produce stories

Light, Easy, and Seasonal: Crimini Mushrooms with Shallots and Wine

2011-07-04T15:25:00.003-04:00

A quick and tasty dinner (I often use brown-rice pasta - Trader Joe's makes a good one - as an alternative to the wheat).

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons butter, divided
2 medium shallots, sliced into thin sauté slice
1 lb. crimini mushrooms, stems removed (keep these in your freezer for stock!), sliced thinly
approx 1/2 cup dry white wine
4 oz. whole-wheat pasta (I like spaghetti)
sea salt + freshly ground black pepper

Heat a 12” skillet over medium heat. Add 1 teaspoon butter and all the olive oil, as well as the shallots and a pinch of salt; cook, stirring, until softened but not browned.

Add mushrooms, several generous pinches salt, and several grinds black pepper and cook, stirring occasionally until mushrooms get very brown and reduce a lot in volume (see photo). Remove mushrooms to a plate, add wine, and turn up heat; scrape browned bits from pan and reduce by half.

Cook and drain pasta according to package instructions, reserving 1/2 cup of pasta water. Add remaining teaspoon butter to mushroom pan over medium heat; when melted, add mushrooms, pasta, and as much reserved pasta cooking water as needed to moisten, and toss to combine well. Serve immediately with additional freshly ground pepper.

Champagne Punch with Cherry, Ginger, and Cognac

2011-07-04T15:22:00.001-04:00

You should probably double this recipe, if your friends are anything like mine.

4 cups sour cherry juice*
6 tablespoons fresh ginger juice, from about half a hand-sized piece of ginger**
6 tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice
3/4 cup agave nectar
200 mL cognac (I used Courvoisier)
1 bottle dry white wine
4 bottles well-chilled Champagne or semi-dry sparkling wine
Additional lemon slices for garnish, optional

Mix the first six ingredients up to several hours before serving; keep chilled. Mix in Champagne just before serving and garnish with lemon slices. I prefer not to ice this punch, so I made mine in two batches, dividing up the punch base and combining with two bottles of chilled Champagne each time.

*I used Red Jacket Orchards’ Tart Cherry Stomp; if you can’t find sour cherry juice, try unsweetened cranberry or pomegranate juice, but you’ll need to up the agave nectar quite a bit to taste.

**Make ginger juice by squeezing grated ginger through cheesecloth or a jelly bag.

Two bring-along lunch ideas for warm weather

2011-07-03T19:54:00.003-04:00

Here are a couple of my favorite lunch ideas for hot days that are easy to make ahead and don't require reheating once you're in the office.

This cheese-free frittata is loaded with vegetables and is tasty served cold:

Note: Bacon fat or butter make for a much cleaner release from the pan, and both fats add wonderful flavor to this dish, but if you are particularly averse to them both, refined coconut oil or olive oil will work—you’ll just have a messier cleanup and a less neat serving appearance.

3 eggs
Sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons butter or bacon fat
1 spring onion, diced
1/2-1 cup cut-up asparagus spears
1/2 medium bunch lacinato kale, cut into ribbons (about 2 cups)

Heat broiler. Beat eggs lightly with several generous pinches of sea salt and black pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon fat in a medium skillet over medium heat; add onion and a pinch of salt and cook until soft, about five minutes. Add asparagus and cook about 2 more minutes. Add kale and a splash of water and cook until kale stems are almost tender and additional water has cooked off. Add remaining fat and allow it to melt. Turn heat down to low, add eggs, and stir occasionally as if making scrambled eggs. When eggs are half cooked, place under broiler for about 2 minutes, or until cooked through. Immediately remove frittata to place and serve, or cut into slices to cool.

My lighter version of tuna salad (with an olive oil/vinegar dressing - no mayo required) is great with lettuce leaves or crackers: one can of olive-oil packed tuna, drained; 1/2 red bell pepper, diced; zest and juice of 1/2 lemon; about a teaspoon of capers and a few splashes of brine; a small handful of rough-chopped olives; a pinch of cayenne and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper; a glug or two of extra-virgin olive oil. Mix everything together and add sea salt and vinegar to taste.

RIP Readymade, + my radish slaw recipe

2011-07-03T19:30:00.006-04:00

By now everyone's heard that ReadyMade is no more, and while the site continues to stand, I have no idea how long that will remain. So I'll be reposting my best fruit- and vegetable-related recipes from my tenure at RM here, mostly so I'll have a record of them.

Sad news for sure, but a recent wonderful development in my vegetable life has been my membership in Garden Of Eve's CSA, which picks up downstairs from my office in Brooklyn Fireproof, and has gotten me excited about trying and re-trying all sorts of vegetables. My last ReadyMade post (below) was my reintroduction to radishes, which I've never liked; but when chance and seasonality forced them on me, I learned.

Also, the Rick's Picks staff (of which I am an occasional member) is currently underging its Eat Local Challenge; handed the task of choosing one of the pickles in the line and one of a short list of local ingredients, I chose Handy Corn and cucumber, and devised this chilled, briny cucumber-dill yogurt soup. I was so happy with the way it turned out that now I'm trying to turn as much of my CSA haul as possible into cold yogurt-based soups.

Here's the radish slaw. And here's to more posting now that the summer growing season is well underway, and I'm inspired to create new vegetable dishes for the first time in ages!

Pickley Radish Slaw

1 small bunch radishes, sliced into very thin rounds (use a mandoline), about two cups
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon agave nectar or honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon capers, drained

Whisk together vinegar, mustard, agave, lemon juice, salt, and pepper until thoroughly blended. Add olive oil and whisk to blend.

Toss radishes, capers, and dressing together in a large bowl until coated; allow to sit several hours at room temperature or refrigerate overnight before serving.

You might call it phoning it in, but I call it I love The Awl

2011-03-10T10:08:00.005-05:00

I just found this great Awl post from last fall about farmer's market fruits and vegetables "tasting like themselves." I felt the exact same way when I first tasted local New York State grapes - nothing short of revelatory. And the grape jelly I made from them! Lordy.

Inexplicable spinach cravings.

2011-03-09T10:01:00.004-05:00

Since I've mostly given up cheese, I no longer love spinach (nutrition-dork brain wonders if it's because of my body wanting dairy to counteract the calcium-infringing action of the oxalic acid), but this non-gratin gratin from Smitten Kitchen makes me want both.

And while I am not a fan of the "creating chips out of greens" trend, I like the idea with spinach, which wouldn't be fibrous or chewy or weird - and these look lovely.

Usually, spinach just seems noncommital to me - it cooks quickly, but it's bland. When I want a quick-cooking green, I generally choose mustard greens, whose antioxidant compounds fairly scream to make their presence known in its spicy flavor. But maybe it's time to rethink spinach?

Steady Diet of Nothing: The Road to Health

2011-03-08T22:55:00.004-05:00

The wonderful and amazing Molly put together this SXSW panel, and invited me to be involved! I'm honored to be in such great company. Word to the Austin-bound: be there Thursday! I'm also going to blog photos of every taco I eat in Austin.

The green smoothie, 2011 style

2011-03-07T07:00:00.001-05:00

Whether it was Mercury in retrograde, the continuing depressive contribution of an especially trying winter, or turning 31, the first few weeks of 2011 were rough, people. The energy was that of scratching one’s way through an increasingly narrow tunnel through the dirt.

Worse, I ended up with crippling late-night abdominal pain, the result of an infection, and took antibiotics for the first time in about seven years. To me, the girl who prides herself on an immune system of steel, this was a bit of a wake-up call. I re-quit coffee, decided to go on a two-week alcohol-free vegan diet, and dusted off the old Vita-Mix to reintroduce green smoothies into my life.

But these are not the yogurt-and-berry breakfast-in-a-glass concoctions of the past – these are lean and streamlined, for someone who doesn’t fear the grassiness of raw greens or the grainy texture of flax. One cup of local apple juice or cranberry-apple juice, about a cup of raw kale leaves, a half-cup of parsley, and one tablespoon freshly-ground flax seed, liquefied in my darling machine.

Raw kale we know: it’s full of fiber, vitamin C, vitamin A, etc. Parsley is the overlooked nutritional powerhouse in this equation: astounding amounts of vitamin K in addition the expected A and C, as well as good levels of iron and folate; and the volatile oils and flavonoids that give parsley its vibrant, grassy piquancy are especially anti-carcinogenic and blood-cleansing. And, of course, the flax provides yet more fiber and most of a day’s worth of omega-3 fatty acids.

I’m not exaggerating to say that bringing green smoothies back into my life felt like coming home again. While I’ve cleaned up my act in other ways (though I've gone back to coffee), I can trace my morning exuberance directly to that cup-and-a-half of chlorophyll-laden freshness. Green smoothie for president!

More Natalie Dee on vegetables.

2011-03-06T07:00:00.002-05:00

New love: purple potatoes

2011-03-05T07:00:00.001-05:00

Until recently, I’d never given purple potatoes much thought. I don’t regularly buy potatoes, and when I do, I (naturally) tend toward yellow-fleshed carola, “the potato-lover’s potato”.

But something struck me the last time I was at the market, that somehow I’d failed to realize: purple potatoes are full of anthocyanins! That’s what makes them purple! Since I’m a sucker for phytonutrients, I’ve decided it’s "all blue" all the time, for me. Their flesh is a bit on the dry side, but since I use them exclusively for olive-oil soaked oven-roasted potatoes (with plenty of sea salt, pimentón, and a dash of cayenne), that doesn’t matter.

Mostly, it makes me feel better than usual about eating potatoes. Because…anthocyanins! Preventing cancer! By eating potatoes!

What have I been doing all these months, anyway? (A roundup)

2011-03-04T07:00:00.002-05:00

Let’s see: happy hour, going to the gym, eating fried chicken, and general idleness. Oh! And, as I've mentioned, writing for the ReadyMade food blog.

Here are links to some of my favorites of the vegetable-related posts I’ve written for them:

In which I resolve to eat greens for breakfast, and share ideas for same.

A double-quick, light dinner: pasta topped with crimini mushrooms in shallot and wine sauce.

Fridge-pickled cabbage slaw – this stuff is great.

Party menu!

I love tacos the most.

And a few ideas for one of my very favorites, broccoli rabe.

Toward the perfect beet slaw

2011-03-03T07:00:00.002-05:00

While I've discussed my affection for beet slaw in the past, my relationship to the stuff has since escalated into somewhat of an obsession. For the past month, I've been whipping up a huge batch of slaw every week, and eating a good helping every day with lunch or dinner; the vinegar, salt, and spices ensure it keeps well in the fridge, and the flavor improves with time. (On a related note: remind me never to go back in time to before I had a food processor, k?)

This slaw is especially great to have on hand in the winter, when tasty raw vegetables can be few and far between. And if you happen to have an overnight guest (don't judge me), serve this slaw alongside the obligatory omelet for an impressive late breakfast.

Now that I've made half a dozen or so batches of the stuff, I've finally got a recipe I think is good enough to share. This slaw is a little spicy from the mustard, naturally sweet from the beets, with a great puckery tang from the lemon and vinegar. Don't be tempted to omit the raw shallot/red onion - it's key to keeping things interesting here.

This isn't a good recipe to attempt if you have a hand-modeling gig later in the afternoon, but it would be totally fine to make the same day as you're planning to dye your hair with Manic Panic, or possibly work on your car.

NB: This isn't one of those "serve this to the beet-haters in your family - it'll convert them!" recipes. You should seriously like beets to go down this road. My mom and President Obama: this isn't for you.

Best Beet Slaw

Ingredients:
2-4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup apple cider or red wine vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
1 tablespoon lemon zest (about 1 lemon)
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
3/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/2 cup mild extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion or 2 shallots (will yield 1/2 cup sliced)
3-4 large beets, peeled (will yield 6-7 cups shredded)
agave nectar to taste, optional

Procedure:
1. Put on an apron, preferably a full apron, but if you wear a cute half-apron like I do, cinch that thing right up around your natural waist for maximum coverage (plus: flattering!)
2. Whisk together mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, lemon zest, pepper, and salt until thoroughly combined. Pour olive oil into vinegar mixture slowly in a thin stream, and whisk until emulsified. Set dressing aside.
3. I'm serious about the apron thing. Do it. Things are going to get seriously messy.
4. Cut up beets into manageable pieces and shred on the larger shred side of your food processor. Do that thing where you futilely try to get it to shred those weird pieces that get stuck on the top of the disc a couple of times, then give up on them.
6. Ok, fine, go ahead and make the Macbeth joke, we know you're dying to.
What, will these little hands ne'er be clean?

5. Slice onion/shallots in half around the equator and slice on your mandoline's thinnest setting. Totally use the hand guard, because you always do, right? Safety first, that's your motto.
6. Toss shredded beets with onion slices in a large bowl. The onions tend to clump when sliced so thinly, so use your hands for this.
7. Give the dressing a quick stir to make sure it hasn't settled, and pour over beet/onion mixture. Fold until evenly distributed.
8. Let slaw sit for an hour or two (during which time: clean up! - sorry), adjust seasonings (adding agave to taste if your beets aren't quite sweet enough), and serve.

The aftermath

Roundup-Ready?

2011-03-02T08:00:00.001-05:00

You should follow erstwhile Minimalist Mark Bittman on Twitter, less for his recipes (which I've never loved) than for his well-curated up-to-the-minute links highlighting food political issues.

Yesterday, he posted this link to a Reuters piece about plant pathologist Don Huber's recent "emergency" warning to Ag Secretary Vilsack about a newly discovered pathogen affecting fertility in animals, that he's linked to a primary ingredient in Roundup. Fingers crossed Vilsack pays attention...I suppose it's too much to hope the mainstream media will.

Why, hello there

2011-03-01T07:15:00.005-05:00

What's six months between friends?

I'm currently wrangling a relaunch of this dear Produce Stories, and I thought, what better time to start than when I can self-coerce into following the horrifically named NaBloPomo?

But meanwhile, here's a link to a series of Ready Made posts, in which I made all my meals for a week out of the same 12 ingredients. (I got really good at listing them off the top of my head as people asked, and now I've got this, sadly useless, memorized: eggs-bacon-lentils-collards-broccoli-onions-carrots-apples-almonds-mushrooms-brown rice-sweet potatoes).

The best product of the whole experience was this recipe for sweet potato/green apple/coriander soup - it's one of the tastiest, simplest recipes I've concocted in some time: the tart apple complements the potato's vegetal sweetness, and the freshly-ground toasted coriander lends the whole thing a floral, citrusy backdrop. It's almost refreshing, but it's creamy and filling. This will definitely be in regular rotation.

Oh! And I've added a link to all my ReadyMade posts in the sidebar, just to be thorough.

More soon...tomorrow, even!

CSA-OK!

2010-08-29T14:46:00.005-04:00

Instead of my regularly scheduled greenmarket shopping this week, I was a CSA tourist. My friend Meg couldn't pick up her Stanton Street CSA share Thursday, so she let me have it. My haul is pictured above (there are a dozen more nectarines inside the Whole Foods bag).

All in all, I took home:
1 head lettuce
6 beefsteak tomatoes
4 yellow plum tomatoes
35 cherry tomatoes
2 Italian frying peppers (?)
2 small yellow peppers
2 long skinny Thai-looking peppers
1 head fennel
2 slicing cucumbers
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch basil
1 lb. tongue of fire beans
13 nectarines

This for the low, low price of free ninety-nine (with a plan to buy Meg dinner in the nearish future, maybe at M. Wells, where I inexplicably still haven't been.)

The lettuce and chard are easy enough (salads; sautéed - last night, I had some with white wine and bacon), but there are a lot of tomatoes in this cornucopia for someone with serious tomato sensitivity. I threw caution to the wind and ate all the cherry tomatoes plain; I made tomato, cucumber, and basil salads with some of the plum tomatoes, and added others to green salads.

Most of the beefsteak tomatoes ended up in the ranchero sauce I made for this morning's huevos rancheros brunch with my friend Jane - I cooked them along with onions, garlic, cumin, the frying peppers (roasted) and yellow peppers, and a little cayenne and oregano, then threw it all in a blender. This sauce is killer - I'm excited to find out what else I can put it on - I'm thinking almost anything.

I still have a few tomatoes left, and I'm stumped, since I'm already paying for eating all the other ones. Maybe I can add them in small amounts to things here and there without causing too much damage.

As for the nectarines, which (of course) ripened all at once, I have been eating them as quickly as I can; I used four of them in some nectarine muffins, which I adapted from this recipe; I used half whole-wheat flour, used 1.5 cups sucanat instead of 2 cups white sugar, used melted butter instead of vegetable oil, and in addition to freshly-ground Ceylon cinnamon, I added 1 teaspoon vanilla. I'm not a big muffin person, because they're generally so dull, but these are quite moist and have a lot of flavor - switching to butter was definitely the right move.

