The Fosters take Maine!

RCF shows off the Farmer's Market bounty!

My parents generously drove 5 1/2 hours from Falmouth, MA to Orono, ME this week to pay me a visit. We visited Pat's Pizza in downtown Orono, which is an institution here, Mom and I played in the garden while Daddy did odd jobs in the house, and we all enjoyed a long visit to the University of Maine's Hudson Museum. During one of our walks across campus, we visited the Orono Farmer's Market, which - as you have seen in a previous post - is a wonderful source of fruit, vegetables, bread, meat, and other treats. Not to mention, a nice chat with some friendly Maine farmers.

MYF doing what she does best!

This week, we bought Pippen apples (an old English variety), oatmeal bread, celeriac, sweet potatoes, gigantic shallots, buttery lettuce...and little, tiny red and superior potatoes. Mom, who is a trained chef, helped me roast a chicken, accompanied by the tiny potatoes dotted with chives from the garden. Mom does a mean chicken - she roasted the 5-pound chicken in a cast-iron skillet for a couple of hours, then drained off the fat and created a pan sauce from mustard, soy sauce, white wine, and garlic. It was a spectacular family meal, enjoyed in the warmth of my little Orono kitchen. Come and visit, ayuh!

Postscript: RCF tells me he took his giant farmer's market onion, cut it in half, microwaved it 'til soft, then threw it on the grill - it was sweet and delicious!

Gnocchi, gnocchi, gnocchi...

Andrew has been agitating to make gnocchi for a while now, and we finally had the time on a recent Saturday afternoon. With our farm potatoes, Massachusetts eggs, Kate's butter, home-grown sage, and King Arthur Flour, we made the most succulent, fluffy, light, airy, yummy, delicious...gnocchi! With that string of adjectives, you know they must have been good. In fact, I think they were the best gnocchi I have ever had, hands-down. For those of you who have never had them, gnocchi are tiny pillows of potato pasta, which are traditionally served in a sage-butter sauce. For the best results, handle the dough as little as possible to avoid developing the gluten in the flour and creating a gooey mess. Our recipe came from The New Doubleday Cookbook, but there are many out there.

Recipe:

For the gnocchi:
2 cups mashed potato (simply mashed with no added ingredients! We rice ours to make them as smooth and fluffy as possible.)
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted.
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper (it calls for white, but we used black)
pinch of nutmeg

For the sage-butter sauce:
2-3 T salted butter
4-5 leaves fresh sage (or more!)

Lightly toss the ingredients with your hands or a fork until the very sticky dough comes together. We let the dough sit for about half an hour and then, on a heavily floured board, roll the dough into 1/2" thick ropes. These we cut into 1" pieces and Andrew rolls them on a fork to create the classic gnocchi shape - the little grooves hold the butter sauce (mmmm).

When a large pot of water comes to a boil, begin melting the butter and sage together in a large skillet until the butter begins to brown - turn down the heat (or off). The gnocchi go into the pot of boiling water about 20 at a time, until they bob to the surface. I remove these with a strainer after they cook at the surface for 30 seconds-1 minute, and throw them in to the warm sage-butter sauce. Top with some grated parmesan cheese, and you have a masterpiece.

Margaret's Adventures in Clamming

...and my mother's adventures in clam digging continue...

"Today was the day several of us from the Service Center were meeting at Waquoit Bay to have a last quahog dig before the season closes. It dawned an overcast day but was mild and sprinkled only a little this morning. At 1:00 I got into my bathing suit and shoes and went to the garage to get the equipment. I put the bucket and rake on the driveway while I put on my shoes and said goodbye to RCF. I got in the car and promptly backed over the rake and the bucket, smashing the styrofoam ring into four pieces, squashing the bucket, and snapping the basket off the rake. It was now beginning to drizzle. I couldn't believe it, but RCF came to the rescue and straightened out the basket and attached the pieces of foam to it with wire. I went to neighbor Bill's and got his rake, and went on my way - very upset with my stupidity. I got there and my friends were all out in the bay, digging away in the drizzle. As I neared them I realized I didn't have my cap with the license on it. Oh well, I would plan to ask one of the men to marry me for an hour or so and squeak through on his license if the fish warden appeared, which is not unusual.


