9.7.10
photos by george billard
How I’ve missed you! Though the time seems to have passed in the blink of an eye. Sadly, I never made it back to the hammock. This has been one of the busiest summers on record for me. I’ve been working non-stop for weeks but I’m not going to bore you with my whining. I feel lucky to have so many great projects. And you? Did you laze about reading novels and popping ripe berries into your mouth? At least for a few days? I hope so. Herewith, a few highlights from the past six weeks, some of which I’ll expound upon in greater detail in the days to come.
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8.2.10
I’LL BE BACK AFTER LABOR DAY!! I’m taking a little time off from the blog. Time to relax and recharge. I hope you won’t feel I’ve abandoned you. I love sharing my adventures in and out of the kitchen with you. Even though you’re not a very vocal bunch, I know that on some days there are actually a couple hundred of you out there, and I’m counting on all of you to come back in September—and bring some friends with you! Going forward, I’m going to try to diversify a little bit; my original intention had been to blog about more than just cooking and food. I’m still planning to conquer sourdough bread, perfect a tomato aspic and write a big-picture treatise on creating the ultimate well-stocked pantry, but I hope to begin a new series of interviews with inspiring people and also share the saga of building our dream home. For now, for these dog days, I’ll be lounging in the hammock, working on my novel and soaking up the summertime. Before I go, I’ll leave you with a few suggestions…
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8.1.10
photo by george billard
The fruits of one’s own garden just seem to taste sweeter. Our first patty pan squash, Japanese eggplants and scallions went on the grill, along with red carrots and sweet onions from the farm. With a radicchio salad in a creamy dressing, that was all we needed for dinner the other night. I made a dipping sauce for the vegetables with an earthy red miso and it truly was perfection. A grill can really change the way you eat, especially if you live in LA or some other temperate climate. As irresistible as that charred flavor can be, I want you to be aware that too much blackened food is not good for you. Burning food produces a group of substances (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) that are associated with cancer, cardiovascular toxicity and immune system suppression, among other adverse effects. So avoid extreme charring of your food, and don’t eat from the grill every day. Moderation really is the key. (Except when it comes to exercise, of course.) But don’t despair! You can use you grill to cook in a number of ways that don’t involve charring but still infuse your food with that delicious smoky flavor. Low and slow, as in our pulled pork for instance, or indirect cooking, which really is the best way to do chicken or other foods that tend to burn quickly. Read the rest of this entry »
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7.26.10
photos by gluttonforlife
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome The Vegetables—making their first public appearance, still dewy and radiating the blush of youth! All the months of labor are paying off. The convergence of so many elements—sun, rain, nitrogen, compost, vigilance, love—has worked its wonderful alchemy. In a beautiful act of symmetry that I find rather awesome, the fruits of our toil go back into our bodies. I hope you enjoy this little photo gallery of vegetable portraits.
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7.22.10
roger tory peterson and a young osprey photo by alfred eisenstaedt
I had my first guest-post on a kindred spirit’s blog this week. The visionary Peter Buchanan-Smith honored me with a feature on his fascinating blog, Best Made Projects. We share an interest in the natural world, so when he asked me to review a field guide, I chose one by the naturalist and early environmentalist Roger Tory Peterson (seen above holding a movie camera mounted on a gun stock). Peter has kindly allowed me to re-post my review in its entirety here.
FIELDING QUESTIONS: A Review of Roger Tory Peterson Field Guides – Eastern Forests
Returning home to Sullivan County from the stinky summer streets of New York City brings a surge of relief and gratitude: the cool night air filled with the rustle of leaves and the throbbing drone of cicadas is a tonic. The woods I now call home are not the same as those I grew up with in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. Fog-shrouded sequoias and wild surf are here replaced with blazing summers and snowy winters among the hawthorn, hickory, maple and pine. The Steller’s jay of my youth is now the equally brazen blue jay of my mid-life. The fence around our small property does little to keep out all the critters that also live here, and long rambles on our kind neighbor’s thousand acres have led to countless discoveries, animal, mineral and botanical.
