Eat. Drink. Be Merry.

I was reminded today of some people's obsession with nutrition, as opposed to healthfulness.

A company sent the magazine a resveratrol-packed chocolate bar that claims to have a bajillion times as many antioxidants as red wine, blueberries, açai and goji berries and chemotherapy combined (or something like that). This bar will cure your as-yet-nonexistent cancer, just by you looking at it. It will lower your blood sugar. Then it will save the world.

I have thought for years that a relative of mine has orthorexia (only I didn't know it was called that until recently), and I wonder how much it is compounded by her work in the nutrition field. When I was a youngster, I remember, she was making almost-no-fat meals out of a cookbook by Dean Ornish, and I noted aloud that his name sounded suspiciously like "denourish." As the low-carb fads came around a few years ago, she tried those as well in attempts to get her "numbers" (cholesterol levels, blood sugar, other leading bad-stuff indicators) down. All this, mind you, for a 5'1" woman who I've never seen weigh more than 115 pounds. I'd be surprised if she's been over 100 in the past five years.

She has developed a type of pre-diabetes (as I understand it), and feels betrayed since she has always "done everything right," and she doesn't "deserve" this. (Do people with full-blown diabetes "deserve" it?) Well, she's never enjoyed just chilling out. Her blood pressure has been high despite exercise. But then, she won't exercise because it makes her lose too much weight. She's so fixated on this constellation of numbers...

I can't imagine living like that. Not eating this food or that food because it's a "carb bomb" (as she called a Thanksgiving dish my brother prepared last month). Have a taste, and enjoy it, and a glass of wine, and enjoy it. Watch those blood pressure numbers fall. And don't buy in (literally and figuratively) to ostensible "health foods" just because they market to your anxieties. If you want chocolate, eat some damn chocolate. And enjoy it.

A life spent tripping over numbers and eating by "rules" just doesn't sound that fulfilling to me (although one friend in particular manages her diabetes exceptionally well, and eats pretty well too). Yeah, I've gained 20 pounds back since moving to New York. I chalk that up to eating and drinking more, and exercising much, much less. And I'm trying to find a balance there. But I'm not going to turn to fake, "value-added" food to save me.

Of course there are soooo many people who are legitimately struggling with disease (e.g. diabetes) or weight as a real health and lifestyle problem. And I hope that each of them finds the combination of lifestyle factors that work for them to be happy, and healthy, and pain- and disease-free. But it's a slap in the face to people who have actual problems to see someone who is basically fine counting calories and agonizing over a "carb bomb."

So eat real food. And enjoy it.

Home sweet garden

If I figure out a way to buy a house in the next year, it will be because I want a real food garden. I'll probably end up spending all of my money on plants and seeds and garden-y stuff, and I'll crash on the floor of a woefully underfurnished room in a sleeping bag.

But I'll have squash next year, dammit!

Would having chickens be going too far?

Guess I should get the yard first, before I think of the chickens.

This book has done a number on me.

A victory, of sorts

That looks so gross. But it's *my* gross. Thyme and parsley from my little pots that sit on the kitchen floor. The rest of it is fixings for chicken stock, which will become chicken soup tonight.

Last night, I finally got the chicken (his name was Gary, by the way) in the slow cooker with onion, carrots and celery. The recipe called for a parsnip and another vegetable I can't remember. Didn't have them, so I ignored that part. I feel really ridiculous for needing a recipe to make chicken stock in the first place. I mean, really. It's hot chicken water. How do you screw that up?

The recipe also called for a bay leaf, parsley and thyme. Alright, I thought. I have a package of bay leaves that have been in the back of the fridge for almost a year. It's dry in there, and they still look great, so I used a couple. You can sub extra bay leaves for a parsnip and that other mystery vegetable, right? Totally.

It was exciting though, to find that the parsley that hadn't been growing so great outside has really done better since I moved the pots inside about two weeks ago. So that's in there, kinda hugging the right side of the slow cooker insert.

The thyme, well, it hasn't done so hot since the move. It was in a pot with some insane, ravenous chocolate mint, and I think the mint might have screwed things up for the whole pot. Roots running around the perimeter of the pot are a bad thing, right? At any rate, the mint seems to have burned itself out, and there were still teeny sprigs of green thyme. They're in the mix too, right on top. Poor baby thyme. You get your own pot next time.

