bleu, blue, and more buttermilk

After dark last Saturday I took out the corn husks and cobs wrapped in the Monday’s  Herald that never got here until Tuesday, whose headline read Mean Irene. When I laid that paper down I read the headlines again and a bit of the text, and I wondered if I should save it along with the JFK Shot and Nixon Resigns headlines, and then I went on using them as a wrapper, and when I got to the compost bin I slid the cobs and husks from them like a sailor’s body at sea and then shredded the papers into the compost. I think I’m angry at Irene. I don’t want to remember her and all that suddenly vicious water.

Ironically, we are just back from satisfying a yen for more water and gazing at the abyss that the ocean is to us, that other world, the twin of our land, about whom we know next to nothing.

We stayed in an oldly brilliant contraption of rooms on a glorious beach, with concrete patios and plastic tables and chairs and blue umbrellas. On the North Cape, so much more connected to the city than wild and primitive Cape Cod, a regular urban kind of shambledown Brooklyn.

Who in their right mind would go in search of yet more water after what we have been through with Irene? But that water is anarchic, matriotic, from whence we and all other waters came. Perhaps we needed to go to the source. Yes, I think that’s it.

But now we’re back and the velocity of fall coming onto us is rapid to say the least::: It leaps and bounds, shedding leaves and leaving piles of tomatoes and peppers on the porch, where the houseplants crept to, too, at forecast of frost.

In the meantime, before, during, and after Irene and Cape Ann I was visiting cheese makers. I was doing that for two reasons – firstly because I like to visit farmers and farms and food people, and it’s part of my job description for living on this earth; and #2, because I was trying to fast talk them into donating cheese to RAFFL for the Twilight in the Meadow Dinner that happened on 9/11. Oh, I had called them, but finding cheese makers and other farmers who use a phone and don’t think you're trying to sell them a bill of goods is a full time affair.

So on beautiful late summer days I’d get into the car.  One day I went to a yoga class being held in the living room of the Weston Playhouse, where we did our downward dogs with glimpses of those lovely quaint little falls that would rise up a mere few days later and demolish said living room. Afterward, I saw the sign for Woodcock Farm – it’s a ruffly sheep with a woodcock sitting on its back. So I stopped by and bought some of the last of this season’s ultimately delicious Blue Cheese and asked Mark Fischer if he would donate some cheese to Twilight. He would, he said; yes, he would, but he would not be able to attend in person. And the cheese he would be glad to donate – because RAFFL is so integral an organization to farm and farmer health –  would be their Summer Snow – a soft, bloomy-rinded, melty cheese much like Camembert.

Then I drove over to South Londonderry because I had heard that The Pantry was open again, and there is something about that angular country store in that tiny town that I like very much. When it was being run by various French and perhaps Austrian or Swiss men it was eclectic and packed to the gills and offered a lot of haute cuisine deli items.

The new owners haven’t quite worked up to that fullness and variety, but lots of things are happening there that are very nice. I picked up a container of one of those – broccoli in a buttermilk blue cheese dressing, and the blue cheese was Woodcock Farm’s. I told them that Mark had told me his blue cheese is almost gone, and they said yes, they were getting the last wheel of it. After I tasted the dressing I wanted to know how it was made. I guessed sour cream and mayo and buttermilk. And chopped shallot and...garlic? Maybe a white balsamic vinegar?

They wouldn’t at all mind giving me the recipe, said one of the women. But when I waited, she asked me to call in the morning so they could check with Mark for his permission. Whatever. I called back several times but they were being downright finicky about giving out that recipe. 

So I Googled Buttermilk Blue Cheese Dressing, and I came up with one from blessed David Lebovitz that calls for sour cream, buttermilk, lemon juice or white wine vinegar and then a few drops of red wine vinegar. He also extols bacon in this piece. What a sweet boy he is. He is going to pour this dressing over iceberg lettuce – a man after my own heart.

I figure I’ll use a few drops of Gordon’s Pond white balsamic vinegar and see if I can stay away from the mayo. Would garlic be overkill? Woodcock’s blue cheese is tender and subtle and sweet and pungent. It marries well with buttermilk, I am imagining. All that delicate fermentation going on in your mouth. Does it need much else?

