The Proper Binge

The unbelievably awesome bounty of my Shared Harvest Winter CSA: Read below!

It's a fantastic fall harvest, certainly welcome after a summer full of what seemed to us more than the usual challenges! We're especially pleased with the onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, fall greens and leeks - all very nice. Enjoy the harvest!Here's a list of what is in your share...

Celery, a bunch

Kohlrabi, one

Leeks, a bunch

Potatoes, 6 pounds of "Sangre" reds. 

Onions, 2 pounds of reds and 2 pounds of yellows

Beets, 2 pounds.

Winter squash, 2 delicatas and two acorns

(2 small) Pie pumpkin "New England pie"

Savoy cabbage, one. A versatile, tasty cabbage

Salad (Japanese? Hakurei?) turnips, a bunch

Parsley, a bunch

Sweet potatoes, 4 1/2 pounds

Daikon, a bunch

Fennel, a bulb or two

Sweet peppers, a handful

Hot peppers, take what you'd like

Lettuce, two heads of Summer Crisp variety "Magenta"

Kale, a bunch of winterbor

Carrots, 4 pounds

Broccoli and/or Cauliflower, 2 heads

A pound of Baer's Best Beans (Otebo)

Ten pounds of apples from Cider Hill Farm are also included this month. Apples varieties include Empire, Mutsu, Melrouge, Carosel, Braeburn, Gala and Jonagold.

via sharedharvestcsa.blogspot.com

Wow, I couldn't believe my eyes when I peeked into the two chock-full boxes I picked up at Busa Farms this rainy afternoon! The cost of the share- $240 for 3 pick-ups of about 38-40lbs of produce- is just about the best money I've ever spent on food. My fridge is stuffed to the gills, and I've created a dark and cool little "root cellar" in my back stairwell. I'm proud to be so well-stocked with beautiful and delicious local goods all winter long.

The flavor of the celery alone would make you swoon! The crispness of a fresh-dug onion is incomparable. The toothsome leaves of the red-headed lettuce did not wilt and wither under the mustardy vinaigrette. And kohlrabi...well, that will be an adventure!

Quickie: Now this is an interesting idea...

via bamcsa.ning.com

I happened upon this Bay Area CSA organization via the always wonderful and brilliant GOOD magazine; they were featured in the GOOD 100, hurray for them!

Opportunities to join local meat CSAs* here in Massachusetts seem to keep popping up, but we're lacking (to my immediate knowledge) a cohesive network to connect individuals who would be interested in going whole hog, so to speak.

These guys at Meatshare.org cleverly leveraged Ning, the DIY social network platform that admittedly I'm not too familiar with to create an online homebase where individuals in some local proximity could sync up with one another and coordinate to collectively purchase a cow, pig or sheep direct from a local producer. After it's been raised healthfully and sustainably, the meat is processed locally according to regulation. The meat-share group then divvies up the cuts amongst themselves however they see fit.

To be fair, I believe that there is a significant amount more information and detail necessary to understand what it takes to build and commit to a relationship with a meat producer. Building the social network, however, seems reasonably accomplishable, if you already know that the need and interest exists. So I'm going to poke around and explore how Ning works, and how Meatshare developed their model, and then I'll report back. I don't know who might be reading this, but if this sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, please drop a line in the comments.

In the meantime, here are some local (MA) meat CSAs.

Let me know if I've missed any:

Stillman's

Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds

Chestnut Farms

Quickie: Added to my winter reading list

A Nation of Farmers was written by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton and will be published in the Spring of 2009 by New Society Publishers. It explores the limits and dangers of our globalized and industrialized food system, and argues that the food crisis is a direct result of our current food system. It predicts increasing hunger - the starvation of tens of millions in the poor world and more and more hungry Americans desperately trying to keep fed - unless we radically re-envision our food system. The book provides guidelines to keep us from that dark future, by bringing more and more ordinary people to the table, and helping them take their place in the most basic of human projects - self-provisioning. We argue that not just our need for food, but our hope of a democratic society rests on the transformation of our agriculture and our dinner plates.