I'm having a crew over for Thai curry Tuesday evening, so I'll throw in the rest of my basil (if it lasts), and if I'm feeling brave, maybe I'll toss in some slices of the Thai chiles. Or I could try sautéeing those with shallots, and tossing them with popcorn, maybe with lime and some curry powder? We'll see.

The tongue of fire beans are a bit of a stumper, but since I still have some tomatoes left, I might pick up some corn and make an improvised succotash for dinner one of these nights. I bet that ranchero sauce would be right at home on top!

I had a party instead

2010-08-22T20:11:00.002-04:00

Though, to be fair, I did buy some collards yesterday. But now I have to clean the floors.

Field trip!

2010-08-15T18:24:00.002-04:00

Upon finding myself in Clinton Hill of a Saturday morning, I took the opportunity to be a Greenmarket tourist, visiting the petite but well-stocked (and refreshingly uncrowded) Fort Greene market. Plus the sun was shining and I found some vintage sunglasses at a stoop sale for $3: all in all, a magical, if drowsy, visit.

A well-balanced haul for two hours' sleep:
1 bunch collards
1 bunch broccoli rabe
1 bunch carrots
3 lbs. mixed summer squash
4 shallots
1 pint sungold tomatoes
1 1/4 lbs. nectarines
Total spent: $25

Naturally, the sungolds are gone - can't stop from eating those things like candy, as much as they wreck my stomach + the inside of my mouth. The first one of the nectarines to ripen was my first nectarine of the season, and I couldn't have asked for a better one: it was perfect, and started my lazy Sunday in the best possible way.

I'll quick-pickle the shallots, add the squash to everything in typical late-summer fashion, and sauté the greens - all per usual. Some of the carrots will go into lunches, but I have been thinking about this simple recipe for grated carrot salad from David Lebovitz since I saw the post, and I'll whip up my own version along with dinner tonight.

Otherwise, it's all catching up on sleep and biding my time until the rest of my nectarines ripen. It's a lush life, people.

Late-summer powersalad

2010-08-08T21:32:00.007-04:00

This whole both-ends candle-burning tendency continued unexpectedly through my return from Bloomington IN, so I didn't wake up bright or early enough to make it to Union Square Saturday morning. Instead, I had a semi-lazy morning and took my budget-shopping to the McCarren Park market instead.

Midwest recovery diet:
1 bunch collards
1 bunch curly kale
1 head red romaine lettuce
2 ears white corn
2 yellow bell peppers
1 bunch spring onions
1 lb. apricots
2 lbs. new Yukon gold potatoes
Total spent: $16

Vacation-eating (and drinking) for the past five days had put me in desperation for a cleanse, so I revised my powersalad recipe to use more of late summer's bounty, ratchet up the fiber, and blast those phytonutrient levels up to healing levels. More importantly: this salad is a joy to eat.

Late-summer powersalad
3 cups torn romaine leaves, cleaned and dried well
One ear sweet corn
1/2 red or yellow bell pepper
2 hardboiled eggs
4 kalamata olives (optional)
Dijon mustard vinaigrette
Sea salt
Black pepper

Shell and quarter hardboiled eggs; set aside. Roughly chop olives if using.
Remove kernels from corn cob into large bowl. Slice bell pepper into thin strips with mandoline into the same bowl. Add lettuce leaves, drizzle in dressing, and toss with tongs; taste and add more dressing if needed.
Plate lettuce mixture and top with eggs and olives, and a few grinds of fresh black pepper.

The rest of my haul is pretty much just maintenance, but I did innovate a little tonight, adding homemade curry powder to tonight's collards with caramelized onions, to great effect; I had them for dinner under a medium-rare grass-fed burger, with red-and-white mixed quinoa on the side. Dessert was four super-juicy Red Jacket Orchards apricots.

Added Value; or, the girl who loved Red Hook

2010-07-24T16:40:00.006-04:00

My plans to get up early, run, and go to Union Square before my Red Hook brunch were foiled by my own sluggishness: by the time I'd dragged myself around McCarren Park and back, it was after 10. So I changed plans, and went by the Added Value community farm and market on my way back to the subway from Fort Defiance (have the Savannah). Not much by way of stories, but I managed to wrest a few nice shots out of the iPhone camera.

Entering the farm - view framed by black bags of compost.

Beautiful (hot) day - you can barely see the corn growing, and the farmstand over to the left.

Swiss chard in the foreground, lacinato kale in the background.

Farmstand armful:
2 zucchini
2 ears yellow corn
1 lb. carrots
1 bunch lacinato kale
1 pint yellow plums
Total spent: $8.75

Friday night fridge pickles

2010-07-10T18:12:00.005-04:00

Friday night in = fridge pickles, which are my new obsession, and - along with popcorn - the only thing I feel like eating during this heat wave. I have a post up about them with a bunch of recipe links at ReadyMade; on my exciting Friday, I tried all sorts of intrepid new spice blends, as this questionable iPhone photo attests.
Everything's less fun on a budget:
2 lbs. crimini mushrooms
1 red bell pepper
1 bunch Siberian kale
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch spring onions
2 bunches carrots
Total spent: $27

The criminis, bell pepper, and some of the onions will go into the mushroom sloppy joes I'm making for dinner with a friend tomorrow night (along with miscellaneous spices and the housemade barbecue sauce from The Meat Hook - cheating, I know, but theirs is so good); we'll also have collards with caramelized onion and, of course, fridge pickles to top the sandwiches.

My favorite carrot farmer has told me that the weather's allowing for a second planting this season, which is lucky, since apparently the deer have gotten into the carrots - my carrots! - so they'll stick around longer this year. I know I've waxed overly poetic about these carrots before but they're just so sweet, but mineral, but grassy - balanced - with no bitter edge like most carrots tend to have, but they're not candy-sweet and one-dimensional like some. All his produce is delicious, so it must just be fantastic soil.

But, fridge pickles! Friday night's batches used the same brine as my previous efforts, with cucumber, yellow bell pepper, spicier yellow Santa Fe pepper, garlic, and onion slices. Four jars, four spice blends: cumin seed, coriander, and black peppercorns; caraway seed, yellow mustard seed, and black peppercorns; pink peppercorn, fennel seed, brown mustard seed; and a final (smaller) jar with lots of yellow mustard seed and crushed red pepper. I also upped the amounts of the whole spices from my initial batch, from 1/4 tsp each to 1/2 tsp each. It's still a bit early to try them, but I'll probably do a tasting along with dinner.

Otherwise, it's a broke week 'til payday. I'll be eating lots of eggs over greens and rice for the next few days - though, since that's my favorite dinner of all time, I'd probably be doing it regardless. Also I'm going to try to be a better blogger. But summertime, man.

My city, my sauna

2010-06-05T13:31:00.006-04:00

As a counterpoint to last Saturday's zombie-hazed, sleepless market trip, this morning I woke up at 6:30 after a sensible bedtime, and got up to run four miles in refreshing 80% humidity before heading out to USG. My extra-long run had me visiting both Monsignors McGolrick and McCarren, as well as the scenic pass near our neighborhood terrifying chicken slaughterhouse, before rounding my sweaty way back to my woefully not-yet-air-conditioned apartment.

After all that and fighting through the busy market crowds? The cherries tasted AMAZING.

Early to bed, early to rise:
1 lb. sugar snap peas
1 qt. strawberries
1 lb. cherries
1/2 lb. wild asparagus
1 bunch lacinato kale
1 bunch Siberian kale
1 head Romaine lettuce
1 head Red Oak lettuce
Total spent: $35.50

I blanched last week's sugar snaps and took them with me to a beach picnic; they were wonderful, but I'm looking forward to hoarding these so I can eat them with lunch every day. Lunch-wise, last week's standout meal was goat barbacoa made by my friendly local (cute) butchers at The Meat Hook, thrown in a bowl with lots of sautéed kale and shallots, on top of red quinoa (tastier than beige quinoa!).

Mostly, lately, I've only wanted to eat the above-pictured Enormo-Salad dressed with shalloty Dijon vinaigrette and topped with hardboiled eggs and olives, sometimes with a buttered piece of the awesome spelt-rye sourdough from Hawthorne Valley Farm on the side. Coming soon: a recipe for said salad dressing.

My only real disappointment this season has been my own overwhelming lack of interest in all things rhubarb. Maybe when I get my A/C installed I'll be able to care. I have been dreaming about this rhubarb bread, but haven't been able to stomach the idea of heating up the oven to bake it. Ditto rhubarb chutney and the great rhubarb bars I made last season. We'll see.

As is standard Saturday practice, I've already eaten half the cherries and one-third of the strawberries. Some things don't change.

Early bird gets the zzzzzzzzzzzz…

2010-05-29T15:26:00.002-04:00

Since I’ve been writing Produce Stories for four years now, there aren’t really many firsts left to be had: even when vendors come and go, the seasons tend to bring the same fruits and vegetables to the market, season in, season out.

But this morning marked the first (and, let’s hope, last) time I went straight to the market in the morning without sleeping. Being that this is a family blog, I won’t go into the circumstances, but I will say that I was sure spaced out and lackadaisical about my shopping. One vendor asked me how I was doing and, after ringing up my greens, told me to “be careful out there.”

You snooze, you lose:
1 bunch broccoli rabe
1 bunch Siberian kale
½ lb. wild asparagus
2/3 lb. sugar snap peas
4 shallots
2 heads red oak lettuce
1 pint strawberries
1 pint cherries (!!!!!!!!)
Total spent: $35

The upside was that, since I left my house at 7:30, I got to the market just as it was opening, so it wasn’t crowded and nobody had sold out of anything yet – and by “anything” I mean CHERRIES!! My buddies at Locust Grove had ‘em, and I snagged a pint.

If I weren’t so drowsy I think I’d be beside myself with glee about the reappearance of sugar snaps. Shell peas were available too, but I held back, since I didn’t have any immediate ideas for them. I’ll have to plan a dinner party soon so I can make fresh pea soup with cream and tarragon.

No big plans for anything else, beyond the giant shalloty salads and proteins served atop piles of greens that have been my standard fare lately. I’m happy that regular heads of lettuce are back in season, so I don’t have to buy super-pricey (albeit delicious) baby greens anymore – and Keith’s Farm has the best lettuce, though sadly their garlic is still all green.

My lord, I’m tired.

Photo from Flickr: fromky's photostream

Better than sleep: strawberries!

2010-05-15T10:04:00.007-04:00

Despite severe undersleeping after last night's brain-breaking (in the best way) Joshua Light Show with Silver Apples and Oneida, I didn't even snooze when my alarm bleated at 7:15 this morning - I was so excited about strawberries, which I missed last week. I arrived at the market at 8:30, buoyed by the gorgeous blue sky and green tea with fresh mint & sage. And: mission accomplished! Of course, I've eaten half of them already.

Oh, spring fever
1/4 lb. mixed baby greens
1/4 lb. arugula
1 lb. white button mushrooms
1 bunch asparagus
2 lbs. carrots
1 bunch broccoli rabe
1 bunch lacinato kale
2 pints strawberries
Total spent: $36

Not that there weren't minor disappointments. My greenmarket inside source told me that Eckerton had had sugar snaps and shell peas for a few minutes before I got there, and wild asparagus has already gone from Terhune.

But strawberries are worth it. My love for strawberries is well-documented (not the least of which, on my left arm), and while apricots may make better jam, and sweet cherries may be easier to eat by the pound, the first strawberries of the year are most evocative, for me, of sunshine and sweetness and - to take it a little over the top - the wonders of the vegetal world. I guess: they just make me happy.

The baby greens are my favorites, from Hawthorne Valley Farm, and they'll be paired with the arugula + dressed with herby shallot vinaigrette in one of the many protein + salad greens dinners I can't get enough of lately. I've been sautéeing broccoli rabe with ginger, sesame seeds, shoyu, and a splash of toasted sesame oil, and bringing it to work to eat cold, which is surprisingly great.

And of course, the strawberries will be gone before the weekend's over.

Asparagiiiiiii!

2010-04-24T10:02:00.002-04:00

I have lost my capacity for rational thought when it comes to new arrivals at the market. All I can think to say is "asparagus is here! Asparagus is here!" Though for some reason I'm really not ready to face rhubarb yet.

You can have any color you want, as long as it's green:
3/4 lb. asparagus
3 hydroponic cucumbers
1/4 lb. wild Italian arugula
1/4 lb. mixed lettuce
1/2 lb. white Russian kale
1/3 lb. collard greens
1 bunch lovage
1 lb. crimini mushrooms
1/4 lb. shallots
1/2 lb. Nicola potatoes
Total spent: $48

I'm not a huge fan of hydroponically grown produce because it's never as flavorful as soil-grown, but I'm heading upstate to a barbecue today and really wanted to make a simple cucumber, mint, and feta salad - my mint plant exploded while I was out of town, and it needs trimming back. I'll keep it simple with red wine vinegar, shallots, the cucumbers, plenty of mint, and a sprinkling of Lynnhaven Farms' wonderful feta on top.

As for the rest, I have been craving green salads like crazy since spring started. I managed to eat pretty healthfully on my desert vacation last week, but it's time to ramp up the greens intake for the cleansing sunny season. I'm especially excited about the tiny-leaved, spicy, Italian arugula - it's so delicious simply dressed with a lemon-Dijon vinaigrette, and brings a ton of flavor and freshness to a meal.

I have no idea how to use lovage, but most online sources say it's simply added to a recipe for added flavor, maybe in place of celery. It was an impulse buy for sure - maybe I'll try it in my next batch of beans or lentils.

And the market's best asparagus, from Terhune Orchards? It's everything I can do not to go throw it in a pan and eat it all now, with my fingers. I'll sauté and sprinkle with salt and eat it within a day or two for sure. Spring!!!!!!!!!

Photo from Flickr: Muffet's photostream

OMGreens

2010-03-27T21:02:00.003-04:00

Given last week's relative barrenness at USG and the freezing-cold temps, I wasn't expecting much from this morning's trip. The hydrangeas pictured were certainly the most glamorous and colorful scene at the market today, but I was much more excited by the color green.

It's really happening:
1/4 lb. pea shoots
1/2 lb. collard greens
1/4 lb. lacinato kale
1 lb. white button mushrooms
3 lbs. mixed apples
Total spent: $22

Not only did I find marvelous (albeit pricey) young lacinato kale and collard greens at Norwich Meadows Farm, the farmer who grows my favorite carrots and shell peas in the world had pea shoots. Fresh greens! I couldn't stop smiling.

With my bounty, tonight's dinner was a salad of the pea shoots, with my standard simple dijon mustard vinaigrette, and kale stir-fried with lots of sesame seeds, ginger, and shoyu. The young and tender greens cooked up very quickly, and had so much flavor - I can't wait to try the collards tomorrow.

In other produce news, I've been making jam thumbprint cookies like crazy the past week with last season's homemade peach jam, because it turns out that jam made with agave only lasts a couple of weeks once opened. And as I'm off toast at the moment, I've got to find ways to use this stuff. Luckily the cookies are quick to make, and I haven't had trouble finding folks to eat them.

Sun, but not much else

2010-03-21T18:05:00.003-04:00

Beautiful day at USG yesterday, with more vendors, most of whom were selling plants. Not much by way of produce, as I expected...but perhaps this burst of early sunshine will bring on the advent of harbinger rhubarb soon.

Just a few things:
1.5 lbs German butterball potatoes
1 lb. yellow onions
1/2 lb. shallots
1 lb. crimini mushrooms
Total spent: $14

I also bought a chive plant to go with my bedroom-window herb garden. Here they are, all nicely potted in terra cotta. I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to plants, but at least they look cute. The chives already seem like trouble.

Humble beginnings

2010-03-19T12:30:00.004-04:00

The start of my windowsill herb garden: tarragon, thyme, spearmint, and sage. I had to build my own windowsill! And I can't figure out how to get my screen open to get the old pots out of there, but I'll figure it out. Next stop: the garden store, for new pots. I'd like to have oregano, lavender, lemon balm, and catnip too...summer savory, basil, hyssop...we'll see how much space I have.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain

2010-03-16T09:22:00.007-04:00

Well, I did make it to USG Saturday morning, but the rain and wind had already started - though they'd get worse - and the vendor turnout was understandably sparse. I bought some potatoes, onions, cheese, eggs, and milk, before heading to Whole Foods to pick up the rest of what I needed to cook for my old folks on Sunday.

And Sunday itself was almost laughably terrible, with the aggressive gloom continuing, the leak under my kitchen seak worsening, and my rushing to get everything done before I had to run to the office to bring merch for the Hauschka show at Le Poisson Rouge (which show was perhaps the only positive of the day). It was the kind of day where you find yourself making fennel and orange salad at 1 a.m. - we all have those, right?

Oh! And my camera's broken. I haven't even begun to figure out what to do about that.

