New Magazine Review: The Lucky Peach

Article first published as New Magazine Review: The Lucky Peach on Blogcritics.

I just got my first Lucky Peach and devoured it. The Lucky Peach is McSweeney’s brand-new magazine devoted to food writing. As with any McSweeney’s publication (I’ve been a fan since first discovering McSweeney’s issue no. 4), the magazine is dedicated to original voices, strong ideas and opinions, and creativity in all its glory. The Lucky Peach is no namby-pamby whole-hearted endorsement of all things trendy in food, but instead raises questions about the trends and looks at them from fresh angles. From the discussion among Anthony Bourdain, David Chang, and Wylie Dufresne about mediocrity—and especially mediocrity in the restaurant business—to an essay about authenticity, this magazine presents articles that make you think and, more important, make you want to think beyond what you’ve been told or given.

This first issue is almost entirely devoted to ramen, which may seem like a funny place to start a new magazine about high-end food, but in true McSweeney’s fashion, it works. Turns out ramen is far more interesting than those square blocks that could also pass for insulation that at least I used to buy in college because I couldn’t afford to eat anything else. In Japan, ramen is as much a part of the fine dining scene and culture as sushi; nearly as much technique, knowledge, and specialized vocabulary are devoted to it. The magazine presents several articles about it, from a travelogue by Peter Meehan and David Chang to a guide to regional variations on sushi by Nate Shockey to a taste test of instant ramens by Ruth Reichl to a fascinating little story about the American working-class version called ya-ka mein by John T. Edge, which all tell a rounded history of the foodstuff.

And being a food magazine, of course recipes are included, although I wouldn’t buy the magazine for them. Some of them do seem delicious and many articles discuss techniques for making some really special things to eat, but that seems almost secondary to the passionate writing about foods and the cultures surrounding foods. I find that I am inspired to try some of the recipes provided (in particular the recipes for alkaline noodles and bacon dashi), but more than that I am inspired to think about food: where it comes from, how’s it made, the culture that surrounds it, and the people who make it.

I have only two criticisms of the magazine. First, the language gets a bit salty at times. I know, it’s a food magazine—shouldn’t it be a little spicy?—and maybe I am old fashioned, but the use of the f-word gets a little old sometimes. Granted, with Anthony Bourdain as a contributor, the language almost has to get a bit rough, but I find it jarring. I think it’s possible to get the voice of the authors across without having to include every syllable. Second, the layout of the recipes, while visually appealing, is sometimes hard to read. The layout includes arrows to let you know where to go next, but because we are Western readers, we expect a page to flow in a certain way. When it doesn’t do that, reading gets a bit harder; you find the flow is disrupted and you are struggling to figure out what the next step is.        

Despite these drawbacks, I know I am going to hold on to this copy of the magazine for years and I will be experimenting with noodle soups. And I can’t wait to find out what they are going to do in the next issue. I am so glad I signed up for a subscription!

     

Blueberry jam with maple syrup and lemon zest

For some updates on techniques and a recipe for plum-peach jam with basil, click here. 

I haven't posted in a while. For the Independence Day weekend, Mike, Sebastian, and I drove to Auburn Hills, Michigan (a little north of Detroit) to visit Mike's sister, her family, and their dad for the holiday (the drive takes 10 and a half hours; my little boy is a champ!). Instead of cooking and eating good local food, we subsisted mainly on junk food and candy bought at rest stops along the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes, feeling bloated and gross the whole way. (Sebastian, of course, loved this, but the guy is four, so I can't blame him for having tastes geared primarily toward straight-up salt and sugar.) I did have one really excellent meal: My brother-in-law Russ made some amazing fall-off-the-bone ribs and served them with BBQ sauce, grilled corn, and baked beans. We gorged ourselves on these delectable treats and moaned with discomfort for several hours after dinner. It was totally worth it.