via anationoffarmers.com

This is the point that really compels me:
“We have, in only 60 years, gone from a people who could supply our own needs to being the most dependent people in American history."
Now, let's be clear. I'm not suggesting that everyone drop what they're doing, pick up a pitchfork and become a homesteader. But what concerns me (I suspect this will axe will be getting a lot of grinding) is that not only are we are becoming more and more disconnected from the sources of our food, even the idea of "from scratch" seems so quaint it's precipitously close to joining its brethren "natural" and "homemade" in the march toward commodification.
Beyond locavorism, slow food and urban homesteading, I'm curious to learn what the authors will proffer as practical ways for everyone- and I mean EVERYONE- to take steps toward a real food system transformation. And, of course, to get them to care about it in the first place.

A chicken in every pot, and other weekend culinary ventures

This unseasonably cold weather (snow? really?) has got me in the mood for keeping my oven occupied and my stove on fire (so to speak) over the weekend. I've been doing a lot of thinking about food over the past few days, and helping a friend plan what promises to be a lush seasonal dinner party menu has kicked me into gear to put thought into action and get cookin'...On my mind:

- Heading out to an orchard (finally, and undeterred by rain and a sneaking suspicion of imminent under-the-weatheriness) to load up on the remains of summer produce hanging on for dear life. Maybe there'll still be some tomatoes for sauce and salsa-making and I've seen lots of pretty peppers for jelly, too. Then, of course, apples galore. I'm hoping to put up some apple sauce and I'm thinking some spiced apples in cider or wine would be nice to have on hand, too.

- Slow-braising a big ol' piece of meat into luscious, rich submission. Coaxing out those deep, rustic flavors with wine and roots and herbs. Oh yes! And what the heck, maybe a roast chicken while I'm at it.

- A batch or two of pizza dough, just to have around. And some pumpkin-flaxseed muffins for breakfast next week.

And wine. I think I'd like to curl up under my faux-furry blanket with Ruhlman's Ratio and some Pinot.

Quickie: Junk food in the neighborhood subverting reforms in the cafeteria

Study Shows a Little Money Buys a Lot of Calories at City Corner Stores. Fifty-three percent of kids surveyed visited a corner store daily, five days per week; Chips and candy top the list of items purchased, but efforts are being made to increase healthy options.

via www.rwjf.org

    While I have a lot of faith in the necessarily relentless pursuit of school lunch reform, things get a lot stickier when kids are armed with pocket money (or more likely, lunch money pocketed when chicken nuggets have been replaced with couscous and veggies) to spend for an after school snack.

    Affording indulgences is part and parcel of a balanced diet, providing that the scales are tipped in favor of whole, fresh, unprocessed foods. Sure, asking that local shops stock their shelves with fruits, nuts and yogurt (all of which can be found- perhaps gathering dust- at just about any convenience store) won't hurt, but offering an alternative is only half the battle.   

    Evaluating choices is the everyday business of growing up (and being a grown up). Kids already know that eating an apple is obviously "better" than eating a bag of Doritos. Education will hopefully give them answers as to why. What I'm wondering is how we can arm them with the motivation to choose the apple?

    Admittedly it feels trite to say so, but leading by example would seem to be the best defense. We need to demonstrate healthy attitudes towards eating by making smart choices ourselves, and the smartest choice we can make is to cook. I don't want to get all Alice Waters here, but the closer and more connected you are to what you eat, the more the pleasure of food extends beyond the eating itself.

    Cooking becomes science and art and magic as you assume the role of creator- "Wow! I made that!" Ownership of the product makes choosing a no-brainer. Every opportunity we can take to invite kids in the kitchen (at home, in school, in programs) to mix, to knead, to taste, to make a bit of a mess is setting a quiet but solid foundation for making good choices whenever and wherever they will confront them. I guarantee that the homemade cookie or the apple picked on the trip to the orchard will beat Doritos just about about every time.