So it's all sitting and stewing as I type. Hopefully the joint's not burned down when I finally get home tonight, and making soup is easy. At least I don't need a recipe for that.

It's been too long...

I used to blog in the mornings or early afternoons before leaving for my 4 or 5 p.m. shifts at the newspaper. I'd make coffee, maybe an egg or some yogurt concoction, then settle in for a morning of paying bills and snuggling with the dog and reading blogs and news. A couple days a week, I'd go for a hike with my puppy, Leo, either up Mount Beacon down to Dennings Point. Once in a while, I even made real food, like bread or scones, before heading in to work.

But then I got a day job—my dream job—for which the hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I catch the train at 7 in the morning and get home around 7 at night. I love everything about it.

The pace of the work suits me—no more 11:28 p.m. anxiety attacks while someone wants to change a headline and my boss is telling me to just send the page.

I'm smitten with a good deal of the content—the best hot cocoa in the world, anyone?

I learn something new every day—even if it's just that ATMs at Duane Reade are fee-free to me.

The train ride is often breathtakingly beautiful—pink fog rising from the Hudson this morning, stellar sunsets for the past two months (not anymore, of course, with the expiration of daylight savings time).

I'm exposed to things I'd never have the chance to try anywhere else—a fancy-schmancy French wine from 1995 that showed me what "elegant" means. Balsamic vinegars from Italy that poured like motor oil, aged 12, 25, and 100 or more years.

But getting home at 7 means that adventurous cooking goes on the back-burner (so to speak), a little bit. After two months in this schedule, I think I'm getting used to it, and will be able to figure out a routine that involves more cooking. Once my weekend days opened up, I got roped into (often literally: we climb) more adventures in the great outdoors. Now that the weather has chilled substantially, I look forward to spending more days in the kitchen. That said, I've saved a fair bit of money by making quick dinners at home, even if, like last night, it's just mashed sweet potatoes and stir-fried frozen veggies with Asian-inspired seasoning. That was on the table before 8, and I even played ball with Leo for a while.

I did some freezer-oriented cooking a month or so ago. I had really ambitious plans one day to make vegetable lasagna, butternut squash-apple soup, sweet potato chili, a spicy carrot-cabbage Chinese kimchi kinda thing, and ... and I can't remember what else. I took a picture of the table laden with all the food I planned to cook that day. I'll put it up here when I get home (if I remember).

It probably goes without saying if you know me, but I didn't quite get through everything on the table. I got the lasagna and chili done and frozen, and the butternut squash roasted (it's easier to prepare if it's cooked first). We went through the lasagna pretty quickly. There are still two big yogurt containers full of chili in the freezer. Unfortunately, the squash didn't get made into soup until its already-roasted freshness was already questionable, and it just tasted "off" no matter what I added to the soup. Also unfortunately, that will finally get chucked tonight so I can use the big pot for chicken soup.

There's most of a roasted chicken in the fridge, see, and I don't want it to meet the same fate as the squash. Since B and Leo will be at B's parents' place tonight to celebrate his sister's birthday, I have an empty kitchen to work with. Can't wait!

Coming soon... A roundup of some of the awesome and not-so-awesome (but usually cheap) places I've had lunch since starting the new job, and thoughts about agriculture/farming/conscientiousness since reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." It's amazing. And what happened to that garden on the back deck, anyway?

Results may vary...

I made stuffed, fried squash blossoms last night from this post at thekitchn.com.

Mine did not look anything like theirs (the photo, above). It's possible, though, that what mine lacked in looks, they made up for in flavor...

Drool-worthy summer inspiration

It's really hot. Like, sweating-while-sitting-still hot. Yeah, I could turn on the air conditioner, but it's all the way upstairs and any move away from this seat would be just. too. much. effort.

So this'll be a roundup, of sorts.

Cruising Thekitchn.com this morning, I have been so inspired by posts about and gorgeous pictures of salads: cabbage, macaroni, beet... I was reminded of what a geek I am when I saw this book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee. I literally drooled while I was reading the post. Maybe the science-y stuff in this book could explain exactly what neurotransmitter synapse caused me to salivate over a reference work. Or, I might just be a sleep-deprived nerd.

