Imagining orange and purple cauliflower I found at Union Square Greenmarket swirling in a soup, I then found crosnes—small, white tubers from the mint family—that resemble tiny Michelin men. Sneaking one at the stand, I decided these were the crisp surprise topping for a salad.

Before the sun rose on Thursday, with one oven to work with, I prepped dishes on the stove while rotating pans in an out of the oven.

Grateful to an oven that hummed away at a consistent temperature, my proudest moment came stirring homemade buttermilk and homemade butter into smashed Adirondack potatoes from Evolutionary Organics, their blue and dark pink skins tingeing the bowl.

With the kitchen smelling of spices, I set the table, placing vintage glasses around the kale centerpiece from the Prospect Park market and carefully lining up my great-great grandmother’s silver.

The amazing Solana arrived to apply her ninja skills to peeling carrots and final prep, then Jessica brought her incredible energy and her boyfriend Matthew (he’s lovely) into the apartment, and a little later, Jenne carried fabulous in with a chocolate mousse cake and killer bangs.

(I should also mention that Solana has a gift for texting—see our text exchange that morning below.)

Solana: I’m going to dress like a pilgrim today. Or an Indian.

me: AWESOME.

S: That means you have to dress like a turkey because there are no other characters left.

me: I promise to wear feathers.

S: Ooh feathers.

Solana did indeed rock Pilgrimesque style, competing with the quince on the table for Most Traditional Dress.

Toasting with cava, we started in the kitchen with silver lusterware bowls; Jessica bravely poured orange at the same time I poured purple, and filling the bowls from both sides, we used the oven thermometer as a wand to swirl the recipient’s initials into each vessel of cauliflower (next year, crunch from croutons of some sort will return).

Next, all of the salad in a large white bowl made me happy as I set it on the table—those tiny lettuces and radishes from my expedition to Rooftop Farms mixed with Patches of Star’s goat cheese (she sells at Union Square Greenmarket) and the strange and wonderful crosnes.

One of the nicest parts of Thanksgiving with friends is the casual way you can set out the many bowls and pans of carrots with a pesto of their tops, smashed potatoes, mustardy peas and pearl onions, and roasted brussel sprouts and fennel.

We all agreed that Matthew did an admirable carving of the DiPaolo turkey (I highly recommend them—they are a fixture at the Prospect Park Farmers’ Market on Saturdays), but the real focus was Thomas Keller’s leek bread pudding (I subbed a fennel-parmesan loaf from Brooklyn Larder in for brioche).

And we went back for second plates,

and I felt grateful for these friends to celebrate with as the afternoon light filtered in.

Laughing, we put an embarrassment of rich desserts on the den floor and opened more red wine (everyone pictured here has excellent taste in wine—Matthew’s “Carpe Diem” was my favorite label),

Jenne’s chocolate mousse cake, Jessica and Matthew’s pecan pie, pumpkin bread in the center with Patches of Star goat yogurt, chocolate squares with pistachios and prunes, and croissant pudding made for lazy conversation as we sat in a circle and talked and ate and talked.

Yesterday afternoon, I made a tall sandwich with the leftovers that keep on giving,

and the fennel-parmesan bread slices spread with chicken liver pâté on one side and carrot top pesto on the other, with turkey, skin, cranberry sauce, and roasted fennel between stood as a reminder of how very fortunate I am to have these friends in my life, these ingredients where I live, and small remaining portions of each dish still in the refrigerator…

Related posts:

1. a dinner party built for ten
2. a belated post on thanksgiving
3. the beauty of leftovers

And so began five food-filled days in Southern California as I relaxed into the sound of the ocean you can hear softly from Laura’s apartment. We both look for food preparations to adapt to a home kitchen, and this Turkish squash had a beautiful savory hit of rosemary and crunch of salt.

