it IS only February yet

I didn’t write a column last week for a myriad of reasons, first on the list being – it’s February and we’re eating low-carb, which is only exciting when you ARE eating low-carb and not filling up on bread. That’s when a well-massaged salad of spicy spring greens (yes, fresh from your farmers’ market) with gorgonzola and an anchovy and some lemon juice can make your day. A hamburger from Pine Woods Farm done exactly right so that it is caramelized on the outside and pink to red in the middle, smothered with more gorgonzola and perhaps a pat of butter, can be orgasmic.

Simply skip the white or refined starches. They’re like a narcotic – you want more and more. Perhaps Monsanto -- Monsatan to the initiated -- has done more than genetically modify our wheat – they may be slipping addiction into those grains as well (Actually, one reader of this Twice Bitten column told me that Monsanto is definitely making its grains addictive).

There comes a point when bread, or toast, begins to perform the most trencher-like activities: In the morning it transports butter and jam to your mouth and mid morning can perform the same for a spoonful of peanut butter. Lunch is a sandwich – two pieces of bread or halves of a roll slathered with mayo and mustard, layered with... well, you know the drill. Mid-afternoon? How about some of the stuff squashed into garlicky olive oil, or toasted and buttered and sprinkled with sugar when your kids come home from school. That’s bread for me, when I allow it in.

 Doing without it is a mind-blower. Get bread out of your life and you discover that other things taste GOOD! So many tastes, so little time.  And what does my scale say? It says, “Doing good, Sharon. Stay away from the bread.”

Compliments of Molly's website

I’ve been experimenting with Molly Stevens’ new book, All About Roasting, even though I don’t own it yet because it wasn’t immediately available in our local bookstores. I heard Molly on The Splendid Table a few weeks ago and she had some advice about roasting a perfect chicken, and that was to get a good local one (Yes, she did say that -- why waste your time with an inferior chicken) and a day before you’re going to roast it rub it with sea salt, about ½ teaspoon of salt per pound of chicken, and put it in the fridge uncovered for 24 hours or so. The skin dries out and becomes shiny, and the salt migrates into the body and seasons it and through some kind of magical transmogrification makes it moister – like brining but without the mess.

That was welcome news, for I often think that some of our free-range chickens stay a little muscular around the joints (although Jeff at Sunset Farm disagrees with me, and the barbecued chicken that he used to sell at the summer market was always tender. Which begs the question – Why does he not sell it anymore? If I recall, it was some kind of misplaced politicism on the part of the Farmers' Market.

So I tried Molly’s advice – she makes the point that she spent five years researching the book, which means that she IS the expert on roasting refinements!  I might’ve had a 4.5 pound chicken, and I roasted it at 350° for about 1.5 hours, and the thing was delicious. Perfectly cooked. Crispy skin, juicy breast! Salting it and leaving it uncovered – what is essentially dry aging – worked beautifully.

Another of Molly’s recipes is Blasted Broccoli, wherein a head of broccoli is dismembered, tossed with olive oil and garlic, arranged loosely on a flat pan and roasted at high heat -- about 425° for 15 minutes, flip, another 10 minutes. Molly was on VPR last week and Jane Lindholm was Jonesing about that broccoli. So I tried it, again.

Some of you know that I am not entranced with broccoli – it’s either mushy and gray or bright and so springy your nose is in danger of being mangled by your jaw when you chew it. The most important thing about this technique is that the broccoli  – I quartered the stems lengthwise, and peeled them, of course – gets nice and tender on the inside while crisping around the edges. It’s very good.

So what reasons have I covered here for not meeting my column deadline last week? Mainly, just eating low-carb and being uninspired, but that doesn’t really hold up because look how much I’ve written about that already!

***

The second reason is that while I used to be the only one writing about local food we now have the amazing Kris Smith writing about Farmers’ Markets and local food almost every week on this page and she does a very good job of it. I must mention that she writes free for the Herald, as a function of her job at RAFFL and as RAFFL’s volunteer to Sustainable Rutland.

Here might be the place to say that when people give away their writing it makes my teeth itch – it makes it hard for those of us who try to eke some kind of living from it -- but still I’m very grateful to have Kris’s column almost every week.