Before we left, I had wanted to make a batch of blueberry jam to make sure that the harvest didn't go by without preserving at least some of it, but I ran out of time. I love blueberries. They may be my favorite berry. I am especially fond of wild lowbush blueberries, but they are hard to come by here in Virginia. When I was a kid in Sweden, I spent much of my time roaming around the woods like a small wild animal, getting damp and muddy and pretending I was a hero of some kind: a knight one day, Robin Hood the next. In my long rambles, I discovered treasured spots where wild blueberries grew in great masses, and I spent many hours seated among the plants, plucking berry after berry and savoring each one. I miss my blueberry spots, especially now that I cook. If only I could wander out into the woods and collect and gather blueberries, bring them home, and preserve them for winter. (I was told once that my Icelandic grandfather Sigurdur was a legendary berry picker; he could fill baskets faster than anyone, fingers moving so fast they blurred.)

But I must settle for domesticated highbush berries, which produce larger fruits that are not quite as deeply flavorful (still good, but not magic). Thankfully, one of my favorite farms, Reid's Orchard, grows berries and fruit organically (although they aren't certified), using integrated pest management techniques and caring for their soil and land in a way that will preserve it for the future (and it shows, just take a look at their peaches--they taste and smell as good as they look).

After recovering from the Michigan trip for a few days, I finally made it out of the house to get food on a steamy Thursday. I went to the Herndon farmer's market and decided to get some blueberries from Reid's. I lucked out because they had a lot of them, so I bought six pints. I had had this idea of making jam flavored with maple syrup and lemon zest. Foods from the same area often taste particularly good together--and sugar maples typically live where blueberries grow, so the combination sounded good. Obviously lemons and blueberries violate that principle, but they are good together. The acidity of the lemon just sparks the flavor of blueberries (as lemons do with so many things).

It was actually so hot and humid the day I bought the blueberries that my camera fogged up. 

So here's how I made my blueberry jam with maple syrup and lemon zest. I started with

• 3 liters blueberries, picked over to remove any soft berries, stems, leaves, or anything else you wouldn't want to eat, rinsed, and finally drip-dried for 10 minutes or so (better yet, use a scale, you should have 1.5 kilos of berries) 
• 700 milliliters sugar
• 200 milliliters real maple syrup
• 1 lemon, washed
• 1 tablespoon pectin, mixed with a little water to make a smooth paste

I spread a layer of sugar on the bottom of the pot I planned to use for jamming.

Then I layered blueberries over the sugar, added another layer of sugar, and zested some lemon over the sugar.

At the second layer, I added the maple syrup instead of sugar and zested some more. 

I added more berries and ended with a final layer of sugar and zest. (In other words, one layer of sugar on the bottom of the pot and one to top it all off.)

I covered the berries and sugar with the lid (ants are quite a problem in summer) and let it sit for a little over an hour (you could let it sit up to 24 hours in the refrigerator). Then I set the pot on low heat. At first, not much happened but eventually I could see a rim of liquified berry juice starting to rise around the edges of the pot, followed by a completely wet mass slowly simmering away. (Note that this isn't a project you do quickly, it can take several hours to reach the jelling point. Pick a lazy, rainy day when you aren't going to leave the house to make the jam. Maybe make some bread while you are at it.) 

  

I added the mixture of pectin and water to the pot and let the mass just simmer away. (At one point, I did get a boil over, so I had to turn down the heat a bit. Almost anything that's made with a lot of sugar has a tendency to get feisty if too much heat is applied.) I skimmed regularly. (Once when making jam as a kid, I made the mistake of not skimming. It left the finished product with a very unpleasant, bitter aftertaste. So if you decide to make jam, don't skimp on skimming.) Oh, and here's a tip to ease your skimming: Keep a bowl of cold water near the stove, dip your skimmer into the cold water before you skim, and then clean off the scum in the cold water, and skim again. You will probably want to replace the water from time to time. 

While the mass simmered, I cleaned and sterilized my jars in boiling water. (You can re-use your jars, but you must use new lids every time. The rubber that creates the seal doesn't hold up to multiple uses. You can probably find boxes of lids where you would buy other canning/jamming equipment.)

You can keep the jars in the hot water on low while your jam continues to simmer. Eventually, I started testing my jam to see if it was ready. How to test for readiness? Get a teaspoon of the liquid in the pot and spread it on a plate. Let it cool for a few minutes, and scrape your spoon through the smear on the plate. If the liquid immediately fills in the lines where the spoon scraped through, you are nowhere near done. If the lines don't fill in immediately, but do eventually, you are getting closer but you aren't there yet. If it bunches up into a jelly-like mass, you are ready to go.