My friends had their buckets half full and I was getting going, thinking about the lovely end-of-season chowder I would make. My first quahog was the size of an orange and the pickings were pretty good. The ocean is still warm so it was very pleasant. The sun even peeked through for a few minutes and the drizzle stopped.

My friend Kathy filled her bucket and said she had to go home, so we said goodbye as she left the water. A ways down the beach she stopped and read a yellow sign that said the shellfish area was closed because of fecal contamination, and she came running back to share the news. How the rest of us missed the sign is beyond me! Maybe the lure of a pleasant afternoon at the beach clouded our vision. Some folks actually considered ignoring the sign, but the final decision was that we had to dump our catch. So we all left the water and sat on the beach throwing the quahogs back into the sea one at a time. :( Bob knows what a painful few moments that would have been. Retirement isn't all fun and games."

Empty Bowls

Empty Bowl...it sounds so sad, but it was a celebration! As Waltham Fields Community Farm members, we were able to attend a fund raiser this summer: we each purchased a handmade soup bowl (thrown by one of the farmers), which we filled with soup made by area restaurants from farm ingredients.

Catherine and Andrew eagerly await the soup!

Susan, Tim, Andrew, and I opened a bottle of red wine, sampled soup, and enjoyed meeting fellow shareholders. It was a perfect evening in the late summer sunshine, and we ate dinner at the edge of the fields that brought us all of our summer produce! Seems to me it was money well spent, and reminded me that belonging to this farm doesn't just mean getting veggies - but joining a community, supporting hard work, and nourishing ourselves in lots of ways.

WFCF shareholders gather for the Empty Bowls Dinner - can you spot Sue, Tim, and Andrew?

Welcome to Orono, Maine!

Though not as famous as its Idaho cousin, the Maine potato is an important economic crop...and superior, according to the seller!

Always the traveler, I am now living in Orono, Maine to start my job as Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Climate Change at the University of Maine...once again, Andrew and I must juggle living in two places, but at least we can get to each other by car this time! I am settling in to my cute little house, getting to know my colleagues, and the first week of classes is already over. It has long been a dream of mine to spend more time in Maine, and I guess this is my chance.

Orono Farmer's Market seconds tomatoes - at $1 a pound, I buy lots and make them into sauce to freeze for the winter. Together with homemade meatballs, this is a wonderfully comforting meal.

As part of my settling in, I had to investigate the food options here in Orono. Just down the street is the Thriftway, which is possibly one of the grossest stores I've ever been in - they offer cheap beer, pink hot dogs, and really frightening, shriveled veggies. This filled me with fear, but we have found a lovely grocery store nearby, as well as the fantastic Orono Farmer's Market!

A New England classic - Anadama bread is made with molasses. Mmmmmmm.

I had initially been afraid that there would be little local food available in the area because we are a tiny university town and it's so cold here much of the year, but was I wrong! The Orono Farmer's Market is year-round (though diminished in the winter) and features veggies, fruit, honey, maple syrup, poultry, pork, beef, fish and lawbstah, baked goods, cheese, cured meats, and more. It is spectacular and is within walking distance of both my office and my house. During Andrew's weekend visit, we made a trip to the farmer's market and came away with a huge bag of goodies. I have already been going twice a week and can see that my paycheck will be feeding my farmer's market habit, but it is comforting to know I can keep my pantry stocked with good, local treats. Come for a visit and sample our Maine fare!

Chef Andrew enjoying an evening on the deck - he grilled Chestnut Farm steak while I prepared Farmer's market salad and corn on the cob. A fantastic New England feast!

More thoughts on grains...

In the last few days, I have had grains on the brain. Martha Stewart Living featured an article on grain salads this month, and I read a Boston Globe article featuring Ben Lester, who runs a bakery and grain CSA in Western Massachusetts. I have wanted to join, but am just too intimidated by the enormous amount of grain in the share (over 100 lbs!)...but, it got me thinking about the jars of grains I have stored in our pantry. As I said in a previous post, we need our grains to stay healthy, whether they are locally available, or not. So, I decided to move beyond rice this week and started cooking with bulghur and wheat again. The results were wonderful! Last night while Andrew was roasting Chestnut Farm chicken on his new grill, I cooked a bowl of bulghur wheat and mixed it with cherry tomatoes from Waltham Fields Community Farm, parsley from Susan's garden, and homemade salad dressing. When the chicken, which was marinated beautifully, was done, we shredded it and added it to the salad for the lovely - and very simple! - result pictured above.