It was because of Kris’ enticing description of the Dorset market not too long ago that I found myself visiting it – for pleasure instead of out of duty – and it did provide me with an assortment of riches that I miss even at Rutland’s magnificent market. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the fact that I was able to buy a pig’s ear from the Lewis Waite Farm, as well as some liverwurst – free ranging pork and beef liver made into one of my favorite foods.

The lovely Stina Kutzer with the
cultured butter she makes at her
Gammelgården Creamery in Pownal

From a beautiful woman from Gammelgården Creamery in Pownal – her name is Stina Kutzer – I bought farm-made cultured butter, sweet, tangy buttermilk, some fresh creamy cheese, and a lovely skyr, or yogurt. I thought I was in heaven!

And from Earth Sky Time, Oliver and Bonnie’s Community Farm, I bought a small loaf of bread(!) absolutely stuffed with different grains, seeds, and fruits. You can imagine how ecstatic I was with that bread, that butter, and that liverwurst. The combination of gratifications was simply confounding, and when it was gone? That is when I decided I needed to get bread out of my life. Again. For awhile. Until my pants fit again.



Another local writer who is taking some of the pressure off me is Gordon Dritschilo, who sometimes takes a breather from walking the halls of the City to write about goings-on in his kitchen on his blog and occasionally in these pages. 


Gordon’s take on food is no-nonsense, the very opposite of lyrical (I saw his blog post titled  Kielbasa Stir Fry the other morning and laughed out loud. I knew it must be his before I even looked for his name). As for local?  When he can get a pig shank from the Davis Farm at the Farmers’ Market he will, but if they don’t have one he has no compunction about getting one at Price Chopper or Hannaford, hormones, antibiotics, and pig misery be damned.

His writings are directed at the working cook who wants something  good to eat,  perhaps needs to feed a family, but with limited time. Occasionally he jaunts off into longer techniques that you could spend a Sunday doing, and some of them are just downright esoteric. His last one was Pickled Tongue Tacos. I will have to try that.  Check him out.  I think you’ll like him.

Having good writing available about local food is inestimably important and perhaps takes away the sense of urgency about my own writing.

***

I have to admit there is one more reason I have been a bit disheartened about writing for the Herald. And that is because they let my favorite editor in a long time, Randal Smathers, go. Go, that is, into the wild blue yonder to fend for himself, he of the family and two children, no doubt soon a new dog, and two houses, one that he and his wife, Katya, are selling and one that they had just moved in to.

The Smatherses are just the kind of people you want to move to Rutland and to stay here, because Rutland needs their energy, their youth, their willingness to give their all. Randal is such a gung-ho and generous lover of Rutland Downtown, the City, the Area, Vermont; and, as well, he is a serious and experienced journalist ... it just seems very short-sighted of the Herald to have let him go. Without, of course, any press about it since they are the only show in town.

Given the facts, though, all we can do is wish him well, and invite them out to dinner some night.

***

Just an addendum here. I learned about Gordon's blog from another reporter took me to task (not to my face) for my rudeness to one of our Rutland restaurants in my last column when I found that they did not serve local meats – not even a hamburger. I agreed with him – I had written the segment in haste and was surprised when it came out in print at how clearly my distaste and exasperation were expressed. But in another way I was glad I wrote it. Why don’t these restaurants support their local farmers, and why don’t they bone up on the detrimental effects of non-local produce and meats? I am not going to support them until they support their customer and the farmers!

I have not heard any ire from the restaurant. Well, I did get an anonymous telephone call the evening after that column appeared. After a few Hellos, with only silence on the other end, I groused, “God, that P****s me off,” and then some subdued laughter in the background. Sounded like a bar to me. 

No matter. They were good sports about it, and several times I have seen the owner coming out of the Farmers’ Market just as I arrived. Each time his arms were empty. Now I simply cannot understand how you could come out of the Farmers’ market, in February, with your arms empty. But, no rants here.

***

It has been SUCH a very weird winter, warm, no snow, but still it is surprising when the fresh greens start coming back into the Farmers’ Market, a sign of spring, a cause for Huzzahs. No doubt inspiration is just around the corner as the days lengthen and, I was about to say, things green up. But remember? I have to pinch myself to remind me -- and the farmers who are talking about early planting already  -- that...

It IS only February yet!