We headed from our early lunch into the AFI DigiFest in Los Angeles to see public and private media collaborate on mobile applications, low-budget production, and short content. And later that night, I presented to the estimable Dr. Ben Bateman’s class at Cal State LA on online identity, representation, and asymmetry.

The next day, Laura and I walked the Venice boardwalk, watching the skaters and those aspiring to be skaters,

spying someone who might be part of the nearby Cirque show practicing on the rings,

on our way to tapas and the shops of Santa Monica. With very different orders at Bar Pintxo, I ordered classic wrapped dates, pine nuts in wilted spinach, and crab ringed in salmon and roe,

while Laura started with a pumpkin-apple soup,

and then a tossed Niçoise salad (that we’ll both recreate, as I find composed salads tedious and this clever version piqued my interest).

On the way back, we passed the Santa Monica Community Garden (more on that next time I visit),

just in time for the sunset.

(Later, we went with Laura’s friend (and now mine) LJ to The Foundry on Melrose, where they serve extraordinarily large scallops on the tasting menu.)

….

The Venice Farmers’ Market makes for a nice Friday tradition, with the sprouts you expect,

the Asian date called jujube fruit, you do not,

and then, the baby bok choy that inspired dinner for seven,

that combined with beautiful mushrooms from an inspiring and civically-engaged forager for a rice dish made perfect by Dr. Bateman’s (it’s too much fun not to include the title, Ben) punctilious rice technique and by conversation in the kitchen spanning wigs, karaoke, and terrible dancers before the dinner party progressed through Venice’s First Friday galleries.

Before all of that, though, there was a bouquet with eucalyptus,

and a surprise tour of secret Venice. Laura explains:

A tour complete with wildlife and speckled flowers, of course.

On to hipster Silverlake, we spotted Chloë Sevigny in hush puppies (yes, we groaned) while engrossed with burgers at The Local—this is their pork burger and special sauce of roasted chiles.

The requisite celebrity sighting complete, we traced the Silverlake Fallen Fruit Map to find oranges, limes,

a golden couch on the side of the street,

and a pomegranate tree that wowed us.

I had no idea that pomegranates begin like Dr. Seuss blossoms.

….

Recovering from Friday’s adventures, we began Saturday with a hearty brunch (steak was appropriate as Laura is soon to vacation in Argentina),

and we wandered the Venice vintage troves (ask me about trying on a diaper dress sometime), then took in the Pacific Coast Highway on our way to Malibu’s Sip, the wine tasting room for Cielo Vineyards:

Meeting new people from old places we have lived, we sat around the fire pit as the sun sank,

and decided fried seafood at Neptune’s Net biker bar was in order (listen to what our research uncovered their chowder is as good as) before discovering why men stare at goats:

I walked more slowly to the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market on Sunday morning as if to prolong my last day in Southern California, and just past the circling ponies,

there were persimmons, pomegranates, and dragon fruit,

bundles of herbs,

carrots and parsnips,

dried plums,

and yielding Halawy dates that I am portioning out, a few a day. We resisted the large pancakes,

to order savory crêpes from a line with fascinating rhythm,

and I boarded the plane that afternoon, shaking the sand out of my shoes, wondering what the next adventure with Laura will hold…

More pictures of our adventures in the Flickr set.

Related posts:

1. the secret life of foodpaths (my ars electronica presentation)
2. two if by ocean
3. artichokes, breaded and trimmed

Just before I left for Linz a few weeks ago, my wonderful friend Mike of RoadTrip Nation was in town, and since Roadtrip Nation puts college students on the road to meet their heroes, I thought it appropriate we swing by the mobile @waffletruck (Mike’s naturally infectious energy was heightened by the sugar and the possibilities of the food truck movement) on our way to a house party on an actual back patio in Manhattan (seems they do exist).

Now Virginia homesteaders, Jay and Ryanne of Ryan Is Hungry have been leading lights in videoblogging for years, and they invited interesting fellow videobloggers (it was so nice to finally meet food vlogger Grace Piper of Fearless Cooking) and other friends over to the house they were sitting for the week.