Okay, come to find out, Blue cheese, buttermilk and sour cream? Say a ¼ cup to ¼ cup to ¾ cup  proportion? Fabulous. You need nothing more. Add two teaspoons of the white balsamic and the whole balance shifts. Now you want some garlic, smashed into a paste, maybe –  a whole, fresh clove. And you want freshly ground pepper – but you want freshly ground pepper anyway.

Last Sunday I made more of that basic dressing and I roasted a Singing Cedars chicken in a clay pot – a story in itself – and  built this salad:

Onto a plate, lay down leaves of romaine lettuce from the farmers’ market that you have found in the fridge. Mine was  from Alchemy Garden or Radical Roots. Then, strew with slices of very soft pears, yellow in color. Then strew with crumbled Woodcock Farm Blue Cheese, or, since it’s rather hard to get right now, with whatever blue cheese you have. Then, slices of red onion. Then take a walk outside into a beautiful fall evening and look at the sunflowers spiking the sky yellowly, so captivating this year. Think about that salad. It needs crunch! Nuts or croutons?  Back in the kitchen throw a couple handfuls of walnuts into a pan with melted butter and brown them very slowly.
To the salad, add a sprinkling of baby basils, so enticing, from Foggy Meadow, and then dollop the buttermilk/sourcream/blue cheese dressing over top, and then warm, melting slices of chicken breast. Scatter the walnuts on top. Hmm, what else does it need? Fruit? No, remember the pear slices. Another scattering of the baby basil. Grind of black pepper! That’s all! Okay, let’s eat!

***

The cheese board at Twilight in the Meadow turned out to be a glorious thing. As did the whole affair, but I just need to talk about cheese here. First we had a hefty round of Southwind Farm’s buttery Swiss-like cheese. I’ll call it a raclette. This is a new to me cheese and it’s fabulous, made by Jeremy Russo down in the Pawlet/Rupert area. But he makes it at Woodcock Farm’s cheeserie, with Mark’s tutelage. Farmer to farmer generosity, that!

Next to Southwind, Kim Farrar served up some of Crowley’s best and sharpest. I don’t think there’s a better Cheddar/Colby style cheese in Vermont OR the world.  Next came a selection of Consider Bardwell’s Rupert and Pawlet aged cow’s milk cheese and a handsome round of Manchester, an aged raw goat milk tomme – all, of course, stunning!

Leicester’s Blue Ledge was represented by a selection of their delectable fresh chevres, some with a pepper or herb coating, and lovely rounds of their signature, ash-veined Lakes Edge cheese. Next came Woodcock’s Summer snow camembert-style cheese; and finally there was Maplebrook Farm’s fresh burrata, which is mozzarella stuffed with sweet heavy cream and mozzarella shreds. And to show that off exquisitely, Fat Toad Farm sent us a selection of their goats’ milk caramel to drizzle over.

Thank you, you lovely cheesemongers. You really came through!

an accretion of karma

Once I foolishly spaced some tubers of the orange daylily along the sidewalk in front of my house. Ten years later it took axes and shovels, brute strength and an entire summer to dig them out. Inevitably I missed  a few chips along the way and they are popping up all over the place now. Do tell. The things are hardy opportunists, and plant themselves into the middle of more cherished plants more often than not and, unless you want to ruin clumps of your more esteemed lilies, you are reduced to pulling them out as well as you can.

I put the last of those that I supposedly destroyed in a big, tough, black plastic garbage bag and put that in an out of the way place in the woods. There they apparently ate that plastic and burst from it into a thriving colony.

We can imagine, in a singed, dystopian world, one lonely tiger lily pushing orange through the rubble. First one, then another, until they repopulate the world.

I DID mean dystopia a few columns back when I described a strawberry season from my childhood. Some of you assumed I meant utopian, and one of you sent me an entire encyclopedia page defining utopian, in an email with WRONG WORD? in the subject line. And no signature. Wrong word? Well, No. But that did let me know that I did not succeed in clarity in that column.