The Super Fruity Multigrain from Bonnie and Oliver's Earth Sky Time Farm in Manchester that set me on the no carb highway.

a warming company dish

thank you to (young) artist Isobel Nimtz

What's that, you say, a company dish? Let’s just say it’s whatever doesn’t scare you off from asking people to partake of food, conversation and companionship around a table in your own cave.  I can get a little gun shy of “entertaining,” as they call it. Because I write about food, people tend to expect quite a bit of my prowess in the kitchen. And I’m loathe to show off my rather primitive skills. I ask people to supper instead of dinner, or for a bite. In other words – don’t get your hopes up.

I like casual. I like juxtaposition. I like a kind of surprise on the plate – whether I’m cooking or someone else is. I seldom make complicated dishes, but I do like to build meals somewhat extemporaneously. Here, take some of this in your, ah, trencher. More broth from this humongous kettle? How about a late baked potato? I tend to think in layers of taste. This might need a little spread of unctuosity –a spoonful of walnut oil over the top of that... whatever. Crunch? Toasted nuts or seeds. Croutons. A strew of cheese? Sweetness, a slice of pear?
I found a new pear at Hannafords the other day. It was called a Concorde. It’s a yellow pear, rather firm, but juicy and delicious; and because it’s firm it adds texture to the palate as well – a nice crispness.

I had friends over the other night and chose to serve a Puerto Rican Braised Pork Roast with Sweet Potatoes. It’s a recipe by Jacques Pepin that appeared in the New York Times many years ago. I hadn’t made it in a coon’s age! But I remembered the simplicity of it and the wonderful taste. And, importantly, it could be put together mostly before the guests came so that I would not be exiled to the kitchen while they were conducting intriguing conversations without me. Or about me! (You know who I mean!) But almost most importantly it would be cooked in my black cast iron dutch oven and that would be placed right in the middle of the table, giving us a certain primitive, firelit, festive aura, as though it came right out of the fire.

thank you to artist E. Bethany Parquette

Relying as I do on food from farmers I know, I wanted to be sure to be able to source that pork roast for Saturday. Then I remembered that I was friended with Jeff McMurry on Facebook. Jeff is the owner and operator of Sunset Farms near Granville, NY, and I get most of my eggs and a substantial lot of my meat from him. So I statused him on Facebook and asked him to save a roast for me and – get this – to let that roast thaw at least a little bit before I picked it up at the Farmers’ Market on Saturday.

I wasn’t too worried about that point because I remember Bill Pape, owner of On the Edge Farm, telling me to take a frozen roast home and put it in a pot and into the oven and it would be delish in 3 hours, and it was. Optimally, though, I like my roast thawed.

The largest one Jeff had was 3 pounds, bone in, and I said fine, I’d flesh it out with some andouille sausage, which I did, from Pine Woods Farm.

Here’s the recipe according to Jacques Pepin, and you’ll note the changes I made below that, in bold. There are two blocks of time here, one of which you could start mid-afternoon, and the last – to slide it into the oven – about the time your guests are due to arrive. Neither one require a whole lot of effort.

Braised Pork Roast with Sweet Potatoes

•    1 shoulder butt pork roast, boneless, 3 lbs.
•    2 cups water
•    2 tablespoon dark soy sauce
•    1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
•    2 tablespoons red wine or cider vinegar
•    2 tablespoons honey
•    1 teaspoon cumin
•    2 pounds yams (about 4)
•    1 pound onions (2 large)
•    6 large cloves garlic, peeled.

Place the pork roast in a cast iron pot with a lid.  Add water, soy sauce, tabasco, vinegar, honey and cumin. Bring it to a boil and reduce heat to very low to simmer gently, covered, for 1 hour.

Peel yams and cut into 1 1/2" slices.  Peel onions and cut each into 4 to 6 pieces.
 
Preheat oven to 375°

Add yams, onions and garlic to pork.  Bring back to the boil and continue boiling for 15 minutes. Uncover and place casserole in the center of the oven and bake for 45 minutes, turning every 15 minutes. 

Serve directly from the pot, cutting the meat at the table.