Reading through my favorite food blogs, instead of getting into the kitchen and making something refreshing like a kickass spicy Chinese cabbage/carrot/pickled chili salad, reminded me of this article at the New York Times last month. I hope I'm not becoming one of those people who are "out of the kitchen, onto the couch"; reading about food instead of doing something with it. I don't even own a TV, so maybe I'm somewhere in the middle? Believe me, I'd rather be cooking. It's just that the kitchen has no air flow. No, it's worse: It has negative air flow. All the hot air in the apartment goes there to hang out, and like some dinner guests, it doesn't know when to just leave.

I have had a fair amount of food interaction this summer:

In July I made awesome strawberry-sour cream scones (recipe here). It was still raining every day at that point, so using the oven was not so painful.


My vindaloo spices. I think getting them prepped for the cooking is my favorite part of making that dish.


The Latin American festival at Beacon's Riverfront Park:


Where I come from, "Latin American festival" likely means a huge event with a ton of Mexican food, with at least one vendor for each of the country's distinct regions, plus Central American and South American booths. Roaming mariachis, and the Chilean folk music Inti-Illimani guys, and the Peruvian pan flute players, and tiny wrinkled Guatemalan ladies selling brightly colored cloths. So it felt strange to go to a smallish event, with booths mainly representing Caribbean nations such as the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and Puerto Rico of course. Welcome to New York, Cali girl... Of course the food was amazing. This was actually the second of two plates B and I shared (and maybe Leo got some too).


I had a rare weekend off after the hecticness (hecticity?) of the past few weeks, and I needed to get out of town. B found a bouldering area near a lake in the Adirondacks. I stuffed a bottle of wine in my backpack for Saturday night. It was worth the extra weight.


Wild blueberry bushes covered the area where we camped. The ones I picked Sunday morning were just what the Quaker Instant Oatmeal needed. (Well, it needed a lot of help, but the berries were a great start.)

Comfort food

photo source

I'm nearing the end of a pretty trying 10-day stretch. There have been some lows, but to be fair, some highs too (including meeting extended family in Boston). This afternoon, I only had a few minutes to concoct something to eat between finishing errands and leaving for work at 3. It was raining and at only 70 degrees felt a little chilly (how pathetic, I know), so I wanted something comforting...

I cooked a Chinese stir-fry last night and made extra rice. There were leftover garlicky-gingery sautéed veggies from something else a few days ago. Perfect.

After I mixed those and heated them through, I cracked an egg over the top, stirred it and put a lid on the disgusting-looking mixture, then took the dog out. (I'm all about being efficient.) When I came back in from the rain, the egg was cooked perfectly. Added a little sriracha and soy sauce and I was set... (Then I made an egg for Leo. He's the most spoiled dog ever, I swear.)

I'm not sure why I have an Asian comfort food. It's not like I had a sweet little grandma whipping up congee for me (although mine did have lemon drops). You'd think it'd be something like mashed potatoes and beef stew or something, with my Euro-mutt roots. Of course, those sound good too.

Lately, some readers have e-mailed comments to me... Why not post them instead and share your favorite comfort foods? I'll make cookies for the most unusual one.

More fermentation education. (Guess I really like the rhyming.)

photo source
A kind soul gently pointed out today that a few posts down, in my rambling tale of the sauvignon blanc trip to the wine store, I incorrectly said that a Sancerres wine I bought was from the Bordeaux region of France.

Sancerres ≠ Bordeaux.
Sancerres = Loire Valley.

I have no doubt the woman at the wine store told me the correct one, but it got lost in the overwhelming amount of geographical information she imparted attempted to impart.

I could have gone into the post and edited it to be correct, and just pretend I never got anything wrong ever, but how lame would that have been?!? I started this blog as I was learning about cooking; now that I'm learning about other ingestible substances, I might as well document this process too, right?

Of course.

I Googled the wine today and this blog came up:
brooklynguyloveswine.blogspot.com
I love this guy, and not just because we have similarly constructed blog names. He has this to say about my not-Bordeaux Sancerres:
The 2007 Christian Venier Touraine Le Gautrie Sauvignon, $17, Savio Soares Selections ... was lovely, although not as stunning an example of Loire Sauvignon Blanc as Venier's VdT is as a Cheverny.

Brooklyn Guy described Venier as a Loire hipster-natural-wine-biodynamic-producer.
Anyone who can use "hipster" in a serious discussion about wine has my vote.

Time to go make dinner... Tonight's wines are from Whitecliff Vineyard, just up the road in Gardiner, New York.