Dean Jansen of Miro, the open-source video and podast player you should certainly download for watching (ahem) video blogs, brought his friend Winnie Yang, who casually mentioned when we were introduced that she works on The Art of Eating, the watchword in publications for serious food geeks (and my favorite food magazine since I discovered it seven years ago).

Winnie is Managing Editor of AoE, besides blogging and running the film-and-supper club Choice Cuts with Matt Pendleton (who paid this blog a lovely compliment to be shared in a future post). Last night was this year’s BLT party, a genius event idea where guests can truly bring useful gifts and contribute to the table.

Assembling quite a team, Winnie was, seemingly, everywhere while Matt took pictures, Tim cut bacon (this was cured by the Char No. 4 chef, a restaurant I really like in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn),

someone talented associated with Momofuku mixed bacon-infused bourbon into Old Fashioneds,

near the bread station and table with juicy tomatoes piled high, homemade mayonnaise in plain, basil, garlic, and olive-anchovy flavors, bowls of gleaming lettuces Tim tore into pieces just the right size for sandwiches with the star ingredient—Benton’s, of course, but many local curings from New York farms,

that Winnie directed in cooking, placing, and labeling—she moved too quickly to catch here (but with any luck, she’ll appear in many upcoming posts).

As I left this party full of fascinating people (including food blogger Ganda) and smoked beer, trays of bacon continued to emerge from the kitchen, and the beautiful bacon haze followed me back down the stairs it had lured me up.

The end of a lovely day that began with salted radishes with butter on bread while proofing the loaf I brought to the party,

and Sancerre with salmon cakes, aioli, and allium flowers,

I walked down the stairs last night thinking the best description of the BLT party’s food, guests, and especially the hosts is the language at the bottom of this sign at Evolutionary Organics yesterday morning at the Prospect Park Market—”seriously, they are awesome.”

Related posts:

1. cassoulet, brunch, and the underground food collective in brooklyn
2. why yes, I’d love another bacon swizzler
3. sweet beets and food of record

In my next post, I’ll detail my Austrian adventures with this great group of digital activists and, of course, the food. For now, below is the video of my talk (also here), the slides, and a rough transcript.

You should definitely read through and watch the other presentations, particularly David‘s and Ethan Zuckerman‘s (Thank you to Ethan for also blogging my talk.) As I tweeted from the festival (all tweets on the symposium are tagged #arscloud), I was humbled to be part of this group and found presenting incredibly fun.

The Secret Life of Foodpaths

(this a rough transcript of what I said and a few things I wish I’d said)

I was out to dinner the other night with some friends from MIT, and they said “Kristen, why food?” And I responded that I think food has a lot to do with cloud intelligence. I always think of Clay Shirky and Kevin Kelly‘s work where they talk about how the internet runs on love. And that’s very different from lust, which is what we think of sometimes when we think about food representation online.

I am also a food pornographer—please don’t tell my mother that I just told you that.

What I want to talk about today is how we make online food back into real objects. If we have the internet running on love, and we have food lust happening online, and I really want to talk about the social future of food (for more food eye candy, check out tastespotting.com, the food porn aggregator that has attracted many copycat sites).

So we’re going to step away from food fetishism to talk about cooperative [food] communities. Stephen [Downes] talked this morning about moving away from collaboration and into cooperative communities. If you think about food coops, we’ve been talking about cooperative activity and food this way for a long time.

In the NYT a few weeks ago, Renato Sardo, an urban homesteader, was trying to explain the importance of food, and I’ll point you to the end, where he says, “food is the thing you do most.”

We’re not going to talk about politics today, though there is a lot of food politics and some food politics communities online (Civil Eats is a great one); we’re going to talk about politics in this way, instead: Yes We Can Food. What I’m really interested in is the how the products are often quite mobile, but the processing is local [and DIY food processing reclaims the word for food communities, another interesting topic for another time]. That’s what’s on the stamp—be it technology or food, we tend to read labels for where something is from, to have a sense of its place.