When the spoon scrapes through, the liquid immediately refills the line. This is nowhere near done. 

The liquid isn't filling in as quickly now. The white of the plate shows just a little longer. Progress, but not done. 

The liquid no longer fills in where the spoon has scraped through, and you can create a little clump of jelly. Finished!

When the jam had reached the point where it was finished, I added the juice from the lemon (both for flavor and to help preserve the jam). (I strained it to make sure I wasn't adding seeds.) Then the next step was to add the jam to my warm and clean jars, close up the jars, and boil the jars to vacuum seal them. 

One thing to remember when you add the jam to the jars: Always leave at least an inch of space at the top of the jar. Otherwise, you won't be able to create an effective vacuum. And the vacuum is one of the main reasons that these jars will last for up to year. (That is, if you don't eat them before then. I am almost out of the strawberry jam I made already!)

I've wrapped my jars in newspaper because I don't have a rack to keep the jars stable (yet). 

Ah, pride and joy!

Update: To make sure your jams and jellies are safe to eat, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation. 

Overcoming fear: Lessons from the kitchen

I read an article about the trendiness of using foam in food this morning. What popped out at me was writer Andreas Viestad's shock at hearing comments about making his own whipped cream during a promotional tour a few years' back. He quotes a television host proudly saying, "Did you really whip the cream yourself? Well, my grandmother did that, too!"

As a fellow Scandinavian, I fully understand his amazement at such surprise. I encounter it too: People who speak of bread-making in hushed and reverent tones, as though the skill were some esoteric, magical knowledge bestowed in dark temples by the High Priest of Yeast and the Demiurges of Flour. Or people who are terrified at the thought of cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving, when getting the chance to cook something that big and impressive is so much fun! I can quickly think of a half-dozen items that are easy to make from scratch that many seem to be unable to accomplish without a ready-made product from the store, such as pancakes, biscuits, vinaigrette, marinade, stock, gravy, cookies, etc. Cooking is not rocket science, and yet many seem to approach it with the fear I reserve for trying to do calculus or talking to people on the phone.

Thankfully, I have never been afraid of cooking. Its familiarity to me and the long line of successes that I have had overcome the occasional disaster. But I have other fears and weaknesses. I have messes around the house that I strategically avoid including in the food photographs. I frequently cringe at things I have written. At times, picking up the charcoal and the paintbrush is a real struggle: What am I going to make? Will it be any good? Am I just being stupid to even try? Are my ideas pathetic, weak, derivative, shallow? I get anxious about not being as well organized as I'd like to be or struggling with debt. I feel embarrassed when I haul my heavy body out the door to go for a slow, painful run and imagine how stupid I must look.

In other words, I drag a chain of anxieties, fears, embarrassments, and shames around with me that can make movement difficult, if not downright impossible. I try to rely on little mantras sometimes, like Ted Kennedy's idea of not letting perfection stand in the way of accomplishing something good, or the idea that a long journey starts with a single step, but they don't always work for me.

But here's another idea. I am not afraid of cooking because I am so familiar with it. I have seen it done around me all my life. I have done it myself for years, and I have tried all kinds of things. Know the saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt"? Well, in this circumstance, that's not as bad as it sounds. All that familiarity I have in the kitchen gives me the history to try and fail without too much embarrassment because I know I have succeeded in the past and that I will succeed again soon. All the familiarity and knowledge I have picked up lets me analyze my mistakes and figure out where I went wrong.

So how do I apply this to my fears and anxieties? I breed contempt through practice and familiarity. I try and fail and then I try again. I put embarrassment and fear in a room, and I lock the door. I know they are still there, hooting and hollering away, trying to get out, but I work on ignoring them until they shut up. I drag my floppy belly out the door and run, and I look with empathy at those who run more slowly than I do (and with envy at those who fly by). I make myself write and move on when it's done. I practice drawing, paying little attention to what I draw because I know the ideas will come as I continue to practice. I trick myself into doing the things that scare me or embarrass me or make me feel shame as often as I can with the hope that eventually the shame and fear will go away.