To accompany the leftovers for today's lunch, I made flatbreads from our Massachusetts wheat. I perused several of my favorite cookbooks for flatbread recipes and decided to go with a simple pita bread recipe, which you have seen Susan make before.

It took me just a few minutes to grind the 3 cups of flour necessary for the recipe, and instead of letting the pitas puff in the oven (who wants to turn on the oven in this humidity?), I cooked them on the cast iron griddle. They are done within minutes and produce these lovely, browned breads, which are wonderful as wraps for the salad.

Birthday Foraging Expedition

Susan tries something green and hearty during our foraging tour - brave girl!

We are having *crazy* weather here in New England this summer. Today it is so humid that I am huddled by our new air conditioner, hoping to get a little bit of relief from the sticky, icky, yucky day. It has been much improved by my cold glass of white wine, and a tour of this summer's photos...including those from my birthday. My birthday falls at the end of June, and we spent the evening at Waltham Fields Community Farm - just what I love! Susan, Tim, Andrew, and I participated in a foraging tour of the farm, we ate birthday potluck dinner (including rhubarb pie!), and stayed to watch Andrew host star gazing night for farm members. It was a happy, relaxing way to spend the evening, and a fantastic way to forget that I am currently in my mid-30s.

WFCF in the evening light.

On our foraging walk, we learned about many, many plants that one can harvest from the Massachusetts landscape - I will admit that I'm a bit lukewarm about the greens, but the nuts and berries are quite tasty. We enjoyed fruit leather made from Autumn Olive, toasted black walnuts and hickory nuts, and a June berry pie made by the leader of our foraging expedition. As the guide said, we do NOT recommend that you go out and pick things from the landscape without a proper guidebook - there are few things in Massachusetts, besides mushrooms, that could kill you, but you do not want to get sick. If you are interested in attending a foraging walk or learning to forage with a guide book, check out Russ Cohen, our guide. And, now, enjoy our photos!

Russ Cohen educates us about the natural bounty of the landscape.

Tim was totally into it!

Though they are an invasive species, autumn olives are a lovely berry that make great fruit leather.

Hickory (l.) and black walnut (r.) - we ate them both, but I preferred the hickory nut - black walnut is definitely an acquired taste, but is widely available in New England forests.

Lettuce extraordinaire!

Possibly the biggest head of lettuce I've ever seen. It took 6 people to finish this thing off...

Susan's Oven Risotto

Grains sure are hard to come by here in New England. When we lived in California we ate rice from the Sacramento Valley, but otherwise we just bought grains in bulk - and that's what we're doing here, too. I have found Maine cornmeal and the lovely wheat from western Massachusetts, but we need our whole grains to stay trim and fit! So, I do buy rice, quinoa, and other things, and occasionally we get a bag of wheat or barley from the Enterprise Farm Share. If you, dear readers, have suggestions for where to find more local grains, please let me know.

Now that Susan and Tim are on their honeymoon in la bella Italia, I have been craving Italian goodness...pizza, ricotta, tomatoes and basil, olives...Risotto, a creamy Italian rice dish, is one of my favorite meals and is a great way to use up the veggies from the Waltham Fields Share, especially when one begins to grow tired of summer squash and zucchini. My sister Susan is an absolutely wonderful cook and she has several tried and true recipes (if you're lucky, I'll share some more). One of these is an oven risotto that takes less than half an hour from beginning to your bowl. This is not the traditional way to concoct an Italian risotto and may offend you die-hard risotto eaters, but it sure is quick and delicious.

I'm writing this as the smell of risotto fills the air - temperatures are finally cool enough for me to turn on the oven and we had an abundance of veggies in the fridge. Hopefully this will satisfy my Italian cravings!

