zoramargolis

I found the article thought-provoking. There are many different theories of causality, and they are probably all correct. The article suggests that picky-eater parents create picky-eater children. This is so obvious as to be a tautology, but it is not the only cause and it is not always the case. There's lots of emotional baggage associated with food likes and dislikes--one doesn't need to have had a parent who was a picky eater. My father was a fairly adventurous eater, but would not eat any fish other than broiled salmon, because he grew up with a mean stepmother who made pots of stew with fish heads in them, and they had to dig out the fish cheeks to eat. Salmon was too expensive and too special, so he never got to eat it when he was young. Any other fish became a powerful, emotional reminder of the past, even though he was aware that his aversion was completely irrational.

My family ate lots of different ethnic foods, spicy food, all over the map. My brother was a picky eater, while I was adventurous and would eat pretty much anything. There were only a few things my brother would eat--beef, chicken, canned corn and green onions was about it. And dessert. He took kosher salami sandwiches for lunch every day for all the years he went to elementary school, junior high and high school. My father used to make malted milkshakes with ice cream for him every night, so that he would get sufficient calories and protein. That finally changed when he was an adult and started travelling in Europe and Asia on business, often entertaining clients in restaurants.

I have no idea what adriatic cavier (let alone the "albino" variety) or "sea beans" are.

Sea beans are a small, succulent-type of sea weed which are crunchy and very salty. They sometimes are available for sale at Whole Foods for about $10 a pound. A few years ago, I found them at a Giant. Having never seen them before, I decided to buy some (after I tasted one). The produce manager and cashier couldn't figure out what they were or how much to charge, so they rang it up as if they were green beans, which were on sale that day for $.99 a pound. I might buy them again for a dollar a pound, but they taste mostly of salt and are an exotic little crunch. Not worth the big bucks.

I'll take a shot at Adriatic caviar--pale, salted roe from a variety of fish found in the Adriatic sea?

Rustic tart of mixed mushroom duxelles, corn and lavender chevre

Charcoal grilled wild coho salmon

Green beans

2005 Tittarelli Torrontes

Thank you for this info, but I'm still a little confused (please see dimness outlined above). Is reducing, reducing, reducing cooked pumpkin the only way to get that pumpkin flavor I love or am I confusing the flavor with the spices usually added to the pumpkin?

Seems like a bit of mind reading is required here. Do you mean pumpkin pie spice--usually a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and clove? Have you had a savory pumpkin dish before? Those "sweet spices" are not usually included. A quick, relatively inexpensive way of answering your own question would be to buy two cans of pumpkin--one plain, and one pumpkin pie filling, which includes the pie spices. Taste them side by side. then you'll know.

To ask a really stupid question (a specialty of mine), what are you guys using for pumpkin? I bought a small pumpkin (labeled for cooking as opposed to carving) for the pumpkin orzo I made Saturday night. Between hacking my way in, scooping all the seeds and chipping away with the paring knife to get a few scraps, I ended up with just enough stuff that ultimately didn't taste, well, pumpkiny, but rather like squash. Do you folks use the canned pumpkin puree or did I do something particularly dim?

Pumpkin, as I'm sure you know, is a type of winter squash. Pumpkin flesh is often watery and bland. It is sometimes necessary to puree cooked pumpkin and then cook it on top of the stove to drive out some of the water and concentrate the flavor before making a pie with fresh pumpkin, even the sugar pie varietal. For more intense flavor and denser flesh, use butternut squash or kabocha (buttercup) squash. They are interchangeable with pumpkin in any recipe calling for pumpkin (ie. pie, risotto, stew), and have better flavor, as a rule. This, of course, is IMHO and YMMV.

Wow, your toddler daughter knows what she wants at a sushi bar.

When she was little, my daughter would only eat kappamaki (cucumber roll); then she graduated to California rolls and anago (eel). She loved sitting at the sushi bar and it didn't cost much to take her along. We would amuse ourselves by quizzing each other on the Japanese names for all of the fish. Now she eats all of them. At least it's not as expensive at Kotobuki, but her favorites are toro and hamachi, which cost more than $1 a piece.

