Wedding on a Farm - Boulder, CO

 As if the beginning of the Fall hasn't been busy enough, with school starting, a new menu to launch for work, the New Haven Food Policy Council to keep on top of, and a Feast From the Fields dinner at Common Ground High School to help plan and cook for next weekend. This past weekend, I hopped a plane to Colorado with my family for my husband's cousin's wedding (thanks to grandma PJ for the tickets!!).

Luck for me, the wedding took place on an organic farm just outside Boulder, Colorado.  The friends and family were kind, the weather was gorgeous, and the food was fabulous! I worked catering for more than 10 years, and it is a rare night when I get to actually go to, and enjoy a well catered meal myself. The farm-to-table food at Pastures of Plenty Farm, catered by The Big Bang was great, and made up for years of overcooked farm-raised salmon and bland chicken breasts at standard catered events. The thriving farm on the planes of Colorado was a sight for a north-easterner to behold. Dry flat beige landscape giving way to rows of greens, flowers, and vegetables, all used to prepare the night's meal.

After a personal and loving ceremony, we headed into a beautiful pagoda structure for appetizers. Artfully presented on large wood platters from Mexico, there were: roasted purple potato chips with olive tapenade, bruchetta with roasted tomatoes, goat cheese and pesto, prosciutto wrapped melon, marinated and grilled buffalo and shrimp skewers, wonderful local cheeses, and beautiful berries. As a written menu there is nothing so exceptional about this line up, but the execution of the menu was superb. The food was cooked and seasoned very well, and presented beautifully both on the table  and in the location. Dinner was wild caught salmon with sorrel pesto, flank steak, spicy quinoa salad, field green salad, and roasted root vegetables. Again, a fairly standard contemporary farm to table menu, but executed with finesse.

I was busy eating, so didn't get pictures of the food before all the guests attacked it, so you can't see the elegant display of appetizers, fruits and cheeses they put together, but this will give you a little glimpse at the selection.

 

 

the wood-fired oven and 12 foot long buffet table

Doesn't this look like fun!

Wedding cake: red velvet and a spice cake.  Kazoos made in the bride's home town of Eden, NY

Even the porto-potty got dressed up!

It was a wonderful day, finished with a gorgeous sunset and a full moon, and it more than made up for the 11 hours of travel it took to get there and the sleepless nights with 2 jet lagged kids. My son, had been concerned that this wedding wouldn't meet the standards of the last one he attended which had a table of crazy hats, wigs and instruments. So, it was a relief when he declared, "Mommy, this is the best wedding ever!". Indeed, it was lovely, (and delicious).

Rosehips at the Sea Shore

On one of the first windy fall like days of September we took a trip to the ocean up the coast at Hammonasset Beach and State Park. I went there a lot as a kid, but haven't gone much in recent years. It was beautiful and felt like we were on Cape Cod, very different than the urban beaches right in and around New Haven just a few miles south. Since it was too cold for swimming, I imagined spending the day collecting shells and drift wood and just wandering along the sand. As we arrived I had a sudden flash of memory of seeing rose hips along the beach there many years ago. I wasn't sure if it they really were rose hips and edible, or if I'd just made it up. As we walked up the sandy path, I started to see red and orange fruits along the low prickly bushes and my heart started racing as it seems to do when I am near lots of pickable fruit.

I was carrying a pink plastic sand bucket and started filling it immediately. The bushes were thorny and stretched over the edge of the beach in a close knit mass. Most of the fruits were a little hard to reach, and I fell onto the prickers more than once.  Seeing me immersed in picking, my kind husband took one of the kids and went to ask the ranger at the nature center near the parking lot if in fact they were rose hips and not  some poisonous berry.  Returning with a thumbs up just as I had finished filling the bucket, I smiled and started handing the softer of the fruits to my daughter who likes all things sour. I had a vague idea of rose hips from some herbal tea labels, and knew that they were very high in vitamin C, so since we are approaching cold season, I figured it was a good find, and we'd figure out something delicious to do with them.