On the positive side, I finally wrote down my permutations to this baked fettucine recipe I found on Epicurious. It's a great dish - one of my clients' favorites - and can easily be made ahead and popped into the oven when dinner guests arrive. While a bit heavy on the cheese, there are enough vegetables in the mix to make the whole thing seem, if not virtuous, then at least balanced.

Also on the bright side (literally, heyo!), it's sunny and in the 60s all week - further making me feel like not going to SXSW this year was the right decision.

Baked Fettuccine with Mascarpone and Vegetables

Ingredients:
2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 head broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets
2 lbs. spinach leaves, washed well
3 medium leeks, halved and cut into 1/2" strips (about 4 cups)
juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
zest of 2 lemons (about 1/4 cup)
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup whole milk
8 oz. mascarpone (I've used fromage blanc for a lighter version also)
1 cup grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano Reggiano
3/4 lb. dry fettuccine (whole-wheat works great here)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Sauté spinach in batches in a small amount of olive oil, adding a pinch of salt per batch. Drain, chop, and set aside.

Blanch broccoli in boiling salted water just until crisp-tender; shock, drain, and set aside.

Heat remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet over medium heat; add leeks and a pinch of salt, and cook until softened; do not brown. Turn off heat and stir in lemon juice, zest, thyme, several pinches of salt, and several grinds of pepper. Set aside.

In a heavy-bottomed, medium saucepan, melt butter over medium heat and add flour. Cook one minute, whisking constantly.
Whisk in milk, turn up heat, and bring to a boil, whisking constantly; turn down heat and simmer (keep whisking!) until thickened to the consistency of heavy cream, about 3-4 minutes.

Remove from heat and whisk in cheeses until mostly smooth (mixture will be a bit grainy because of the Grana Padano). Stir in leek mixture and taste for seasoning.

Cook fettuccine to al dente in salted water. Toss pasta with vegetables in a large bowl; add cheese sauce and toss until thoroughly combined. Adjust seasoning as needed. Transfer pasta to a baking dish and bake in preheated 350˚ oven until top is bubbling and golden, 15-20 minutes.

If making ahead, store, tightly covered, in the refrigerator, and toss to redistribute sauce and vegetables before baking. Can be frozen at this point, tightly wrapped in aluminum foil; allow to thaw completely before baking.

photo from Flickr: Ervin Bartis' photostream

Vegetable blogging at ReadyMade

2010-03-09T18:26:00.003-05:00

Hey...that's me! I'll be posting weekly at ReadyMade with info and recipes about a different vegetable every week. Check out my first post, about the wonders of butternut squash.

In other news: too sick to go to USG this week. Roasted some beets, sautéed up some greens, nothing too exciting. We've had sunshine though, so I'm getting spring fever for early veggies! Still a few weeks yet, I know.

It's the freakin' weekend

2010-02-27T15:39:00.008-05:00

So, there will be no boring, self-important monologue about why I haven’t posted in nearly six months.

But! Now! Installed (as I am) in my own real one-bedroom which boasts an even smaller, narrower kitchen than my former home, I am suited wonderfully for the frequent dinner party for 2 and the occasional slightly crowded dinner party for 8, not to mention other configurations and guest-quantities TBC. (When spring arrives, there will be teas: delightful conversation-heavy teas in the best of company with the best of finger sandwiches and other delicacies, because I’ve never given up on my fantasy of having a salon.)

Since we last encountered our heroine she has become single, turned 30, quit caffeine, and acquired a personal chef client, a freelance cookbook-consulting gig, and an upcoming weekly vegetable-blogging assignment for a prominent DIY/lifestyle magazine (about which more later). This is on top of her full-time job managing a little record-label-that-could, as well as her new physical-fitness hobbies, running and Ving Tsun Kung Fu. (Today was my first Saturday off since mid-December.)

But enough about me. USG was closed yesterday due to our third snowstorm of the season, but today it was open and even thriving – much more crowded than I thought it would be, and with most of the wintertime vendors in attendance. But this photo (of organic farm Norwich Garden’s insulated tent-stall) is a pretty typical shot: it’s pretty much all root vegetables and tubers nowadays, where it’s not apples. And it’s apples almost everywhere. So it’s not much of a haul, but it was a welcome excursion for a work-free Saturday.

Hot and fresh out the kitchen:
1 ½ lbs. beets
1 ½ lbs. “Red Rose” potatoes
4 lbs. mixed bargain apples
½ lb. shallots
Total spent: $11

I also bought eggs from Northshire Farms, a maple syrup-sweetened lemon poppyseed muffin from Body & Soul which was very dense and had a not entirely unpleasant faint hint of Funfetti cake mix, and a gorgeous whole-wheat multi-grain boulé from Our Daily Bread with which I will spend the week making impractically-sized toast. Then I headed across the street to Whole Foods where I bought the greens, carrots, and other necessities our root-cellar of a market is currently lacking.

I’ll roast the beets and probably the potatoes (no doubt on separate occasions), and the apples I’ll make into applesauce, which will feature my new favorite spice to pair with apples: star anise. I know – daring! Nothing’s changed.

Puttin' my money where my mouth is

2009-09-02T14:31:00.004-04:00

I've been preoccupied with other things the past couple of weeks, and haven't posted. Nothing too inspiring going on around here recipe-wise, though I promise I'm eating my vegetables. I am looking forward to having chili for dinner tonight for the first time in ages; I have some gorgeous peppers to roast up for it.

However, I have been inspired by the efforts of Food Bank for NYC, and this week I donated money and applied to volunteer with their CookShop program, as well as a local food pantry in my neighborhood. You can do the same thing!
Food Bank NYC website

Here's the thing about corn

2009-08-20T22:19:00.004-04:00

I love corn on the cob to distraction. I love fresh corn soup, salads made of fresh corn, and adding fresh corn to any and all possible meals, while it's in season. But, as I was discussing with my photo assistant this evening, corn is really heavy to carry home from the market, and it creates a lot of compost waste (which I carry back to the market eventually). That's because the edible area is basically a 1/4" surface in between one big part of the corn (the cob) and another (the husk/silk) - an eaten corn of cob is almost exactly the same size and weight as an untouched one. But, as I said, I love the stuff, so I'm not going to stop eating it. I'm just complaining.

I did find many more-convenient selections, though:
4 ears corn
2 bunches carrots
1 leeks
1 bunch kale
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch celery
1 3/4 lb. zucchini
3/4 lb. button mushrooms
2 lbs. yellow tomatoes
1 1/4 green beans and yellow wax beans
1/2 lb. mixed peppers (jalapeno, anaheim, poblano)
1 bunch oregano
1 bunch thyme
1 pint strawberries
4 nectarines
3 peaches
4 purple Italian plums
Total spent: $48

I made it home without forgetting the strawberries, but they did end up pretty squished. Luckily, they're still edible. I'm planning to use the peppers, tomatoes, and some of the zucchini and leeks in a posole stew tomorrow night with the dried hominy I soaked and cooked today. Inspired entirely by a friend's description of her mom's posole recipe, I'm going to make this up as I go along.

Otherwise, the main story here is that I still haven't bought peaches, nectarines, and apricots for jam. The heat has really gotten to me this year, and with no AC in the front kitchen part of our apartment, I am not looking forward to making any more jam. But I know it will end up worth all the sweat and effort...it's just going to take a little more convincing.

Photo from Flickr: Trimmer741's photostream

Why I shouldn't go to the market before coffee

2009-08-12T12:53:00.005-04:00

A lovely, if hot, visit to USG today. I very nearly made it through without disaster despite my unfed, uncoffeed state - but not quite. I forgot to buy celery, and, worst of all, I left my brown-paper-bagged pint of Tristar strawberries at the Evolutionary Organics stand when I bought my greens, and didn't realize it until I was walking home from the subway. I'll just take heart imagining that someone who works at the stand will get a treat!

Refilling my bare fridge:
1/2 lb. salad greens
2 bunches carrots
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 head Rocambole garlic
1 bunch Italian parsley
3 lbs. green and yellow zucchini
2 lbs. new red-gold potatoes
1 1/2 lbs. yellow wax beans
4 ears white corn
1 pint Tristar strawberries (sigh)
4 nectarines
2 peaches
4 apricots
4 Shiro plums
Total spent: $44

The real news this week isn't in greenmarket purchases, but in pickles! My crock pickles magically weren't destroyed by my out-of-town week of neglect. They are delicious - really sour and perfectly spiced. I decided not to boil the brine, making my spirit guide in that decision Sandor Katz rather than the arguably more sensible Linda Ziedrich, though I (loosely) followed the latter's recipe for the pickles.

As you can see in the photo, the brine is alarmingly cloudy with sediment, but I'm choosing to ignore that and blithely rinse my pickles before I eat them. I just can't imagine that they could taste so good and be somehow spoiled. I ended up with three quarts of pickles, plus a handful of extras (which quickly became a mouthful, and have vanished). These will certainly not last more than a couple of months given their tastiness and my obsession with pickles, and unfortunately the Kirbies currently available at the market are too big for pickling in my little crock. Next year I'll have a successful pickling experience under my belt and will start early and pickle often! I might need a bigger crock.

No big plans for this week's haul. It's pretty standard, nothing to pickle or preserve, because I was on a budget and handicapped by my lack of caffeine and calories w/r/t creativity and desire to carry more heavy bags. Next week (or this weekend, if I can get my neighbors at Locust Grove to make me a side deal), I'll get peaches, nectarines, and apricots, and plan a massive jam day. I've already bought a new flat of jars in preparation, and I'm impressed by the stylish new brushed-steel lids Ball has introduced this season.

In other news, I have some news coming soon. But meanwhile, onward and upward, with a pit stop by the pickle department of my fridge on the way!

Eat It

2009-07-29T12:48:00.008-04:00

8/2 revision: I have let everyone down, especially Weird Al. How could I have forgotten "Addicted To Spuds" - especially given that the photo accompanying this post was of potatoes?!?!? I am off my A-game, people. There's no other explanation. Unfortunately I couldn't find the official "Addicted To Spuds" video, but here's a link to a live version on MTV from 1987. Luckily the search for that vid enticed me to rewatch Trapped In The Drive-Through which is blatantly amazing.

I recently found (Weird) Al Yankovic on Twitter, and he mentioned that this month marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark cinema classic UHF, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. With an all-star cast including Yankovic himself, Victoria Jackson, Fran Drescher, Emo Phillips, Billy Barty (as Noodles McIntosh), Kevin McCarthy and a pre-Seinfeld Michael Kramer, UHF is clearly one of the best movies ever. Unfortunately it doesn't have much to do with produce, and even Al's hit single Eat It barely mentions vegetables, though bananas figure prominently in one verse.

Today, we're teaching poodles how to fly:
1 pint Tristar strawberries
4 nectarines
3 peaches
6 apricots
1/4 lb. salad greens
1 bunch collards
1 bunch lacinato kale
1 bunch leeks
1 bunch celery
2 bunches carrots
1 1/2 lbs. mixed new potatoes
1 lb. wax beans
1/2 lb. peppers - Anaheim and jalapeno
2 lbs. zucchini
1 1/4 lb. Lima beans
3 plum tomatoes
1 box Sungold tomatoes
Total spent: $54

No big plans, although I clearly forgot to buy less food than usual because we're leaving Monday for Bloomington. I'll just have to use it all up before then. Tonight I'm planning to have salad, then a main course of succotash with the limas and corn, garlic-sautéed lacinato kale, and roasted new potatoes (patriotic red, white, and blue mix pictured in their farm-fresh dirty state), with some sliced Sungold tomatoes to garnish. At some point I'll use the peppers in a pot of black beans, the leeks in a frittata with the remaining potatoes, and the rest will get eaten as lunch snacks (celery, carrots, wax beans), and in as yet unplanned miscellaneous meals.

In jam news: my second batch of sour cherry jam turned out, though it was a lengthy process - had to add about six times the called-for amount of pectin. Apricot, peach, and nectarine jams are all on the schedule for my return, and possibly plum jam or plum butter. I also might try something with currants or gooseberries, just for the novelty.

Pickle update: Lots of white scum growing on the surface led me to reconfigure my pickling setup. Now it's more covered, but there's still white stuff growing. I'm a bit panicked because when I leave for Bloomington nobody will be skimming the stuff off my pickle crock...so I guess I'll just hope it stops, or allow that I might have to give up on at least the top layer of this batch. Who knew that making old-fashioned crock pickles was so difficult?

If at first you don't succeed...

2009-07-22T16:04:00.004-04:00

Just put four more pounds of kirby cucumbers in brine in my pickle crock. The tragic first batch came out so salty they made my teeth vibrate, so I had to toss them (the upside being that my whole kitchen now smells deliciously briny and pickly).

Running around like crazy today amidst general blues and homesickness for California. Nothing much interesting to report w/r/t market purchases, though I did get some sour cherries so I can make some jam, as a certain mother I know implied I ought to do. I wonder if I should put in the almond extract that about 75% of the recipes I've found include? I've got until Friday to decide.

Good advice, from Natalie Dee

2009-07-20T19:58:00.001-04:00

nataliedee.com

This makes me want to play video games again

2009-07-19T10:41:00.004-04:00

The Munchables, a new game for Wii - tagline is "When Vegetables Go Bad." The storyline involves two characters (called Chomper and Munchy) who must take back the Legendary Orbs, stolen by space pirates, in order to save their planet Star Ving ("a fantastic world of many islands connected by rainbows"). NB: nowhere does the website explain why the space pirates are vegetables.

The game has a ska-ish soundtrack, with bosses including Brocco-Lee, Great Grapy, Heli-Cantaloupie (what?), and Don Onion (who is "a pirate wandering around space and leader of the Space Pirates," whose personality is "greedy and unfair" and whose hobby is "invasion"; he was last seen at "Fort Entrée"). Other characters, which you eat along the way both to stop them and to grow bigger and more powerful include Eggplanter, Space Shroom, and Rice Baller.

3D video games freak me out but I like moving the cute characters around their adorable website.

It's sunny and 75 - feels so good to be alive

2009-07-15T12:30:00.008-04:00

If I ever end up in debtor's prison, it will be my orchard bills that send me there.
Everybody must get stonefruit:
1 3/4 lb. peaches
3/4 lb. pluots
3/4 lb. apricots
1 1/2 lb. cherries
1 pt. Tristar strawberries
1/2 pt. chanterelle mushrooms
1 bunch curly kale
1 bunch Swiss chard
2 1/4 lb. zucchini
1 1/2 lb. green beans
2 bunches carrots
2 bunches celery
1 1/2 lb. red potatoes
2 big yellow tomatoes
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch mint
2 lbs. onions
1 pt. shallots
Total spent: $62

So much fruit! Luckily I've already polished off about half of the insanely delicious Tristar strawberries, and I'm about to start in on the pluots from Locust Grove Farm, which I sampled last Saturday when I was lucky enough to be stationed next to their stand at the market. (I'm looking forward to eating the pluots in the privacy of my home this time, without any creepy guys staring.)

I'm especially excited about the chanterelles - reasonably priced for such a fancy mushroom. The pints were even more of a bargain ($7 with a half-pint at $5), but I wasn't sure I'd be able to use them all. I haven't decided the best way to showcase their flavor - possibly just sautéed in butter and served over pasta.

Tonight I'll be using the tomatoes in some chana masala, which will make a certain chickpea-lover in my life very happy. I'll bring out blended mint lemonade to start dinner, an idea stolen from Westville - but mine will be agave-sweetened.

In other news, my favorite Amish cheese vendor now has eggs, which is perfect timing, since Madura Farms just stopped selling them. Nothing else to report - time to give myself a stomachache from eating too much fruit!

NB re: photos. My camera seems to be slowly dying - I can't get the screen to work half the time, so I have to use the viewfinder, and I don't yet have Photoshop on my computer so my post-production options are limited. I'm hoping to remedy all these issues soon though.

I just love how serious he looks

2009-07-13T21:00:00.003-04:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Hot futures

2009-07-08T12:44:00.005-04:00

Oops...wrote this Wednesday and forgot to post it. I was waiting for a photo that never materialized.

The season's first plums today pointed forward to the arrival of all the stonefruit - peaches, nectarines, apricots, more plums - and the pie/crumble/cobbler-baking and jam marathons on the horizon. Luckily my love for peaches makes the prospect less daunting than thrilling. Also spotted today for the first time: corn on the cob. Can limas be far behind? Succotash, here I come!

Fruit-crazy:
2 lbs. cherries
1 pint raspberries
1 quart Tri-star strawberries
1 pint heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 bunch lacinato kale
3 heads celery
2 bunches carrots
2 lbs. yellow onions
1 lb. sugar snap peas
1 lb. shell peas
1 1/2 lb. mixed green & wax beans
1 head Romaine lettuce
2 heads garlic
3/4 lb. crimini mushrooms
Total spent: $65

Celery, carrots, and onions are simmering on the stove right now for vegetable stock. Local celery tends to be quite tough and leafy compared to the juicy and luscious California-grown stuff in Whole Foods, but it's also more flavorful - great for stock, not so much for the photo assistant's lunch snacks. But he can handle it.

