or rapidura)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon 5-spice powder (optional)
• 2/3 cup finely chopped walnuts
• powdered sugar (or rapidura) for dusting
As you mix the ingredients, add reserved flour as needed until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Form and roll into spheres about the size of walnuts. Place on a greased cookie sheet
Bake for 20 minutes or until firm to the touch.
Dust with powdered sugar.

These are sandy, like shortbread, not too sweet, absolutely delectable, and so fast and easy to make.
It turned out to be a lovely day for a wedding. And the sun came out just as the bride said “I Do!”

***

So! To all of you now I say thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Merci. Gracias. Really: Thanks!

That last summer sweetness

It's Fall, folks, Autumn, but without our big freeze yet, this is the time to take full advantage of all the fresh tastes you can.

Some of the summer etables still available pending the big freeze. Eat 'em up!!

I had the most perfect tomato the other day. It was an enormous Brandywine, perfectly ripe, grown by the Tomato Lady at the Farmers’ Market. I made a BLT for Leo with Bear Mountain honey/oatmeal bread, bacon from the pork people in Clarendon – J&S Davis – and iceberg lettuce grown by Paul Horton at Foggy Meadow Farm in Benson.

For me I made a BLT salad, because I’m not eating bread right now, nor potatoes, rice, nor pasta. No starchy things, in other words, nothing that can easily turn to sugar, and NO sugar. It was so good, that luscious tomato all juicy and sweet, and the crunchy, icy, substantial lettuce, and the salty crisp baconness, all dolloped and dotted with mayo. I ate and ate and ate.

“Iceberg lettuce!” you exclaim. “But how outré!”

Well. Maybe. But possibly trend-setting, I’d like to suggest!

I was re-minded of my predilection for the crisp-tender sweetness of that round balled lettuce – with leaves so substantial you can wrap a slice of ham with a slather of mayo in them and forego the bread while you munch – last late-spring when I sat on the deck leafing through the May issue of Saveur Magazine. Yes, there was a photo of Her Majesty The Ice Queen, as they called it, looking luscious with blue cheese, radishes and scallions.

Iceberg was the only lettuce to be had when I was growing up. Those big pale green balls would come home from the grocery store every week, the stem would be thumped on the counter to remove it, and it would be stored in a – get this – Tupperware container made especially for it! We ate it every night, usually with bottled red stuff called French Dressing. It was sweet. We liked it. Candied lettuce! Often, though, budding little gourmet that I was, I would top a crisp cold leaf of it with half a canned peach and a dollop of Hellman’s – not mayo, but – was it called “Salad Dressing”? It looked like mayo but it was sweeter. I think it’s still around. If company was coming, a plump red maraschino cherry would sit atop the whole elegant thing... “Just like downtown,” my mom would say.

Suddenly, sitting there in the backyard in that long beginning twilight that is early summer, I yearned for iceberg lettuce, but I would have to go to the grocery store to get some, and it would have been grown in California or even China, and I didn’t want it that bad. The Farmers’ Market overflows with gorgeous, splendiferous greens, and that’s what I buy.

But. That next Saturday I couldn’t help but ask Paul whether or not he’d ever thought of growing iceberg lettuce. He’s very open to growing new things, even asks for suggestions, and I never hesitate to oblige. “Hmm,” he said with interest, “I haven’t. But it’s not a bad idea. I’ll order some seed.”

We’ve had lots to think about over the summer, but the other Saturday I revisited the subject: “I did grow some,” Paul told me, “But the heads didn’t form up very well – maybe it was that last heat we had, or maybe all the rain early on – but it tastes good and it’s been going into the salad mix.” So I bought some of the salad mix and enjoyed it that way.

The next week, though, “Oh, I’ve got something for you,” Paul said, and handed me a ... real... head of iceberg!