Marinated roasted red peppers

Balsamic-glazed roasted cippolini onions

Marinated fresh borlotti beans

Roasted eggplant tapenade

Roasted beets with orange oil and lemon juice

Cherokee Purple tomatoes, cucumbers

Young Pecorino Romano and Humboldt Fog

Leftover lavender-brined charcoal roasted chicken

2004 Obvio Malbec

Gingered plum crumble

Vanilla ice cream

How long do Brussels sprouts on the stalk stay fresh?

Depends how they are stored. In the refrigerator, they could keep for weeks.

Nothing better to smell on a blustery Sunday than a pot of golden love simmering slowly away.

Too bad it's a hot, muggy Sunday. I'm sure ready for summer to be over. Despite the heat/humidity, I've got my oven going--roasting garlic, beets, cippolini onions (separately, not together). And I've got a pot of fresh borlotti (cranberry) beans cooking on top of the stove--found those at Super H this week, and they are beauties.

I thought e. coli was present in the intestines of most animals, including humans,and it would be difficult to digest food without it (the phrase "symbiotic relatioinship" comes to mind). What impact do antibiotics have on e. coli if the antibiotics are not targeted at e. coli?

Antibiotics destroy beneficial bacteria as well as pathogenic strains. That's why lots of people eat yogurt or kefir, which has acidophilus, after a course of antibiotics taken for an infection--to restore beneficial intestinal flora.

For an interesting point of view, at ground level--this was forwarded to me from an on-line newsletter:

http://smallfarms.typepad.com/photos/farmer.andygriffin.html

I asked Andy Griffin from Mariquita Farms, if I could reprint his story here about

what is really going on in Spinach-Land:

Deborah Schot, a reporter from the L.A. Times, called me to ask for

an opinion about the e-coli outbreak in prepackaged fresh spinach

that has killed one person and sickened hundreds more.

And yes, I have an opinion. I think the F.D.A. employee that I heard

on the radio yesterday urging people to play it safe and not eat

fresh spinach is ignorant.

Although the victims got sick by eating spinach from a sealed bag

it's wrong to seize on spinach as the culprit in the controversy; it

makes more sense to look at the processing and handling of

pre-packaged greens in general.

Put another way, it's the harvest procedures that were followed, the

pre-washed claim made for the greens, and the bagged environment the

greens are in that are the relevant issues, not the specific variety

of leafy greens that were actually contaminated at some point during

the harvest and post harvest handling. By fingering any spinach as

suspicious, even bunched fresh spinach, the F.D.A. isn't educating

anyone, or solving the problem. They're just spreading fear on a

national scale.

The L.A. Times called me because I'm a farmer and I'm quick with a

sound bite, but also because I have a background in the baby spinach

and salad business. Back in the dark ages when I started farming

organically people bought their spinach in bunches and their salad as

heads of lettuce. My first career in farming was in the production of

the then new baby salad greens and baby spinach. We harvested the

crops by hand, washed them, and packed them loose in unsealed bags.

In 1996 my partners and I sold our company, Riverside Farms, to the

company that became Natural Selections, which happens to be the

company at the heart of the current controversy. Their packing plant

was once the packing plant for our farm, though it was a lot smaller

and less sophisticated back then. Our former label, Riverside Farms,

was one of the labels pulled from the shelves this week. Ready Pac

and Earthbound Farms, two of the other labels pulled, were labels

that I once grew and harvested raw products for so, for me, this bad

news has a personal angle.

When we harvested baby greens by hand at Riverside Farms the workers

dipped their knives periodically in buckets of antiseptic solution to

clean them. We were unsophisticated then, compared to the way the

industry is today, but we knew that any bacteria on the knife could

contaminate the wound in the leaf where it was severed from the plant

at the moment of harvest.

We also knew that baby salad greens that were harvested by dirty

knives were far more likely to break down quickly in the cooler, even

after being washed, because the wash process, no matter how good,

can't really remove bacteria that has been introduced into the leaf

by a dirty blade.

Riverside Farms had a state of the art wash line for 1995. but we

went the way of the dinosaurs in part because we couldn't afford to

pay the escalating labor costs of a unionized crew of hundreds of

salad cutters when our competitors were going to be harvesting tons

of product cheaply with machines. Not long after we went out of

business harvesting machines became the industry standard.