My camera battery died just as we were approaching the beach, so the only pictures I have are from home, but they are a beautiful sight growing all along the beach, so you might want to head out and see them for yourself. I read up on some recipes for rose hips, and most say to pick them after the first frost, or a little later in the fall when the berries are more red than orange, and soft like a ripe tomato.

I'm thinking of turning mine into a syrup or jam, since I don't want to take the time to remove all the tiny seeds and hairs inside. If you decide to  go adventuring and make some great rose hip recipe,                                                                                           please comment below and let me know!

Here are two links for recipe ideas:
Recipe for rose hip syrup and cupcakes with rose hip meringue frosting.
Some general info on rose hips and links to a variety of recipes.

Sriracha

Sorry for the big gaps between posts lately, I've been really busy consulting at Blue State Coffee trying to get our new menu ready to launch. We had a big menu tasting this week, and the new sandwiches where a big hit. One of my favorites is the new Turkey Sriracha sandwich with shredded romaine, pickled red onion, avocado, and some sriracha spiked mayo. Sriracha hot chili sauce has been available in the USA at least as long as I've been wandering through asian markets, which is about 25 years. It is a great mix of chili pepper, garlic, vinegar, salt and sugar. You might also find Sambal from the same company, which is similar, but a little chunkier, more garlicy, and not in a squeeze bottle.  The Huy Fong brand Sriracha is certainly the most well know and easiest to find brand, available in the asian section of many regular super markets. To make the mayo for a sandwich, just mix a little Sriracha into some mayonaise and you have a delicious condiment. If you want to get fancy, you could add some lime zest or juice and even some sliced scallions, but those are extras, and the mayo is great with just the Sriracha. This hot sauce has flavor as well as heat and it doesn't numb your mouth, making it oblivious to any taste that may follow, like some other hot sauces who shall remiane nameless.  While I love the Sriracha mayo paired with the pickled red onions in this new sandwich, I also enjoy straight Sriracha on just about any meal, especially squeezed on a fried egg served over rice and sauteed vegetables.

I'll post a picture of the new sandwiches soon, but in the mean time, hope this inspires you to get some Sriracha and start adding a little heat, and flavor to your meals. 

Do you have a favorite hot sauce? which one?

25 Pounds of Peaches...Eaten!

On my last day of summer, I dragged my kids out to go peach and raspberry picking. Bishops Orchard's in Guilford, CT is about 25 minutes north of the city of New Haven, so it was a quick car ride, and a gorgeous, hot day. The first bunch of peach trees we approached were full and heavy with fruit, but most of it was a little too hard. One year, at another orchard, I'd picked hard peaches, and they never ripened properly, even in a paper bag, so I was hesitant to pick these. I found one slightly ripe peach and let my six year old squeeze it so he would know what to feel for. The two year old just wandered around eating hard peaches and hiding under the tree limbs. We tried a few more trees, thinking the sunny side of the tree might be riper, until, finally we found one great tree filled with ripe fruit. In a few minutes we had two full bags, 25 pounds of perfect peaches. We brought them home, rolled them out onto the counter and started scheming. 

Peach raspberry pie was declared first on the list. We made it with the few handfuls of raspberries I managed to pick with two tired kids after we were done with the peaches, and a few more from the bush in our yard. I made my favorite pie dough, rolled the crust and let my boy decorate it. He took the dough scrapes and turned them into a baking experiment, all rolled together with some rainbow sprinkles and chocolate inside, and a little egg and sugar on top (below left). He explained that we needed to test it before we made more to see if it tasted good. I remembered the time I'd spent playing in the kitchen when I was a kid while my mother baked desserts in out of our home for a local restaurant, and how it instilled in my the love of baking and creativity in the kitchen. He was equally excited by the pie and his dough experiment as they emerged from the oven.

My Grandma came to dinner so we made her a gluten free peach raspberry crisp, using oats, tapioca starch, brown sugar, salt and a little oil for the crumble topping. Herb stuffed roasted organic chicken, with with cauliflower and onions made it's way into the oven as well. It was a good night.