While not talking about government, we are going to talk about a government building. This is the official government building of Wellington, New Zealand: the Beehive, which has a great url, http://www.beehive.govt.nz/; I want to talk about honey today, and how honey can be a model for online activity.

This is another beautiful image, also of a beehive, but this beehive has CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. It’s beautiful and tragic, because if you’ve been following the ‘Save the Honeybees’ movement, you know that the honeybees are in quite a bit of trouble. We use honeybees to pollinate many of our crops; this is a global problem. The honeybees become like a traveling circus, and the same set of bees will be taken around a country, used to pollinate different things, and they become very weak and they die. This image is of a hive that’s been abandoned.

We see similar patterns in online activity; many of us belong to many online communities and as we distribute our attention, there often isn’t cooperative action as an outcome [of our participation]. The real promise of cloud intelligence may be the possibility of cooperative action. We don’t want to become like the [weakened] bee.

Two current buzzwords in food are relevant to our discussion–the first is “single origin”, and single origin honey comes from one specific place. When you buy honey, it says on the label what type of honey it is, like tupelo, wildflower, clover, avocado, which indicates what the bees ate, mostly. What you may not know about honey is that it is most healthful [note: this is unproven, but there is much compelling evidence indicating the benefits increase the more local the honey] if you consume honey produced closest to where you live. Although honey from around the world is wonderful, it won’t give you as many benefits as the honey produced on your block, on your street, in your town.

I live in Brooklyn, New York, where it is illegal to keep bees. There is an aboveground movement and people are keeping bees on rooftops. I have a rooftop. It’s sort of an open secret. Everyone is very into knowing exactly where the product, honey, has come from.

The other term I want to talk about is “source-verified” food. I think it indicates our deep level of distrust of labels, and it sounds very scary, almost governmental. This isn’t on genetically-modified food, this is on slow food, the kind of artisanally-produced food that we think of as the highest caliber of craftsmanship or craftswomanship. We need to focus on what we eat as well as where what we eat is from, on a more granular, local [geospecific] level. We have an alienation from production, and I think that’s one of the reasons for the DIY excitement in online food communities.

I found this image last week; the idea of mapping and elevation, and then pie and cake. We’re familiar with layers in a cake, but this made me think about Cory Doctorow’s article in the Guardian last week about cloud computing and using Amazon as a way to archive data in terms of the layers of data that we have.

Many of us have been online for some time now, and we have generated a lot of material that is out in various places online. If we start to think about this data as sedimentary layers, it will help us start to generate data that can have cooperative actions associated with it. This is my pie-in-the-sky question: how do we want to backfill the sky [the cloud]? What really is worth archiving? If the data never has actions or adds up to anything, where are we going?

Cloud intelligence may be your aggregated actions in context of coordinated, cooperative activities.

I don’t want to take this too far lest it become trendy; some of you may remember tall food from a few years ago. Chefs were creating dishes that were sometimes so tall that you could not see the person you were dining across from. The kitchen would cook ingredients that were then stacked in ring molds that were removed and the top garnish was added, heightening the drama as the dish is sent out. This gives little indication of what the food ingredients actually look like, as everything has been forced into this cylindrical container, this parameter [much like proprietary software, but that's another topic entirely].

To return to the ideas of movement, mobility, and maps as Ethan [Zuckerman] spoke about this morning, this is a map from Fallen Fruit.org of a neighborhood in Los Angeles with the different kinds of fruit trees. You can discover the fruit on a given street that, without the map, you might not see. The fruit becomes the treasure.

Thinking about fruit tree maps along with guerilla gardening and the fact that if [in the U.S.] food is planted on public property, the bounty is yours for the taking. That is, of course, if you are mobile; in contrast, the food itself can be mobile.