Susan Foster's Oven Risotto:
1/4 c. onion, chopped
1-2 c. other veggies - leeks, summer squash, zucchini, fennel, or whatever hearty summer veg you might have on hand - cut into very thin slices. If you are using peas or other very delicate vegetables, cook these separately and add at the end!
Sautée the veggies in olive oil in a pan you can cover (a covered sautée pan or Le Creuset pot, for instance). Add salt and pepper.
When the veggies are soft, move them to one side of the pan and add 3/4 c. arborio rice - sautée until it begins to turn translucent (2 minutes, approximately).
Add 1/4 c. dry white wine and cook off alcohol.
Add 1/2 c. chicken stock and 1 1/2 c. boiling water.
Bring mixture to a boil, cover, and put into a 425-degree oven.
Check the rice after 5-10 minutes and stir.
After another 5-10 minutes, the mixture should be sticky and gooey, but not dry - at this point you can add 1/4-1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese.

...and the buzzer tells me my risotto is ready, so off I go, white wine in hand, to imagine I'm in an Italian villa overlooking the sea. Buon appetito!

Using my Barefoot Contessa cookbook as a guide, I made the leftover risotto into cakes - mix with a bit of yogurt or ricotta cheese, coat in bread crumbs, and sautée in olive oil.

BEST. SOUP. EVER.

No, this is not an exaggeration: I think I made the best soup ever. Now, if you don't like fava beans or tarragon, it's possible you might disagree, but I think one sip of this soup will change your taste buds forever. Waltham Fields grows fava beans each year, and I was thrilled to see them because we used to buy them by armloads at the Berkeley Farmer's Market. However, their tough, furry pods can be intimidating if you don't know what to do with them - they are quite easy to shell, and they have a lovely, summery flavor and bright green color. Beware: they are NOT good if they are old, so if they taste funny or the pods are browning/bursting, I'd throw them away (in the compost, of course).

I hoarded our share of these for two weeks to make The Best Soup Ever, and have recreated the recipe below. There are many other ways to cook fava beans, but this was easy and made a full, sumptuous meal.

The Best Soup Ever (or, Fava Bean-Tarragon Soup):
40 fava bean pods, shucked
5 scallions, chopped into 1" pieces
3-5 cloves garlic (or a head of fresh garlic, which I had on hand!), sliced or minced
~2 T tarragon leaves (if you don't know tarragon, it has a light licorice flavor - I hate black licorice, but this is a very pleasant herb)
salt and pepper to taste
water (or chicken stock, if you have it)

Sautée the scallions until they wilt, add the garlic, fava beans, salt, pepper, and tarragon. When this mixture has begun to brown and smell fragrant, cover with water and cook until all the veggies are very soft. Blend 'til smooth and serve with a dollop of plain yogurt, a garnish of chopped chives, and homemade croutons.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam

I am back in Massachusetts - for the time being, at least! To get here, my dear friend Stephanie helped me drive all my belongings from the Smithsonian to our little apartment in Somerville, and we had quite the adventure along the way...one stop we made was to see our graduate school friend Kris, who lives in Rhode Island with her husband and children (you have seen them featured in apple picking and farm visit posts previously). Now there is a new addition to the family - little Erik! During this visit, we discovered they have a large rhubarb plant flourishing in the back yard, and they donated their entire crop to us. From this wonderful bounty, I made strawberry-rhubarb jam, which I have frozen in small servings to enjoy as the winter comes...we can only imagine the wonderful, cool temperatures that will be coming as we endure a heat wave of more than 100 degrees!

To make this jam, I always do it by eye and estimate the amounts - but it's important to keep in mind that rhubarb is *extremely* sour and needs lots of sugar to be palatable. You can do this according to your taste, but I like mine tart. I cut the rhubarb into 1" pieces, the Waltham Fields strawberries into quarters, and added enough sugar to make the mixture sweet (3/4 cup or more, perhaps?). When this has boiled down, let it cool and enjoy on yogurt, on bread, in oatmeal, or store in the freezer for a later date.

News from Waltham Fields

This morning I received my weekly newsletter from Waltham Fields Community Farm, where we get our weekly veggie share. Usually I skim through it, it provides a list of what's available this week and some adventures from the fields. Today, though, it was a heart-felt essay from the farm manager who asks the question: "why farm?" I have copied her letter here to remind us all of the farmers who work so hard for us every day:

I was talking with the radiant Reverend Molly at the end of the CSA pickup on Saturday and she mentioned that the cycle of Biblical texts read at church services repeats itself every three years. She was preparing a sermon on a text that she had preached on three years earlier and was looking back through her notes from that time for reminders, inspiration, or words she could use as seeds for a new relationship with the text and her parishioners.