Turns out....

Turns out that in the following sentence, from the last post, I was merging two fruits:
I remember seeing some spiky melon that I think ends in -iya when I lived in San Diego.

Thanks to flickr.com user Mixed Masala, we can see them side by side:

On the left, the thing that I thought ended in -iya but is actually -oya (cherimoya). On the right, some spiky melon (kiwano).

I didn't see these strange, exotic fruits while in the city.

(Insert big eyeroll at my expectations...)

I found them yesterday at my supermarket in the 'burbs.

Frozen treats save steamy day.

I went down to the city for a Tuesday night concert, but once I knew I could bring a backpack in with me, I decided I was on a mission. A weird produce mission. Specifically, I was looking for the beautiful, exotic, alluring mangosteen, but really, anything new would do nicely.

I got in to Grand Central a little after noon, and needed something to tide me over for a few hours:

Subpar lo mein from Feng Shui in Grand Central. It was unbelievably salty and I didn't finish it. That never happens. I should have just stuck with my tasty GCT standby, Cafe Spice.

A few hours later, after hanging out with a good friend until she had to go to work, I was hungry again. Getting your eyebrows threaded for the first time is a surprisingly effective way to work up an appetite.

I wanted to take one of the green trains (4? 5? 6? I'm still learning, folks), so I headed back down to GCT to first snag a refreshing blast of Ciao Bella, where, in the past, I'd had a revelation of mint gelato (it tasted like fresh mint, not mint flavoring!), among other flavors. I ordered the papaya-crème de cassis, expecting unicorns to come charging out of the cupcakes at one of the bakeries and flower petals to rain into the food court, and for world peace to be achieved and cancer to be cured.

It didn't quite live up to that. I was so meh about it that I didn't even take a picture. Of course the papaya-crème de cassis gelato was okay, but I have really high expectations of Ciao Bella. Unicorns, people. I demand to be blown away.

Several hours and a walk to and fro on the Brooklyn Bridge later, I had made my way to Chinatown. It was probably about 6:30, and I wondered after the fact whether it was late enough that I missed the really weird (to me, you know) produce. I really wanted to find mangosteen... Hell, I don't know if they're even in season. Dragonfruit would have been cool. I remember seeing some spiky melon that I think ends in -iya when I lived in San Diego. It was not to be - I could ID pretty much everything I saw. (I'm no expert; there just wasn't that much.) Note to self: Don't worry about the Brooklyn Bridge. Just go to Chinatown with hours to kill.

Fruit and veggie stand in Chinatown. I was probably there later than the really intriguing markets would be open and/or have really intriguing produce.

I wound up with lychees (which I seem to recall my dad ordering at a Chinese restaurant in the East Bay, where we lived til I was 11)...

Lychees. I don't know what to do with them, yet, other than chill, peel and pop 'em. Maybe some kind of granita?


Starting to make up for earlier: barbecued pork buns, or char siu bao, from Excellent Dumplings in Chinatown.

I demolished those buns.

I walked and ate... Classy. From Chinatown I hoofed it up to the DessertTruck...

Dessert Truck scene

... where my day redeemed itself immediately, and wholly:

Lavender-peach sorbet, with crème frâiche, almond meringue and fresh berries. Unbelieveable. Best six bucks I've spent in at least a month.

From Dessert Truck to Webster Hall, every spoonful of that amazing concoction contributed to this stupid grin spreading across my face. Suddenly, the Brooklyn Bridge blisters and ridiculously heavy backpack (why did I buy so many damn lychees?) seemed a million miles away. Lavender-peach sorbet, with crème frâiche, almond meringue and fresh berries = SALVATION IN A CUP.

Concert. Pete Yorn. Eye and ear candy.

The show ended with time to spare before I had to get back up to GCT for the 12:08 train home. I could grab a slice of pizza, I thought, or... I could go to Daydream (which I keep wanting to call Dreamberry, a la Pinkberry frozen yogurt).

Half original icy, half pomegranate tart frozen yogurt, with ripe (yay!) mangoes and blueberries. Found this place after a concert in April. It hits the spot even more on a steamy late-July night.

Snapped this at a station as I was making my way north:

Someone loves breaded, fried pork cutlets more than I do.

dessertforthemorningafter

Ask, and ye shall receive...