It has been one week since we picked  25 pounds of peaches. I had plans to  freeze or cook some of them, but it seems that over the course of this week, my family of four has managed to eat all but one of these luscious juicy fruits. And, late on this hot night, I'm thinking that that last peach is about to go the way of the rest, pink juice running down my elbows and all.

Peach Raspberry Pie
Best Pie Dough
1/2 pound butter
2 1/2 C Flour
2 T sugar
1 t salt
1/2 C ice water
1/2 teaspoon vinegar

1. Cut butter into 1-inch pieces. Freeze for 15 minutes
2. Sift or whisk flour. Dissolve salt into water and add vinegar.
3. In a stand mixer using the paddle attachement, or with a fork, cut the butter into the flour until it is large pea sived pieces. Pinch any large pieces flat. 
4. Add water mixture to flour while mixing on low speed just until the dough comes together. It should be tacky, not sticky. Do not squish or overwork dough. Gently pull the dough together. Divide into 2 pieces, wrap well in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or freeze up to 3 weeks.

Filling
peaches - about 3 pounds, enough to mound in a 9-inch pie tin
raspberries - 1/2 pint
3 T corn starch or tapioca
1/2 cup sugar (or more  to taste)

1. Peel the peaches either with a vegetable peeler, or by cutting an "x" in the bottom of each fruit and placing it in a pot of boiling water for about 10 seconds. remove the peach and place in ice water. Use a sharp pairing knife to peel the skin off. Slice peaches into 1/2 -inch thick wedges.
2. Roll out both rounds of pie dough to between 1/8 and 1/4 inches thick. Place in the refrigerator to chill. 
3. Place one chilled piece of dough in a nine inch pie pan and press into the bottom edge of the pan. 
4. Toss peaches with starch and sugar. Pour into prepared pie shell. top with raspberries. brush the dough edge with egg wash to help seal the pie crust. Remove the second piece of dough from the fridge and cut a design into it. Cover the peaches with top piece of dough and press into the edge of the bottom crust. 
5. Using scissors, cut the dough about 3/4" from the pan edge. Fold the dough under itself and pinch around edge to crimp, or use a fork to finish the pie edge. brush the top with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar if desired. Chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. 
6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place pie on a sheet pan covered in foil or parchment to catch drips. Bake pie for about 50 minutes to 1 hour until the juices are bubbling rapidly and the dough is a dark golden color.

If you made any great pies this summer, please share by leaving a comment below!

Back To Where It All Began

The first commercial kitchen I ever cooked in was at a hippie alternative community dance camp called Dance New England (DNE), starting when I was 6 years old.  Everyone in the community was required to help out with cooking, cleaning and making the 10 day summer gathering happen. The food I remember from the early days was what I now think of as Moosewood cuisine (as in the cookbook and restaurant). I remember blackstrap molasses, steamed vegetables, buckets of tahini, brown rice, peanut butter, and lots of bodies cooking, dancing, swinging, and kids running in the woods dressed in costumes and covered in face paint. Over the next 30 years, the camp grew a lot and moved into the post hippy era. I cooked in the camp kitchen almost every summer till I was about 26 years old. Many great cooks passed through that kitchen. People from Omega and Kripalu Institute's kitchens, cooks schooled in macrobiotics, delicious vegetarian cooking, organic, inspired, reinvented, fresh cooked healthy, tasty food. I remember there being about 6 cooks in the kitchen each summer with dozens of volunteers cycling through in 3 hour shifts for their kitchen chores. Feeding 300-500 people with a staff of volunteers is an incredible feat!

Over the past 10 years, I have only been to dance camp twice, and this year was the first time with both my children. It was great to be back. My time in the kitchen this year was limited to a few short stints, not the exhausting long days cooking for 500 people that the head cooks were pulling. The DNE kitchen was and is a special place. I certainly owe much of my comfort in the kitchen to the years I spent helping out in there as a kid, teen and young adult. Cooking from scratch without recipes, following directions, giving directions and learning how to cook good food in large quantities to feed a whole community. Meals were cooked with attention and respect to allergies and various diets long before the terms gluten free and vegan were as mainstream as they are now. The lessons I learned in this kitchen about cooking, and in this community about life and cooperation have served me very well, and I am grateful.