    Yield:  6 servings

So, now – you know me – I had to tweak this a bit. To me this recipe was just calling out for green peppers, and not many recipes do, believe me. So I added half a large green pepper, diced, in that first cooking step, and the remainder of it when I added the yams. I already said I added a pound of sausage to the first step to make up for the weight of the bone in the roast. I increased the soy sauce to 1/3 cup. Instead of Tabasco I used some of Peter’s cascobel pepper salsa and a pinch of hot red pepper flakes. I did not peel the yams – the recipe is rather dated – We Peeled for Company back in the ‘80s. And one more thing: I think carrots would be good in this dish and add some girth to it. I didn’t add them but you could.

(I am hearing people absolutely ranting in their praise of the carrots at the Farmers’ Market these days. One woman went from Meadow to Greg to Paul describing how those carrots are exploding with taste. The carbs have turned to sugar, you see, and a roasted carrot is now a thing of  splendor!)

I started this process at 3:30 and slid that casserole into the oven for its final 45 minute stint just about the time my company was due to arrive at 6:30. I did not worry about turning it every 15 minutes.

And if I were you I would, yes, plan to serve it from the pot at the table, for which you’ll need a serving fork and a ladle, but do slice that meat in the kitchen, or pull it apart, before you do. It’s a little unwieldy.

thank you to artist Julie Kuhn Fredette

With that braise I served a platter of sliced mangoes, avocados, pears, and slices of lime strewn with toasted coconut and salt as well as a squeeze of lime juice.

I must say that I put my guests to work – one brought a nice green salad and two others appetizers. I had pie for dessert, which I had made the day before. And it was so much fun, very laid back! Studies suggest that, when all is said and done, people don’t remember the food served at memorable feasts, but they do remember the company and conversation.

And the fire.

fish lard and other delicacies

Now that we’ve had time to become hungry again, and curious, and winter is now perceptible, kitchen warmth may be the call of the day,  and a few stories might be told around the table.

...A Valuable Fat:
I worried all the time I was melting some of my freshly rendered lard to fry up some calamari that I was  wasting it. It’s very rare, you see, if not impossible, to find lard rendered down from hogs that have been raised correctly. And even though it’s fairly easy to render it yourself after you find the right fat, it’s an uncertain process. I’d been out of lard for six or so months until I found good fat at Pine Woods Farm.
So I was being stingy and agonizing over the depth of the lard I was allotting the calamari, and then I reminded myself that I wasn’t wasting it, I was using it for what it was made for! All physical things get used up eventually, and then you start over. Use it or lose it, Honey.

The calamari was very good, but then what did I do but pour that used lard through a sieve into a plastic container which I labeled ‘Fish Lard.’

Have you ever heard of anything more disgusting? I mean hell will have frozen over by the time I dig into the bottom of the freezer to rescue that little capsule of ‘fish lard’ because I need it to...  What? Make a potion? What in god’s name would I use it for?

This is the way that old people get a bad name. Packaging up something called Fish Lard for their progeny to discover after they are gone.

**Readers of Twice Bitten wrote with various suggestions. Of course, one said, you could fry some more fish in it -- which I think I will do tonight. Also use it instead of butter in fish chowder. Thanks, Readers!

...Weird Recipes:
Those are the best kind, don’t you think? This one is a cookie filling, said to be delicious, that consists of  1 small jar of grape jelly, 2 cans of chick peas, 1/2 quart of wine, 1 pound of chopped walnuts, 1 grated orange, 1 large Hershey bar, and 3 cups of sugar. You mash the chick peas and boil everything else together. I couldn’t find how they got put back together, and I couldn’t figure out if you were supposed to drink the wine or boil it up, so I didn’t make it. If any reader is weird enough to try it, let me know the result.

**Readers again came to the rescue -- apparently this is an old Italian family favorite, made for holidays.

...Superb Popovers:
I made these for Christmas dinner for the first time and baked them off  at a friend’s house. They were light and tall-hatted and crispy on the out, eggy within, but I couldn’t find the recipe this time. Luckily my friends had found it and stuck it on their fridge. It was called Marlene’s Yorkshire Pudding and it was from Michael Ruhlman’s blog.  Now, what is interesting – and I think probably effective – is that you  mix this batter a couple hours before baking. Now if that’s not convenient on a busy day I don’t know what is. You could certainly whip these up in the morning and bake them off at 4 for appetizers.  Excuse me while I do that right now!