I have a couple great friends who live up in Ithaca (about four hours away) who I rarely see. Katie and Jon are two of the most fun people I've ever had the pleasure of hanging out with. We talk only sporadically, and usually conversations are about last-minute invitations to an adventure of some kind. They invited B and I to go camping last weekend, and I couldn't go because I always work weekends.

I asked if they might be available on a Tuesday and/or Wednesday for some antics, and received this reply from Jon:
Tuesday or Wednesday seems like a perfect time to do some wine-touring in the finger lakes. :)

As noted in the last post, I've been wanting to learn. Don't know much about wine, yet, but here's to getting educated (and seeing Katie and Jon).

An education in fermentation.(Rhyming is good, right?)

Sorry, mom and dad...
I lived in Utah for eight years, ages 18 to 26. Prime beer-drinking years, right? I guess. I only went on a booze run up to Evanston, Wyoming, one time, and although I had the world's best fake ID, I was so terrified of getting busted on the way back to Salt Lake that I never went again.

I didn't do much beer-drinking after about age 20. Not because of any kind of moral calling or righteous superiority, I just... didn't. A guy who I was with for a long time didn't drink at all. When I did buy a six-pack, four or five bottles often languished in the fridge for months (gross, absolutely; maybe even borderline criminal). I was so, soooooo boring.

At the beginning of 2008, I moved near one of the state-run wine stores downtown, and began cooking the ethnic-inspired meals nearly weekly for my friends. When possible, I bought wines from the appropriate country. Feeling kind of goofy for the last event, Morocco, I bought one wine from Spain and one from South Africa, and we roughly (very roughly) decided to split the geographical difference. There was no method, usually just madness.

Since moving here, and living with wine drinkers, I've been drinking much more thoughtfully. Which is to say, now I do more than buy whichever bottle has the more interesting label.

Right on Main Street in happenin' downtown Beacon is the Artisan Wine Shop, and these folks have helped me immensely. Although I work nights and weekends and therefore have yet to make it to one of their tasting events, the owners have steered me toward some great bottles. Also, I always assumed that good wine equals expensive, and they have shown me that that doesn't have to be true! I owe so much to these people, and they don't even know it.


A couple of weeks ago I walked in with a blank look on my face, and walked out with three bottles of grapey goodness. One was a white zinfandel, my boyfriend's mom's fave; one was a Spanish red with a dramatic label (I'm not totally out of the woods yet) that my boyfriend had bought before; and the third was a sauvignon blanc to pair with dinner's scallops. I'll be honest: I loved it for the cool label, and I was intrigued by its claim to having citrus notes.

But we opened it, and it really, really did have those citrus notes! It was like grapefruit (or, more accurately, grapefruit's cousin pomelo) slapping you in the tongue. In a good way, of course.

So when I walked in there a few nights ago, I knew at least one thing I wanted. But I know that I know nothing about wine, so I kind of crafted an experiment. "Would it be really lame," I asked, "to get another sauvignon blanc so I could compare them side-by-side and maybe learn more about that family?"

I felt really dumb asking. Like, really dumb. Luckily, Mei Ling So (one of the owners) is either used to dumb questions or good at hiding disdain for their askers... She told me it was actually a pretty good idea, and gave me a couple of choices. Most from France, either the Loire Valley or Bordeaux. I asked her what caused the differences, and finally learned how to pronounce "terroir." (The thing about food editing is that although I've learned to spell unusual words, I haven't always learned how to say them right, if at all. For a long time in Salt Lake, "tart-ees tate-in" was a running joke about tartes tatin...)

So I got the Mason Cellars' Pomelo 2007 sauvignon blanc, and a biodynamic sancerres from Bordeaux. She mentioned that it was citrusy, too, and I got all excited about them being similar, but she shut me down: "They're really different." Apparently the biodynamic winemakers don't "mess with" (I swear those were her words) the winemaking process as much. She described the French one as "yeasty," because fewer preservatives are added. Also, the biodynamic guys add infusions of chamomile and nettles, which is really interesting but I don't really get. Yet.

Oh, boy. Have I got a lot to learn...

Picked up sushi on the way home, and cracked open - well, unscrewed, anyway - the Pomelo. Because it was a school work night for the boyfriend, getting though two bottles of wine was out of the question and the sancerres is still chillin'.