No special plans for any of this, beyond giving myself a stomachache eating berries.

Pickle progress: The Kirbies went into the crock Sunday with their seasonings and brine, and they're already looking quite pickled. Waiting 2+ weeks is going to be really tough - the brine smells incredible!

What a crock!

2009-07-01T10:56:00.007-04:00

The cute pickling crock I bought at The Brooklyn Kitchen a month ago is going to get its first workout, courtesy of the Kirby cucumbers I bought today!

A gorgeous, if humid, trip to USG today. Isolated thunderstorms have been predicted through the afternoon, but luckily the skies were clear this morning (last night, not so much). Couldn't buy nearly the amount of berries I wanted and stay within my budget, but I did manage to stuff my refrigerator to the gills.

Too much for the produce drawer:
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch basil
1 bunch Italian parsley
2 bunches carrots
3/4 lb. sugar snap peas
1 lb. shell peas
2 lbs. yellow onions
2 1/4 lb. zucchini
1 bunch French crisp lettuce
2 1/4 lb. Kirby cucumbers
1 3/4 lbs. mixed green beans & wax beans
1 bunch lacinato kale
1 bunch collards
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 pint Sungold tomatoes
1 lb. cherries
1 pint raspberries
Total spent: $56.50

Other progress has been made on the preserving front. Witness: seven jars of jeweltoned strawberry jam recently added to my pantry. The jam tastes wonderful but it's doing that weird solid/liquid separating thing that always seems to happen when I use pectin. I've got to figure that one out.

I also made a jar of the sugar snap pea pickles from Joy Of Pickling, which turned out really strong, even for me, after the recommended two weeks' curing in the fridge. The tarragon gives them a great flavor, though, and I think they'll carry us through the season tossed in salads (and possibly even added to cheese sandwiches).

Other than the pickles, no big plans. I'll probably make a salad of roasted zucchini, Sungold tomatoes, and chopped basil tonight for dinner. We'll inhale the berries in a couple of days - I've already got a head start on the heavenly raspberries from Terhune Orchards. And I'm about to make my favorite Wednesday lunch of sautéed greens (lacinato kale, in this case), fried eggs, and freshly sliced greenmarket bread. Yum!

It's Cherry Good To See You

2009-06-17T12:46:00.007-04:00

Cherries are back! Cherries are back!!!

And some other things:
1 lb. shelling peas
1 lb. sugar snap peas
2 bunches carrots
3 lbs. zucchini
1 bunch collards
1 bunch red Russian kale
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 head French crisp lettuce
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch "garlic balls" (immature heads of Rocambole garlic)
1 qt. strawberries
1 lb. cherries!!!!!!
Total spent: $43

Unfortunately Terhune Orchards doesn't have cherries yet this season. I hope they will; they didn't have any asparagus at all, and theirs was my favorite last year. The ones I got from Locust Grove are delicious, but slightly short of spectacular. (Though it is early for cherries, and I'm sure all this rain hasn't helped anything.)

While I waited for the subway today, laden with bags of vegetables, I looked at the mass of various green leaves sticking out of my market bag, and I mentally compared my leaf-eating self to the brontosaurus from an elementary-school textbook, craning my long neck up to munch green bites out of trees. This is by no means the first time I've had this train of thought.

But then I started thinking, inevitably, about the brontosaurus, who now, we all know, was not real. When I was a dinosaur-loving kid (as so many bookish types are), I remember feeling very confused and a bit betrayed by scientists for making us believe in a dinosaur that turned out to have been constructed erroneously, using bones from more than one creature. It wasn't as though brontosaurus was some peripheral dino that was easily dispensed with - this was one of the canon, along with stegosaurus, triceratops, and pterodactyl, featured on those plastic mugs we all had. And all of a sudden, we're supposed to start rooting for this tiny-headed "apatosaurus" character? Worst of all, everyone pronounced "apatosaurus" differently.

Apparently the subway was taking its time to arrive, because I considered further that perhaps this was the seed of my now fully-blooming mistrust of science, which, of course, was nourished abundantly during my year at The Natural Gourmet. And I imagine today's generation of young bookish kids will have a similar reason for scorn because of the whole "Pluto isn't a planet" situation. Part of the reason I was thinking about this was a recent discussion one of the food sites I read about unsafe/scary foods, and the ongoing debate about margarine - with about half the posters concluding that because scientists say it's alright for you, then it is. It's really unbelievable to me that given the history of scientific mistakes threatening the public health (I mean, come on, DDT? Trans fats?), folks are still so willing to believe whatever today's scientific "wisdom" happens to be, when it comes to food.

Don't get me wrong, I totally believe in evolution and quantum physics and stuff. But when it comes to personal health, I am much more likely to trust, say, farmers, or traditional cultures - even to a fault. It seems like science has had more trouble figuring out the human body and how it responds to nutrition, stimuli, etc., than they have had charting distant galaxies. (Though I suppose mistakes about human health confront us in a way that mistakes about neutron stars don't.) And I won't even get into the seemingly insurmountable conflicts of interest that exist in today's largely food-industry-funded nutrition research community.

In conclusion, re: almost entirely irrelevant subject matter - I am going to be eating a lot of vegetables this week, like every week, because eating vegetables is scientifically and non-scientifically proven to make you healthy. Not to mention: I love 'em. No big plans for this week's haul, though now that berries have started in earnest, I think I'll have to do my first jams of the year next week. I'll begin with strawberry-rhubarb if there's still rhubarb around.

Encyclopedia Brown and the case of the missing strawberries

2009-06-10T12:42:00.004-04:00

I bought two pints of delicious little Tristar strawberries at the market this morning, but now I only have one pint. The investigation is still in its initial stages, but the evidence suggests it was an inside* job.

The threat of rain was an idle one, thank goodness:
1 bunch mint
1 bunch dill
1 bunch chervil
1 head French crisp lettuce
1 bunch beets with greens
1 bunch collards
1 3/4 lb. sugar snap peas
1 1/2 lb. zucchini
1 1/4 lb. shell peas
2 bunches carrots
1 bag onions
1 bag shallots
2 pints Tristar strawberries
Total spent: $44

Today was a bountiful one at the market, to say the least. Zucchini made its first appearance, and I picked up some of the gorgeous sweet baby beets I've been seeing to make a batch of springtime borscht along with carrots, onions, and plenty of fresh dill. I'll use the chervil in a light pureed soup with the peas, as I did last week with the tarragon (which, by the way, was one of the most delicious things I've ever made).

The mint was so fragrant and lovely that I impulse-bought it - perhaps it's time to make that blended mint lemonade I've been thinking about since having a sip of a friend's at Westville...or maybe when I'm making my first batch of homemade ginger ale, I'll throw in some fresh mint and honey. Full report to come.

Not much else by way of big plans: I do want to make some sugar snap pea pickles using the Joy Of Pickling recipe (I was even more inspired to make them when I saw this Smitten Kitchen post), and the rest will be blanched and eaten as snacks. And of course I'm thrilled that carrots are back at the market! If I can avoid eating them all (good luck), I may make a light carrot soup. We'll see.

*Inside my stomach that is! Ha ha ha ha ha!

New acquisitions

2009-06-03T14:36:00.003-04:00

Late to the market, waiting for Fedex. But worth it!!

Springtime arrivals:
1 MacBook Pro
2 lbs. asparagus
1 lb. shell peas
2 lb. sugar snap peas
1 lb. rhubarb
1 bunch spring onions
1 bunch collard greens
1 head broccoli
1/4 lb. mesclun greens
1 bunch tarragon
1 qt. strawberries
Total spent: $2041

Of course the presence of broccoli means my photo assistant is out of town. And since he's away, I'm going to have a hot night tonight...literally hot, because I am going to be pickling. I'm definitely going to make rhubarb chutney (using the recipe in Joy Of Pickling but with agave + molasses instead of white sugar, and with dried cherries instead of golden raisins), and I will do some fridge pickled sugar snap peas as well, with another Joy Of Pickling recipe, which is why I bought the tarragon.

As far as the shell peas go, I'm going to make them into a spring pea soup tonight. I considered buying some cream, but decided I will try to come up with a recipe that doesn't require it (as much as I do support the use of heavy cream). Luckily I have plenty of butter on hand!

Thrilled with spring despite piles of setbacks thus far (the burglary being only the first); thrilled with all the fresh produce and beautiful weather; have a lot of big and small plans, will be developing recipes like a madlady this season if all goes according to plan!

Things I Don't Like.

2009-05-17T18:36:00.003-04:00

1. Forced blog hiatus because laptop was stolen during apartment break-in.

Things I like.

2009-05-01T19:31:00.005-04:00

1. Penzeys shallot salt. They sent it to me as a sample in my last order, and despite my skepticism (to my mind seasoned salts are on the same level as Hidden Valley ranch dressing mix), I've been using it and loving it. So far my favorite use is for sautéeing greens - since garlic isn't in season yet it's particularly handy. It's also delicious in salad dressing.
2. Trader Joe's dried bing cherries. I love cherries. I can't figure out why I haven't been buying these for ages. Especially good eaten in the same handful as almonds when you come home starving from work. Go blood sugar!
3. Broccoli raab. The broccoli-hater in my life won't eat this stuff, but he's out of town and I can't get enough of it. The bitter-sweet balance is just perfect. Apparently the season is short around here, though, so it's almost gone already. Apparently someone out there loves it enough to have made it a website.
4. Sunshine. Apparently it will be in short supply tomorrow at the market. I've already packed my extra socks.

Excuses, Kalustyan's trip & secrets of tempeh

2009-04-21T18:31:00.006-04:00

I've been going to the Friday greenmarkets at Union Square lately, and since I have to scurry off to work immediately afterward, the freshness of the experience and my will to post fades by Sunday, when I finally have time. (Saturdays I'm now part of USG, working at the Rick's Picks stand.) That will all change next week, because I'll start shopping at USG on Wednesdays, which will also be my new day off. And so! As the season starts anew, so doth I.

Excuses, excuses. I did finally go to Kalustyan's, and naturally I'm kicking myself for not being a regular all these years. I went a bit overboard, as the photo indicates. I just got so excited about all the exotic legumes! - "overwhelming" doesn't begin to describe the place. I wouldn't even let myself consider the spice aisle, because once I got there my basket was getting hard to carry, even with both arms. Next time!

Tonight I'm making pan-fried tempeh, collards (the delicious, sweet ones from Yuno's Farm), and baked potatoes with gravy, and I got to thinking about tempeh. Lots of vegetarians and plant-food enthusiasts don't like tempeh, and I think that's because most restaurants handle it poorly or at least not well. Even a beacon like Angelica Kitchen has problems with overly sour, bitter tempeh (though it's much better than most).

The secret of making tempeh delicious, which I had to spend $20K going to a health-positive cooking school to learn and which I am now sharing with you at no charge, is that you must simmer it in marinade for 20-30 minutes before pan-frying, grilling or baking it; or if you're using it in a stew, it must cook in the liquid at least half an hour. That eliminates the off-flavors that tempeh so often has. The marinade can be extremely simple: for each 8-oz. package of tempeh I use a few tablespoons of shoyu, a couple slices of ginger, two smashed garlic cloves, and water to cover. Cover and simmer about 30 minutes, then let cool until it can be handled, slice on the bias, and you're ready to pan-fry (my favorite), grill, or bake your tempeh. Leftover pan-fried tempeh is phenomenal in a sandwich! In fact, one of the reasons I like to have tempeh for dinner is the promise of sandwiches for lunch the next day.

Onward and upward. Friday I'll be buying my vegetables, Saturday I'll be out in the 80-degree heat all day, and next week things will return to some semblance of normalcy - at least w/r/t my vegetable blog, that is. New excitements on the horizon! More later.

Springtime! Green things! Back home! Overwhelmed.

2009-04-03T19:05:00.003-04:00

Triumphal return to USG after 2+ weeks in Bloomington, Indiana. I love the people there, and I always have fun when I visit, but the long stay made me realize how much I love living here. And this (Friday) morning's greenmarket only emphasized that - many vendors had reemerged from winter hiatus, people had cheerful despite-the-rain springtime moods, and there were fresh young greens, herbs, vegetables...enough to forget about my 3ish hours of sleep last night.

Can't wait to chop all this up:
1/4 lb. baby spinach
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch curly kale
1 bunch tat soi
1 bunch mystery flowering greens
2 bunches baby carrots
1 bunch green garlic
1/2 lb. brussels sprouts
3/4 lb. button mushrooms
3/4 lb. portabella mushrooms
1 bunch mint
1 bunch thyme
Total spent: $37

Tonight I'm making stir fry with tatsoi, button mushrooms, tempeh, and young garlic; I minced some of the tops like chives and added them to the egg salad we had for lunch.

Otherwise, no real plans yet, just excited to have fresh local vegetables in my life at the moment.

Tomorrow is my first day at the Saturday USG with Rick's Picks...very much looking forward to it, despite the 7:30 a.m. start time. Now that I'm working Saturdays, I'll be switching to Friday morning greenmarket trips. I like the Friday market, and I think a change might be just the thing.

I missed the farmer's market, but thank goodness for Bloomingfoods!

2009-03-22T14:36:00.000-04:00

This is a test

2009-03-14T08:35:00.001-04:00

This is a test of my new mobile blog posting capability...

News In Brief

2009-03-09T08:13:00.002-04:00

1. Tomorrow is my final class, and Friday is my graduation.
2. Monday (a week from today), I leave for my internship at Farm in Bloomington, Indiana. I bought myself a new knife roll to celebrate.
3. When I get back I'm going to start working one day a week at the greenmarket for Rick's Picks.
4. Last week at USG I bought onions, carrots, and arugula.

That's all for now! Busy busy week getting ready for everything.

Friday Night Fights

2009-03-02T08:32:00.008-05:00

Friday night was my group's final dinner at school, and everything turned out great. Our seasonal, Eastern European-themed menu went over wonderfully with the diners, and, though we had our share of conflicts and panic moments, I think everybody left feeling positive and accomplished (albeit tired and achy). Photos and menu below.

Up again Saturday to do the marketing:
1 bag onions
5 lbs. carrots
1/2 lb. arugula
1 bunch mustard greens
1/2 lb. oyster mushrooms
4 Empire apples
Total spent: $22.50

Friday Night Menu:
Appetizer - tasting trio
Brussels sprout salad with Meyer lemon vinaigrette
Lima bean puree with rye cracker
Fig-onion compote

Soup
Dilled beet borscht with roasted garlic cream

Entree
Beer-braised seitan-stuffed cabbage with porcini sauce
Winter vegetable latke with arame caviar, kabocha mash

Dessert
Pear trifle with vanilla maple cashew cream
Cranberry-red wine reduction, almond lace cookie

Our dinner prep started Wednesday evening, when we made the brown stock for the borscht (which recipe I still haven't posted as promised, will do that soon), the seitan for the cabbage rolls, and the mushroom stock for the sauce.

For six hours Thursday, we got the majority of our prep done, saving only the cabbage roll assembly, latkes, brussels sprout salad, and trifle assembly for Friday afternoon. Progress was mostly smooth, though we had to do some last-minute cooking due to underestimated dessert quantities, and the entree was a real bear to plate. Everything was delicious. I'm so glad it's over.

No rest for the wicked, though - Tuesday is my final practical cooking exam, and Thursday and Friday I'm doing prep for my classmates' Friday Night Dinner to fulfil my last graduation requirement. So it will be another hectic week.

Tonight I'll practice my planned entree for the final: deconstructed tempeh curry (basically: pan-fried tempeh with coconut curry sauce), served with cinnamon/cardamom rice, kale with cumin and caramelized onions, roasted sweet potato garnish, and lemon-ginger pickled carrot garnish.

Candy, candy, candy, I can't let you go

2009-02-21T12:05:00.009-05:00

Tonight, the photo assistant and I joined a friend for an early dinner at Dirt Candy. I am already trying to figure out how to recreate their carrot risotto.

But before I go into that, here's the shopping:
1/3 lb. baby Swiss chard
1 lb. white mushrooms
4 lbs. carrots
6 lbs. yellow onions
1 lb. Italian red torpedo onions
1 bag shallots
2 lbs. carola potatoes
2 lbs. Empire (?) apples (the bins weren't labeled!)
1 4-lb. bag mixed "bargain" apples
Total spent: $37.50

Dirt Candy, as you may have heard, is a restaurant dedicated to vegetables - so naturally, I wanted to try it. I'm no restaurant critic (though perhaps I qualify as a vegetable critic?), but here's the summary. (Photo is from their website. I don't take photos anywhere outside my house, really, but especially not in tiny restaurants.)