I just want to make one note in closure: I am neither a parent nor an educator at the moment, but that shouldn't matter. Our responsibility is shared if our care and concern is genuine.

Quickie: Great quote from NYT article on Jamie Oliver

A timeout here for self-anointed Health Nazis. Oliver cooks and eats all kinds of meat and feels free to use butter, cream and cheese, in sane amounts. He is not a diet cop; he’s about scratch cooking, which to him means avoiding processed and fast food, learning pride of ownership, encouraging sparks of creativity and finding a reason to gather family and friends in one place. If you can make pancakes or an omelet, a pot of chili or spaghetti sauce and know how to perk up some vegetables, you can spend less and eat a more healthful meal that’s delicious.

via www.nytimes.com

This is the best summary of a healthy food attitude and philosophy that I've seen in a long time. Time to spread the word, one kitchen at a time.

Sure, my pizza is a cliche. A delicious, delicious cliche...and other food musing from the weekend

When the chips are down in other areas of fulfillment, food assumes the mantle of my muse on a more full-time basis. Life in the digital realm, save for my recent romance with Twitter (Seriously, people. Twitter is changing the way we create, consume and share information in a major, major way. Get familiar. I won't go into it here, you can just trust me. I'm an Internet professional.) has been, shall we say, less than engaging.

Of course, it's more than just work angst that sends me to the solace of my kitchen. With the farmer's markets now featuring mountains of squash and potatoes, I'm inspired to capture what remains of the summer bounty- Carpe Tomatoes! (er, Lycopersicon Esculentum, that is), my latest undertaking being of the Food in Jars variety. Recent conquests have included putting up some pickled green tomatoes from my friends' garden overflow, some of my favorite bread and butter pickle chips, and 8 quarts of heirloom tomatoes. Today, I am obsessing over working out a red pepper jelly recipe, as I just grabbed a few pounds of handsome field peppers from Wilson Farms in Lexington, and similarly, am hoping to try my hand at some preserves from the last of the season's peaches.

The crisp edge in the air is also a pretty good excuse to crank up the oven, as I have begun to over the past week or so. Knowing that I'd stashed a Whole Foods whole wheat/multigrain pizza dough in the freezer, I was inspired to give in to my desire for a basket of luscious fresh figs to put together an arugula, fig, prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella pizza. Here's how it looked before I put it in the oven:

Nouveau pizza it may have been, but it was pretty yummy. It's hard to resist that magical combination of flavors. Then, yesterday, with my parents popping in for a brunch on their way from Vermont to Connecticut, I threw together this quick crustless mushroom, leek and potato quiche, the rest of which I will continue to enjoy for lunch this week:

And then, alas, there are apples. We had grand plans to visit Tougas Farm on Saturday, but the rain got in the way. Still, there are a few bushels of apples out there with my name on 'em. Beyond the obvious apple-a-day crunchfest (Hello, Macintosh!), there'll be some tarte tatin making and more putting up: apple sauce and apple butter at a minimum. I'm excited to learn that the first share of my Winter CSA will purportedly include apples, too.

I can't help myself. Food enriches me. Cooking engrosses me. Enjoying the product is invigorating; not for the praise, but for the moment of a shared experience. The brains/hands/heart process is soul-satisfying in a way that monkeying around behind a computer screen will assuredly never be, this blog and these little iPhone pix being as close we can get...for now. Augmented reality*, anyone?

*Yeah, this is really a thing. And not just a thing of the future, it's a thing of...now. You can read about it here if you want, or you can just trust me. I'm an Internet professional.

Bean + green soup: a go-to recipe without actually being a recipe

Everyone has at least one go-to dish that they make over and over, yet somehow it never ends up being the same thing twice. Soup, in general, is sort of like that, a kind of cooking without borders, its endless variability inherent. Don't get me wrong here. While one of the best things about making soup is the affordance of stretching a little into a lot, the quintessential peasant food, a soup may be as refined as it is rustic. Each ingredient has a distinct job to do in flavor, texture, or nuance. Poetic, ain't it?