The first Charlie, now "Chaz" making bread for 500 people daily. Some wheat, some spelt.

The fabulous lunch salad bar. Who would have a hard time eating well 

with these wonderful options waiting for them?!

The Kitchen in action

 The large immersion blender, once you use one, you'll never go back!

Did you know that you can "cook" kale by massaging it with a little salt and oil? Simple, fresh and delicious. Here we mixed it with some leftover cous cous, lemon juice, roasted garlic and herbs. I remember first learning this technique many years ago, and thinking the cook who
told me to do it was a little wacky, but no, it works and is great!

 Thank you to all the 2010 cooks and community members from Dance New England who fed us for the last 10 days, we miss all that great food already!

Do You Know About The Dirty Dozen?

When I go to the grocery store or farmers' market I look around at the food and wonder what was done to it before it got to the store cooler or market table. Did it come from a huge farm where the soil was mixed with chemical fertilizers and the plants sprayed with pesticides? Did the farmer spray the fruit directly with pesticides or not? If I eat this food, and serve it to my kids how much of those chemical fertilizers and pesticides will we be ingesting? 

While I like to grow some of my food, and I prefer to buy food that is grown with organic or other sustainable farming practices, I can't always find everything organic or ecologically grown, and even if I do, I can't always afford to buy it.  I use this Shopper's Guide to Pesticides put together by the Environmental Working Group to help me prioritize which produce I should try and buy organic. The "dirty dozen" side of the list shows produce with the highest levels of pesticide retention after they are grown, and washed. The "clean 15" side shows produce that has the lowest levels of pesticides. Most conventionally grown food (anything not labeled organic) is grown not only with pesticides, but also herbicides and chemical fertilizers. Some produce is grown "sustainably" or using Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which is a process of creating healthy crops through a variety of agricultural techniques to help minimize the use of chemical pesticides and fungicides. You can always try asking the produce worker at your grocery store or the farmer at the market about how the food was grown. A farmer might tell you that they sprayed their peach tree when the flowers were in bloom, but have not sprayed them since the fruit was on the tree, so they are using minimal amounts of chemicals and there should be none on the fruit itself.

Some people say that this list might scare people from eating fruits and vegetables at all. I think that it is important for people to be informed about what they are purchasing and eating, and to make decisions that allow them to balance out the amount of high pesticide residue and low residue foods they eat. For example, I love strawberries, but once the small window for local  IPM strawberries is gone, I can only afford to buy organic ones on occasion, so I sometimes buy conventional ones (with chemical residue) but only on occasion, and the rest of the time I use frozen organic ones or choose a different fruit that is lower in chemical residues. If I didn't know that strawberries were high in pesticides, then I would be feeding them to my children regularly, and that is a lot of chemicals for a little body to handle.

For a complete list of all the 49 types of produce tested by EWG, click here.

Here is some info about the Shopper's Guide to Pesticides:

Why Should You Care About Pesticides?

The growing consensus among scientists is that small doses of

pesticides and other chemicals can cause lasting damage to human

health, especially during fetal development and early childhood.

Scientists now know enough about the long-term consequences of

ingesting these powerful chemicals to advise that we minimize our

consumption of pesticides.

What’s the Difference?

EWG research has found that people who eat five fruits and

vegetables a day from the Dirty Dozen list consume an average of

10 pesticides a day. Those who eat from the 15 least contaminated

conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables ingest fewer than 2

pesticides daily. The Guide helps consumers make informed choices

to lower their dietary pesticide load.

Will Washing and Peeling Help?

The data used to create these lists is based on produce tested as

it is typically eaten (meaning washed, rinsed or peeled, depending

on the type of produce). Rinsing reduces but does not eliminate

pesticides. Peeling helps, but valuable nutrients often go down the

drain with the skin. The best approach: eat a varied diet, rinse all

produce and buy organic when possible.