In New York right now, we have a food truck movement (this is also happening in a big way in Portland, Oregon); about a dozen or so popular, high-end food trucks. This is the French food truck, Le Gamin, and this is their lamb burger with strawberry ketchup, that I think is worth seeking out (told you I was a food pornographer).

The way to find these trucks is through Twitter. And when the food trucks tweet, they sometimes ask for help with parking, so this is your way to be a fan and to take an action (another very popular group of trucks on Twitter is in Los Angeles, the Kogi Korean BBQ trucks on Twitter here). The trucks also tweet at each other, creating a supportive community of mobile food vendors, and they often park near each other, raising the visibility of mobile food in a given area [that can, rather swiftly, relocate if necessary].

I had schnitzel the other day, this image is from the @schnitzeltruck–I was prepping for Linz, for Austria. The Schnitzel Truck shows up near where I work on Fridays, and we have the Dumpling truck come on Mondays, and the Cravings truck came on a Wednesday (they do Taiwanese fried chicken with secret pork sauce).

I was walking around the same area on a weekend with a friend who said, “You know, it’s such a shame. I used to work around here and there’s really not that many places to go for lunch.”

And I looked around, and the streets were sort of empty, and I though “hmm.” When I look at the same street, I know that the Schnitzel Truck usually parks on this corner. And the Dumpling Truck parks over there. Oh, and there’s an ice cream stand that sets up between these two buildings.

In the social future of food, we are the cooperative mapmakers.

Thank you.

I collect interesting examples of food, currency, and shelter experiments on culturemodding.com.

Related posts:

1. dear mom, this is what I do
2. jujubes, falling fruit, and secret Venice
3. envisioning sugar plums

About a month ago, I drove up to meet Emily and Jeremy Stanton of Barking Dog Farm,

had an incredible weekend learning about the strong network of local producers in the Berkshires they are part of,

and as we stood in the kitchen looking out over the chickens and orchard, they told me about the local butcher shop they plan to open in the spring—and an upcoming fund-raising dinner to that end.

So last Saturday afternoon, I pulled out a long dress with flowers as bright as those in Emily’s garden, adjusted the three strands of a vintage necklace from the Brooklyn Flea, and drove with determination through four hours of rain to the inaugural dinner of the Meat Market.

Upon entering the house, this charming bartender (I’m told he makes a mean cup of coffee at Rubiner’s, the local cheesemonger you should certainly visit) mixed a vodka cocktail for me with a homemade rhubarb concoction Chef Jeremy created from the large plants in their backyard,

and everyone clustered around a long table of charcuterie and then bread that Emily baked, sipping as the rain fell outside.

Then we all began to move down toward the tent, passing the fire pit and peach tree with branches hanging heavy with fruit.

Entering the tent, I met Emily and Jeremy’s neighbor Ken, who divides his year between the Berkshires and Miami—you will likely see him on kthread again, as we are old friends although we’ve just met. (Linked photos throughout this post are by Kit Latham, a photographer who shot for Martha Stewart, which explains their beauty.)

Finding my placecard at one of the three long tables, I sat quietly at first, knowing only the hosts.

As she sat down next to me, Kathleen, owner of a cloth-screening business in Southfield that made the beautiful tablecloths printed with chickens (image at the bottom of the post), began to illuminate the fabric of the group beginning to settle into chairs.

Image copyright Kit Latham (borrowed for this post).

After that, it was all delight.

Orbs of yellow hovered above the tables until clipped, and mushrooms, scissored off, landed softly in soup bowls below; a beefy onion broth poured underneath lifted them. We all turned to each other and lifted our spoons.

Next, Jeremy’s famous ravioli filled with rooster (yes, rooster) on top of lettuces and baby rainbow chard dressed with a citrus – a clever combination of courses and unusual presentation appropriate for summer.

