my lunches at Sissy’s

It’s a pretty 15 minute drive for me up 140 from Wallingford to Middletown Springs and lunch, and it’s one I’ve made every Wednesday, it seems, throughout July.

Because, although Sissy’s Kitchen serves breakfast, lunch and dinner Wednesdays through Sundays, I’ve only been there for lunch; and I want you to know that even though Sissy’s is a take-out place you can usually find a place to perch – either at a table on the front porch or in the sylvan back gardens – for long enough to eat her beautiful food, much of which she sources locally and all of which she prepares with the care and expertise that her long career in food – much of it as chef/owner of the Dorset Inn – affords her.

Her website bills her place as a retail outlet, and it is full of charming touches – like the twig and small lights chandelier on the porch ceiling; selected crafts of  pottery and wooden bowls and cutting boards, and her own bottled sauces and salsas as well as a selection of cookies, including the best knife-thin gingersnaps I believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of biting into (at 25¢ apiece) and other baked goods. Yum. Yum.

For my first lunch I met Elsie Gilmore there because I wanted to meet this young woman who was so kind and effective in helping my son Spencer a few years ago when he suffered the devastating loss of his house to fire. Since she divides her time between Sarasota and Middletown Springs, I had my chance. I wanted to thank her and I wanted to know what she was about.

She’s about Green – ways to lessen your carbon footprint, which you can see on her website.  I’ve watched her do that herself on Facebook, where she downgraded from car to scooter to bus to shank’s mare back up to scooter. And she’s about reaching out to women, helping them to connect and to succeed in business.

I had the Ploughman’s Lunch – a pork pie enclosed in pastry, served with potato salad, red onion jam, Consider Bardwell Dorset Cheese, hard boiled egg, sliced tomato, and sliced apple $8.95. Even though I’d fasted all morning the sight of that plate made my eyes pop and I was sure I’d be having it for supper, too. But No! Bite by tasty bite the plate was cleared, as Elsie devoured her Prosciutto, Pesto and Fresh Mozzarella cheese on Cibatta Roll. We sat at a table on the porch, and then, being nosy, scouted the gorgeous gardens out back where Sissy grows much of the produce she uses in the kitchen, with the help, it must be admitted, of the amazing gardener Paul Morgan.

***

Next week I had lunch with Angela Miller, the owner, with her husband, Russell Glover, of Consider Bardwell Farm in West Pawlet. I hadn’t seen Angela since last fall when we met for dinner at the Victorian Inn at Wallingford.  I’d first met her at the Consider Bardwell booth at that frigid first year festival, in 2007, of the Winter Farmers’ Market. She struck me then as a pretty blond woman, petite, retiring but warm, almost shy but forthright. We talked about cheese and I sampled. Those were some wonderful cheeses. In 2008, when finally I drove to West Pawlet and saw the gorgeous (300 acre, red brick) farm and talked to Peter Dixon, the cheese maker, I couldn’t quite square the whole thing in my head. I knew Angela had her own literary agency in New York City. Driving from NYC to W Pawlet and back each week? Melding or leaping from one end of life’s spectrum to the other? THIS woman? It didn’t compute. And, really? It still doesn’t.

But sometime this summer I picked up her new book, Hay Fever, from the Consider Bardwell stand (which she no longer womans) and it had lain on my coffee table since then. You know how it is that sometimes you’re reluctant to read something that a friend has written? What if you don’t like it? What if you find it boring, or the voice is off, or... I don’t know! Anyway, one night, when I had first begun reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, I picked up Angela’s book as I was making myself a supper sandwich, flipped it open on the kitchen counter and began to scan through it, like you do with a new book sometimes, trying to get the lay of the land.

It. Was. Fascinating! Angela’s voice came right off the page and into my ear. I flipped it shut, took my sandwich and glass of wine out to the porch and started at the beginning, leaving Lisbeth Salander to languish pour le nonce.

It was all there. No punches pulled. Names named. An honest –  heartrending sometimes; joyful, too – account of real life on a real farm. But this is not your ordinary farm, nor is Angela – or her husband, (whom she calls Rust) – your ordinary farmer. Rust has his own architectural practice in NYC, too. Both are very successful. Thus – as a rule – she usually drives from NYC to West Pawlet on Thursday night and back again to the city on Monday. By 8AM next morning she’s sitting in the Chinese beauty salon in her office building getting redone for her city look – nails, hair, makeup – and  taking calls from “my authors” on her cell, “they don’t know I’m not in my office.” The goats take care of her country remake every Thursday evening with their nuzzling and kisses. Angela loves her goats and they love her!

I got up and emailed Angela, "You never even told me you were writing a book, and it’s terrific!"

She wrote back, "That’s probably because we don’t see each other enough. Let’s have lunch."