So if you're afraid of cooking, here's what to do. Pick a recipe, any recipe, something you think you might like and try it. Make a mess in the kitchen. If you don't know what something means, look it up. Don't be afraid not to know something and look stupid. The smartest, most talented people in the world got that way because they didn't care if they looked stupid and asked a lot of questions. Maybe your food won't be great the first time, maybe it will. Either way, do it again. Do it until you can do it perfectly and take pride in it. Then try something else and do the same. Build your ability and your familiarity step by step. Know that practice will make you better. And in the meantime, I will try and do the same.        

Once upon a midsummer's night's ribs

Once upon a midsummer night cheery, I thought to myself, "Oh deary,
"I have yet to think of a dinner for,
"The midsummer night's feast that comes a'creeping,
"The luscious fruits of which we must have more,
"The roasted meats upon which we will feast, evermore."

All right, all right, wrong midnight creeping, I know, but I thought it was funny. So I'm easily amused.

Obviously, I wanted to do something with A Midsummer Night's Dream, but it was hard. All that came to mind was some sort of "pork-butt-Bottom the Weaver" kind of joke and a "what the Puck." I couldn't make it all come together. At least not quickly, and I do want to get this post out before Midsummer Night's Eve.

OK, OK, so technically the summer solstice was yesterday, but they won't be celebrating Midsummer Night's Eve in Sweden until this Friday, so I think we're good. This is a story of some amazing pork ribs that I highly recommend grilling for a midsummer night feast or the fourth of July or any other summer-y celebration. Heck, these would be good in winter, and nothing beats tending a grill in wild weather. But here's fair warning: Grilling ribs right takes a lot of time. You want at least three hours on the grill, and more is better. Why? Ribs have a lot of cartilage, which is tough connective tissue. It takes a long time before it melts, but when it does, you have tender, juicy meat heaven. (Apologies to my vegetarian friends; these ribs make me quite the savage.)

First, here are some notes about my grilling setup. I use a Weber kettle grill with charcoal. Lump charcoal, not briquettes (I don't like the way they burn and I believe they leave a chemical aftertaste in the food). So if you have a gas grill, you might want to check out a book on grilling to get more info about how to do this with your equipment. Steve Raichlen's BBQ USA has been a good source for me.

I start by applying a dry rub to a four-pound slab of ribs from Haskins Family Farm (if you know me at all, this is obvious; I like the family, I like their attitude about farming, and I love their products). A dry rub is a blend of salt, sugar, and spices that you rub on meat and leave on for a few hours. This is my blend (and it makes a lot, so that you can either double the amount of ribs or use about half of the rub and set the rest aside for another time):

3/4 cups salt
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 Tbsp dried mustard
2 Tbsp paprika
2 Tbsp cumin
2 Tbsp coriander
1 tsp black pepper

This deviates quite a bit from Alton Brown's formula of 8 parts sugar, 3 parts salt, plus 2 parts spices/flavorings, which is a great formula, so if you want to come up with your own blend (and I highly recommend doing so), go ahead and use that.

Lay the ribs out on a baking sheet with some paper towels underneath and rub big handfuls of your blend all over the meat (both sides). Set it aside for at least two hours, but you could probably leave these overnight (if you have a refrigerator that will accommodate. I don't, so I put the pan in a nice cool spot where the dog can't reach the ribs. You don't really have to worry about any bacteria buildup because of the high salt and sugar content of the rub).

Now, while those sit and soak up flavor, make the mop (you can also do this a day or two ahead if you'd like). A mop, in grilling terms, is basically any liquid goodness that you smear on the rubs while they are cooking (others may call it barbecue sauce, but because this is grilling not barbecuing, I try to call it a mop; also, I like the word mop). This mop uses blueberries, but almost any juicy summer fruit will work well (fruit and pork are just so happy together). These are the ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium to large onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 cup frozen (wild) blueberries (I prefer frozen here because the freezing process breaks down the cell walls and lets the juices flow freely)
3/4 cup light soy sauce
5 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp ketchup (optional, but it can add to the tang)
3 Tbsp sherry vinegar (you can replace this with cider vinegar or red wine vinegar, but you may want to increase the amount to 4 tablespoons because sherry vinegar is typically very strong)

Heat the oil in a pot and add the onions. Let them caramelize over low heat (takes about 10 minutes). If they burn slightly, it's not a disaster. If they burn a lot, you'd better start over. The bitterness of slightly burnt onions actually adds to the flavor.