Jeremy thanked all the farmers sitting among us (there were many) and introduced the next course of sausage, pickled beets, more of Emily’s good bread, and braised cabbage.

We served each other, passing plates, the rain continuing as a part of the evening’s show,

and I remembered Master Chef Gerhard Schmidt, who carved a little later, asking me how I had stayed so dry with the rain,

as the table was prepared for the Murray Grey beef that had been turned for hours on a welded device of Jeremy’s fashioning,

and we marveled over the beef, the tomatoes, and incredible roasted corn as Dominic Palumbo stood and made an impassioned argument that a local butcher shop represents a significant step for this community of local producers. He tapped all dinner guests as co-producers:

Shortbread cookies in a basil crème anglaise with eggs from the chickens half a dozen yards away and a peach from the nearby tree accompanied by eau de vie and dandelion wine ended the meal, and guests lingered in the tent lit with tea candles between sunflower bouquets.

The next morning, the special tablecloths had withstood the night of revelry and looked ready for their next event,

as the flowers leaned from the rain,

the lilies heralded the evening’s success,

and all the way back to this borough I hold dear, I thought about how a community celebrates its own.

Heading to a neighborhood full of pizza places ranked competitively with long lines for tables, I sat down on the asphalt with other Flea Marketers to the finest white pie I’ve tasted, cooked at 900 degrees in an oven that travels on the back of the Pizza Moto truck.

The pepperoni made this pizza sing, but then so did the others sitting around me, crunching their crusts, breaking the slices apart—superior products still need serious, supportive demand.

Best of luck to Emily, Jeremy, all involved with the Meat Market, and all of the lovely people I met at the dinner. For more wonderful images of the night, see Kit Latham’s Flickr collection, and for a comprehensive, detailed review in a source I now read compulsively, bookmark Dan Shaw’s articles on Rural Intelligence (here’s the one on the dinner).

Related posts:

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and the mystery mushrooms looked potent and ancient.

Buying elderberries from him (what should I make? a sauce for game or an infusion for cocktails?), I stopped for tiny wild blueberries at Berried Treasures,

wispy bouquets,

husk cherries (sometimes called ground cherries) that I’ve brought into the office, with a papery husk you peel back to reveal what looks to be a cherry tomato with seeds like a tomatillo and a taste like pineapple,

and celosia that reminded me that soon we will shift away from tomatoes and fairy tale eggplant to hard squash and apples…

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2. eat your spigariello
3. sparkly morning at the greenmarket

and nearby were two curiosities: refreshing Mexican Sour Gherkins—a type of heirloom cucumber that sours later, but these have a sweet pop to them now,

and for something slightly different, corn shoots sprouted from popcorn kernels at Windfall Farms have a lingering sweetness at the end, the better to begin this Wednesday morning…

Now I’ll need to devise ways to incorporate both in summer menus—

Related posts:

1. a market to begin the weekend
2. eat your spigariello
3. sparkly morning at the greenmarket

and some of the bouquets looked like the season ahead,

some like the height of summer,

near the beautiful berries of Berried Treasures that were profiled in the Serious Eats video on Mountain Sweet Berry Farm this week.

My favorite booth, Evolutionary Organics, had Peruvian sprouting broccoli,

zebra tomatoes with zags, stripes, and pinwheel patterns in their skins,

and a little further down, donut peaches and plums piled up (and I finally bought currants, more on that in a future post).

A few hours later, the Cravings Truck (@nyccravings) pulled up close to where I work, and with Dan, Coco, and Ellen (she’s off to the right of this picture), I hoped this truck full of Taiwanese fried chicken with secret pork sauce would stop by again soon,

(they are accepting donations for Taiwan’s recent typhoon and donating net proceeds to relief efforts).

Eating the last of the strawberries this morning, I am musing on where I may be this weekend—wherever I am, I’ll be cooking…

Related posts:

1. eat your spigariello
2. a market to begin the weekend
3. heirloom cucumber and shoots of corn

You emerge from the subway into flowers,

and this morning, into the Italian broccoli kin, spigariello.