Being a young farm-kid in the era of my childhood was every kind of disconnected. For our news of the world we had Gabriel Heatter and Grandpa. Neither one of them inspired a person to feel easy in her soul. You took your joys as they transiently appeared – the first sun-hottened strawberry in your cheek or Grandma coming home from work. Sometimes food is the only thing we CAN rely on – not only can we touch and feel it, but we can taste it, and it nourishes us.

Perhaps the reason so many young people are going into farming  is our new connectedness with the land and with food without – these days –  the disconnect from outside society.  Without “the mental prison of rural subsistence,” is the way Ian McEwan described it in his latest book, Solar.

There is community in farming now that there wasn’t back in that Midwest that I grew up in, where we were reliant on family, which could be a little ingrown, and a very limited community. Now we can be connected by the internet to the larger world, and to an educated local community that helps solve the problems inherent in farming. And that might prevent us from getting too hateful,  perhaps, and narrow, or even too lonely.

When Carol Tashie of Radical Roots Farm broke her ankle recently, the event summoned lots of help from the larger community. When she thanked everyone on Facebook, saying “We are overwhelmed with appreciation,” the answering comment from Solarfest struck my eye. “It’s the good side of Karma,” they said.

Carol and her partner Dennis Duhaime have, all by their ownselves, brought an invigorating sense of community to Rutland over the last several years and now they’re reaping the rewards. And it was nice that they chose Rutland to put their cheerful and effective energy into. Rutland has always been a gritty place, a kind of a show-me place, and perhaps it is now attracting the kind of people who see work to be done here that they can do – not to change Rutland into Woodstock, but to help Rutland reach the height of being Rutland.

This is a matter of accretion – for forty years the farmers’ market has met every summer Saturday, then more recently on Tuesdays, and now for the last few years year-around. It is arguably the most exhilarating market in the state. How did it get there? By perseverance. And accretion.

Kara Fitzgerald, of Evening Song Farm in Cuttingsville, told me how she and her partner, Ryan Beauchamp came to be in the Rutland market. They’d meant to move their very professional operation to Hardwick from Pennsylvania but got sidetracked when they talked to Lindsay Arbuckle and Scott Courcelle of Alchemy Gardens, who had interned with Paul Horton of Foggy Meadow, who had been enticed a few years ago to become a new vendor at the Rutland Farmers’ Market by Steve Chamberlain of Dutchess Farm and Greg Cox of Boardman Hill, two of the oldest vendors. Lindsay and Scott talked of the wonderful energy in the Rutland area – and certainly Carol and Dennis are responsible for some of that wonderfulness – and of the numerous young farmers, of the knowledgeable older ones, and the opportunities for new ones. Kara and Ryan are pretty darned thrilled with their decision to settle here.

Another recent example of perseverance and accretion, if not karma: For years local restaurants kept repeating the mantra of ‘it’s more complicated than you know’ when I asked them why they weren’t serving local foods. Or else they got all paranoid and hysterical when I made a joke of it. But. Guess what? It’s not as complicated as all that now that Roots, the Restaurant has made such a splash by successfully serving, making it a point to serve, local food. Sustainable, at the very least, since not everything can be locally grown and/or produced.

All of a sudden our good tried-and-trues are asking – “where can I source good local meat or vegetables in the amount I need?” The answer is, of course, RAFFL will be sure to help you, and you could always look up on line and talk to some of the farmers. I know for a fact that Greg Cox almost always picks up on his cell phone.

Now, if that’s not accretion, I don’t know what is: It's like sand building on a rock through aeons until suddenly you have topsoil! That's what's made Rutland a big star in Vermont's bright food galaxy.

Rutland resembles nothing so much as those tiger lilies with which we started this ramble: Intent survivors, and beautiful, too. What to do with all those lilies so intent on repopulating the world? Well, you can revert to Rutland’s answer to almost every problem – you can eat them. They are rather delicious as well as pretty in a common sort of way. Eat them all up, but be sure to leave the tiniest chip of them to keep... slowly... propagating.