How Was This Guide Developed?

EWG analysts have developed the Guide based on data from nearly

96,000 tests for pesticide residues in produce conducted between

2000 and 2008 and collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture

and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. You can find a detailed

description of the criteria EWG used to develop these rankings and

the complete list of fruits and vegetables tested at our dedicated

website, www.foodnews.org.

THE POWER OF INFORMATION

Headquarters 1436 U St. N.W., Suite 100 Washington, DC 20009

(202) 667-6982

Learn More at FoodNews.org

Dinner From the Garden + Bacon (and other food ramblings)

Sorry I haven't posted for a while, the kids were both sick (now I am) and I've been really busy trying to get our new menu ready at work. Thought I'd share a recent, fairly typical summer dinner with produce from our garden and the local farmers' market. Just picked lettuce (from the garden)with blanched broccoli (from the market), zucchini sauteed with thai basil (from the garden), basmati rice and some neiman ranch bacon (from the grocery store) crumbled on top. A little splash of good vinegar, and we had dinner.

I try on occasion to practice what I preach about food. Now don't think that  I manage to eat this way at every meal, but it is what I strive for. When people ask me about how to eat healthy food, I usually tell them to try and eat fresh whole foods, things that didn't come out of a box, they don't even have a nutritional label, because there are no ingredients. I also describe the idea that if you strive to have half of your meal be fruits or vegetables and the other half divided by grains and proteins, then you'll have a great healthy meal. This bowl is a little light on the protein, some marinated white beans would have been a good addition to round out the meal, but, you get the idea...

Note about pork:
While I'm jewish, pork was not off limits at either my mom's (mostly vegetarian) or my dad's (mostly carnivorous) houses growing up.  I have memories of eating salami and peperoni as a kid, my mom even sent me to school in second grade with a matzoh sandwich filled with butter and salami, (could it get any more unkosher?!). Around the age of 12 I started eating a mostly vegetarian diet. In college I was even vegan for a while. That started to change as I began cooking professionally in restaurants  after college in the mid 90's. There was so much good quality meat and it started to smell good to me after a while. At one catering company I worked at up in Boston, each week I had to cook dozens of racks of lamb. I would marinate the lamb overnight in fresh garlic, lemon and orange zest, fresh rosemary and thyme, then sear them in a very hot pan, slather each with dijon mustard and coat them in buttered bread crumbs. I'd serve them up at wedding after wedding, bar mitzvah after bar mitzvah, only to watch the guests and wait staff drool over them. I had never even tasted them, and then one day I couldn't resist, and man was that a delicious piece of lamb! Pork on the other hand still seemed like a taboo. The time I'd spent in Israel after college ingrained in  me the feeling that pork was dirty meat, and despite how good I knew bacon tasted, I just didn't have the desire to eat it, that was until I was pregnant with my second child. I started craving cured pork, salami, bacon etc, but after reading up on the horrible treatment of pigs in commercial feedlot farms (see below), there was no way I could eat the regular meat sold at most grocery stores. On occasion I have a little bit  of pork if it comes from a pig that was sustainably raised, and slaughtered in a "humane" way. 

I can still only stomach a small amount of cured pork at a time, I guess I'm just not used to the fattiness of it. This is some delicious house-made cured pork from Franny's in Brooklyn where I went to eat again after may years away, and it is still fabulous! Great Pizza, even by New Haven standards, and great non-pizza food made with local ingredients from the farmers' markets and sourced from local farms. This plate was shared by the whole table, but I still got a stomach ache afterwords. They also had fabulous roasted eggplant with lemon and almonds, spicy sauteed calamari and homemade celery or cherry soda, delicious!

If you want to learn more about how pigs or other animals are raised in many of the large feed lot farms, the ones that supply much of the pork and meat in our country, check out TheSustainableTable.com website and look under issues.