I loved: carrot risotto (my favorite thing I ate there by a long shot - I do love carrots); jalapeno hush puppies w/ maple butter; the fact that they offered an upscale pinot grape juice along with the wine list (delicious, and I got to drink out of a wine glass just like a real grownup).
I liked: Greek salad (but I thought the fried mushrooms made the feta a bit too much); popcorn pudding (a little too sweet for my taste).

All the food was delicious, though I do think the menu relies a little too heavily on fried food. But frying is certainly a good way to make vegetables decadent, which is obviously one of the goals of the place - and I have to say, they succeed admirably. The place is tiny - 20 seats - with a two-chef line, chef Amanda Cohen expediting, and one server. I'm sure they felt a bit frantic back there, but the compactness and efficiency of the setup made me romanticize the idea of opening my own tiny restaurant.

And dinner was early (it's not easy to get a reservation for 3 there - 5:30 was our only option), so I had time to make granola and hummus, start a batch of yogurt, and sharpen my knife when I got home. Earlier in the day I made vegetable stock, but I didn't get around to the applesauce I had planned to make out of my bargain apples. Luckily class ends early tomorrow.

In semi-freakout news: next week is our Friday Night Dinner!! Tomorrow I'll make brown stock (using carrots, onions, celery, and the pound of white mushrooms) and post the recipe, which I invented to use for our borscht. It is fantastic for soups!

"It's Valentine's Day, and I'm catatonic"

2009-02-14T11:00:00.006-05:00

Well, not quite. But because my Valentine and I were thwarted in our attempts to go see Coraline in 3D, we did spend a decent amount of time on the couch watching 30 Rock on DVD.

But before all that, was this:
1 bunch scallions
1 head Savoy cabbage
1/4 lb. arugula
1 1/2 lb. German butterball potatoes
2 lbs. large carrots
1 1/2 lbs. small carrots
1/2 lb. burdock root
1/2 lb. shiitake mushrooms
4 lbs. apples - Mutsu, Macoun, Winesap
Total spent: $28

Currently on the stove is an extremely romantic split-pea stew with onion, celery, burdock, and carrot, which I'll garnish with thinly-sliced scallions, and serve with buttered greenmarket whole-wheat sourdough. Chilling in the fridge are the crusts for the mini apple-tarts I decided to make after a horrible and total pie-crust failure forced me to abandon my plan of a heart-shaped apple galette (I know, it would have been really cute - probably too cute); alongside the "pie" will be maple-vanilla coconut-milk pudding. We'll start off our meal with an arugula salad dressed in a lemon vinaigrette, topped with goat cheese and smoked paprika-tossed toasted walnuts.

After that, we are going to a party. A dress-up party. The kind of party I usually don't go to because I don't really own any nice clothes, I don't know how to apply makeup (and do not own any), can't walk very well in heels...in short: I hate dressing up. But the party is my dear friend Meg's, and she is leaving the country for three months, starting tomorrow. Also: I rediscovered a vintage cocktail mini in my closet, which will be perfect so long as I don't have to sit down. So the photo assistant and I will have to make an appearance. He, by the way, is napping, and has not yet been apprised of the dress-up situation. Maybe I'll convince him it's a costume party and he is going as Nick Cave.

Everything else is pretty self-explanatory; I bought the butterballs because they're uniform in size and tasty, and I've been jonesing for crash hot potatoes lately. Oh, and I don't really know what to do with the cabbage. Maybe I'll pickle it!

Le cru et le cuit

2009-02-07T10:08:00.013-05:00

Two adorable baby lambs just hanging out in a cage at USG today! I cannot express in anything close to words how cute they are - it's more like guttural grunts interspersed with wrenching sighs. (Update: Molly posted a photo!)

Same As It Ever Was:
4 lbs. (big) carrots
3 lbs. Caribe potatoes
6 lbs. Mutsu apples
1 bunch leeks
3/4 lb. baby chard leaves
1 lb. crimini mushrooms
Total spent: $30

My mini-obsession with Satur Farms mesclun greens has been done to death here, but last week's photo of said greens (from their site) helps illustrate my current dilemma.

My favorite farmer, from whom I buy the world's most delicious carrots (which are sadly gone for the season), has greenhouse-grown baby greens of all stripes for sale at the moment. Now, these greens are priced for salad (that is, high), but I'm pretty sure they're a bit too hearty to eat raw, even though they are being sold for that purpose.

Even without considering the oxalic acid content of the admittedly-delicious-looking chard pictured above, eating it raw doesn't appeal to me. The trouble becomes that once it's cooked down, I've got a very pricey small vegetable side dish...I guess I got so excited about green, fresh, leafy things at the otherwise-bleak market that I threw economic caution to the winds.

Regarding Lévi-Strauss and the title of today's post: I saw a girl walking near NYU the other day wearing a hoodie that said "will close read for food," which, coupled with my etymological wonderings today about "crimini" mushrooms (surely the name is from the Latin crimen -inis, meaning crime, but why?), started me thinking, as I do occasionally, about my college education.

The economic climate and my momentary buyer's remorse about spending $9 for what will wilt down to a cup of cooked greens made me wonder exactly what dollar value of my college education was lost due to the brain-cell-incinerating habits of my immediate post-collegiate years. I suppose I should just be grateful that I'm not still paying it off (thanks, parents' largesse due to temporary windfall from dot-com boom!), because then it would be like the large-scale version of buying groceries on credit (which I had to do for years) - depressing because they're long gone before you're done paying for them.

Not exactly apropos of anything relevant to my vegetable-buying habits, but these were my reflections while wandering the market today. In some ways I feel like a late bloomer w/r/t food and making a career of it, and I feel pinches of small regret for the effort spent learning things I can no longer quickly summon; on the other hand, I don't think I ever would have moved to NYC or so easily spurned graduate school or a corporate career if it weren't for my time learning about, e.g., Ovid and phallologocentrism at the anarcho-liberal institution I attended. I guess this is when I get all new-agey and talk about my path. Well, that's my path.

And now, on to today's task: another borscht recipe-test. I hope this turns out to be the one! And later this week, I'll make vichyssoise.

Farewell

2009-02-03T12:32:00.003-05:00

Rest in peace, Joe Ades - the "peeler man," a USG institution - you brought smiles to so many faces and good peelers to so many kitchen drawers (including mine).

Dinner update

2009-01-31T21:22:00.001-05:00

It was awesome. I want to make four-course meals every night!!

Why don't you take a picture? It would last longer!

2009-01-31T17:42:00.006-05:00

Today was, simply, hectic. I got a late start, the L train was running in two sections, and (no surprise) it was freezing. Plus I had to stop by Whole Foods to get greens and peppers, as well as beets and fresh dill for the borscht recipe I'm testing for school (and Satur Farms mesclun greens - pictured - to feed my addiction). By the end of it, K and I had our brunch date an hour and a half late, but everything turned out fine. Our brunch was great, the borscht turned out well. Unfortunately I lost track of everything I bought at the market today during my rush.

Because the L was running shuttle into Manhattan, it was quite crowded and everyone was irritable...and since the only beets I could find at Whole Foods had greens - big, robust greens with which I would be thrilled on any day I wasn't already heavily laden with produce - I was the person on the train with two feet of green leaves sticking out one of her three giant tote bags. Usually it doesn't faze me, but today everyone's stares burned: I was stressed and vulnerable and there was a lot more negative energy zooming around than usual. At one point I just wanted to yell "haven't you ever seen a woman carrying vegetables before??" In retrospect, it's probably best that I didn't.

The cold plus the stress plus my own perversity have made me plan a four-course dinner tonight. It's relatively simple, but it's four courses nonetheless. My photo assistant will be thrilled to do all these dishes:
  Mesclun greens with shallot vinaigrette
  Dilled beet borscht (goat cheese garnish)
  Mushroom and cheese frittata with garlic-sautéed baby spinach and tat soi (crispy shiitake garnish)
  Poached lady apples with toasted walnuts and dried cherry-maple compote

I'm not quite ready to share this borscht recipe, but I was inspired by this Amateur Gourmet thread to post my own favorite granola recipe. I have been refining this one for years, and I have to say, in all modesty, it's just about perfect (at least, to my taste). It's also got a lot going for it, health-wise: sesame seeds are a great source of calcium, sunflower seeds have lots of magnesium, even refined coconut oil is good for you, and walnuts are the best nut source of omega-3. I use half maple syrup for flavor and to cut down on honey, but honey is key for browning and clumping, so all maple doesn't work.

Note: Please buy organic nuts, seeds, and dried fruit whenever possible: pesticide toxins are concentrated in fats and dried foods. And buy nuts as intact as you can (e.g. whole almonds, walnut halves), because the more surface area is exposed, the more quickly their fats oxidize and turn toxic. And always store nuts in the fridge.

Anna's Best Granola
3 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup raw sesame seeds
1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup chopped raw walnuts
1/2 cup chopped raw pecans
1 cup chopped raw almonds
1/3 cup coconut oil
1/6 cup grade-B maple syrup
1/6 cup honey
1 cup mixed dried fruit (I like 1/3 each raisins, dried cranberries, and chopped dried cherries)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Mix first six ingredients in large bowl.
Melt coconut oil in small saucepan over low heat; whisk in honey and maple syrup until smooth. (Don't skip this step and add the oil and sweetener separately because they won't combine properly and your granola will stick horribly.)
Add oil/sweetener to oat mixture and stir until thoroughly coated.
Spread on a half-sheet pan and bake 25 minutes or until golden brown; allow to cool completely in the pan.
Using a metal or hard plastic spatula, remove granola into a large bowl and combine with fruit until evenly distributed. Transfer to an airtight container.
Granola will keep for about a week.

She's so c-c-c-c-cold

2009-01-17T13:09:00.006-05:00

Yes, I went to the (not-so-) greenmarket today despite the single-digit temps. I wore three shirts, a sweater, and a sweatshirt under my jacket, plus a pair of super-thick knee-socks over my regular socks and leggings under my jeans. It was a real chore getting my boots on over all that stuff.

But in addition to making me weirdly off-balance, my frozen brain tissue couldn't recall much about my trip, other than I bought potatoes, carrots, and other predictable things. I had to swing by Whole Foods as well, for non-starchy vegetables, and I picked up some crimini mushrooms which I'll pair with my greenmarket leeks in a brown-rice risotto (to serve with sautéed greens) if I can drag myself out of our cozy bedroom lair long enough to cook it.

Currently I've got a batch of vegetable stock bubbling away (okay, simmering gently, but that's not as merry an image) on the stove, and I'm trying to think of something I can bake to heat up the house a bit more. I guess I should have thought of that before buying that delicious loaf of spelt bread at the market today.

Okay, back to hibernating. Will post recipe if risotto happens and is worthwhile.

Birthday books!

2009-01-11T18:02:00.003-05:00

I just ordered these books as a belated birthday gift to myself:
Excitotoxins by Russell Blaylock, On Food And Cooking by Harold McGee, Know Your Fats by Dr. Mary Enig, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, and The Joy Of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich.

Return to USG: they may not be so pretty, but they're dinner

2009-01-10T18:18:00.004-05:00

It was a lovely cold clear morning at the USG - I am so glad to be back!

Super Roots:
2 1/2 lbs. soup carrots
1 lb. yellow carrots
1 lb. eating carrots
2 celery roots
3 lbs. parsnips
1 lb. burdock root
3 lbs. Yukon gold potatoes
1 lb. shallots
4 lbs. onions
1 head Shaman garlic
1 head cabbage
4 lbs. "bargain" apples
2 1/2 lbs. Mutsu apples
1 lb. Macoun apples
Total spent: $42.50

Once again reconfigured for construction, the USG was short a lot of vendors, and selection was limited to the season's slim selection of hearty roots (and the odd greenhouse-grown delicacy), but I managed to get enough food to fill all three of my shopping bags and test the strength of my shoulders and arms.

As the photo above indicates, I've got a red lentil and root vegetable stew simmering on the stovetop at the moment - not really a recipe dish but here's what I've done so far:
    I sauteed one onion (medium dice) in sixish tbsp olive oil and a pinch of salt until golden, added 4 cloves minced garlic and 1/2 tsp each sage and thyme, and cooked that about a minute;
    then I added 2 large yellow carrots, 2 medium orange carrots, one parsnip, and two 12" burdock roots, cut very roughly into 3/4"-1" pieces, stirred well, and sauteed uncovered for a few minutes, then covered and cooked about five minutes;
    at this point I added 4 cups homemade vegetable stock, 2 cups rinsed red lentils, several pinches of salt, 2 bay leaves, and a 3" piece of kombu; I brought this to a boil then turned it down to a simmer.
    When my lentils have disintegrated and my vegetables are tender, I'll season to taste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, and serve the stew with some of the whole-wheat bread I just took out of the oven.

I'm hoping the stew tastes good (I have never cooked with parsnips or burdock root at home before) and that the bread isn't underbaked. Fingers crossed!

Some of the rest of the vegetables will go into more stock (I'm down to one quart in the freezer), some into practicing one of the recipes for my group's upcoming Friday Night Dinner, and some will be featured in a week of what I'm guessing will be very similar meals.

I did buy some non-local collards and kale at the grocery, and will probably get some more Satur Farms mesclun mix at Whole Foods, my new pricey addiction. All in all, I'm feeling stocked up and looking forward to much better meals than my pantry-relying creations of last week (although I did come up with a lovely black bean soup).

I did this. You could, too!

2008-12-30T19:29:00.000-05:00

Produce Stories Best Of 2008

2008-12-13T17:32:00.009-05:00

So the ballots are in, and I've finally tabulated the scores in the first annual Produce Stories Best Of The Year...
Okay, nobody is voting but me, so "tabulating" means "remembering" and "typing stuff." Also, I know that I used a tacky font for the Best of 2008 header. I happen to enjoy "groovy '70s" font and have no other outlet in my life for it. Okay?

Vegetable Categories
Best Vegetable (Overall): Brussels Sprouts
    Runners-up: Green Beans, Kale
Best Leafy Green: Fancy Italian Kale whose name I don't remember (from Northshire Farms)
    Runners-up: Collard Greens, Red Oak Lettuce
Most Overrated Kale: Lacinato
Best Root Vegetable: Carrots
    Runners-up: Shallots, Beets
Best Vegetable Dish: Quiche with Caramelized Shallots and Thyme (recipe below)

Fruit Categories
Best Fruit (Overall): Nectarines
    Runners-up: Blackberries, Tristar Strawberries
Best Apple: Macoun
    Runner-up: Mutsu
Favorite Fruit Dessert: Applesauce (recipe below)

Other
Fresh Herb Of The Year: Thyme
    Runner-up: Italian Parsley
Favorite New Culinary Skill Acquired This Year: Canning
Favorite Food I Stopped Hating This Year: Mushrooms

Quiche with Caramelized Shallots & Thyme:
Makes 6-8 servings
1 single pie crust
2 cups shallots, cut into 1/8" sauté slices
4 large eggs, well-beaten
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. minced fresh thyme
Freshly grated black pepper
3 oz. colby cheese, grated
3 oz. parmigiano-reggiano, grated

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and blind-bake pie crust with weights 10 minutes. Allow to cool. Turn oven down to 350.
Make caramelized shallots: Soften shallots with a pinch of salt over medium-low heat in small amount of olive oil (cover pan to speed softening); turn up heat to medium-high and cook, stirring frequently, until shallots are evenly brown. This will take about 20-30 minutes. Allow to cool.
In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, cream, milk, thyme, and a generous amount of freshly-ground black pepper.
Distribute shallots evenly around bottom of pie crust; then add cheeses, distributing each in an even layer. Pour egg mixture over cheese.
Bake quiche on the middle oven rack for 30-35 minutes, or until lightly golden brown and set all the way through. Allow to cool to room temperature before slicing.

Applesauce:
Makes about 8 servings
4-5 lbs. apples
3 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg (optional; or use 1/4 tsp. each nutmeg and allspice)

Was, quarter, and core apples, and place them in a large pot with a lid. Add spices and fill pot with water to cover by at least 1". Cover and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat; reduce heat to low and cook until apples are completely soft but not falling apart.
Drain apples and let sit in colander until cool enough to handle. run apples through food mill using largest- or second-largest-holed screen. Serve hot or cold.

Making/taking stock

2008-12-13T11:55:00.007-05:00

This was the type of morning that makes it hard to romanticize being a Greenmarket farmer (which romanticizing I will admit that I do quite often). Below freezing and windy, today makes me want to stay inside my warm apartment, baking and nestling up on the couch with a book and a hot drink - while all day, the vendors are outside, selling cold produce to warm-home-bound people like me. And the fact that standing outside in the freezing cold all day is probably one of the least difficult aspects of farming as a profession, especially in winter? Hard for this California-bred vegetable-lover to fathom.