***

Last year at this time I made a little 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.

photo by Janet Kennedy Farmer

This is a properly formulated salad from my friend and localvore Janet Kennedy Farmer. She notes, “Last years empire apples, from local grower, Brown’s Orchard, are available at the Co-op & taste as crisp & delicious as the day they were picked!” She used sweet, crisp, juicy kohlrabi from Radical Roots. Yum.

Mid-summer Salad of Kohlrabi & Apple  

serves 4
SALAD:

• 2 kohlrabi roots, peeled and thinly sliced, the slices cut into quarters
• 1 apple, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 4 spring onions, thinly sliced, including some of the green stem
• ½ cup walnuts
• ¼ cup fresh parsley

VINAIGRETTE:

• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• ¼ cup raw apple cider vinegar
• 1/8 cup maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon prepared brown mustard
• salt & pepper to taste

METHOD:
Place all the vinaigrette ingredients in a lidded glass jar and shake vigorously, set aside.
Prepare the salad ingredients and place in a bowl.
Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss.

“Great served with rustic bread and a local pungent or sharp cheese,” says Janet.

And I say, in honor of this column, you might garnish the salad with sliced unopened blooms of the tiger lily.

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

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

Just... Summer

At the Farmers’ Market the other day, somebody asked, “What do you do with beets. Nobody seems to know what to do with them. They seem to be the forgotten vegetable, and they’re so GOOD if you know how.”
I didn’t say that there was no excuse for not knowing what to do with them! Didn’t I write a whole column about them a couple of years back? I bit my tongue instead. So here’s a recap, about them and some other things too.



Just... buy a bunch of gorgeous beets from a farmer, take them home, cut off the stems an inch or two from the beet, swish them through some cold water – they don't need to be immaculate – put them in a pan, cover with cold water, salt the water with a teaspoon of salt, bring to a medium boil and low-boil them least a half an hour with a cover aslant over them before testing them with a table fork. If they are tender, not mushy, drain them and let them cool a bit before sliding the skins and stems off with your hands. If you can’t push that fork firmly into them, cook a bit more. At 45 minutes they’re probably done whether you think so or not. You can serve them warm with just butter or you can slice them and add... yes, the proverbial three – olive oil, vinegar – in this case balsamic, I would think – and sliced garlic, as much as you want. If you don’t have balsamic don’t go out and buy some just for this – the beets are sweet enough as it is. They make sugar out of them, don’t they? Salt and pepper. You can go on from there with sliced onion or chives. You could add dill? or basil. You could even add some broken toasted walnuts, if you like, and sprinkle each serving with feta or chèvre. Umm.

That’s just the beginning, of course.

Just... toss a red pepper on the grill and singe that skin until it’s black, then rub it off. Slice the pepper in strips (save those thick juices, but flick out the seeds with the point of a knife) and anoint with oil, garlic, and vinegar.

Or if you find those small heart-shaped sweet red peppers – I think they're called lipstick – you can stuff them (after they’ve been skinned) with fresh goat cheese, chèvre, that’s been mixed with something sweet like raisins and something crisp like toasted pine nuts, put them back on the (warm) grill for just a few minutes, carefully – want to keep that sweet cheese inside. Serve with forks. A drop of balsamic vinegar as a finish would not be out of place. (Idea from Tapas by Joyce Goldstein)

Just... cucumbers, fresh off the vine, as good as anything: slice them thin, cover them with cold water with a few ice cubes, add some dill heads to this cold stew and put them in the fridge for awhile. The edges pucker up a bit to make a scoop. They’re crisp, and dill-scented.

Or make Asian-flavored Cucumbers. Slice one or two cukes into irregular slabs, cover with cold salted water for an hour or two in the fridge, drain them, dry well in a clean towel, put them into a bowl with a knob of ginger that’s been julienned (cut into thin strips), and add a tablespoon of sugar, 2 of rice wine vinegar, a teaspoon of dark sesame oil and 2 roughly chopped garlic cloves. Yummy. (Smashed Cucumbers with Ginger from Saveur, Issue #113)

Just... cook dried fava beans (cover with water, bring to a boil, turn to a simmer, about 45 minutes, adding more hot water as needed not to burn, salt to taste during the last ten minutes), spread them out on a plate, top with lots of olive oil and garlic, a strew of chopped jalapenos, and dip up with robust young celery, dark green and positively sweet. I am enamored of the Farmers’ Market celery – who knew it could even be grown here, much less so er, ah, tastefully. I would almost treat it like the cucumber chips – cut into leafy sticks and refresh in icy water for awhile. Then crunch away.