Popovers, (or Yorkshire Pudding)
•    1 cup/5 ounces all purpose flour *
•    1 teaspoon mustard powder (I omitted this)
•    4 or 5 large eggs, enough to make 1 cup
•    1 cup/8 ounces whole milk
•    6 teaspoons lard or beef fat drippings (or try coconut oil if you are not roasting a meat)
Whisk the flour and mustard powder together into a mixing bowl. Add the eggs and milk and blend on high speed with a mixer until fully incorporated. Let the batter rest for 2 hours (at least) at room temperature, stirring it up now and then.
When ready to bake, first, pour a bit of fat into each cup of a popover pan or of each muffin cup. Place the pan on a baking sheet and slide it into the oven to heat the oil while the oven comes up to temp 475°. When it’s ready, stir the batter and pour it into the pans until each cup is 3/4 full. 
Put the pan in the oven. From this point on, do not open the oven door. It helps if you have a glass door on your oven so you can watch them rise and brown, but I don’t. We’ll see how that works out.
Bake for 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 450° and continue baking until the popovers are puffed and golden brown, 13 to 20 minutes. Serve immediately.
Yield: 6 popovers of 12 small muffins; you can also bake it in 9×13-inch baking dish with some beef drippings in the bottom and call it Yorkshire Pudding.
*I mistakenly called for 10 ounces of flour in Twice Bitten, the same amount I called for in the scones, below, even though the scones called for 2 cups flour and the popovers only one. A sharp-eyed reader caught that error, so I made the popovers yet once more, with only 4 ounces of flour. They came out pretty much the same as the 10 ounce popovers, except possibly more delicate. Both highly edible.

...Current Favored Salad: 
This is fresh like spring. So sprightly with lemon. So flavorful with... Kale.

Massaged Kale Salad

1 bunch of kale from the farmers’ market. Tear it off the stems into a large bowl. I don’t think you want the stems in the salad, although they’re good. Use them as dippers for a nice spread.
Add to the torn up kale: a very thinly sliced clove of garlic; a sprinkling of salt and pepper; the juice of 1 lemon; the zest of 1 lemon; about a tablespoon of Worcestershire; several chopped anchovies (if you like); a few glugs of olive oil; a heaping tablespoon of Roquefort, Stilton, Gorgonzola, or other blue-veined cheese, pinched into chunks.
With your (spic and span) hands toss these ingredients together, squeezing handfuls, rubbing them together, until every leaf is coated and becoming if not limp then at least manageable. Toss some more.  Taste for salt and correct seasonings.

**I met a reader on the evening of the day this was published in the Rutland Herald, and he said, "In this weather (it was sleeting and slippery, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to drive into town to get some kale to make that salad. It sounds so healthy!"

... Much ado about Garnishes:
What you put on top – like a bit of parm and olive oil on most soups – can really make the dish. I like to serve that kale salad with sliced hard boiled eggs on the side, and a few sliced almonds and pumpkin seeds that have been crisped in butter over the top. The latter are a wonderful garnish on almost anything.

As are a few raisins that have been plumped in port, Madeira, or sherry. I keep a small dish of raisins macerating in a flavorful alcoholic liquid on the counter for use in many dishes. A sherried raisin is a nice cook’s snack, too.

Too, I like the cascobel pepper salsa that I’ve mentioned several times as a garnish for many dishes.

And just lately I found a new favorite – Spicy Fenugreek Sauce – It’s from Flatbreads & Flavors by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, a travel/food book, a collection of breads and their accompaniments from exotic and mostly third-world countries.

My jar of the hard little fenugreek seeds dates from the mid-‘70s. I have never known what to do with them. Grind them up, said Naomi – a quarter cup of them (they are beans, not herbs, legumes in other words) and mix them with a cup of boiling water and let them sit for 3 hours. In this beginning mass they are terribly bitter but give off that sweet aroma that personifies Indian cooking. When they have soaked into a mass, add 3 cloves of finely chopped garlic, ¼ cup of finely chopped onion, 2 large tomatoes, chopped, ¼ teaspoon of cayenne, ½ teaspoon of salt, and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

I ground it in a coffee grinder, used some frozen roasted tomatoes from my garden, some of the cascobel pepper salsa instead of cayenne, and served it over the coconut chicken I’d was making that night. It was very good. It makes a great deal of sauce, keeps well for at least a week, and tastes good as a garnish for many things. Although perhaps not scones.