I said lots of "goodbye 'til next year"s today:
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch red Russian kale
1 bunch collard greens
1 lb. fingerling potato "roasting mix"
3/4 lb. assorted chile peppers
4 lbs. onions
4 lbs. carrots
1 bunch celery
1 lb. cranberries
3 lbs. apples
1 head Shaman garlic
Total spent: $49.50

I have stock on the stovetop now (5 quarts water and 2 lbs. onions, 2 lbs. carrots, 1 lb. celery, 2 bay leaves, 4" kombu, 5 black peppercorns, 2 sprigs thyme, pinch of salt), and I'm also planning to make applesauce, a mushroom quiche, and maybe a loaf of bread or some pita or tortillas, if I'm feeling adventurous. And I'm not sure if I'll do it today, but I'm planning to make some cranberry jam or jelly - these are the first cranberries I've seen at the market this year, and I'm excited.

And later, I will finally finish my tabulating and announce the Produce Stories Best Of The Year!

Freezing toes; greens galore; announcement!

2008-12-06T10:17:00.010-05:00

Lately I've been reflecting a lot on the person I was a few hours ago, when I was getting ready to leave for the greenmarket, a person I don't understand. Actions speak louder than words, so I think the best way I can sum up this enigmatic past me is the decision, upon finding via weather.com that the temperature outside was 31, to wear the pictured holey sneakers rather than, say, one of the many heavy boot options available in my shoe wardrobe.

My toes are still freezing after half an hour in my warm apartment. What was I thinking? At USG, I kept hopping from one foot to the other while vendors added up my purchases, and lest they think me ungraciously impatient, I was impelled to explain my toe situation. Despite my frostbite-fearing hurry, I managed to find some great vegetables among the dwindling winter offerings.

Cold feet, warm kitchen:
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch lacinato kale
1 bunch fancy Italian kale
2 lbs. Brussels sprouts
1 lb. assorted chili peppers
1.5 lbs. assorted mushrooms
1.5 lbs. sweet potatoes
1 lb. miniature, multi-colored potato "roasting mix"
Total spent: $32

The mushrooms will go into quiche when my quiche-loving photo assistant comes back from LA, the greens will be blanched and sautéed/stir-fried, and I haven't decided whether to make chili or lentil pepper-pot with the chili peppers.

I'll use the sweet potatoes in lunches - spicy roasted sweet potatoes with blanched greens are a great lunch side. And the apples left from my Wednesday USG trip will become applesauce at some point today.

In camera news, it's apparently working again.

In other news: Announcing the first annual Produce Stories Best Of The Year Countdown - next week I will be sharing my picks for best produce of 2008. How will you stand the anticipation?!?!? I honestly don't know - you might try meditating, or maybe you could take up a new hobby? I hear knitting's popular.

Thanksgiving market trip and things I made today

2008-11-22T16:28:00.002-05:00

Still no photos. Also: afraid if I sit down too long I won't get back up. Not enough sleep last night.

Ready for the not-so-big day:
1 sugar pumpkin
3 sweet potatoes
3 lbs. German butterball potatoes
1 lb. crimini mushrooms
1/4 lb. shiitake mushrooms
2 heads Rocambole garlic
3 lbs. onions
1 lb. shallots
1 bunch sage
1 bunch rosemary
1 lb. carrots
1 head butter lettuce
1 bunch Siberian kale
2 cute little squashes
6 lbs. Mutsu apples
Total spent: $70

Things I made today:
Applesauce
Quiche (whole wheat crust with caramelized onions, cheese, fresh thyme, greenmarket eggs, Amish cream)
Spelt bread (on its final rise right now)

Things I will make for Thanksgiving:
Celebration roast (artisanal ersatz meat roast, for fun)
Mushroom gravy
Mashed potatoes
Sautéed greens with caramelized onions
Cornbread stuffing (is it dressing because nothing is getting stuffed?)
Pumpkin pie (using roasted pumpkin and sweet potato, per Cook's Illustrated)
Ginger cookie ice cream sandwiches

There will only be three of us (though more are expected later for dessert) so I think I am going to skip another starchy side, though this sweet potato recipe, which my friend Zeb sent me, sounds really delicious. Maybe I'll make it one of these non-Thanksgiving days.

Also want to make soon: polenta lasagna with portabellas and kale from Fat Free Vegan.

I'm pretty sure that quiche is my favorite food ever. It is so nice and self-contained, and just tastes amazing. That may have something to do with the fact that it is entirely composed of butter, eggs, cheese, and cream. Maybe. Looking forward to quiche almost makes up for the fact that the sun started setting before 4 today. Almost.

Excuses, excuses

2008-11-16T07:34:00.003-05:00

There are a few reasons why I haven't posted the past two Saturdays: German composer houseguest, getting over nasty cold, extreme laziness. But now the reason is that all I can think about is Thanksgiving! We're having a small group this year (I think about four including us) and I've just started working on my menu...and of course, I'm coming up with more "totally essential" recipes than it's possible for four people (two of whom are on the tiny side) to eat.

As it stands now, I am planning to serve:
Celebration Roast (from the Field Roast company)
Salmon (maybe)
Mushroom Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Cornbread stuffing
Squash (recipe TBD)
Sauteed greens
Cranberry sauce
Salad
Raw beet pickles
Pie (still deciding, probably apple) with whipped cream
Alternate dessert involving ice cream (I have a very exciting idea for this but I'm not yet willing to share it)

I'm making an apple pie this week to practice my pie crust and to work on converting the recipe to maple crystals rather than white sugar. Though ever since the quiche I made last week with caramelized shallots, fresh thyme, and lots of cheese, all I can think about is quiche. It's so delicious!

Things I made today

2008-11-01T21:24:00.002-04:00

Pictured: granola, minestrone
Not pictured: vegetable stock, yogurt

(Pardon the iPhone photos, still haven't sorted my camera)

Beautiful morning, productive day

2008-11-01T13:48:00.003-04:00

Photos later, once the boy and his iPhone return from errands. The Saturday scramble to get things made has become a weekly occurrence...

Kind of scattered, but the variety's decent:
1 bunch beets with greens
1 bunch Swiss chard
2 lbs. German butterball potatoes
1 butternut squash
3 lbs. onions
1 bunch celery
3 lbs. cooking carrots
1 1/2 lbs. eating carrots
4 lbs. yellow heirloom tomato "seconds"
1 1/2 lbs. Brussels sprouts
1 bunch parsley
1 lb. crimini mushrooms
1 lb. Lakemont seedless grapes

Total spent: $58

I plan on making an omelette with the sauteed mushrooms and cheese, and serving it with garlicky beet greens. We'll start the meal with leftover borscht.

This week was so hectic and rushed, dinner at home and homemade lunches weren't possible most days - hopefully now that we've both got our offices moved (and within walking distance of home!) things will settle down.

Technical difficulties continue

2008-10-25T22:10:00.003-04:00

Oddly beautiful morning that opened an emotional roller-coaster of a day. Every year as winter begins I forget what seasonal affective disorder means...for about a week.

And my camera is still not working. I think I'm going to order a replacement battery, after I consult with my dad about it.

Not on a budget this time:
1 lb. shelled fresh Tarbais beans
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch lacinato kale
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch celery
1 head Red Oak lettuce
1 head French Crisp lettuce
2 1/2 lbs. Brussels sprouts
2 lbs. zucchini
2 1/2 lbs. soup carrots (big)
2 lbs. eating carrots (little)
1 lb. red tomato "seconds"
2 lbs. German butterball potatoes
2 1/2 lbs. apples (Macoun and Winesap)
1 lb. Mars purple seedless grapes
1 bunch dill

Total spent: $70

I've already used most of the soup carrots in an oat-thickened carrot cream soup, which I served for dinner, garnished with fresh dill; inevitably, we started with a big green (and red) salad. The carrot soup was the recipe we had to prepare for our midterm, and despite the practice runs and the stress of making it for the test, I still like the stuff. And my photo assistant, despite his disdain for carrots, lemon, and ginger - the soup's primary constituents - also finds it agreeable.

More carrots and onions, along with the celery, most of the fresh dill, and the beets I've been saving, will go into the season's first batch of homemade borscht. I'm going to use some of the fancy French Tarbais beans instead of limas.

Otherwise: Brussels sprouts for breakfast tomorrow, and lots of greens to eat this week. I feel good about this haul.

Can you stand it in the cold light of day? Neither can I.

2008-10-18T16:53:00.004-04:00

This morning was crystalline with a sharp chill, the kind that can only happen in early fall and seem replete with meaning - the sky's clarity and cold an almost embarrassingly obvious metaphor - the type of morning that carries with it a plangent demand for urgent forward motion and harsh self-examination. Or at least, that's how the morning looks just after coffee to a person as ennui-leaning as myself. It was uncomfortable in a way that felt necessary.

Beautiful morning, lovely time at the market, didn't get quite everything I wanted but got closer than usual. Sadly my camera is on the fritz, as the light today has been perfect.

I've got a market bag full of allegories:
1 head Romaine lettuce
1 head French crisp lettuce
1 1/2 lbs. Brussels sprouts
3 lbs. carrots
3 lbs. onions
1/2 lb. shallots
3 lbs. tomatoes
1 small butternut squash.
2 heads Rocambole garlic
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch thyme
1 box raspberries
4 lbs. mixed apples
1 lb. Lakemont seedless green grapes
1 qt. red grape juice

Total spent: $64

Some of the onions, carrots, thyme, and parsley, along with last week's celery tops, went into a four-quart batch of vegetable stock. It didn't turn out quite as flavor-y as I had hoped, but then again, it is very tough to tell with unseasoned stock. Next time I think I'll brown the vegetables first. I'll use it first in some minestrone with the tomatoes, as well as more carrots and onions, though I am disappointed that I couldn't find cranberry beans at today's market for it. I think I'll substitute lentils as an experiment.

Eventually I'll probably make some butternut squash soup.

And lately, I've been eating Brussels sprouts for breakfast.

What culinary school does to your brain

2008-10-17T10:51:00.005-04:00

This morning, when I was about to get in the shower and I was looking in the mirror to judge whether my hair could go another day without washing, the first words that came to mind were "it's within range."

Punk rock died when the first kid said...

2008-10-11T10:31:00.005-04:00

Despite my morning grumpiness, the sun, perfect blue sky and not-quite-chilly temp made me glad to be a vegetable obsessive, rather than the sunglass-wearing aging punk I sat across from on the train back to Brooklyn. Nothing wrong with his way, of course, just that fiddling with the safety pins on a black hoody while reading Barthes (whom I recognized by the author photo alone - thanks, liberal arts education!) just doesn't strike me as the way to get the most out of such a lovely morning. Though shuffling through a crowded market with aching, laden shoulders may not appeal to lots of folks either, I suppose.
Greens greens greens:
1 bunch beets with greens
1 (gigantic) bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch dinosaur (lacinato) kale
1/3 lb. mixed salad greens
1 1/2 lbs. Brussels sprouts
1 head celery
2 1/2 lbs. carrots
2 lbs. German butterball potatoes
1 lb. seedless grapes - green Lakemont and purple Jupiter
6 lbs. mixed apples (Empire, Gold rush, Macoun, Gala)
2 Bosc pears
1 pint strawberries (?!?!)

Total spent: $56

Being on a budget at the market always requires sacrifices: today, I gave up on getting tomatoes, and had to forego goat cheese in favor of eggs and bread. Though I suppose there was no question of whether or not to buy the strawberries once I saw them, which are some of the best I've had all year...and will be perfect over our favorite coconut milk ice cream for dessert tonight. Beets always make me feel like a smart shopper, though, since they're two vegetables for the price of one.

The Brussels sprouts were an impulse buy as I was still in the shallows of the market - they're not really an economical choice for the household since the photo assistant won't eat them. But if buttered Brussels sprouts and toast for lunch at 11 a.m. are wrong, I don't want to be right!

It's become the time of year when hearty greens make it into every meal - blanched and chopped in tacos instead of lettuce, added to chilis and soups, and sauteed with garlic and olive oil to accompany just about anything. Tonight I'll probably have garlic-sauteed beet greens (my current fave!) along with roasted potatoes and veggie sausage for dinner. My friend Amanda makes a yummy dish with lacinato kale, lemon, and I think red pepper flakes - I'll try that this week.

And of course, given the tough economic times (which for me have nothing to do with Wall Street, rather the increase in my monthly student loan payment for culinary school), I'll save the stems from all the greens and stir-fry them with tofu at the end of the week, like I did last night. Not the tastiest dish in the world, but good if it's spicy enough, healthful with brown rice, and frugal.

One of my favorite greens dishes lately is toasted English muffin halves topped with (in this order) goat cheese, minced chives, garlic-sauteed chiffonade-cut greens (chard is ideal), a butter-fried egg each, and more minced chives on top. The chives may seem optional, but they absolutely make this dish - combined with the goat cheese they elevate an ordinary breakfast combo into a dinner-worthy meal. Tomatoes on the side are an excellent accompaniment and predictably, I precede this with a big green salad.

Minestrone fixings and grapes

2008-10-05T17:59:00.003-04:00

It was an undeniably chilly morning at the USG; there's no turning back from this fall thing, people.
The budget was tight today:
1 bunch chard
1 bunch kale (the same fancy kind I got last week)
1 bunch beets with greens
4 lbs. carrots
4 plum tomatoes
3/4 lb. mixed greens
1/2 lb. Lakemont variety seedless grapes
5 lbs. Concord grapes
1 Osage orange

Total spent: $56

I got a bug to make minestrone with fresh cranberry beans, so I bought some tomatoes that looked perfect for soup (it's the tomato equivalent of having a face for radio), a bunch of chard...and made quite a serviceable minestrone with whole wheat rotelle.

The grapes are for another batch of homemade jelly, but I have to find some Pomona's Pectin, since Brooklyn Kitchen is out. I really have no idea where else to look, but I've got to figure it out soon.

I don't mean to be a jerk or anything...

2008-09-28T19:37:00.002-04:00

but I could eat this lady's CSA share in two days max!

Don't worry, baby

2008-09-27T10:39:00.007-04:00

"We'll have them for awhile still," volunteered the man who grows the best carrots I've ever had, as I paid for my weekly three-pound ration of the hairy, knobbly, bright-orange jewels (pictured here). No doubt he saw the fear in my eyes, saw the wildness with which I clutched my bags of greens and tomatoes; as fall undeniably chugs in amidst mornings fragrant with mist and chilly evenings, harvest bounties dwindle, and I am left to dread my squash and sweet potato-laden near-future.
Late summer and early fall mix:
1 bunch chives
1 bunch dill
3 lbs. plum tomatoes
1 bunch fancy flat kale (can't remember the variety)
1 bunch green Swiss chard
1 1/2 lbs. Brussels sprouts
1 lb. crimini mushrooms
1/2 lb. mixed salad greens
3 lbs. carrots
1 1/2 lbs. zucchini
2 ears white corn
4 lbs. mixed apples
1 Bosc pear

Total spent: $57

Once again I forgot that my photo assistant is leaving town tomorrow, meaning this week's haul is all mine to eat. I should have bought broccoli!

The corn will join the lima beans I bought and didn't eat Monday in the last succotash of the year for dinner tonight, topped with red pepper coulis and served alongside crispy "crash" potatoes and eggs baked with butter, chives, and goat cheese. We'll start with big green salads topped with the handful of plum tomatoes that wouldn't fit on the sheet pan with the rest which are currently slow-roasting in my oven.

I bought the Bosc pear to poach in preparation for my upcoming midterm; today's order is studying after a bit of housecleaning and laundry. Living the dream, people. Living the dream. Speaking of which, to meet my loyal readers' furious demands for more kitten coverage, here's an outtake from the carrots photo session:

News flash 2: making grape jelly is worth it

2008-09-23T15:30:00.002-04:00

It is so good it is so good it is so good it is so good

News flash: making grape jelly is tedious

2008-09-23T12:01:00.002-04:00

I started with 4 lbs. of Concord grapes, and after mashing them, simmering them for ten minutes, running them through my food mill, and straining them through cheesecloth twice, I have 3 cups of grape juice and lots of middling grape almost-liquid that is dropping out of my cheesecloth-lined colander at approximately the same rate that microwave popcorn pops when it's time to take it out.

Once I've got the 4 cups of juice I ought to have, it should be easy enough to boil the stuff with pectin and agave nectar, check for jell, pour into jars, and process...but right now things are a bit dire and boring. Though I suppose I can use a bit of forced relaxation given the way things have been the past few weeks...season change being what it is.

Today is stretching out errand-free until I have to go to class at 5, so once I've got the jelly sorted I'm going to make granola, lentil pepper-pot soup, and start some yogurt. And tonight before bed I'll put in a couple sheets of tomatoes to slow-roast while we sleep.