Ruby crescents gleamed (not sure what I’ll do with these yet),

and I wanted to share this wonderful Evolutionary Organics sign opining the origins of toraziroh.

The white currants I’m still (inexplicably) resisting, but I did buy blackberries for the office from this vendor,

who keeps the leaves in the cherries, which makes me smile.

This afternoon, I met Kushal of Vittana (one of the PopTech 2008 Social Innovation Fellows) for a video on the microfinancing-student-loans-for-the-developing-world company that we’ll post today on the PopTech blog (part of my job is to hang out with amazing social entrepreneurs).

And heading back toward Brooklyn, I found a mobile food vendor, @StreetSweets, I’ve been tracking. The lovely woman inside the cart handed me a card for return visits, saying, “you’re local, right?” (Sweet words for me as I wrap myself in this New York minute.)

A clever cupcake collar kept the vanilla frosting peaks intact as I walked (their frosting is great),

and it didn’t spoil my late dinner of simmered spigariello (simmer 1/2 cup of the stems in stock for ten minutes on med-high, then add the leaves, 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 chopped clove of garlic and stir for about a minute), eggs, and toast.

I closed my eyes, imagined I was in a kitchen in Italy (just outside Urbino, perhaps?), and remembered the first dessert of today—a Ronnybrook Farms’s sample of panna cotta, the firm vanilla custard that is my favorite way to begin or end a summer day…

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2. and dessert will be simple
3. heirloom cucumber and shoots of corn

And so, yesterday in the rain, I had sunny squash in a pasta that’s friendly to additions—while farfalle cooked (the shape matches all those bow ties at summer weddings), I sautéed sliced squash (2 baby squash per person) over medium-high heat until blistered, then halved and added the cherry tomatoes still left (a handful), taking the pan off the heat.

Stir the al dente pasta into the mix, add pesto if you like (1 cup packed basil leaves, 1/3 cup pine nuts, 1/3 cup Parmesan, 1 clove garlic in a food processor, drizzling in 4 tablespoons of olive oil), and sneak in flaked tuna in olive oil to up the umami, if you like (I do).

The tomatoes will burst like water balloons in your mouth, and the pasta holds nicely into the afternoon should the clouds be swept away and a neighborhood block party beckon…

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2. stinging nettles and strangled priests
3. kthread cooks: pepita pesto and roasted squash

Reassured the weekend in the Berkshires wasn’t all a lovely dream, I scrambled a few eggs slowly and thought about how extraordinarily lucky I am that Emily’s father—who seems in the middle of all sorts of useful projects, like working on bringing Internet access to more of the town—found this blog, forwarded the url to Emily, who wrote me a kind and intriguing note about the life she has created with her family in Southfield, Massachusetts, inviting me to visit Barking Dog Farm (I’ll share their new site address soon).

In the large yard behind the house, flowers grow tall,

(I especially like these, that look to me like firefly orbs)

and wild arugula grows between beds of the vegetable garden with borage,

squash blossoms (I learned from a CSA farmer at dinner that the blooms attached to the squash are female)

tomatoes still green,

baby lettuces that made a soft salad,

blueberries that will darken,

and serious rhubarb plants.

On the other side of the yard, their two dozen happy chickens were roaming,

and I followed Emily and Jeremy back to their chicken house.

They have all different kinds of chickens,

that lay in a house with one wall panel from boxes of grapes they bought and pressed last year,

and then there’s Handsome the Rooster, who can be testy.

Fortunately, they have an impressive (and suitably intimidating) pitchfork to keep Handsome in line, that also happens to be useful for digging fingerling potatoes,

that were cooked and tossed with herbs and butter and joined by baby zucchini from the garden,

and then there was the best chard I’ve ever tasted (Jeremy explains below) and a fish stew with clams, mussels, and Red Striper. Jeremy is a chef and the owner of Fire Roasted Catering, so there was an intense and consistent level of really excellent cooking all weekend.