All in all, an argument can probably be made that the big harvest

machines probably cut the product even cleaner than individual

workers can, especially if some individual harvester is sloppy and

careless. But, by the same token, if the cutting blade on a

harvesting machine isn't properly cleaned tons and tons of product

can be contaminated by a filthy blade during the course of the

day-not just tons and tons of baby spinach, but tons and tons of ANY

PARTICULAR LEAFY GREEN VEGETABLE, ORGANIC, CONVENTIONAL, OR

OTHERWISE, that is being harvested.

Let's say some contaminated product makes it out of the field into

the shed. The equipment in the large salad plant wash-line is all

stainless steel, and the wash water that has been chlorinated to

reduce bacteria levels. If the factory puts so much chlorine in the

water that even potential bacteria pockets in the damaged tissue

along the cuts of the leaves is killed the "fresh" salad greens will

have been chemically contaminated into a swampy mess that smells like

a municipal swimming pool.

(When I smell the odor of ammonia that comes out of the sealed bags

of those nasty little carrot plugs that are so popular I want to gag.

When the day comes that someone gets sick from eating them and the

F.D.A. tells people not to eat any carrots I'm going to sue! Think of

all the bunched spinach growers losing their shirts because some fool

at the F.D.A. doesn't distinguish between packaged spinach that's

"conveniently" been "pre-washed," and a bunch of spinach that needs

to be cut from the stems and cleaned in the sink before being eaten.)

If the wash line procedures manage to kill 99.9% of all the offending

bacteria, there is still a real problem due to the tons and tons of

greens being processed over a short period of time. Inevitably, a

significant amount of contaminated product could go out to consumers.

A psychologist might be able to do a better job than I in telling you

why so many people feel comforted when they see their food coming to

them in sterile looking sealed plastic bags covered in corporate

logos, nutritional information, legal disclaimers and "use by" dates.

"It's convenient," they say. It is true that the open piles of washed

baby greens that were once the norm in supermarkets and farmers

markets were vulnerable to post harvest/ post wash contamination.

Those sneeze guards over the pizza parlor salad bar aren't there for

nothing.

But I'll tell you that every sealed bag of pre-washed greens is like

a little green house. The greens inside are still alive, as are the

bacteria living on them. If the produce in the bag is clean, great,

but if it isn't the bacteria present has a wonderful little sealed

environment to reproduce in, free from any threat until the dressing

splashes down and the shadow of a fork passes over. Frankly, I think

convenience is overrated.

When my partners and I sold our salad washing company we sold the

assets, the equipment, the leases, the receivables etc. but we also

sold the right to compete. For five years I was contractually obliged

to seek a way in agriculture that didn't have anything to do with my

previous experience in baby salad greens.

I wasn't sad to leave the big farm and the salad factory behind.

Those years were fascinating for me, but stressful, and the more

sophisticated everything became the more alienated I felt. I was out

of my league. I turned to farmers markets and then, when that way of

business didn't prove to be sustainable <http://tinyurl.com/n4ftg>

Julia and I turned to the C.S.A. format, later joining forces with

Stephen and Jeanne at Higher Ground Organics

<http://www.highgroundorganics.com/>.

Maybe giving people a mixed box of seasonal vegetables that they have

to wash and prepare isn't "convenient," the way shipping thousands of

cookie cutter boxes of salad out of a factory door is. And maybe it

isn't "convenient" for our supporters to have to wash their carrots

or trim the coarse stems off their chard. But that's cooking, and

cooking is a happy, healthy, balanced and therapeutic chore.

I will be curious to follow the news and see what the inspectors

discover in their search. If it turns out that I'm wrong, and it was

the spinach that was what gave shelter and sustenance to the

e-coli-and the problem is not due to a slip-up in harvest or post

harvest sanitary procedures on the factory farms- I'll be the first

to admit to ignorance.

But for now I'm going to call my seed dealer and order some spinach

seed; it's probably on special today, and it grows well in Hollister

in the fall.

Here is the ongoing list of who is coming to the picnic. Please let me know if you are planning to come and are not on the list, or if your name is there and you will not be.