Smoky Split-Pea Soup With Greens

2008-09-09T10:10:00.003-04:00

I made this soup last week on a whim, using roasted peppers and ancho chili powder for a double-shot of the smoky flavor ordinarily supplied by ham hocks. It turned out wonderfully - possibly the best split-pea soup I've ever had, which is exciting to a split-pea-soup-lover like myself! The beet greens were great, but chard, spinach, or kale would work too. It's even better served the next day, and I bet it would freeze well, too. Not sure on the yield here, but we got about six servings out of the batch.

Smoky Split-Pea Soup With Greens

1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup minced onion (about 2 small)
1 cup carrot, chopped into 1/4" half-moons
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp. cumin
3/4 tsp. ancho chile powder
1 roasted Poblano pepper, diced
1 roasted Anaheim (or other mild) pepper, diced
zest of 1 small lemon (about 1 tbsp)
4 cups stock
2 cups water
4 cups split peas
1 bunch greens (I used beet), about 4 cups torn-up leaves
sea salt and lemon juice to taste
minced parsley (optional, for garnish)
lemon zest curls (optional, for garnish)

Heat oil, reserving about 2 teaspoons, over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add onions and a pinch of salt and sweat until onions begin to soften; add carrot and cook until onions are completely soft, but do not allow onions to brown.

Push onion and carrot to the sides of the pan and add reserved oil and garlic to center; combine garlic with oil and cook until garlic is aromatic, about 30 seconds. Add cumin and ancho chili powder and stir into garlic for about 10 seconds, until aromatic; add lemon zest and diced peppers and stir into carrot and onion mixture until everything is combined.

Pour in stock and water. Add split peas and bring to a boil; turn heat down and simmer, covered, until split peas are completely soft and broken down, about 30 minutes.

Uncover pot and add greens, simmering until completely wilted, about 3-4 minutes. Season to taste with salt and lemon juice, allow to stand, uncovered, for 5 minutes, and serve, garnishing each bowl with minced parsley and a couple of lemon zest curls, if desired.

That is the tempo

2008-09-06T11:08:00.006-04:00

Until this week, I've been mostly successful in avoiding tomatoes, despite the gorgeous piles they make everywhere at USG - because they're nightshades, they cause inflammation, they give me canker sores - but yesterday I chanced upon this recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes, and I knew I had to make them, despite the whole "leaving the oven on for 10 hours" thing. And once I had bought the plum tomatoes, I thought I may as well try a lovely low-acid yellow heirloom and a pint of my favorite Sungolds - totalling about five pounds.

So much more than tomatoes:

1 (small) bunch collard greens
1 (huge) bunch kale
3 lbs. carrots
2 lbs. yellow cooking onions
1 1/2 lbs. green beans
1 head celery
3 lbs. mixed summer squash (avocado and cousa)
3 lbs. plum tomatoes
1 pint Sungold tomatoes
1/2 lb. mixed salad greens
1 large yellow low-acid heirloom tomato
1 head Rocambole garlic
2 pints strawberries
1 box raspberries
Total spent: $60

Incidentally, almost everything I bought today was organic. My four favorite produce stands are organic, and I bought everything from them. If I don't have the option of local and organic, I will always choose local, but it's nice to find both - especially because the organic stands (whether certified or not) tend to have the best-tasting produce.

The tomatoes are already in the oven at just over 200 degrees - here's a shot just before they went in. I'll check them at about eight hours, but I'm expecting to leave them in for 10-12, like most of the recipes I've found online have indicated.

Otherwise, a pretty standard trip to the market, tinged with a bit of summer's end gloom. Peaches are finally waning - the last few I've gotten have been a bit mealy, and green beans are no longer young and tender. I think I'll have to roast these to make them delicious, as they're a bit tough. Tonight I think I'll make a light pasta dish with tomatoes, summer squash, greens, and parsley. We'll start with a salad and have berries for dessert, in late-summer style.

Wow, I want to eat this immediately

2008-08-30T14:13:00.000-04:00

Sweet corn ice cream sounds AMAZING!

Tiny market, giant Swiss chard

2008-08-30T12:29:00.008-04:00

Today I got up late, and I was way too tired and grumpy to consider dealing with the 10 a.m. USG crowd. Since I needed to stop by my vet on Berry Street, I decided to go for a long walk to McCarren Park and do my weekly shopping at the pint-sized Williamsburg greenmarket.

Not too shabby for a little market:
1 lb. wax beans
1 bunch carrots
1/2 lb. mesclun greens
1 bunch GIANT Swiss chard
1 bunch beets w/ greens
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch arugula
3 onions
1 lb. nectarines
1 lb. peaches
Total spent: $30

For scale, here's a photo of the chard leaves positioned next to a lounging 15-lb. tomcat. As you can see, they are about the same size.

There were fewer than ten vendors in McCarren Park, but a few of them had good selections. Things seemed a bit more disorganized than with Union Square vendors, perhaps because the crowds at the Williamsburg market are smaller, and a bit more laid-back. I don't think I'll start going to this market regularly, but it was a nice change of pace for a morning when I just didn't feel like making the trek out to Manhattan. I was disappointed that nobody had any corn - I'll have to go to USG midweek for our corn-on-the-cob fix.

On the way home, I stopped by Brooklyn Kitchen to pick up a dozen more mason jars and a box of pectin. Today I'm making nectarine jam, and I think I'll do half with pectin and half without so that I can eventually compare them.

Just a reminder...

2008-08-23T21:08:00.002-04:00

...that créme anglaise is pretty much the most delicious substance in the known universe.

Culture (and nectarine) jamming

2008-08-23T10:05:00.010-04:00

Today I made a list, and stuck to it!

1 1/2 lbs. yellow string beans
3 heirloom tomatoes
2 lbs. green and yellow zucchini
2 jalapenos
1 1/2 lbs. carrots
2 ears bicolor corn
1 lb. cranberry beans
1 bunch kale
1 bunch chard
1 lb. (mixed) sorrel, pea shoots, and salad greens
1/2 lb. shallots
2 heads Rocambole garlic
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch thyme
1 box blackberries
2 lbs. peaches
3 lbs. nectarines
Total spent: $68

Nectarines are rapidly disappearing, so I'm going to have to decide whether to eat or jam this batch. I think I might do half and half - even two jars of jam from these otherworldly nectarines will be wonderful to have on hand for winter. In other fruit news, I'm going to attempt to make vanilla bean creme anglaise to pour over the blackberries for dessert tonight.

I'm currently reading Unmarketable by Anne Elizabeth Moore, and while what's socking me in the stomach about every four pages are her astute and unflinching observations about the way corporations co-opt underground culture, including music (and the spectrum of complicity from the underground artists and producers she names, several of whom are friends and about half of whom I've worked with), the connections to the way food is marketed are unmistakeable.

The USG, for all its sprawl, flapping banners, and denim-clad, often-grubby-handed vendors, can instill in shoppers a sense of local pride, as well as a feeling of connection to the food and the land; above all, meeting and talking to the people who grow our food creates a sense of community and trust. Emotional responses to consumption (discussed in depth by Moore) are nothing new, and in this case, they're based on genuine shared experience.

Across the street, shoppers entering Whole Foods are encouraged toward the same emotional responses, but for these shoppers the responses are engineered by the marketing departments who put together the stores. Though local produce constitutes a relatively low proportion of what's available at Whole Foods Union Square at any given time, the word "local" in various home-style fonts swirls around the high-heaped market-style displays, implying that just by shopping at Whole Foods, the local community is enriched. Slogans throughout the store make frequent use of the pronoun "we," encouraging a sense of attachment to some (false, artificially constructed) Whole Foods community.

Perhaps most ludicrous is Whole Foods' current attempt to brand themselves as an economical choice, offering "smart shopper" tours that tout sales and their in-store brands - thoough it doesn't appear that any actual price-cutting has attended this new marketing effort. However, Moore makes the point that nowadays advertising messages don't need to be true; even claims that are instantly refutable are made in such a way that consumers will unknowingly embrace the associated "feeling" (in this case, connecting Whole Foods with economical shopping) even when the facts speak otherwise.

Emotion-based branding is so extensive that most of us probably don't realize how much we've been affected by it. I've recognized some of my own attachments: e.g. no matter how much I disdain its ownership by Nike, or how tacky I find their new shoes, there is an unshakeable place in my heart for Converse. When I was a kid, they were still the shoes of the counterculture, and when I put on my first pair in 7th grade, this symbol of misunderstood cool salved the everyday torture of middle school for a nerdy smart girl. Regardless of how much the company and I have both changed, that association is too powerful to dissolve.

Given its connections with comfort, family, body image, self-control, and health, food is already a highly emotional area for many of us; thus food shopping, already rife with anxiety and perceived stigmas, provides immediate emotional access to marketers. The more we hear often-misleading mainstream media coverage of the locavore movement and carbon footprints, meat recalls, e.coli outbreaks from spinach, the debates over the value of organics, or the healthfulness of dairy products, eggs, or fish, the more vulnerable we become to the type of food marketing (like that practiced by Whole Foods) that offers to soothe the seething worry.

As with most powerful marketing initiatives of our age, the irony is palpable: across the street from the "eat here and you'll be fine"-messaged Whole Foods (and its plethora of nutrient-fortified, lab-formulated, sugar-laden, processed "health" junk food) are food choices that can genuinely negate these anxieties. The meat, eggs, and milk are pasture-raised from local, grazing animals and therefore pose little or no risk of heart disease; some of the vegetables are organic while some are not, but none of them are processed in the type of facilities that are vulnerable to e.coli contamination; the locally-baked breads are preservative-free: in short, it's unlikely that any meal sourced from the greenmarket will be detrimental to health.

Whole Foods and many of the corporate-organic "health" brands it sells benefit from keeping us confused about what's good to eat, then offering their brand as an umbrella answer - though many of the foods they sell range from simply unhealthy to actually toxic. Local farmers, who sell genuinely healthful, sustainable foods, don't market themselves. Whole Foods is crowded every time I shop there, but so is the greenmarket, and increasingly so: while our branded world honestly terrifies me, the weekly crowds at the greenmarket offer some room for hope.

Ol' Strawberry Arm in the media

2008-08-22T10:55:00.004-04:00

I have long meant to post a photo of the tattoo I have on my arm - a reproduction of a botanical illustration of a strawberry plant - but I am quite lazy. Luckily, Bill from Tattoosday recently featured it on his blog. Read his post and find out what a nerd I really am HERE.

Lentil pepper-pot

2008-08-19T09:04:00.003-04:00

We had dinner last night at 10 p.m. because I got home late and had a bug to make this lentil soup I'd dreamed up on the train. I just used the peppers I had on hand, which weren't Anaheims but were similar; the soup turned out terrific, but next time I might heighten the smoky flavor by adding some ancho chile powder along with the cumin. I served this with whole-wheat tortilla triangles that I sprayed with olive oil, sprinkled with cumin and smoked Spanish paprika, and crisped under the broiler (on the "low" setting). I'm not totally sure on the yield but it makes LOTS, probably at least ten cups.

Lentil pepper-pot soup
3 tbsp olive oil
1 cup minced onion (about 4 small)
1 jalapeno pepper, cut into very small dice
2 tsp ground cumin
3 cloves garlic
1 red bell pepper, roasted and cut into small dice
2 Anaheim peppers, roasted and cut into small dice
4 cups vegetable stock
2 cups water
2 cups red lentils
4-6 cups Swiss chard leaves torn into 1-2" pieces
1 tbsp lemon juice, or to taste
salt to taste

Heat 2 1/2 tbsp olive oil in medium-to-large heavy-bottomed saucepan (5 qt. would be ideal), add onions, jalapenos, and a pinch of salt, and saute until soft and onions are slightly golden.

Clear the center of the pan, add remaining 1/2 tbsp olive oil, add garlic and cumin, and stir together until fragrant, about 30 seconds; add roasted peppers, stir all ingredients together, and cook about 1 minute.

Add stock, water, and lentils. Cover and bring to a boil; reduce to a simmer and cooking, stirring occasionally, until lentils have completely softened and broken down, about 20 minutes? (oops, I wasn't paying attention to how long this took).

Add lemon juice, salt to taste, and chard leaves, and cook 3 more minutes, until chard is completely wilted. Remove from heat, taste again for seasoning, and serve.

Currently reading

2008-08-19T08:44:00.005-04:00

I picked up Stuffed And Starved by Raj Patel while browsing at St. Mark's Bookshop the other evening, surprised I hadn't heard of it until then. It's an in-depth look at the global food economy, and how corporations and governments have worked together in creating our highly profitable but volatile and totally unsustainable worldwide network of producers, distributors, and consumers.

It's been so eye-opening already: as early as the 1940s, US food aid has been used to shape political policy overseas, ensuring the political pliability of countries who become dependent on this aid. Patel also examines the growing phenomenon of farmer suicides, and looks at activist movements in countries like South Korea and Mexico that have grown up in response to "free market" farm policies whose implementation threatens small farming. This quote, from South Korean legislator and activist Kang Ki Kap about the WTO, is beautiful and its truth applies to so much about our current economic climate (italics mine):

The most essential things for human beings are the elements - sun, air, water and food. These are the essential resources for people's lives. God decided that these things would be the enjoyment of all, so that all might live. He does not intend that we monopolize the elements - yet because they're so abundant, people treat them as trivial, do not take them seriously. The trend, the wind behind the WTO, is the globalization of the capitalist system. The fundamental contradiction is the polarization of the rich and poor, with the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. Some might say that this is the natural logic of competition. But if you're a human being with reason and conscience, then the WTO should be eliminated. Especially the agricultural sector and market pressures. To live, people need to eat. You cannot commercialize this. It's such an anti-human behavior, not just anti-social, but anti-people.

Patel posts at the interesting Stuffed & Starved website as well. I think the next book in my Global Food Crisis Reading List will be The End Of Food by Paul Roberts - I've heard a lot about it.

Quick summary - greenmarket demo, jam, dinner

2008-08-16T22:14:00.002-04:00

Today, I was part of the Greenmarket, not just a shopper! The Natural Gourmet has students at Union Square demonstrating seasonal recipes every Saturday through November. We made sauteed eggplant with basil and balsamic vinegar, and sauteed red potatoes with parsley and fresh garlic. It was kinda fun, but mostly just uneventful. I went shopping beforehand and stashed my haul in the walk-in refrigerator at school during the demo.

It was a long day:
1 1/2 lbs. lima beans
3 ears white corn
1 bunch swiss chard
2 lbs. carrots
1 lb. onions
3/4 lb. salad mix
4 Empire apples
2 lbs. peaches
2 lbs. nectarines
half-flat of blackberries
Total spent: $61

I've already made the insanely flavorful blackberries from Fantasy Fruit into five gorgeous jewel-toned half-pint jars of jam - though after I tasted a couple I wanted to eat the lot. I used the same basic recipe as I used for the strawberry jam, but I used 1/2 cup grated apple and 3/4 cup agave nectar. I don't know if it was the increased apple or just that blackberries have more natural thickener than strawberries, but this jam set up in ten minutes. Next, I'll do apricot and nectarine.

The limas were boiled until tender (about five minutes), then sauteed into a pseudo-succotash along with the kernels from two ears of corn, one finely-diced onion and a couple pinches of cumin; I plated it topped with some of the roasted red pepper coulis I made a few days back (roasted red pepper, hot sauce, olive oil, salt, and lemon juice). We had salad with refrigerator-pickled beets and goat feta from Lynnhaven farms first, then the succotash with half a grilled Tofurkey sausage. It was a terrific dinner!

A late-night strawberry jam session

2008-08-14T08:23:00.003-04:00

It worked! I went pectin-free this time, using a bit of grated apple instead. The resulting jam is much softer than our peach jam, but I like the texture. And it tastes wonderful - the Tristar strawberries from Fantasy Fruit Farm are so sweet and flavorful.

The one drawback to my jam experiment beyond being up past midnight on a work night? It was pricey. Figuring in the cost of six pints of strawberries, three lemons, an apple, and the jars, I spent more per half-pint jar than the $5.50 Phillips Farms charges for their delicious jams.

But I did get to use agave nectar instead of sugar or white grape juice concentrate, and go without the pectin. And my photo assistant and I were careful to adjust the sweetener just perfectly to our liking. If I had my own garden, or if I lived near a much-less-expensive "pick your own" farm, this jam would have been a lot more economical. As it is, I have four beautiful jars of strawberry jam I can crack open to combat winter doldrums.

Next on the list? Blackberry. Or nectarine. I'm going to try pickling jalapenos, too - and maybe some cucumbers to keep things traditional.