...Scones and thick cream:

These were developed for a child’s history of food storybook I worked on  a while back. When I made them the other day my friend Ann brought sweetened whipped cream and we had Breezy Meadows’ elderberry/blackberry jelly. It was perfect.

Unfortunately, late that evening I discovered that bits of the scones broken off and used as dippers for as much whipped cream they could carry were indistinguishable from true joy. Uneasy dreams resulted from that discovery.


Pippin’s Scones
2 cups (10 ounces) unbleached white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 scant teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup (4 ounces) butter
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup raisins
1 large egg
¾ cup of buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 375°.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl or a food processor. Cut or pulse in the butter, then the rolled oats, then the egg and buttermilk.  Then stir in the raisins and work them through the batter.
Flour a counter top, scrape the dough onto the flour, gather the dough and pat into a flat circle about 12 inches in diameter. Cut it into wedges with a sharp knife – the dough will be soft – like a pizza, and then carefully place onto a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes.
Alternatively you may spoon half cups full of batter onto a hot griddle, smooth into cakes and bake on each side until done.

Here’s hoping you find true joy on these cold but lengthening days, get to spend some time in the kitchen, with friends around the table, and have another sherried raisin – they’re good for you!

future tense

ingredients for peasant cuisines found inexpensively at your nearby co-op: spices, fruits and nuts, beans, lentils and rice. plus a little bit of maple sugar

Two thousand eleven was the year that the cat clawed herself out of the bag! Finally everyone seems to know they need to be eating clean-raised local food, and they seem to know where they can find it, too.

Thank god for Roots, say those of us who are disgusted by the idea of a burger made of the ground up flesh of ten, a hundred, maybe even traces of a thousand cows who were fed antibiotics and hormones like gruel in their last days, and then were all ground together into a vast vat. Roots, the Restaurant, on Wales Street opened last winter and has made it their point of pride to serve food sourced from our local farmers – all across the menu.  They've bought almost $70,000 worth of local food from our farmers in the first 11 months they've been open! They have succeeded. Wildly!

We also recognize 3 Tomatoes, which has long made a valiant effort to serve a lot of  food grown in Vermont, which is to say pretty organically, and they do so beautifully. Dennis at Red Clover in Mendon is a pretty faithful Farmers’ Market customer. Downtown Grocery in Ludlow serves spectacular home-grown food – for spectacular prices, it must be said.  Splurge there, though, when you can. And both Cafe' Provence in Brandon and The Victorian Inn at Wallingford source local food, though Chef Stanti at the Victorian Inn balks at local meats.

But other restaurants are slow to catch on. When we all stopped by Sabby’s the other day I was told that local food was way out of their ball park. People didn’t care. We stayed anyway, but I’ll tell you that eating a pile of anonymous animal protein is not a very appetizing thing anymore.

Even the New York Times’ Mark Bittman, whose food politics have been somewhat middle-of-the-road until the last year or so, understands that studies finding that eating meat is an unhealthy habit are not studying locally grown grass-fed beef, pork and fowl. In other words, they’re not studying the effects of meat-eating on human health, they are studying the effects of the antibiotics and hormones the meat is fed on the health of the eater. So Bittman, realizing that most people do not have access to grass-fed meats, suggests abstaining from meat on certain days of the week and simply eating less. And he's not alone in this fall-back stance among food experts who are talking to a large number of people. And it is not an unappetizing idea.

Peasant and ethnic cuisines that rely on a preponderance of vegetables and spices with very little meat to produce great flavor are a fantastic place to start. We can teach ourselves their ways by picking up a book or looking online.

If you are as ignorant as I am you might start by picking up a copy of Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook – It’s chock full of inexpensive and for the most part simple recipes and techniques. After all these years since it was published, this is the first time I’ve really examined it. I made a little ‘garlic dip’ she wrote about and it was not bad. It was not good, either – it involved boiling some potatoes until very tender and then fo-proing them with lots of garlic and some mayonnaise into a slithery mass that tasted like very garlicky potatoes. Of course it did.