Which means, you know, that I have to go back and get another bottle of Pomelo for an advance-planned tasting. It'll be rough, but I think I'll get through it. Here's to more sushi and wine this Tuesday!

Starting from scratch

Nothing but Miracle-Gro Organic, a bunch of tiny seeds, and crossed fingers.
Everything we bought in May was already sprouted, beyond seedlings, nascent little plants. Like, toddler plants. Things went well, for the most part.

I got ambitious. I bought seeds. I probably waited too long to plant them.

So on July 24, I buckled down and did it. Here's the lettuce (mesclun mix), basil, zucchini (One seed in the packet? Are you kidding me?) and sunflowers. Lettuce and sunflowers are in the full-size egg cartons; basil in five of the six nooks in the smaller one, zucchini in the last niche:

Urban forager

Sign below mulberry tree

Last Friday, I headed down to Denning's Point in search of berries. I've seen several mulberry trees, strawberries, and raspberry canes getting ready to burst, and it felt like time to forage...

Raspberries were first up:

That's a lot of raspberries.


These guys weren't quite ready, but plenty of others were.

I don't know what these two are. I think the berries in the second might be currants?




Leo got to swim in the Hudson:




Then we heard thunder - not exactly a surprise, since it seems like there has been rain every day this summer - so we took off for the car. But first, the mulberries.




I didn't know the flash was on for this, but the unripe berry looked just like that a moment later when there was lightning.




We made it home just before the sky opened up. I had to rush to work, so doing something with berries had to wait. All told, there were about two and a half cups of berries. I made a smoothie with about half of them, plus some blueberries. Mulberries are (mostly) on the left, some with stems; black raspberries (mostly) on the right.




These have been growing in the jungle on the side of my apartment. The landlord said she wouldn't go through the trouble of picking them, but I was welcome to.




The rest of the Denning's Point berries and the backyard blackberries topped a Big Pancake this morning. The camera battery died before I could get closeups of the berries and whipped cream. Suffice it to say that it tasted as good as "fresh berries and fresh whipped cream" sounds.




While walking the dog a few days ago, I discovered the next frontier in my urban forages: a tall old apple tree by the water tower up the hill. Looks like I'll need to find a ladder before autumn...

¿Yutia? ¿Cómo? or, talking tubers...

Way back when, when I started the ethnic cuisine challenge/resolution, I had this precious little idea that I'd walk into an ethnic grocery with a vague idea of what I wanted to cook, then I'd find unknown-to-me ingredients/items and ask the employees/owners how to prepare them. It would have worked in SLC. I regret never having been to one of the African grocers...

So a few months ago - wow, looking up the photos I see that it's been six months - I went to a new-to-me grocery store that looks a little warehouse-y but is closer than the one I had been going to. The produce selection was broad, and prices seemed good. As I wandered the aisles, I came to a tuber section. Yes, a little area with nothing but brown tubers in various lengths, widths, and stages of hair growth. In addition to yams, sweet potatoes, and jicama, signs read batata, malanga, casava, manioc, taro... and my new friend, yutia. A cute little older couple was picking through these tubers, arguing in Spanish about which ones to were good.

Aha! I thought. This was my chance to try to fulfill what I'd originally set out to do. I asked them in my crappy Spanish (I may have studied it for six-plus years, but my last class was in 2002) what this vegetable was, and how to prepare it. Luckily this sweet man was adept at charades, because I understood "slice it thinly" and "bake it."

So I bought some, brought it home, and promptly Googled "yutia." Yeah, it doesn't really exist on the interwebs. Results were spotty at best, and basically told me that South American indigenous peoples cultivated it. After that, I'm not sure what they did with it... It came across as some anthropological curiosity more than a vegetable you'd pick up in a suburban New York ShopRite.



So I did what the abuelito said. I peeled it and sliced it as thinly as I could, which got difficult, as this tuber was really slimy. I tossed the slices in some olive oil and salt and pepper, and stuck it in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes, tossing it again at some point in there.




When I figured my little medallions were done, it looked like they needed something more. Sour cream! That makes almost everything better. And it did, for these guys. They were still pretty chewy. Pretty bland. One big "meh," you know? But they reminded me of something. I couldn't place it for a few days.



Bam. Top left. Thanks to the "exotic vegetable chip identifier" at Terra Chips' website, I had known this previously as taro... Good to know. There are plenty of recipes out there for taro. It seems like a lot of these starchy/slimy tubers are interchangeable, as far as recipes go. But I'd wanted to do something uniquely yutia... Chips, so original, I know.