Garden Update July 2010

 I thought it was about time to share some garden pictures from this summer. The garden has survived the heat wave, and we are past our first crop of summer foods. My backyard plot gets limited sun, so many things grow a little later than normal. Our strawberries are long gone, sugar snap peas are just finishing, snow peas and shelling peas are done, tomatoes are just starting to ripen, the first round of lettuce is getting tall, but still edible, and the second crop is ready for some picking, the green bean plants  are small with a few moderately edible beans showing their faces, the cucumbers have exploded everywhere, zucchini plants are large with lots of flowers but no squash (hmmmmm,...?) carrots and celery are growing well, the raspberry plot is huge and heavy with unripened berries and bumblebees, the herbs are flourishing, the apple trees are struggling along, the grape vine has gorgeous leaves and sad fruits, and the blueberry bushes are happy to be in their new spot out of the shadow of the abundant raspberries. So far it has been a productive season for our little urban lot, with some good harvests, a few diseases, some great dinners and snacks, and a lot more good food to look forward to. 

I sometimes dream of spending my days working on a farm. I have done enough short stints on farms to know that my day dreaming about farm work is not entirely grounded in reality, and that the idea that working a farm would be less stressful than the work I do now, well, it is just a different kind of stress.  I am very thankful that my lively hood is not at the whim of mother nature everyday. The fungus or drought or bugs that infest our organically grown backyard garden, have a small impact on our lives. If I have to pull out all of my yellow grape tomato plants due to fungus (as I did this year) I haven't lost a percentage of my income. If my zucchini plants keep not producing squash, I can still pay my bills. If all my grapes are turning black and shriveling up, I haven't lost this year's wine crop, I just read up on grape disease and try to prevent it next year. 

The fungus that wilted my yellow grape tomatoes, and the black rot on our grapes. This year's losses.

I have been gardening in pots for many years, but in a yard, in the earth for only 4 years. Each year there are some great successes, and a few losses. Having a backyard full of food is exhilarating, beautiful, delicious, nutritious and cheap. This year we made the investment to build raised beds which I describe in detail in this post from May, that investment will last us for years. Each year we purchase a few bags of manure or compost to enrich the garden and harvest some from our own compost pile. I buy a few packets of seeds and some seedlings from the Common Ground School Spring Farm Festival or from some local garden shops, and then add water and weeding. A few of the plants in our garden were gifts from friend's yards (thank you Doug). A small stem of raspberries quickly turns into a patch, and a small grape vine will grow to cover a fence in just a few months. The marigolds are grown from dried flower heads picked off the Edgewood School Garden last year. They are an incredible variety, robust and hearty (they also help keep some bugs away from our plants).

The raised beds, soil and compost which were our start up costs for this year were about $250. The plants and seeds, about $30. In a normal year when we are not building the garden beds our annual costs would be somewhere around $50-$75 dollars, and could be a lot less if I started learning how to save seeds and if we paid a little more attention to our compost pile.

I have been entertaining ideas of growing food through the winter, using plastic sheeting as row covers. I'm starting to think about which hearty greens to grow through the winter, like spinach and kale, and maybe some carrots or other root crops as well. I took a workshop at a CT NOFA conference a few years back with an incredible farmer from Lebanon, CT who covers most of his farm land in row covers and hoop houses and grows food all winter long. He was an inspiration, and I have been promoting his work to every home gardener, school garden and farmer I know, so maybe it is time that I do it myself!

So, the point of all of these ramblings is to say that growing food in your backyard or in pots on your stoop is simple and inexpensive, and it can add an enormous amount of pleasure and delicious healthy food to your life. I hope you all are growing something good to eat, or at least entertaining the idea...

For resources on how to grow your own food contact your local garden center, organic farming organization, master gardeners program, farmers' markets, state extension program, or maybe try asking your neighbors.

You can also check out the resource guide in the cookbook I created: New Haven Cooks/Cocina New Haven, available to purchase on the CitySeed website.

Please share about food you've grown this year, successes or losses, 

first tastes or other fun garden  related stories.