If you really want to fix something good to eat, quick, and cheap, try this, one of my favorite meals: It’s basically red lentils and rice, with perhaps a sausage. The lentils are rinsed, put into a pot, covered with cold water, and cooked over medium heat until tender but still (if possible) retain their shape. This takes only about 15 minutes. Add a little salt to the water towards the end of cooking. For the rice, bring two cups of water to a boil, add a teaspoon of salt, pour in 1 cup of white rice, stir, bring back to the boil, cover, and turn the heat very low. Cook for 20 minutes. When these two foods are done, they’re piled into a plate, dolloped with plain yogurt, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds, and drizzled with a little garlicky olive oil. Salt and pepper. Maybe some hot peppers. You could sprinkle with Asian seasonings such as 5-spice powder. Add any crunchy vegetables you might have lying around. It takes about 25 minutes to make and costs about 3¢ per serving. It’s good, plain, proletarian, peasant food that can be gussied up.

This one from last summer included sausages and lots of fresh veggies. Yum.

Of course, for home cooking there are few places more liable to supply good makings for our kitchen than the Farmers’ Markets and Co-ops. Here in the Rutland area we are blessed with the best year-around Farmers’ Market in the state, probably in the northeast, possibly in the country. It’s impossible to walk through without engaging in many conversations with people ecstatically commenting about the good feeling there, the wonderful food, the festive atmosphere, how lucky we are, yadda yadda. Shopping at the Farmers’ Market is just a very uplifting experience. Here are some vendors and foods that are new favorites. 

I LOVE having Peter McGann – who used to give away samples of his food free at the Co-op – offering his Mexican fare – all the way from tamales and enchiladas to the lovely cascobel pepper salsa, guacamole, and tomato salsa, as well as his Tortilla Espagnol – a thick potato omelet. His orange scented rice pudding studded with big plump raisins? Well...

Too, I enjoyed Maya Zelkin’s steamed tamales there one Saturday, and she will be back with more the last Saturday in January. I keep nattering at her to supply us with freshly made tortillas, but they are labor intensive and she does not see her way to doing that just now.

Pine Woods Farm is also new this year, with their excellent beef and pork. I bought pig fat there that I rendered down into the best lard I have ever made – creamy white and solid. It’s a once-a -year process I go through, and so worth it! You can also get organic suet – for cooking or for the birds. After all, why would you feed birds suet with antibiotics and excess hormones in it?  Love their sausages and roasts, too.

Meadow Squire is there with her Breezy Meadows booth from which she is still selling baby greens, most especially fresh cilantro, as well as the bibelots she puts together, like the tiny jars of maple sugar last Saturday. I wrote about their rice crop here.

Meadow is just one example of the biggest boon the Rutland region has going for it right now – a preponderance of young and very determined farmers.

A few years ago Greg Cox told me, “We’re getting tired. We’re getting old. We need nothing less than an influx of young people going into farming.” Guess what? Suddenly we have them, and they are committed to the land (even when it slides out from under them as Evening Song’s did during Irene). And Greg, who has hosted many beginning farmers on his land at Boardman Hill, is very responsible for this resurgence. He has long worked with RAFFL to offer an incubator space for new farmers and POW, we look back and what do we find? He has, perhaps unwittingly, provided it on his own land!

I hope that 2012 proves to be the year that the Rutland Co-op assumes its diversified and indispensable roles for Rutland, for instance as a teaching venue for people who want to learn to shop the Co-op and the Farmers’ Market and learn to cook the food. There is a very nice kitchen that was built a few years ago expressly for that purpose. Now there’s a “Private” sign on its door most market Saturdays.

I’m not grousing about 2011.  I still have not needed to get up from my supper table, pack up a few things, and walk down Rt. 7 to get away from the enemy. Wars always take place upon other people’s soil, isn’t that true? All I really wish for in 2012 is peace and a contentment with what is without losing the edge that makes us do better. A less tense future. And I wish that for you, too. That’s not much to ask, is it?

nice and easy does it

A 'tween holidays jigsaw puzzle provides the background for a moderately tiny cuppa

This is really not a time when we need to talk very much about food. I mean, this is the question:::: Who is Hungry? Not me, and not you, I’ll bet. Not that we’re aware, and certainly not for food.
Of course everybody is hungry for something. They’re hungry for approval, for peace, for meaning, but sometimes they couldn’t care less for a truffle, whether it be chocolate or dug up by an Italian hog from under an ancient oak.

So, let’s talk about something more important than food. As if there could be such a thing, because perhaps you’ve noticed that where ever you start it always comes back to food. That’s what I realized several years ago when I started to write about it. Several? Well that would be since 1978, which is thirty-some very odd years, I believe, and since then I have often been pretty much able to use food terms to translate life into something understandable.