 
Then add the rest of the ingredients and let them simmer over low heat for at least an hour. Don't forget to stir occasionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom. The blueberries will partially fall apart; you can buzz the sauce in a blender if you'd prefer it to be smoother, but I don't usually worry about it. If you are using fruit like cherries, peaches, or anything with some skin, you may want to peel the fruit first or strain out the skins.

About three hours and 40 minutes before you want to eat the ribs, start the grill. It takes about half an hour to get the coals going when you use charcoal. By the way, I finally got myself a chimney starter for the coals, and it's fantastic. It does away with having to use chemicals to start the fire (which may affect the flavor), and it's surprisingly efficient.

When your coals are hot, pile them all on one side of your grill. When you grill food for  a long time, you use indirect heat; otherwise you end up burning your food to a crisp, and what a shame that would be. Place the meat on the side of the grill where the coals aren't and close the lid (make sure the vents are open so the fire gets some oxygen). The shape of a kettle grill ensures that the hot air circulates around the meat (it basically works a lot like an oven). You can use wood for smoking as well (I didn't the last time I made these ribs because I find the smoke to be a bit overpowering sometimes). If you do use smoking wood, make sure to soak it in water for at least half an hour before adding it to the coals.

Now, let the fire do most of the work. Every half hour, turn the ribs and mop them with your sauce. Be generous with the mop. Every hour, add about 12 fresh coals to the fire (and smoking wood if you are using it). Just keep doing this for three hours or more. Eventually, the slow heat will dissolve the cartilage in the ribs that can make them so tough. You will also notice that a lot of fat will melt off and the bones will start to poke out. If the bones are turning black, you can wrap them in tin foil. After at least three hours of this treatment, take the ribs off the grill and let them rest for 10 minutes before serving. The ribs will be unbelievably tender and so good you will want to suck every ounce of meat off them.

In the immortal words of the Animaniacs, "Helloooo nurse!"

Serve with potato salad and salad. Or with baked potatoes (you can do these on the grill as well if you like) and sour cream and salad.

Lime-peach upside-down cake: The experiment

So. I did it. You know, the experiment? With the limes and the peaches and the cake and whatnot that I mentioned I wanted to try yesterday? Yeah, I made a lime-peach upside-down cake, and as you will see, the experience had its ups and downs.

So I started with my go-to recipe for all the upside-down cakes I make and then made some modifications.

I zested two limes.

I melted six tablespoons of butter in my cast-iron skillet slowly over low heat.

I added a cup of brown sugar to the butter in the pan.

I juiced the two limes and added the juice to the sugar and butter in the pan.

I added a tablespoon of honey to the sugar, butter, and lime juice in the pan.

Then I let the mixture simmer on low heat until the sauce thickened.

While the lime caramel simmered in the pan, I started on the batter. First I beat six tablespoons of softened butter in my stand mixer until it was creamy.

Then I added a cup of white sugar to the butter and beat that until it was creamy.

I added the lime zest (about one tablespoon) and two eggs to sugar and butter and once again beat it until it was creamy. (It's funny how hard we have to work over our food sometimes. I imagine the molecules with little black eyes. Oh boy. Don't mind me.) Then I added a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. (Usually I scrape the seeds out of half a vanilla bean, but I couldn't find any in the cupboard, which is always overflowing with spices, some of which I don't use because I bought them in the heat of excitement over something or other).

Then I mixed one and a half cups of all-purpose flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, and a quarter teaspoon of salt in a bowl and measured out a half cup of milk. I proceeded to alternate adding milk and flour mixture to eggs, butter, sugar, etc. in the bowl. (About three measures of each and at low speed, otherwise the flour will fly up into a cloud and make you look like an old man, which is of course not a problem if you are an old man, but I am not yet, so I avoid it.)

The next step was to add the peaches to the caramel mixture in the pan. (I used frozen peach slices left from last year--there were about two peaches worth in the bag. The texture of the peaches was pretty mushy, so I would recommend fresh peaches or other fruit.)