Tomato Lady's Brandywine Tomato and Paul Horton's Iceberg Lettuce

Now I can’t tell you how much pleasure that head of lettuce has given me. I know that sounds pathetic, but I live a simple life, with simple tastes and ... well, nevermind! But, it was perhaps at least partly responsible for my eating low-carb for a few weeks here, as I could see how I could do without some of those starchy enclosures, how a leaf of this crisp stuff could cup a tuna or egg salad or support that BLT salad I began with, tastily, crisply, and absolutely healthily. I feel better already.

As I spoke to some other farmers, including Greg Cox of Boardman Hill, and read up about the history of the lettuce, I found few facts but much conjecture. Greg told me that iceberg was the original desert lettuce, bred to survive the trip across the country from Sonoma County where it was grown, which is probably why it didn’t thrive in our cold, rainy summer. I read that it traveled heaped with ice chips, from whence comes its name, and that it was the picking of this lettuce that led, in the 70s, to Caesar Chavez calling for a boycott to protest the working conditions of California lettuce pickers.

The main point to me, though, and what makes me feel less than proud of my hunger for iceberg, is that it was bred for long-distance travel, and I have simply given up on long-distance foods. I said to Paul, I don’t know why I’m writing about iceberg lettuce when I have just finished the only head of it that anyone’s likely to see...” He had a thoughtful look in his eye. “Maybe I’ll try it again, make it the first seed planted, maybe in March next spring.”

So that’s okay – as a long-time local-eater (before localvore was coined) I know that I can’t have everything I want exactly when I want it. I can wait. In the meantime there are other crisphead lettuces. A silky butterleaf is as encompassing if not as crisp, and we’ll have lovely spinach all through the winter, most likely.

And, truth to tell, this diminuendo of eating mainstream carbs has paid its benefits – I no longer have an insatiable urge to eat more and more; to, in the midst of a meal, be planning the NEXT meal! Because that’s what sugar does to you, you know, it makes you want MOWAH, as Oliver so plaintively pled in the midst of his pallid porridge.

So now it’s time to allow in starchier veggies, such as beans and lentils. They’ll taste sweet enough, because when you cut out the blatant sugars in your food the subtle sweetnesses that remain step up to the plate. How to get your sugar fix? Go without carbs for awhile and a bowl of split pea soup will taste like ambrosia. A very thin slice of Bear Mountain Honey Oatmeal sourdough bread will be orgasmic! Slathered, I don’t have to tell you, with butter.

So forget about iceberg lettuce for now, wait for spring and see what Paul’s efforts bring, and truly enjoy those wonderful tomatoes that are still vine-fresh as I write. Eggplants. Peppers. Go hog wild on those things while they last.

**

Corn on the cob is getting scarce, but when you can find it it’s starchy and sweet, maybe a little tough for some of you dainty cob-gnawers out there, but it’s great scraped off the cob (maybe with a round cookie-cutter?), perhaps scored with a knife, first, so as to get its milkiness in with the kernels, then baked with lots of butter in a hot oven for half an hour, 45 minutes. Caramelized, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to corn heaven.

My latest favorite rendition of this is from Michael Ruhlman’s blog – his wife is a photographer and the photo made me want to fly down to Manchester to get myself a corn scraper just like Michael’s. If you have one you don’t have to use a cookie cutter or a knife:

Baked Buttered Corn
adapted from Michael Ruhlman
These are the ingredients for four servings:

- 8 ears of corn
- 4 tablespoons butter, cut in 4 pieces
- salt and pepper to taste

Scrape 6 ears of corn using a corn cutter, [but we’ve talked about this, right?] so the kernels are opened and all their sweet starchy juices fall into a bowl (you can also slice the kernels with a knife and scrape the ears that way or you could probably use a box grate. Cut the corn from the remaining two ears into the same bowl. Season well with salt and pepper. Pour the corn into a baking dish (choose a dish or individual ramekins that will give you a depth of a couple inches). Push the butter into the corn and bake uncovered at 425 for 30-40 minutes.

The more common scene: Sarah Seward's Farm Stand, East Wallingford. Gorgeous Fall.