My go-to soup is always some variation on beans and greens. Talk about endless possibilities! Shall I rhapsodize on leafy greens here? Escarole! Mustard! Kale, be ye purple, curly or dinosaur-y, I love you all! Oh Chard, I swoon for your stems of pink, gold and orange. Ahem. Compose yourself. As for beans, the creamier the better. Cannelini almost always make the cut, but I'm really excited to get familiar with some interesting varieties of heirloom beans. 

Beyond the beans and greens, however, anything goes. Well, almost anything.Let's get one thing straight here. You probably already know this, but I still think it's worth mentioning. Every soup- EVERY SOUP starts with a mirepoix, or whatever your culture* calls its blessed base of aromatics (carrots, celery, onions, Amen) softened in a fat of your choosing. I often toss a little diced garlic and/or fennel in there if I'm feeling randy, but this is as wild as it gets at this stage of the game. Nothing, by the way, beats the scent of a mirepoix sauteeing in some butter. I would make a perfume out of this if I could. You probably could. Once, I made a tomato-basil perfume, and it was magical. I digress.

Once I've got my mirepoix veggies softened up, I like to add in whatever herb component I'm going to use. Rosemary, thyme and oregano are a pretty safe bet, because I always have them around. I also like to add my first pass of salt here. I have this theory, grounded in no empirical knowledge whatsoever that a well-seasoned soup (or sauce or stew) starts from the ground up, layering in the flavor. However, if you're going to use any wine in your recipe, you'll want to deglaze any nice browned bits of veggie before adding in the herbs and such, to make sure the alcohol cooks off, and the liquid is more or less evaporated. Once that's all taken care of, I'll add in a thickening agent of some sort, usually a tablespoon full or so of tomato paste, or Wondra flour for a creamy soup.Get that all mixed up in there, spreading the love all around to coat the veggies, and to let the flavor mellow a bit.In terms of soup-making, that's all you really need to know. You can take it any which way you please from there, adding this and that, maybe giving it a go-round with the old immersion blender. Just keep in mind the relative cooking times of what you toss in there, like adding in some pasta and letting things simmer awhile, then stirring in your greens at the end, so they still have some vitamin and minerally goodness left in them.

To me, a bowl of soup is a no-brainer for a really nutritious meal, dense with a variety of veggies, some protein-packed beans, and maybe a pasta or a grain, all with a typically limited amount of fat. For finishing touches, sometimes I'll swirl in some homemade pesto-like creation, with basil or arugula or who knows what. A little shave of Parmesan on top, the end.

Honestly, I really didn't intend to go into a whole article or essay here. I had merely wanted to say hey, check out this delicious and simple soup I made the other night; try it, you'll like it. But I couldn't help myself, even if I'm largely preaching to the choir here...and assuming, for that matter that there even is a choir! One of the things about blogging, or starting up one's blog again is that there aren't any rules about structure, or expectations of format or style. If there's going to be, then it's going to emerge organically. I can't decide all that now. I can only know the basics of where to start; the variations are endless.
Here's what was in the soup I made the other day- a riff on the Tuscan Ribollita:(The ingredients are listed in the order I added them to the pot.)
- Carrot, celery, onion, garlic mirepoix (from 1 of each vegetable, 2 cloves of garlic) plus the diced chard stems
- 1tbsp-ish of tomato paste- 2 tbsp combined chopped fresh thyme, oregano, rosemary- 1 can of Cannelini, with their juices- 1 quart of chicken broth (until I start roasting some chickens, I use the Whole Foods Organic Low-Sodium variety) plus 4 cups of water- 1 cup of orzo- 2 bunches of Swiss Chard, leaves cut into ribbonsSimmered the whole thing maybe 10-15 minutes before adding in the chard; simmered another 5-7minute before ladling myself a big bowl for dinner.
*We can talk about sofrito, and other variations on this theme some other time. You get the point.