Just... tiny new tomatoes eaten plain, of course, at first, then halved and fried with garlic in olive oil while you blanch those first new green beans in boiling, salted water for 2 minutes. Drain them (the beans), plunge them into cold water, and chop a clove or two of garlic and add to the tomatoes, which should be browning on the cut side. Stir and fry until you can smell the garlic, drain the beans again and add them to the tomatoes. Turn the heat to high and stir-fry everything until tender enough. Not too long. Tear some basil leaves over them for the last minute, turn off the heat, season with salt and pepper and maybe another drizzle of olive oil. You could serve these with soft scrambled eggs for a simplified version of a dish called piperade. Now I'm thinking – serve them with bits of chèvre sprinkled over the top. I've just finished a plain omelet sided with cut cherry tomatoes and chèvre and it was delicious, so sweet and so good.



Just... silken, buttery cabbage, technique from Simon Hopkinson. For 2 people use 1 of those football-shaped cabbages, quarter it lengthwise leaving the core in. Plunge it into boiling salted water and cook until very tender. Drain it well, remove the core, melt a sufficient amount of butter in the empty pan (please, not too little, you’ll spoil the dish), don’t let it brown, add the cabbage to it, grind salt and white pepper over it, turn and turn until it is a buttery mass and then turn it out onto plates or into bowls. If you like, a sprinkle of vinegar – I’d say cider or sherry – to finish it off.

I heard someone ask Paul Horton at Foggy Meadow Farm what he had been eating that had, up to now, called themselves carrots – certainly not these fresh, bright, sweet, crunchy things. Yvonne Brunot from her Wallingford Right Mind Farm (don’t you love the name), a new vendor, made a Moroccan Carrot Salad to sample hers, serving them with The Foreign Kitchen’s lovely crackers to dip it up with, and a little bowl of sheep’s milk yogurt to drizzle over each bite. She gave me the recipe to pass on to you, so here you go.



Just... cook 1 pound of scrubbed new carrots – mix and match yellow, orange, purple, pink, for visual fun – until just crisp/tender – you don’t want mush – in boiling, salted water, drain and chop them rather finely and toss with 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, ¼ cup olive oil, ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper, and salt to taste. Let sit around to marry the tastes. Serve as a salad or as a dip with crackers. Don’t forget the yogurt. Delish! (Exigencies: I used Sherry vinegar, added a scattering of green cilantro seeds, and used ancho pepper because that’s what I had).

Just... make a whole meal of fresh corn on the cob with just butter and salt and pepper. Or mix a quarter pound of butter with lime juice, lime zest, garlic, salt and pepper, hot pepper flakes or powder or chopped fresh hot pepper... chopped cilantro... anything that strikes your fancy.
Leftover butter can be used when you next bake some of those lovely russet potatoes to be found at Heleba’s market stall.

Just... make thin-leaved, spiky Frissée (a curly endive) from Boardman Hill into a classic poached egg salad in the style of Simon Hopkinson in his Roast Chicken and Other Stories, my newest acquisition in the way of Cookbooks. For Salade Frissée aux Lardons everything has to be done at once – the bacon fried, the egg poached, the vinegar heated. The fewer people, the easier it is.

It basically involves cleaning the frissée, maybe half a head for two people, and putting it into a heatproof bowl. Season it lightly with salt and pepper. Make some croutons by rubbing a couple of slices of bread with a cut clove of garlic, cutting them into cubes, and frying them in olive oil. Set aside. Put two eggs into simmering vinegared water to set them poaching. Fry 3 thick bacon strips, cut into pieces, in 3 tablespoons of olive oil until crisp and golden. Toss bacon and fats onto the frissée and toss. Put the pan back on the heat, add 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar to it, swirl around, add to the frissée, which should be wilted, and toss. Add the croutons and toss. Arrange the frissée mixture on plates, top with a poached egg, sprinkle with sea salt and a grinding of pepper, and............. EAT!