I poured the batter on top of the peaches. Poured is generous, more like scraped and smeared. This batter is not runny, and it's not supposed to be. Try to spread it evenly over the fruit and caramel in the pan. (By the way, if you don't have a cast-iron pan, you can do this in an eight-inch cake pan. Just start your caramel in a thick-bottomed pan on the stove and then pour it into your cake pan. However, I think that you should run out and get a cast-iron pan; they are cheap, last forever, and incredibly wonderful to work with if you get a good season on them. Like now. Go. Run. I will wait for you.)

Put the pan into a 350-degree oven and set the timer for one hour and five minutes. Now, if you use eggs that you can trust, gorge yourself on every last morsel of batter that you can scrape out of the bowl. I literally made some kind of grunting Neanderthal noise while trying to shove my face into the bowl (with little success) to get every last molecule of this batter. It's that good. No. Really. Trust me on this.

OK, when the timer went off an hour and a half later I pulled the cake out of the oven (it turned out a little darker than usual, I probably should have pulled it out a little earlier). I placed the whole pan on a rack to rest for 30 minutes. Dum de dum de dum de dum. Twiddling fingers. Pacing.

Finally, it was time for the great reveal. I scraped around the edges of the cake with a butter knife to loosen it, and holding a plate on top of the pan, I flipped it over. I pulled up the pan. Nothing on the plate but a couple of crumbs. Hm. OK. Scrape around the edges again. Do the flip thing again, and, don't laugh, the thing comes out in big broken chunks.

Damn! Typical! I have made this cake so many times, and it has come out beautifully every time. The one time I want to show it off to the world, it turns out a big mess. Oh well. It tastes great. I am pretty sure it turned out such a disaster because the fruit was so mushy. If I had used fresh peaches (and perhaps more of them), it would have been beautiful.

Notes on the source recipe: For this recipe I eliminated the cinnamon that is usually added to the flour mixture. I didn't think that lime and cinnamon would be a happy combination. I also added lime juice to the caramel mixture. When I make this recipe with other fruits, I generally follow the recipe as is, minus the almond extract. I like almonds, but I've got a thing about almond extract and other almond-scented stuff. It just gives me the willies. I know, weird, right. Well, everyone has their hangups. I also detest celery and do all I can to avoid it.

Food I want to make

I have a huge craving for sweets at the moment, which is a bit weird, I don't usually crave them so ferociously. I am also too exhausted to make anything, and the thought of getting some kind of candy bar or something is actually kind of repugnant (guess I must not be craving sweets that much).

So I was daydreaming about what I might be able to make with what I have. I think I may have some chocolate, but somehow the season doesn't say "chocolate" to me. I've got a bag of organic limes and some frozen peaches left over from last summer (I don't hit the farmers market until Saturday when I will get fruit, fruit, sweet fruit). Because, as I have said, I am too tired to stand in a kitchen and beat butter (I can't even bear the thought of standing by the stand mixer while it beats butter), I am just going to have to hold on until tomorrow, when I am going to try to invent some kind of peach upside-down cake with a lime glaze. I think it will be good. I hope it will be good. Mostly, I think it will be a lot of fun to try. I love making upside-down cakes in my cast iron skillet.

While I was moaning on Facebook about craving lime-y treats, a friend recommended the key lime pie from Joe's Stone Crab (she's a food writer, so she ought to know about all kinds of deliciousness). I looked it up; I could order a pie for nearly $70 (a teeny tiny bit out of my price range) OR I could try this recipe, which I plan to do in the near future. I really want to try inventing my cake first though.

Another food notion that popped into my head was creating the perfect tomato pie. I am not sure what my criteria for perfection are yet, which will of course have an effect on said perfect pie. Obviously, no sog factor in the crust. Ew. The addition of some herbs and cheese would likely be nice, but which ones? Some experimentation may be in order. Also, I love fresh summer tomatoes (I mean who doesn't really?), but I think I want the tomatoes to feel almost dry like a sun-dried tomato. So, once the tomatoes start to hit, I may need to test some variations.
 