Crackers+1

Porcupine

agm

mdt

Jacques Gastreaux

Crescent Fresh

zoramargolis

Escoffier

Cucas87

RaisaB

Pat+1

StephenB

Scott Johnson

bbq4me+1

Rissa P

Shogun

Bilrus

Dame Edna

Barbara

ScotteeM

JParrott

JPW

xcanuck+1

Chica Grace

Demvtr+1

Tripewriter

Walrus

Iliane+1

Catherine+1

brr+3

mktye

treznor

Monique DC

rvanrens+2

clayrae+1or2

bonaire+1

LaShanta+1

Lydia R

legant

And here are the food pledges so far, other than pig and chili+fixin's:

Appetizers/snacks/finger food

Now Notorious Deviled Eggs with Caviar: StephenB

never will be famous curried deviled eggs: Scott Johnson

Pork lumpia +finadene sauce: bbq4me

?Cheese and bread: brr

Dip: bonaire

Sides/salads

Spicy roasted sweet potato salad; roasted corn salad+ avocado: (veganx2): Cucas87

Zucchini: Dame Edna

Corn bread: Rissa P

Green bean salad with pecans & blue cheese: ScotteeM

Saffron rice and black beans a la cubana: Chica Grace

Slaw(s): JPW

Main course

Meat

? grilled chicken: bbq4me

Homemade smoked salmon: xcanuck

Grilled beef skewers: rvanrens

Vegetarian

Noodle-cheese casserole: Pat

Tofu in curried coconut milk; an eggplant entree: Demvtr

Desserts/sweets

2 desserts to be named later: RaisaB

Red velvet cake: Barbara

Beverages

Wine: Cucas87

Wine: JPW

Wine: JParrott

Canadian beer: xcanuck

?Beer: brr

Beer: bonaire

Misc.

Bacon buns; mystery bread: mktye

Cigars: Scott Johnson

Keep me posted!

Really a lovely meal. Every course was a treat. We especially enjoyed the agnolotti and the halibut with fresh corn and crab polenta. My only 'plaint--more sauce on the shortrib, please!

Our tablemate John, a lurker at his first DR event, brought a small production Oregon pinot noir (?Prive´sud) that he gets from a winery mailing list, that was especially good with the beet risotto. My wine closet yielded a 1995 Pomerol (La Croix du Casse) that was opened when we first arrived, but not decanted. It had a fairly funky nose when first poured, but within ten minutes or so in the glass, the funk had blown off and it turned into an excellent accompaniment to the short rib. Not quite as rich as I had expected, based on the review in Parker's Wine Buyer's Guide, but complex and satisfying nonetheless.

Crabcakes tonight! What's a good side? I'm already doing an Asian slaw and maybe a sauce. We've been doing a lot of roasted corn lately.

I made crabcakes on Tuesday night, and served them with new potatoes (and green beans) and a remoulade made with a roasted garlic aioli that I also used to bind the crabmeat. I like the sauce with the potatoes, as well as the crabcakes.

Was it labeled black cod or did you know it by sight? I love black cod but have never seen in it the stores in the area.

I might just have to drive out for some, at those prices.

It was labled and was, in fact, black cod--also called sable fish. It has a very distinctively patterned skin, which I recognized, since I used to be a fishmonger at BlackSalt. I had not planned to cook fish yesterday, but when I saw it, I was astonished at the price. The fish were on display, on ice, so it was possible to see the eyes and gills and see that they were in good condition. I asked for a smaller fish than they had on display, if possible, because they were HUGE. One of the guys behind the counter went into the walk-in, and brought out a smaller fish. I paid between $10 and $11 for it--enough for two meals for my family of three. Of course, they would not filet it, I had to do it myself (they scaled and gutted it), but I have saved the head and bones for stock.

It was very fresh and tasty. One of those fortuitous bargains you run across occasionally. If you like black cod, and can manage a whole, large fish, I would definitely head out there today to see if it is still on sale.

How did it turn out? I'm a sucker for lychee everything. Will you splain the process?

I peeled about a dozen fresh lychees, took the seeds out and cut them in half. I put them in a glass jar and poured a medium-sized bottle of sake over them, and let it sit in the fridge for about a month (probably didn't need that long, but it got shoved behind some other things and was forgotten about. I had saved the sake bottle, so I strained the sake back into the bottle and put the screwtop back on. Kept in the refrigerator.

I have had lychee-infused sake at Beacon in Los Angeles, which was quite sweet, so I imagine they made a sugar syrup and poached the lychees or used canned lychees. I liked this better. The lychee flavor was subtle, and it was still very dry, which went well with the food.

A trip to Super H inspired me to make something Japanese...