I used to think this seemed to be a winter salad, but it always gets chilled around the edges. So now I think it’s a summer salad – perfect for a cool night. Oh, right, you could sprinkle all this with chopped parsley if you like.



Just... substitute garlic scapes for basil in your favorite pesto. Into the food processor go, say, 10 garlic scapes, ½ cup each of toasted walnuts, parmesan, and olive oil... chop it up good, amalgamate, add more olive oil if it needs to be loosened, salt, spoon it over pasta, or tomatoes, or spread it on bread.


These are just a few of the fresh new vegetables we’re gloriously JUST keeping up with these days, and along with a handful of berries – the latest is blackcaps mixed with fresh, unpasteurized Jersey cream and frozen – provide most of our meals these days.

...from marble to merlot...
is an event to benefit Dimensions of Marble and Rutland Area Farm and Food Link (RAFFL) where you can, for $10, sample all these foods – wines from Neshobe River Winery, produce and cheeses from Rutland area farms and producers. It’ll be held at the Vermont Marble Museum on Wednesday, August 5, from 5 to 7. 802-459-2300 or theforeignkitchen@yahoo.com .

Simple Food for Pacing Tigers

The White Tiger paces its bamboo cage – “He was hypnotizing himself by walking like this—that was the only way he could tolerate this cage.” Those words are by Aravind Adiga, in his novel about India, The White Tiger. Ah, I look up from the page – has there ever been a better description of cabin fever? Just when I am dangerously bored, my imagination forsakes me and all I can see are walls. Thank god for people like Adiga whose words act as a pry-lever to flip me into another reality, make me laugh, demand my commiseration for those worse off than I.

Not a White Tiger – charcoal by Isobel Gabel Nimtz (with permission)

So I get up and go make myself a smoothie. I have never made myself one of those things – don’t really approve of them – but I have blueberries that Greg Cox picked last summer and froze in his prototype processing barn up at Boardman Hill. Prototype for the processing plant he and RAFFL want to build as part of the food HUB in Rutland whenever they find the property.

That Food Hub will one day consist of a Commercial Kitchen to serve as an incubator for small businesses and also for RAFFL to process foods under their own label so that Rutland area consumers can find local canned and frozen foods all year round. There’ll be a Flash-Freeze Operation, a USDA certified Meat Processing center, Storage for ingredients and final products, Distribution Facilities, and a four-season Farmers’ Market. That’s Greg’s dream, and RAFFL’s, too, and, come to think of it, mine as well.

Now wouldn’t it be nice to see that dream take on flesh right in downtown Rutland, on Wales and Center, surrounding Center Street Alley. That way the Co-op (Rutland Area Food Co-op; Rutland Natural Food Market: The Co-op – whichever name you know them by, they’re all the same entity) and the Farmer’s Market could stay together in what has been an incredibly fulfilling partnership so far, stretching out into the alley in the summer, and withdrawing cozily inside in the winter. And all those empty spaces on Center Street could be filled with the other components of the HUB.

The important thing to know right now is that Greg has done more than talk about the Food Hub, and installed display freezers at his booth at the Winter Farmers Market and is selling berries, melon balls, vegetables and meats there. You know, of course, that the Farmers’ Market sets up Saturdays from 10 to 2, and is reached through the Co-op’s Wales Street entrance.

About that Smoothie, er, ah, let’s just call it a shake. I spooned out probably about half a cup of Fage Total – that thick, creamy, Greek strained yogurt – into a glass, added Greg’s frozen blueberries, a spoonful of blueberry jam that my friend Ruth Ann made last summer, and some creamy whole unpasteurized milk that John Pollard gets from his little Jerseys up in Shrewsbury. Jumbled that up with an immersion blender, and didn’t so much drink it as spoon it out of the glass. MMMmm, delicious. I scraped it up.