Emily began the plum tatin before dinner,

and unmolded it perfectly a bit later—

The night ended with tastings of dandelion wine and Jeremy’s tart hard cider and smooth apple brandy, and the next morning I woke up to find Emily making crumpets in her handmade Italian tins formed for that purpose:

And the crumpets were the base for eggs Benedict with a Prosecco hollandaise sauce—

this is how yellow hollandaise becomes with fresh eggs and yes, those are the orangest yolks I’ve seen.

There was a pressed cream spread Emily made topped with jam,

and then we were off to visit Blue Hill farm (this is the real one), where one of Jeremy’s brothers farms.

Thistle abounds,

and the farm goes on and on,

to mobile chicken coops (these are neat),

beautiful pigs of a heirloom breed that make you smile, near the cows (the goats were hiding),

all on a farm that truly looks like this.

We went for ice cream and cheese (at Rubiner’s) in the town of Great Barrington and walked through gardens with friends of theirs, and I really didn’t want to leave.

Emily and Jeremy sent me back to Brooklyn with bottles of Jeremy’s good cider, raw milk (you know how I consider this a necessity), and a dozen of those beautiful eggs.

The best part is that not only do I now consider them friends (they have a place to stay in Brooklyn), but I can support them in their new venture—a local butcher shop in Great Barrington.

In late August (the 22nd, to be exact), the two will host a fundraising dinner for the shop at their farm with a menu that includes, among other things, rooster ravioli, a rhubarb cocktail, and their own salami.

How nice to think we can, all of us, nurture small businesses into being; let me know in the comments or by email if you would like to go to the dinner too, and I’ll make sure you have all the details.

I imagine that, like me, you’ll find Southfield and the hosts charming and the area very difficult to leave…

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1. all for a local butcher shop
2. America Day II: Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through
3. the shore, the yolks, and the brightness

gazed at sprays of elderberry flowers,

admired the graceful lines of whole heads of baby lettuce,

the excessive curlicues on a sign for beautiful cheese,

the bright lilies opening on another table,

near rainbow beet reminders of the double rainbows Brooklyn has glimpsed lately,

and tart currants that I will embrace another time—too tart for the sweetness of a holiday weekend ahead…

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1. heirloom cucumber and shoots of corn
2. milkweed, cider, and dancing at the Camden Farmers’ Market
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and reviving plants I watched wilting earlier in the week.

Here’s to a few days framed with sun, as we turn toward restorative summer—

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We started talking about the coconuts that he harvests from the street, and that led to a machete and a handmade, welded striking implement cracking open coconuts on the porch, draining the milk, admiring the meat (which you score and then scoop out), and an explanation of how to make coconut milk—blend quite a bit of coconut water, a little coconut meat, a date and a dash of cinnamon for sweetness.

As a storm rages outside, intermittently lighting up the cottage, I am drinking it all up and in, sipping the milk (fresh coconut water tastes infinitely better than the packaged product, as you can imagine) and shaking my head at all the years I let a terrible cake experience with sweetened, shredded kind of coconut hold me back.

I prescribe fresh coconut.

If we can imagine meat—the word itself, without its weighty moral baggage and simply referring to these hairy things that hang from tropical trees—as a delightfully firm, silky white layer hidden inside a shell, perhaps spritzed with a little lime, we may all feel a little better…

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The event with the six community leaders in design, urban homesteading, neighborhood installations, community service, and storytelling in L.A. last month?

Voilà. (Also posted on the GOOD site, and more background in the GOOD recap.)

I watch this and smile—hope to be out that way again in early June and meet up with some of the lovely people in this video, including the wonderful Max Schorr of GOOD and my wise friend John, who attended the event to support this really interesting work—

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