Slow roasted black cod ($1.99 a pound for whole fish!) with white miso sauce

on Soba noodles

Sauteed shiitake and maitake mushrooms

Wakame seaweed

Lychee-infused sake (made a couple of months ago, and waiting for the right meal...)

By the way, if anyone is looking for sake, Super H is the place to go. They have a dozen or more different premium sakes, and plenty of everyday ones, too.

Last weekend, I came upon a long-neglected crabapple tree in Battery Kemble. The plastic bag I carry while walking the dog hadn't been used, so I stopped and picked about three or four pounds of crabapples from the low-hanging branches. There was a ton of fruit on this tree, plenty within reach but lots more was up high, well out of reach without a ladder.

I am allergic to apples, but enough of a foraging freak that a food allergy is not going to stop me. I tasted (and spat out) one of the fruits and determined that it was: full of fruit flavor, very tannic, and very sour. Perfect for jelly-making. With the high ratio of peel to pulp in crabapples, there would be plenty of naturally occuring pectin--no need for Sure-Jell.

I washed it all, pulled out the stems, covered the fruit with water and cooked it until the fruit was mushy and started to split. After it cooled, I ran it through the food mill to get rid of skin and seeds. Then I put the watery pulp into a muslin towel, hung it up and let it drain. I admit that I was a bit impatient and because the towel had a tight weave, I squeezed it occasionally to facilitate the process--a no-no in jelly-making when you are using layers of cheesecloth as a jelly bag, since you don't want any pulp in the liquid. After a few hours, I put the drained liquid (about three cups) into the fridge.

The next morning, there was a small amount of pulp that had settled down to the bottom of the liquid. I poured it into a pot, leaving the pulp behind, then added an equal amount of sugar and heated it until the sugar dissolved. I added about a cup of fresh mint leaves from my herb garden wrapped in cheesecloth, muddled the mint pack a bit and let it steep for a couple of hours.

After removing the mint package, I boiled the syrup until it reached 220 degrees on a candy thermometer, skimmed it and ladled it into sterilized jars. I ended up with 2 half-pints, after all that. It is perfectly clear, a pretty pink color, tightly jelled and has a faint mint aroma and flavor. The unfortunate part of making a fully natural mint jelly, is that some of the more volatile aspects of the mint leaf essence is driven off by the violent boiling needed to make jelly. I didn't have or want to use mint extract, though. So, when I serve it with lamb, I will probably add some fresh chopped mint.

Here's who has said they are coming, so far:

goldenticket

Crackers

mdt

Jacques Gastreaux

Crescent Fresh

Zoramargolis

Escoffier

Cucas87

RaisaB

Pat+1

StephenB

Scott Johnson

bbq4me+1

Rissa P

Shogun

Bilrus

Dame Edna

Barbara

ScotteeM

JParrott

JPW

xcanuck+1

Chica Grace

Demvtr+

And the food list, so far (not including chili or pig)

Appetizers/snacks/finger food

Now Notorious Deviled Eggs with Caviar: StephenB

never will be famous curried deviled eggs: Scott Johnson

Pork lumpia +finadene sauce: bbq4me

Sides/salads

Spicy roasted sweet potato salad; roasted corn salad+ avocado: (veganx2): Cucas87

Zucchini: Dame Edna

Corn bread: Rissa P

Green bean salad with pecans & blue cheese: ScotteeM

Saffron rice and black beans a la cubana: Chica Grace

Main course

Meat-

? grilled chicken: bbq4me

grilled skirt steak salad

Vegetarian

Noodle-cheese casserole: Pat

Tofu in curried coconut milk; an eggplant entree: Demvtr

Desserts/sweets

RaisaB- 2 desserts to be named later

Barbara ? cheesecake

Beverages

Wine: Cucas87

Wine: JPW

Wine: JParrott

Canadian beer: xcanuck

Misc.

Keep me posted!

Today we buried my friend Audrey, who taught me how to can. This was the recipe she used when we did our first batch of spiced peaches together. I am going to miss her very much. But on the way to her services deep in the countryside of southern Maryland this morning, her daughters and I decided that as a tribute we will try to get together every year and make a big batch of these spiced peaches. Thereby "preserving" their mother's memory, and continuing our friendship throughout the years ahead.