That next Wednesday, Angela pulled up in a utilitarian van with no air conditioning. It was sweltering. She was wearing black denim jeans and a white muslin top that she worried she would drip pulled-pork sauce on (BBQ Pulled Pork on Cibatta Roll with cole slaw  5.95). I had what Elsie had had the week before, (Prosciutto, Pesto and Fresh Mozzarella cheese on Cibatta Roll 5.95). We strolled out back to the gardens and found a shady table. And talked. For a leisurely but intense couple of hours.

We talked about her voice. She told me how she had written notes through that 2008-2009 year and given them to her co-writer (the title page says By Angela Miller with Ralph Gardner, Jr), and he had captured her voice and put the book together. Later I googled him and from what I found he doesn’t hesitate to be hard-hitting. He’s written extensively for magazines and newspapers – I got quite caught up in his compelling account of the Tony Marshall/ Brooke Astor affair from last year; one in which I hadn’t the slightest interest at the time  – and is Senior Special Writer for The Wall Street Journal. Hay Fever is his first book.

We talked a lot about the mechanics of raising goats, milking them, and making internationally-acclaimed cheese out of the milk. “Most cheese makers don’t milk their own goats,” she told me. “It’s like having two full time jobs – three, if you count my agency.” (Oh, now why would we count your agency??!!)

She told me she slept in her car during kidding season, which is March and April, during which she tries to stay at the farm most of the time. “The house is too far away from the kidding barn,” she said. “I couldn’t have someone running to the house to get me every time I was needed.”

We talked of the satisfaction she gets from the mix of all the farm workers from all strata of life – from 18 year old tough-talking pure Vermonters to the Texan who travels up to W Pawlet for every kidding season. When she first went to New York City (from her mother’s organic farm in Pennsylvania), she found herself dating a publisher and their whole social scene was literary. That was when she determined she wanted publishing to be her career, not her life.

We talked a lot about the dilemma of when to separate the kids from their mothers. We talked about the tragedy of male kids, most of whom are destined to be slaughtered.

We returned again and again to a vituperative letter to the Manchester Journal that had taken Angela to task for the euthanization of a kid that the writer took totally out of context. Angela was distraught at the letter as she had been distraught at the necessary euthanization.

A neighboring farmer had stopped her at the general store. “He said, ‘we farmers know that life on the farm holds its tragedies. But we don’t write about it.’ I think I should have pulled my punches on that one,” she told me with regret.

But that’s one of the strengths of Hay Fever – she pulls no punches!

We got up to walk through the gardens. I had one last question. Angela’s in her early sixties, but doesn’t look it. And to my earnest question, “How long can you continue to do this?” there was, uncharacteristically, no answer.

***

The following Wednesday, I took my visiting friend from Virginia – Dana Squire – to Sissy’s for lunch. I had the Seafood Salad Roll (Shrimp and crabmeat tossed with celery and mayonnaise) 7.25, while Dana had a wrap (Fresh Mozzarella, zucchini, yellow squash, spinach, roasted red pepper, black olive tapenade, sun dried tomato puree 5.95). We sat in the back and talked, and then inspected the gardens. Dana has gorgeous gardens of her own but she was entranced. 

This week, my daughter will be visiting. I wouldn’t be surprised if  Sissy didn’t see me again! Maybe we’ll all go for dinner this time.Maybe I’ll see you there! Maybe you’ll be reading Hay Fever!

originally published in the Rutland Herald 08/03/10

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.

green showers

What I would like to iterate this morning after reading the Sunday New York Times on-line is the phenomenal gustatory satisfaction one might take in showers of flavorful little green leaves of herbs over almost any main dish; and how food just keeps happening when you give over a portion of your brain and time and activity to it. Which, I realize now is not just iteration but re-iteration, since that’s what I’m always talking about, isn’t it?

The latest and greatest finger-food at Saturday’s Farmers’ Market in Depot Park is barbecued chicken made by Sunset Farm’s Jeff & Cathy McMurry. I think Jeff’s in it for the new equipment – the big metal tow-behind barbecue, and now a lovely little battery-powered hot water gizmo. Cathy’s own BBQ sauce, neither sweet nor gloppy but with just the right combination of herbs and spiciness, that seems, when done, more likely to’ve been a dry rub than a sauce, is the perfect partner for the pastured chickens.

I shared half the half-chicken at the Market, then took the rest home and made a little two-person chicken salad for supper.  

For the salad: To the diced chicken, I added coarsely chopped black Moroccan oil-cured olives; a dice of preserved lemon (you may use fresh lemon zest and a bit of juice), French Breakfast radish (from Right Mind Farm), cornichon, and onion; chopped tarragon and lovage, with maybe some dill; then mixed it all up with olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar. After the flavors had time to mingle I served it over hot rice. But wait! That’s not all: Over all, I sprinkled chopped cilantro and lemon balm and rings of Egyptian onion. The heat of the rice woke up the many tastes in this little dinner so that every bite was a study in contrasts and comfort.