Oh yes, another thing I want to try: Different kinds of pesto. Obviously regular basil pesto is absolutely lovely and freezes nicely, letting you keep that fresh basil flavor all winter or at least as long as the pesto lasts, which may not be that long. But I also want to try making it with cilantro and pepitas. And I have heard that arugula and walnuts can be good. I recently "discovered" arugula and would love to use it more. What else might work? If you have ideas, let me know.

Of course, pasta is something I want to take on at some point. Given how important eating local and minimally processed foods is to me, I have to say I find it a tad embarrassing to buy any food in a box. I mean, it happens, of course, I am only human and I still live in a country with grocery stores, but I do tend to experience a twinge of shame even when I get a box of organic pasta. What I really want to try is this giant noodle. Looks like so much fun! I also want to try coloring pasta with beets, carrots, spinach, and whatever else I can think of because I completely, totally, absolutely adore color.

Generally I think I am a pretty good cook, but I find myself motivated to refine my skills. To pay more attention to nuances and the effects of taste and texture that I am trying to achieve.

Tune in tomorrow (or perhaps Saturday) to find out how the lime-glazed peach upside-down cake turns out.

Oh and to add a little eye candy to this post, here's a little something I drew today. It's after a photo of juvenile red-shouldered hawk. I made some mistakes while drawing it, but it's not too bad. I am trying to work on improving my drawing and painting skills as well.

  
Oh, and I made mayo today, but with a twist. (We had some leftover grilled chicken and I wanted to make sandwiches.) Instead of using lemon juice in the mayo recipe I use, I substituted lime juice, which turned out really well. I also reduced the oil by a quarter cup, with no discernible ill effects. I think I am going to try to reduce it some more and see how much low I can go.

Connecting farmers and consumers: Two examples of solutions

Food processing and distribution systems are one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of local food economies. Most of these systems have been optimized for industrial scales and simply don't allow people to access local food in a practical way. Thus, you end up buying asparagus that has been shipped from Chile, even though many local farmers have a glut of it that's fresher and better tasting (and hasn't traveled thousands of miles wasting who knows how much fuel).

    

Access to local food has certainly been a difficulty for me as I have tried to transition to eating a more local diet. I frequently go to at least two different farmer's markets every week to find specific products from specific farmers that I am particularly fond of. I have searched up and down nearby grocery aisles to find products that are from around here (or at least from the east coast), but sometimes those local products haven't been treated very well.

Obviously, there's a lot of leg work involved. So you can imagine my excitement when a friend of mine sent me this link today: Farmer Girls.net. The site is designed to provide the critical link between farmer and consumer, which so often hinders people from accessing local food. Websites like these is one more way that local farmers can connect with the buyer and sell their food. Basically the idea is that the consumer orders food from local farmers through the Internet and then picks it up at a certain time from specific locations in the Northern Virginia area. The website provides brief bios of farms and producers that participate, including information about whether they are certified organic, "beyond organic," conventional, or in transition.

Of course, farmer's markets are the most common option (and the most enjoyable, at least for the consumer), but they can take a lot of time out of a farmer's day, can be expensive, and can be hard for people to get to. Also, although I know of a few winter's markets, most farm markets shut down in colder months, so that's several months out of every year when farmers aren't able to sell their wares. (Photos illustrate the goodies I purchased during a recent trip to the farmer's market.)

Another local distribution system that I have followed on Facebook for about a year now is The Local Food Hub, which is based out of Charlottesville, Virginia. This nonprofit works on bridging the divide between producers and consumers that can make eating local food so difficult. According to their website, they focus on three major issues related to local food: distribution, supply, and access.

To address distribution, they have a warehouse where they bring together produce from more than 50 farms, enabling purchasers for big institutions, including hospitals and schools, to purchase local food without having so much difficulty sourcing it.

Aggregating food like this enables farmers to focus more on producing the food, thus addressing supply. The Local Food Hub also provides a lot of educational programs, such as internships and workshops, enabling farmers to continually improve what they do and to bring up a new generation of farmers within the context of the Virginia food shed.

Finally, they provide access with a phone number that enables institutional purchasers to buy the large quantities of food they need and through partnerships that enable the Food Hub to get food to food banks and to needy neighborhoods. It's a cool organization (and I wish there was something like it a little closer to home).

These are just two options for accessing local food, but I hope to learn of more. I'll keep my ears open.