Today, six months after starting the yutia journey, I re-Googled "yutia recipe." And got results, including this one for a Filipino tapioca stewy-desserty-thing called tabirak o binignit o ginataan. I ♥ Filipino food, so who knows, maybe I'll give this (and tapioca, eek) a shot sometime.

Also among the Google results: "Did you mean: yautia recipe"

Turns out that yes, yes I did mean "yautia recipe." Where the heck was that six months ago?!? Next time I get a bug to buy it, I know where to find recipes.

Except that I ended up switching back to the other supermarket.

Tomato blight? Not in my backyard.

A horticultural pandemic is sweeping the Northeast.

Late blight, the same fungus that killed three-quarters of Ireland's potato crop in 1846, has taken a severe toll on tomato plants around New York. It's been confirmed in 30 or so of the state's 60ish counties, and Margaret McGrath (a Cornell vegetable epidemiologist) said on today's Brian Lehrer show that plant authorities simply haven't checked the remaining counties.

The fungus is highly contagious, and this spread is starting mainly in backyard gardens. Most outlets are saying that the main source of the blight in the Northeast is plants from big-box stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's. One supplier in the southeastern United States seems to be at the root (no pun intended) of this outbreak. The supplier, Bonnie Plants, says it isn't to blame and that its plants were somehow affected along the supply chain... To the company's credit, they've aggressively worked on recalling all of their plants.

Yellow leaf? yes. Telltale fuzzy spores? No.

Cherry tomatoes. Yum.

Sure, my plants have yellowing and even browning leaves. But that likely has more to do with the nearly nonstop rain this summer, and the fact that a fairly big plant is in a fairly small pot. Are our plants faring better — they're not dropping dead, at least — because we bought them from a local greenhouse? It's possible that quality control is easier when the production scale is smaller. I wonder what, if anything, the GMO-ness of our tomatoes has to do with their hardiness.

Here is McGrath's Cornell blog.


The one on the left was ripe enough a couple days after this was shot.

During the cage installation, three tomatoes fell off of the big plant; we kept them outside anyway. Today I ate one; half of it was good. (The other half was a bit more mealy than I'd have liked.) We've eaten several of the cherry tomatoes, and they've been great.

Last September, I took an incredible daylong class at the Culinary Institute of America right up the road in Hyde Park titled "Taste of the Hudson Valley." It was more than a Millbrook Winery this, Sprout Creek Farm that, Stone Barns blah blah. It delved deeply into food as politics; more deeply than many of the participants were comfortable, I imagine.

Among the hottest topics were the buzzwords "local" and "sustainable." Late blight appears to be neither. Although produce with either of those labels is often more expensive, it seems to be worth it, so far. Does produce come more locally than from my back deck (not that I have a front deck)? I'm still in my first season as a wannabe farmer, so I'm not sure how sustainable this endeavor will be.

The class' instructor reminded us that we vote with our dollars. And it's a deeply personal, and political, decision to just say "no" to big agribusiness. Now, I'll be the first one to admit that I buy the majority of my fruits and vegetables at the local supermarket, but the transition to local/fresh/sustainable feels pretty good. I've been hitting up two local (haha, I had to throw that in) farmers markets and loving what I've come home with.

It's also really cool to me to be able to have a conversation with the person who actually is doing the growing. Maybe I just like to talk; maybe the investment and exchange of ideas appeals to me. But after last Thursday's trip to the Fishkill market, I realized that nowhere else would someone have offered me a plum, even while I was checking out the blueberries. Nowhere else would someone have jogged across a parking lot to tell me I had money hanging out of my back pocket. Nowhere else would a farmer give me advice on what to do with my own fennel, as I wasn't buying hers...

I think I'll go back and see them again tomorrow.

Dinnertime...

I made this killer sandwich before I left the apartment today. Multigrain bread from the farmers market, hummus, veggie cream cheese, avocado (just a teensy bit overripe), ripe tomatoes, sharp white cheddar, lettuce, and leftover tuna that B was brilliant enough to put capers in.

Some of that spicy cranberry mustard that's hanging around in the fridge woulda been good, too.