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7.7.10
photos by george billard
Meet lovage (Levisticum officinale), known to the French as céleri bâtarde, or fake celery. It really is like celery but without the stalk; its lush leaves have a very similar green, herby, slightly salty flavor. Since it’s considered a “magic bullet” companion plant—one that improves the health of all surrounding plants—it always has pride of place in our vegetable garden. It’s second only to capers in its concentration of quercetin, a plant-derived flavonoid that has anti-infammatory and antioxidant properties. The Greeks and Romans chewed lovage seeds to aid digestion and, perhaps because of its name, lovage has been used in tonics and potions to conjure up true love. An infusion of the seeds is said to to erase freckles, although it may also cause photosensitivity. The plant grows easily and quickly; pinch it back to make it bushier and to deter the flower spikes. Once they start showing, the flavor becomes quite strong. Use the leaves to make a compound butter, in soups and stocks or, our favorite way, in a simple syrup. This is ideal for cocktails or simply mixed in with sparkling water for a refreshing summer drink. Read the rest of this entry »
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6.25.10
photos by george billard
By some miracle, I think all our landscaping will be complete by the time guests arrive for our annual 4th of July bash! A lot of planning and hard work went into a series of new stone paths that divide up our little property into new beds for planting. We also added a second, fenced-in raised bed for more vegetables; it encloses my medicinal herbs as well (angelica, lady’s mantle, borage, bee balm, catnip, anise hyssop, rosemary, lavender) which were rabbit fodder last year. We are so happy to have found Mike D. from Catskill Native Nursery in Kerhonkson to oversee the design and installation of a gorgeous selection of native plants that have already brought us more bees, butterflies and birds. Some highlights: a berry patch with raspberries, blueberries, elderberries, gooseberries and red and black currants; honeysuckle; aromatic sumac; native grasses; a bed of sunflowers; wild roses. As things settle in and spread out, I’ll get G to take more photos, but just wanted you to see the work in progress.
new front paths
front plantings
Mike D. surveying his handiwork
getting started on the back (note just one raised bed)
new paths in back
second raised bed
G’s tomatoes staked in new raised bed
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6.23.10
the house site (photos by george billard)
We’re seriously considering buying this piece of land that was brought to our attention by a guardian angel up here in Sullivan County. The idea would be to build our dream house on it one day. It’s a nice-sized 5-acre lot that starts with a gorgeous meadow and rolls down a hill to a breathtaking reservoir. The best thing is that across the reservoir is all state-owned land that is a protected sanctuary for the bald eagle. We put the canoe in there the other day and it’s absolutely stunning. The prospect of being able to live in such a place seems almost too good to be true.
So you can imagine how my heart broke when I watched Josh Fox’s gripping documentary, Gasland, on HBO the other night. It was a hit at Sundance and I imagine it will get theatrical distribution at some point, but I urge you to see it now; you can watch it on HBO On Demand. Hot, bitter tears rolled down my cheeks during most of the film, which is about fracking—the hydraulic fracturing process that is being used to free up natural gas from within vast shale deposits. Natural gas is being touted as the ideal “transition” fuel that will take us away from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy sources. In fact, this extraction method is entirely unregulated, thanks to a loophole created by Dick Cheney, that evil and calculating sonofabitch. He even convinced the Bureau of Land Management, an agency that is supposed to look after 264 million acres of pristine public land—that’s OUR land—to allow drilling.
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6.17.10
photos by george billard
Rhubarb abounds at the moment. Driving along the little country roads out here, you see many a luxuriant patch with broad, lofty, ruffly green leaves and the occasional gorgeous flower soaring above. The markets are full of the celery-like stalks in shades that range from rose to raspberry. I’d been feeling a tad deficient for having produced such adamantly green rhubarb, but then I looked up the variety we planted and it turns out Victoria rhubarb is meant to be green! Naturally, it’s not the one most commercially favored, since everyone is attracted to the gaudy red stuff, but I’m now quite proud of my green stalks with the discreet hint of pink at the very base. It tastes just as wonderful, and I find the color makes a lovely counterpoint to the vivid strawberries with which it’s so often paired. Food52 continues to be an inspiration (even though my strawberry-fennel ice cream, nominated last week, did not win—#$@$%#!), and I think you’ll love this simple but flavorful poached rhubarb that I’ve topped with strawberry preserves that deliver a bit of heat. Make it now, before all that beautiful red (or green) rhubarb has seen its best days.
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6.7.10
I’ve always been into birds. Where I grew up, in Santa Cruz, California, we had lots of bossy Stellar blue jays, noisy woodpeckers, seagulls, and hummingbirds that drank from our bottlebrush bushes. But I developed a great passion for spotting birds when we were in India. Gliding along the backwaters of Kerala in the South, binoculars glued to my face, I saw some truly exotic beauties—tiny, vividly colored kingfishers, long-legged herons, split-tailed drongos—and I was hooked! My girlfriend Lisa and I even kept a list of our sightings. It was truly a thrill to watch it grow. With the advent of spring, and G’s frequent replenishment of our feeders, our yard is full of bluejays, mourning doves (I adore their sorrowful coos), waxwings, red-breasted robins and lots of other little brown birds I have yet to identify. And on our forays beyond, we’ve encountered many others, such as the enormous turkey vulture, above. The fringe-like quality of its wings makes it easily identifiable, and they’re often circling in groups of three or four. This weekend we saw one hunched over a dead deer at the side of the road. They’re rather ugly, these carrion-eaters, and yet they have their place in the cycle. Read the rest of this entry »
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