I’d been aware that an enormous chicken resided in my freezer. But, big surprise – as it thawed it turned into an enormous bag of chicken backs. Only then did I remember that Singing Cedars had given me them last fall, and I’d put them in the freezer. Anyway, I’d made a wonderful toothsome broth of them, just roasting them for the meat, then found they were skillfully cut and, really, just bones, which I then simmered in lots of water, plain, no onions or other stuff, until they made a really nice broth.

I’d seethed them, really, which I always took as simmering very slowly, as though in a warmer than warm marinade. Curiously, there are two definitions of the word – one is just that very slow simmer and the other is a very fast boil. Talk about oxymorons!

Anyway, to that finished, strained broth I added lemon grass, contemplated cascobel peppers, consulted Diana Kennedy on that matter and, while continuing to think about those peppers, went to the garden in a soaking mist for garlic, cilantro, and scallion. On my way back, I spied the young collard greens, almost walked past, thought, “perfect”, jerked to a startled stop, and brought some of them in, too. What a treasure it is to remember that you had planted those delicious greens and find they are ready to eat!
Black beans would be the other half of this dish. Maybe some rice?

And chopped or torn leaves of lemon balm over the top. I’ve grown lemon balm for years and NEVER used it in a dish. It was so delicious in last night’s chicken salad that it’s now become a decided component of my little herb salad garnishes, my green showers.

Back to those cascobel peppers: They are challenging, thin skinned little orbs that rattle when you shake them. Charring them eats the flesh and flavor. So I crushed them in half, emptied out most of the seeds and just simmered them in plain water, then tore them into bits into the broth. Their flavor is rich, deep, slightly chocolate, almost intoxicating.

Then I added ribbons of collard greens, and chopped garlic, and warmed up the refried black beans I had in the fridge.

I made a pool of hot broth and collard greens in a soup plate, plopped in refried beans, topped that with Lakes’ Edge Farm’s Pepper Chevre, which is just a very fresh goat cheese rolled in ground peppers – a wonderful summer cheese, sprinkled that with a handful of chopped salad of  lemon balm, Egyptian onion, and radish, drizzled that with garlicky olive oil and a sprinkle of lime juice, and served it up with tortilla chips.

Another evening, a spring (now summer) shower of dill, cilantro, tarragon and flat-leafed parsley went over Red Houses’s spicy lamb sausages and Radical Roots cauliflower. Delish. That cauliflower? Steamed it al dente, then into a clay baking dish, dotted with butter, cream, cheese, baked until golden and tender, then showered with that little salad.

Next night was cool and I had ground lamb from Red Houses, and wonderful German Butterball potatoes from Heleba’s, so I made a Shepherd’s Pie, with the herbs both cooked in the meat filling and sprinkled fresh on top of the finished pie.

You know how to do this – brown the meat with garlic and onion, the herbs (especially lovage), maybe a little broth at the end. Put that into a casserole, top with mashed potatoes, maybe a sprinkle of cheese, and bake.

Grow some herbs and make some green showers of your own. Lovage, cilantro, arugula, dill, tarragon, lemon balm, sorrel, basil, parsley, mint, thyme... the list never ends. Mix and match. They’re lovely.

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I know it seems impossible, but I erred when I called Erin at the Larson’s Farm stand at the Market the wrong last name. We can’t figure out how that happened, but when you stop by, please say hello to Erin Seward. My apologies.


A couple of other shout-outs to food ready-to-eat at the Saturday Market . The Domestic Diva doesn’t have a sign on her stand, but you will recognize her by the wide variety of lovely finger-foods. My favorite so far is the cupcake-sized fallen soufflé. It was delightful. I couldn’t share!
Other treats this last week were little tarts topped with thin slices of heirloom tomatoes, teensy profiteroles and cream puffs filled with savory and sweet substances, crispy, buttery puff-pastries, baklava, and pea-pods filled with creamy essences as well as peas.

Nancy, at Tweed-Valley Farm is now offering smoked quail, as well as quail eggs, peanut brittle, and shiitakes.

And Morgan Over is offering her home-made REAL bagels (boiled and double-cooked) with the honest-to-bagel taste and texture of real bagels, at a stand called Good Morgan Bagels. She’s going to start toasting them on the spot so you can get your real bagel & cream cheese fix as you do the rest of your shopping.

This lady sells a little bit of everything, delectable soaps, as well as these coconut rolls that come from her native Trinidad. I love coconut, and these are excellent!

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That’s it for now, Folks. Do plant some herbs. These little plants have flavors and textures that will enlighten your cuisine, whatever it is, with some perfectly refreshing green showers.

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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

New Garden