For instance, I can only remember one time that I was hungry. A friend and I were lost. We had left Michigan in a 1965 Mustang and were wandering all over the east looking for Rosa Parks and Bob Dylan. We’d heard they were out there. What we didn’t know in that pre-instant-information-age is that they’d been here and already left. On a side-trip we got off on some logging roads in French-speaking Quebec. Finally we came upon a gas station out in the middle of nowhere whose attendant did not speak English and apparently had never met anyone who did, just as we, probably, had never met anyone who spoke French. We found things in this alternative universe that looked like milk and Hostess cupcakes, but the milk had cream pushing the cap off and the Hostess cupcakes were... like Hostess, but just a little different. Very primitive, it was. Oh, I was heartsick, and so HUNGRY. Finally we tumbled out of the Canadian forest onto a beautifully paved road into Jackman, Maine and were able to assuage our hunger on familiar homogenized junk food, American – albeit 1960s – style.  And that’s what I was starved for – familiarity – that mild Canadian strangeness was terrifically unsettling!

 Thanksgiving reminds me of that time. It’s a day when we stuff ourselves with – besides the blameless good local turkey and roasted vegetables –  all the starches of potatoes and gravy and dressing, not even to speak of pie. It’s a pure, longed-for carbohydrate binge. It happens every year at this time and we eat the same food that Grandma cooked – starches and sweets!

And then come the recriminations! By now we have got past the talk of what gluttons we were and how we stuffed ourselves, and are looking forward with various strains of trepidation to Christmas cookies and more pies and suet puddings and holiday breads and sweets.

What’s the answer? Let’s try this – just take it

For forty-nine years I have had at least one very large and potent cup of coffee in the morning.  A couple of months ago I quit drinking it, just to see what would happen. At first I substituted decaf, but soon realized I didn’t need anything! I had no headaches, no withdrawal symptom of any kind. Well, perhaps there was a kind of emptiness at the centre of my morning ritual; and, as I gradually realized, perhaps a certain lack of energy, a lethargy, in my morning activities. So I relented a bit.

I have beautiful little pottery cups made by Susan Leader from Weston. They’d never been used much because they’re so tiny. Now I often fill one of these miniatures with coffee and cream. I might even have two cups. That serves to ameliorate the tiredness and provide a bit of ceremony, and so, in the end I have not quit drinking coffee so much as I have explored the habit and moderated it, and brought more pleasure to it, too.

So let’s take heed of our feelings that we have overly stuffed ourselves, but let’s not excoriate ourselves for it. We might say, ‘Okay, wayyyy too many carbs, I’ll just cut them out for today.’ And maybe tomorrow we’ll wake up and feel really quite as though we’ll pleasingly exist on salads and cheese and eggs and maybe a hamburger for yet another day, and perhaps find ourselves at the end of a week having lost a few pounds and feeling far less bloated and round-footed. We’ll wake up and smell the coffee, so to speak.

Then of course in come the Christmas cookies and who can blame us if we cannot resist one, or two, unless we have an extreme allergy to gluten, which we may have since the flour we grow now bears very little resemblance to the flour that grew a few years ago. It has been so bioengineered that perhaps our bodies do not recognize it as a food substance anymore. Perhaps our bodies mistake wheat flour as a bacteria, something to be flooded with antibodies. It certainly is true that many people find themselves with a gluten intolerance. One has to wonder why.

In that light it is interesting that the country of Hungary has destroyed one thousand acres of Monsanto genetically modified corn. Other countries are taking these depredations seriously. Peru has likewise passed a ban on genetically modified seeds.

So perhaps you will not abstain from all carbohydrates. But perhaps you will try very seriously not to eat anything made with wheat, barley, or rye. Try that hat on and see how it feels.

I used to think of moderation as the habit of boring people. I don’t think that anymore. I will try to be thoughtful about my hungers and to take it, as Frank Sinatra sang in that era when I was following my hunger along Canadian logging roads, “Nice and easy does it all the time.” I have to tell you, I never did catch up with Dylan, and now I’ve developed this inappropriate curiosity about him. You couldn’t possibly have a gluten intolerance, could you, Mr. Jones?