Mark Bittman calls this a Sorbet in his blog BITTEN (think he stole the name from me??), combining 2 cups frozen fruit in a food processor, with 1/3 cup sugar, ½ cup yogurt and about 2 tablespoons of water. Process for just the right amount of time or, he says, “you’ll have a smoothie, instead.” Spoon into desert goblets and serve right away. Those are the proportions for, probably, 4 or 5 people – make as little or as much as you like. It should be eaten immediately, perhaps with a crispy shortbread if it’s a company dinner.

***

Well, that was simple enough, but so is this following – one of those slow-cooked winter dishes that permeates the house with tantalizing odors.

I talked about a book called France, A Culinary Journey, a few weeks ago. This recipe for Caqhuse (I do not know where the term came from, but isn’t it an interesting word) is one I didn’t mention then, but it makes an absolutely lovely dish and it’s as simple as they come – all it takes is oven time. And though I haven’t tried it, it could probably be made in a slow cooker. It’s simply a pork roast slowly cooked with a LOT of sliced onions, which melt down into a savory compote whose deliciosity is impossible to describe. It’s supposed to be served cold, and it IS good cold, but for that first supper I serve it hot, and in days following it’s eaten cold, usually with a good amount of that onion compote spread on good bread and covered with slices of cold pork.

The recipe itself calls for “fresh ham”, which, of course, means unsmoked, a slice cut from the thick end of a leg of pork, but I’m going to make it with country – meaty – spare ribs tonight.

Caqhuse

• 5 tablespoons butter
• 2 ½ pounds pork (or more), preferably bone-in
• 2 pounds onions, thickly sliced (or more)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• ¼ cup red wine or cider vinegar (I used the vinegar, here)
• ¾ cup water
• 2/3 cup white wine (I’ll use red wine, sorry)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Melt a lump of the butter in a large baking dish, place the pork in the center and surround it with onions. Dot with the remaining butter, season generously with salt and pepper and bake for about 1 hour, or until the pork and onions have begun to brown. Baste from time to time (I don’t).

Turn the pork over, add vinegar, water, and wine, and continue baking for another hour. Test to see if the pork is done by piercing the meat – if the juices run clear, it is done.

Remove from the oven and serve warm.

I think you will be astounded at the synergy of these two ingredients!

***

All right, so those are a couple of satisfying things to do in the kitchen that will interrupt your pacing for a bit, and sooth your cabin fever.
Here’s another – get out of the house and have a little lunch at the Co-op.
Yes, finally, after finishing the new kitchen oh, about a year ago now, the Co-op is utilizing it for more than a prep area for the store.

First of all, there’s a little series of cooking classes/demonstrations happening one Saturday a month during Farmers’ Market. There was a steamed vegetable soup there in November, a vegetarian chili in December, January’s offering was roasted root vegetables – all very good, and all given out at the end in small portions to vendors and customers. Coming up on February 14 is Vermont Breakfast Specials (French Toast & others), March 14 will be 3 Sisters and a Brother, corn, squash, beans and rice. And April 18 finishes this series off with Feeling your Oats (and Grains). You’re welcome to join the cooks say around 10 or 11 a.m., watch the whole process, and learn what you can!

As well, the Co-op has been making and selling lunch soups now on several days of the week. Highlights have been last week’s Yellow Split Pea soup. Clam chowder was a hit, as was the Salmon Miso Soup, and a Curried Coconut and Roasted Squash. Mike Muller, the Co-op’s General Manager, raved about the “Great Cabbage Soup,” from last week.

For now the soup – very affordable, by the way – is accompanied only by Westminster oyster crackers, but Mike told me that as he gets a handle on the operation there will be some good bread and/or rolls with it, and some experimenting with non-soup offerings such as oh, casseroles, chili, and Beans and Rice kinds of things, and then, perhaps, eventually, salads and sandwiches.

“We’re taking it slow, seeing what works,” Mike says.

It’s quite enjoyable to ladle out a cup of soup for yourself and head up to the tables by the windows. Maybe pour yourself a cup of tea or coffee. There’s always an interesting character sitting there already, or standing behind the cash register, to relieve your tigerish pacing!