Losing friends who were in the prime of life is a bitch. Your idea is a great and worthy one. There's nothing quite like a row of beautiful jars full of summer's home-canned bounty that speaks to a belief in the future and an appreciation for nature and good food and hard work.

When we lived in Vermont, on an old farm, I spent all of one summer gardening, foraging for wild berries, and "putting by" as they call it there. I filled the shelves of the walk-in pantry with dozens of jars of tomatoes, wild berry jams, pickles, beans, applesauce and peaches. There were bags of corn and berries in the freezer, too, but that was tucked away, out of sight. One of the other people who lived there with us used to love to take a chair into the pantry, and just sit and look at the shelves. He said it gave him a feeling of utter contentment and happiness. We saw him for the first time in thirty years, when we were in Vermont this past June, and just found out that he is clear of a cancer that he was being treated for when we were there.

My husband and I are leaving for 2 wonderful weeks in Paris on Sat and we have an apartment so I am thinking what a wonderful opportunity to actually be able to cook and use all the wonderful markets and shops. We would appreciate any recommendations as far as opinions on the best open markets, boulangeries, fromageries etc..

Fauchon.

And I seem to recall a time, way back when, in sunny southern California, when TJs did not have a produce section at all.

When Trader Joe's was owned by Trader Joe, back in the 60's and early 70's, it was basically a place to buy wine, coffee beans, vitamins and supplements, nuts, dried fruit and brie. Once in a while, there would be a crate of butter lettuce or Vidalia onions near the cash registers. After Joe sold the company, they started adding prepared food and expanding the line of packaged foods, groceries and baked goods. Produce was a very late addition, in the late 80's and early 90's.

I bought some salmon steaks (over $50 worth) and got them home, only to discover (just before cooking time) that they had left the scales on the steaks. I called them immediately and the manager tried to tell me that EVERYONE sells salmon steaks with the scales on. Then he went on to say that EVERYONE eats salmon with the scales on. I haven't been back there since.

Intelligence and knowledge are rarely among the hiring criteria of low level service jobs like selling fish. This poor soul obviously does not know the difference between skiin and scales, and doesn't know that fish scales are supposed to be removed. At the P Street WF the other day, "Skate fillet" (sic) were not removed from the cartilage. When I pointed out that a filet is, by definition, removed from its bones or skeletal structure, the clerk had no idea what I was talking about. Someone else makes the signs, she just weighs and packages it.

One of my favorite Julia Child viewings was when Martha Stewart had Julia as a guest on her ((Martha's) show, and they made croquembouches side by side.

Martha's was tight, perfectly neat and orderly, and Julia's was chaotic and stacked sort of willy-nilly. But good ol' Julia was high-spirited (probably literally as well as figuratively) and having a great time, while Martha was smug, as usual.

I drizzle olive oil on unpeeled beets and roast them whole with some fresh thyme stalks. Bigger ones, I wrap individually in aluminum foil, and smaller ones go into a baking dish that gets covered with aluminum foil.

Or I boil them.

They get peeled and sliced or wedged after they are cooked and cooled. The boiled beet skins slip off easily, and the roasted ones need a paring knife to peel them, because water has been driven out of the beets by the oven heat, and the skins adhere a bit more. But the flavor is also more concentrated with roasting. I don't mind getting my hands stained, but you could wear rubber gloves if it bothers you.

Beets have an affinity for citrus, especially orange.

I often serve roasted beets as a salad, dressed with orange vinaigrette, with some goat cheese or feta, over some greens, with tomato wedges and cucumber.

Or I toss beets in hot butter with a splash of orange juice, and serve as a side.

Then, there is cabbage-beet borscht. The beets get cooked separately, and added at the end so that all of the veg in the pot of soup don't turn pink.

mktye has set an extraordinarily high standard for communication and organization, but I will do me best.

So, please indicate, either in an online post or in a PM to me, that you are coming, and how many people you are bringing (eg. +1, +2, or however many).

Then, indicate what you are bringing that is NOT for the chili cook-off or pig roast. If it is not obvious, let me know under which of the following categories your contribution will fit, and if it is vegetarian or vegan:

Appetizers, snacks, finger food

Sides/Salads

Main course

Desserts/sweets

Beverages

Misc.

I will periodically list a running tally, so you can see what other people have already committed to bringing.