Strawberry Jam
6 pints strawberries (makes 4 cups mashed berries)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 to 3/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup grated peeled apple

1. Sterilize five 1/2-pint jars by boiling them in a hot water bath for five minutes. Turn off heat and leave jars in water until ready to pack.
2. Wash and stem strawberries (I washed mine three times - little ones can get quite dirty).
3. Transfer stemmed strawberries to a wide-bottomed bowl and mash them. You can use a potato masher, but I used my fingers.
4. Stir mashed berries, lemon juice, agave nectar, and grated apple together in a heavy-bottomed three-quart saucepan over medium-high heat.
5. Bring to a full, rolling boil and boil at least 10 minutes, or up to 15 minutes. Adjust sweetener to taste after 5 minutes and again after 10 minutes. To test for jelling, put a white plate in the freezer when you start cooking the jam; when ready to test, put a teaspoon of jam liquid on the plate, and return to freezer for one minute. You should be able to make a line in the jam with your finger that doesn't fill back in at all, but this never happened to me - the line filled in most of the way even after 14 minutes boiling. My jam turned out awesome, though, so just boil it as long as you see fit, but no more than 15 minutes. Remember, the worst possible outcome at this point is runny jam, which will be delicious on ice cream or yogurt, so don't overcook your berries to try to make them jell.
6. Remove a jar from the water, ladle hot fruit mixture into jar leaving 1/4" headspace, wipe threaded rim of jar clean, and attach lid and band. Repeat until all jars are full. You will probably have enough to fill four jars, with some left over. Fill another jar partially with the excess, refrigerate, and use within a few weeks.
7. Process in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes. Leave undisturbed overnight or until completely cool (about 12 hours), check seals (they should be concave and should not pop in and out), and store. Any unsealed jars should go into the fridge and be used within a few weeks.

Wart a dilly!

2008-08-12T14:14:00.008-04:00

I've never really understood this pun from Chicken Trek. It's one of the many pickle-themed taunts yelled at Oscar and his cousin Dr. Peter Pretchwinkle as they cross the country in the Picklemobile (which, to be exact, is actually at that point called the RemDem (tm), though its pickley appearance is really all that's relevant here).

Regardless, the phrase always pops up when I think of dilly beans. For these, I was inspired by a recipe I found on this Gardenweb thread. I used about 2 lbs. snap beans, dill, serrano peppers, slightly bruised garlic cloves, a half-and-half water and apple cider vinegar mixture, and kosher salt. Everything went smoothly, though I panicked a bit when it was time to remove the air bubbles, since I didn't know how - turns out it's easy enough to do with a rubber spatula. All the lids have popped and gone concave, which seems like a good sign. Also they are cute!

Also I made granola, which turned out fine, though next time I'll use fewer sesame seeds. I also attempted to make seitan, which was a total failure: I guess blithely ignoring the fact that the recipe calls for bread flour wasn't such a good idea. But batting .667 isn't bad for a Tuesday.

A coupla nice melons

2008-08-11T19:27:00.006-04:00

I know, I know, another boob joke. I just enjoy them, is all. In fact, I wasn't going to photograph this pair (!) 'til I thought of the boob-joke possibility. But the real story here is that the gal on the left is a canteloupe - a green-fleshed canteloupe. I know from honeydews, and this is definitely a canteloupe, even though I've never seen anything like it. But this internet website says they exist. I haven't yet sorted out exactly what type of magical powers they are supposed to have, but it really explains a lot about my day to know that I've been carrying around an enchanted fruit.

Today I got up earrrrrly and went to the greenmarket before work, because I was out of town at our yearly distribution summit on Saturday. The Monday market is always fun, but toting fifteen-or-so pounds of vegetables on my shoulders twenty-five blocks isn't so much. And the melons added lots of weight.

My weird walk home from the train, laden as I was, was undoubtedly due to the mysterious influence of the green canteloupe. First, I saw a beefy young fellow wearing a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo shirt. Note to my parents: if this is the private investigator you hired to follow me around and make sure I'm not partying all the time, you might want to try someone else. A block later, I saw a fellow who looked and was dressed exactly like Howard Jones. Later, a guy with an extremely round head wearing a Pavement t-shirt that had the New York skyline on it smiled at me.

At any rate, I'm hoping that green canteloupe will cast a goodluck charm on my project for tomorrow - canning part two: dilly beans!

Mission accomplished!

2008-07-26T21:16:00.007-04:00

We made jam!

Sixteen ways to brighten my day

2008-07-26T11:14:00.000-04:00

1 bunch rainbow chard
2 lbs. zucchini
2 bunches small carrots
1/2 lb. shallots
2 lbs. red new potatoes
1/2 lb. purslane
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 pt. sungold tomatoes
4 Nardello peppers
5 jalapeno peppers
4 ears bicolor corn
2 pts. strawberries
1/2 pt. blackberries
3 lbs. peaches
1 lb. nectarines
1 lb. apricots

Total spent: $67

What a morning! I arrived at USG around 8:45, finding none of last week's crazy crowds (I guess everyone slept in?), and enjoyed a non-stressful greenmarket experience. My leisurely pace is attested to by the eclecticism of my choices.

Purslane is a mild-tasting green that's higher in omega-3 fatty acids than any other land vegetable; I'll throw it in a salad. The potatoes are beautiful and will be made into potato salad (along with some shallots and parsley), and everything else is self-explanatory.

A tough day redeemed by berries and dinner

2008-07-19T21:41:00.006-04:00

This morning I was tired and listless at the Union Square greenmarket. After wandering back and forth three or four times, aimlessly picking up something here and there (sometimes visiting the same vendor multiple times), I realized I just needed to be home.

Luckily I managed to get a reasonable amount of food, despite my haziness; however, it took me so long to wend my way to the Fantasy Fruit stand, they had sold out of Tristar strawberries by the time I arrived. I was so close to the end of my rope I almost cried - now I know why my intuition has always sent me to their stand first.

But when I got home and started eating the delicate heritage raspberries and spectacular blackberries I bought from Terhune Orchards, I felt a lot better. There will be more strawberries next week!

I don't remember buying half this stuff:
1 pt. blackberries
1 pt. raspberries
2 lbs. peaches
1 lb. apricots
2 lbs. lady apples
2 ears bicolor corn
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 stalk celery
1 bunch carrots
2 lbs. green beans
2 lbs. zucchini
2 heads Rocambole garlic
Total spent: $50

Since it was ungodly hot today, I had to work up to the idea of making dinner for a couple of hours, and decided on stir-fry, with the vegetables cut into thin strips. This has the hot-weather advantage of quicker cooking than larger pieces, and, even better, I got extra knife skills practice.

For two people, I French-cut about 1/2 lb. green beans (French-cutting green beans is so hard!!), cut 2 medium-sized carrots into matchsticks, and chiffonaded 6 big Swiss chard leaves. I also pan-fried about 1/3 block of tofu, pressed briefly and cubed. I threw the carrots and beans in, then once they were almost ready, added a twince more oil and tossed in the garlic and chard, then added the tofu once the chard was almost wilted, just to heat it back up. We had this with my favorite grain, short-grain brown rice. Why is it so good? All other forms of brown rice are dead to me.

We also had the corn, steamed, to start, with butter, salt, and smoked Spanish paprika. I like bicolor corn, but regular yellow is much sweeter - I hope it shows up at the market soon. And of course, dessert will be more fresh berries!

Speaking of berries, I desperately need to get on the canning wagon. I had planned for Tuesday, but the photo assistant and I are going to see The Dark Knight instead. Next Saturday, then, I will be making my first batch of jam. I can't let another summer's bounty get away from me...and as I have an offer open to practice with peaches from a friend's family's tree, I have to hold up my end of the bargain and figure out how to do it, stat.

(Photo is not mine! It is from futurowoman's Flickr photostream)

Just the facts on my rushed morning

2008-07-14T08:05:00.002-04:00

I was in a crazy hurry Saturday morning, but somehow I managed to pick up an excellent assortment of produce.

Variety is the spice:
1 bunch kale
1 bunch collard greens
1 lb. shell peas
1 lb. pattypan squash
1 bunch spring onions
1 bunch carrots
2 lbs. zucchini
2 ears bicolor corn
1/2 lb. cherries
2 lbs. peaches
1/2 lb. apricots
1/2 lb. Shiro plums
2 lbs. lady apples
2 pints Tristar strawberries
Total spent: $67

Why so few cherries? According to one of the vendors, the cherry crop has been truncated due to a hailstorm and bad weather over the week - so no more! Despite this heartbreaking news, I was able to console myself somewhat with delicious peaches, apricots, plums, and strawberries.

We fly the planes ourselves

2008-07-05T09:59:00.005-04:00

Due to our disdain for a) fireworks and b) drunk people, as well as our indifference to c) barbecue, my photo assistant and I have developed the perhaps-antisocial July 4 tradition of seeing three movies in the theater. Yesterday we were three for three, with Wanted, Get Smart, and Hancock all coming through with all the car chases, gunfights, explosions, special effects, pratfalls, and one-liners we hoped for. And what's more American than that?

Listen, fruit is less expensive than smoking, even in these quantities:
1/2 pt. raspberries
1 pt. Tristar strawberries
1 lb. peaches (!!!!)
2 1/2 lbs. cherries
5 Empire apples
1 1/2 lbs. rhubarb
3 lbs. zucchini
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 1/2 lbs. shell peas
1 lb. "soft" discount tomatoes
1 head Rocambole garlic
Total spent: $57 (of which $20 was for cherries)
Today we're going to a friend's house upstate for a barbecue, so I made rhubarb bars again. This time, I used brown rice syrup, which definitely has a hearty and almost caramel-like taste, which added a nice quality to the rhubarb filling - thing is, I didn't use enough sweetener in the filling, nor sugar in the streusel, so they taste more like breakfast bars than sweet desserts. I also used whole wheat flour because I didn't think it would make a difference in a recipe that already called for oats. These bars are hearty and taste a bit healthy, but I hope folks will still like them. I'm also bringing Tofurkey sausage, cherries, and half a dozen little zucchini for the grill. Despite the rain, it promises to be a fun trip.

Today I passed up apricots and the season's first corn on the cob, because I was out of money and my shoulders hurt, but I may pick some corn up on Monday for dinner - I'm quite excited about it. Tomorrow night we'll have peas, and maybe peaches for dessert!

The summeriest meal around

2008-06-30T22:01:00.006-04:00

Tonight we had a gazpacho of sorts: shallots cut into whisper-thin salad slices and macerated in 2-3 tbsp. apple cider vinegar along with minced basil and salt; then added the seeds, juice, and flesh from a tomato I concassed and diced; let it sit for an hour or so at room temp while making the rest of dinner, tasted for seasoning, ladled into bowls, then drizzled with my fancy Pasolivo olive oil just before serving. It was on the magnificent side of wonderful, with the acid and salt countering the sweetness of the tomatoes and basil just so.

I got the shallot-vinegar-herbs idea from Peter Berley in one of our classes - he used it to dress roasted peppers, and mentioned that with tomatoes, it would make a nice gazpacho. And so it did.

Our main course was risotto with shelled peas (the biggest ones I've ever seen) and spinach, with Parmigiano and butter added to finish; I liberally sprinkled minced parsley over each serving, which really highlighted the fresh taste of the summer vegetables. An hour later, we upped the summeriness ante even more with a few handfuls of Tristar strawberries (eaten in front of the TV while watching House on DVD, naturally).

The gazpacho was wonderful! If only acidic foods didn't give both of us tummyaches, I would make it constantly this summer. But so it goes - this lovely healthful dish will have to be only an occasional treat.

Today I'll be making potato salad with the lovely "just dug" red new potatoes I bought at the Greenmarket yesterday, made with a dressing incorporating Mean Beans brine. More on this later.

An exciting and impractical morning

2008-06-28T10:51:00.011-04:00

What a morning! I miraculously awoke at 6:32, even though I'd forgotten to turn on the alarm I'd set for 6:30. I got up even earlier than usual so I could get to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket at 8:30 for a meeting about an exciting internship (more on this later so I don't jinx it), then to USG for shopping. I bought shell peas twice, once because I planned it, and once on impulse when I tasted sweeter ones elsewhere. It was that kind of morning.

Yes, I have an expensive fruit habit:
2 pints Tristar strawberries
1 pint blueberries
1 pint raspberries
1 1/4 lbs. cherries
3 lbs. zucchini
2 lbs. shelling peas
1 lb. sugar snap peas
1 bag spinach
1 bunch spring onions
1 bunch carrots
Total spent: $57

I had a nice NYC moment today, during my convoluted subway trip (turns out I made the wrong call about how to get to Grand Army Plaza and back). A very nice woman asked me if I knew how to get to the Cloisters. "I've been there, but I'm not sure I remember," I replied, and racked my brain to recall the subway stop. After the not-so-helpful "it's somewhere above 180th, and you take a bus to Fort Tryon Park, I think" and multiple attempts to find secret clues by staring at the subway map, I had all but given up.

But! Miracle of miracles! When the memory part of your brain has been eroded by too-late-diagnosed ADHD, and you therefore have the short-term memory of a newborn bunny rabbit, you come up with coping mechanisms like writing down in a little black notebook any information you may need to know more than five seconds in the future. And so, luckily for my new friend, I found all transportation and contact information for the Cloisters in said notebook, to her delight and amazement. And we could be heroes, just for one day.

Clearly, I bought a ton of fruit this week - including blueberries which I don't even really like! - because I just can't get enough. It's only going to get worse when peaches and apricots come into season...but of course, I can't wait. Thank goodness I just got a raise! My photo assistant is currently giving up refined sugar, so I'm using that as an excuse to be even more lavish than usual with my fruit purchases - but I'm still eating the lion's share of the fruit (just like with everything).

We're having a friend over for dinner on Monday, and I think I'm going to make a risotto with the spring onions, spinach, and peas, serving veggie sausage and broiled zucchini on the side; I'll start with an olive and pickle plate featuring my new favorite, Rick's Picks Mean Beans. Dessert will be fresh berries, that is of course if we've got any left.

Hilarity ensues

2008-06-26T21:38:00.004-04:00

"Boy," I thought, munching on one of the blanched sugar snap peas I had brought in my lunch, "these are tough. Maybe they are going out of season or something? I did buy them from an unfamiliar vendor..." After struggling with the too-fibrous pods of a couple more, I gave up and decided to shell them, making a decent-sized mess to get to the tender interior peas.

"Gee," I thought, struggling to shell an especially intractable petit pois pod for dinner, "these are tough to shell." I reached for another equally-difficult pod, and had struggled through about five of them when it finally dawned on me what had happened. Of course, in my morning rush, I'd blanched the petit pois and put them in lunches, and I was now trying to shell sugar snap peas.

It's this kind of subtle hilarity that makes live worth living, really.

Sweet treats and expanding horizons

2008-06-23T20:52:00.006-04:00

What a wonderful greenmarket morning I had Saturday! I made it to Union Square by 8:30, and the crowd was manageable. I bought lots of fruit to make desserts for Katherine's birthday/housewarming party, as well as the season's first cherries.

Getting up early is worth it:
2 qts. strawberries
1 1/2 lbs. cherries
3/4 lb. rhubarb
1/2 lb. asparagus
1 lb. fava beans
1 lb. petit pois
1 bunch red Russian kale
1 bunch carrots
3/4 lb. shiitake mushrooms
Total spent: $47

For Katherine's party, I made rhubarb oatmeal bars, using a version of this recipe, but I cut the sugar in the rhubarb filling by about 1/4 cup, and added 1 tbsp. lemon juice to brighten the flavor. I also omitted "1/2 cup chopped" from the crust since I didn't know what to chop and add 1/2 cup of, and left out the vanilla as well. They turned out really delicious, but they didn't quite "bar up" to become independent desserts - you couldn't eat one out of your hand. I can't tell if I should have cooked them longer, or if the streusel just isn't substantial enough to be a bottom crust. Or maybe that 1/2 cup chopped would have firmed things up. (I'm thinking that shortbread would be insanely good, and just as buttery.)

I also made strawberry shortcake; I used the cream scone recipe from Baking Illustrated as the base (adding 1 tsp. vanilla), sliced and partially macerated the (quite wonderful on their own) berries with sugar and letting them sit for a few hours, and whipped 1 cup of Ronnybrook Dairy heavy cream with a few tablespoons of sugar to top. It was all lovely until I ate lots at the party (along with Allison's yummy pie), then had a severe sugar crash all of a sudden, got overwhelmed and cranky, then had to hurry home.

Tonight's dinner was shiitake mushroom risotto with buttered peas (excuse me, petit pois), which I had to have solo because my photo assistant is in transit and has been stuck at airports for the past six hours. He can have leftovers though. The peas were great - just a bit sweeter than regular English shell peas. Tomorrow night I have class, but I'm planning something exciting for a late-night Wednesday dinner involving those lovely favas.

And cherries!!! I have been talking about cherries for months, and now they're here! Of course the 1 1/2 lbs. I bought Saturday are already almost gone. I love them so much!!

(No photos this week due to extreme laziness.)