It was warm and kind of smoggy today, so I just wanted fresh flavors, you know? I ate an apricot on the way to work, and a juicy white nectarine once I arrived at 4. By 5, I'd eaten the sandwich. It's freezing cold in the office. So, as usual, despite my best intentions, the dinner order came a-calling...

You know how when you're cold, you want hearty, fortifying foods? It could be 100 degrees outside, and if I'm at work, I'll be craving chili and cornbread because of the office's sub-Arctic temperatures.

So tonight, colleague E and I spearheaded an order effort from Ambadi, a White Plains takeout spot. It's nice to get out of the Mexican/ribs/Chinese/Uno's/any-of-several-Italian-places rotation. From the write-up the paper gave it upon its September 2004 opening:
The restaurant, which is named for the birthplace of Krishna, is a modern take on Indian, and offers small plates of street food like Bombay chaat, samosas, tandoori and korna.

I'm not sure what "korna" is... but I hope the chicken korma ordered by a co-worker turns out tasty. (This reminds me of how much I miss food editing. Sigh.)

an appetizer called samosa chaat, which reminds me an awful lot of something else, called kosta kachori.

vegetable biriyani

Hi there

Has it really been more than two months since I've trolled around here?

I've got no excuse, I suppose. Have had a to-do list as long as I am tall, but who doesn't, really? I got some big items checked off of it over the past few days, which feels good, but that doesn't write blog posts, now does it? Even when blog-writing has been on said to-do list, it still hasn't happened. To my blogging friends: How do you keep it up? Do you write whenever you're inspired? Adhere to a schedule? I need to figure out how to do this on a regular, disciplined basis, despite the pushes and pulls of everyday life.

Maybe my barrier has been one of opportunity. I've been getting outside, hiking with my puppy a lot more than I thought. Despite this summer's torrential downpours, Leo and I have had a great time. Many of the excursions have been marked with opportunities for urban foraging: mulberry trees everywhere, from a branch inching toward my bedroom window, to berry-laden fronds hanging over a trail near where we climb, to another path at Dennings Point. There's even a white varietal a few blocks over.

There are wild black raspberries growing everywhere, too: along just about every trail I hike on, including both of the aforementioned trails. On windy country roads near B's parents' house, even in their yard. I've seen wild strawberries around Dennings Point, with hypersaturated red berries. A few weeks ago, B, Leo, and I were making our way around the Beacon Reservoir and spotted blueberry bushes. Along the fence bordering our landlord's property, blackberries are peeking out from among the overgrown vines. This is stunning...

Maybe the next time I head out (tomorrow?), I'll remember to bring a clean container for collecting. Recipes like this one, for rosemary ice cream with mulberries (the same dappled ones I've seen more of recently), have inspired me to do something with the mulberries before it's too late. I'm new to this gardening stuff, and newish to the Northeast, and totally new to making ice cream (that one time in preschool where we shook some container of something does not count), and I have no idea when "mulberry season" is over, so I guess I better get on this.


Late-spring dinner. Fiddlehead ferns sauteed with shallots, butter and some lemon juice (thanks, Lesli, for the prep idea). Garlic mashed potatoes, half-sweet and half-red. Thyme-poached salmon (thyme from my pots!) with a random concoction of a yogurt-sour cream sauce with tarragon (tarragon from my pots!).

I've still been cooking up a storm — fiddlehead ferns have been among the more unusual ingredients around the kitchen. There's a nascent container garden on my deck, too: fennel, onions, rosemary, lavender, basil, parsley, tarragon, lettuces, red and green bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, three kinds of tomatoes (small, medium and large), chocolate mint, thyme, broccoli, and collard greens. The photo above is from May 13...

From around the same time, here's a view of Leo in the "garden," before seedlings and starters from Adams were even potted:


I took new pictures today, and can't wait to put them up for comparison.

The lettuces in the pot right now aren't doing so hot, so I bought some seeds, which I need to start. It rained for a month straight starting around Memorial Day, but we've had some hot, sunny days in the past week so I hope the plants start really growing. But not like the lettuce and basil that bolted. Still not sure what to do about those.

I see things every day and think of content I'd love to write about, but never get around to it. Among those items: my newfound love of kimchi, this article from the NYT, how much I miss food editing, and my summer food love adventures... all of it TK, as we say in the biz. Which reminds me - also TK was more info on the tubers... Did I ever finish that? No? Well, that also is TK.