On the farm, our cycles repeat as well, though in ways that aren't always predictable -- while summer always follows spring, and fall summer, one growing season might carry echoes of another, or things might seem to repeat themselves from week to week or day to day. This week, for example, we had some flat tires, first on our "Mini-K" tractor, then on our big Massey-Ferguson. We had some finger injuries: Dan hurt his moving irrigation pipe, and I seem to have injected mine with a tiny cucumber spine that makes it swell up and difficult to bend. Everyone has Band-Aids on at least one finger at this time of year. And this week we had some potent reminders of 2009: the cool, rainy day on Friday when the weeds seemed to grow six inches between morning and noon, the warnings from UMass about late blight making its way up the coast to Connecticut, a group of amazing weeders who saved our sweet potatoes in memory of our dear work share Cary, who left us two years ago last week.

I've been thinking often, too, of longer cycles -- for example, the cycle of rest for the land and farmers that, in the Old Testament, is required every seventh year. Coincidentally, the "sabbaticals" that I have taken from farming because of the birth of my children were seven years apart, in 2003 and 2010. During that 2003 season, one of our most thoughtful and skilled colleagues here in the Boston area wrote an essay called "Why Farm?" I revisit it as a canonical text during the cycles when I am thinking about the big picture instead of the sore finger or the flat tires: why do we do what we do? Why even bother with this seemingly quixotic effort to grow food on land that is so high value that it is nearly impossible to make the enterprise cover its costs? Why continue to do a job that is backbreaking, heartbreaking, infinitely changeable and ultimately leaves us with very little in the way of equity for all the sweat we put in? When something as uncontrollable as late blight can wipe out the entirety of a beautiful, healthy tomato crop in under a week, why not throw in the organic and local towel and go back to eating predictable, processed food from the grocery store?

In his essay, Chris argues that the reasons to farm need to go beyond the personal rewards reaped by the farmer. He suggests that the economic, social and environmental good that is served by local agriculture as part of a larger movement towards justice in our society is what gives farmers their real staying power in the profession -- and is also what moves consumers to support them, even when the bok choy is full of holes or the tomatoes don't come in at all. It is, he says, "an understanding of the role this work plays in the great issues of our time that sustains us in the long run."

Depending on my place in the cycle of the growing season or my approach to farming, I have remarkably different responses to Chris's essay. This week, in the heart of this growing season, with all its echoes of seasons before and foreshadowing of seasons to come, I think he's got it backwards. Don't get me wrong -- I firmly believe in the connection of local organic farming, with all its contradictions and complexities, to the great issues of our time. This is what got me into the work in the first place, and what brought me to a farm that addresses many of those issues, both directly and indirectly, every day. But what sustains me, as privileged and personal as it might seem, is the fact that when I let go of the intellectual and physical challenges that we wrestle with both on a daily basis and in the big picture, farming is something that I can help do to bring a moment of beauty to the world. It is clear in a moment like Saturday morning, when the farm, full of healthy food and happy people and flowers and memories, was something a little greater than the sum of its social, economic and environmental parts.

There is nothing about a farm that will stand the test of time --the beauty of a farm in July is fleeting, giving way to the senescence of the fall and the beauty of those other cycles we were talking about earlier -- winter into spring, spring into summer, rest and renewal into mud and hard work again. Anything built of soil and water and light is both eternal and gone in the blink of an eye. And I'm no artist -- I can't capture this beauty in a painting or a song or a sculpture that both represents it and connects it to the great issues. All I can do is honor the cycles of plant, cultivate, harvest, sore finger, flat tire, late blight, and try to stay awake enough to hear the echoes of the larger cycles when they come around again.

Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for Andy, Erinn, Dan, Larisa and Lauren

Concord Grape Jelly

This morning as I sat down to breakfast, I decided to pop open a jar of grape jelly...what I think of as "exploding grape" jelly. Last summer, Susan and Tim found abundant Concord grape vines in their small back yard in Watertown, and Tim snuck out to pick them before the landlord or neighbors could get to the supply - and pick them he did! He gathered as many as he could, and they are just a beautiful, deep purple. They give off a sickly sweet grapey scent, which makes my mouth water. Anyway, back to the story of the exploding grapes...

After Tim picked and washed the grapes, we turned to the 1967 Joy of Cooking that belonged to our grandmother, Elizabeth Foster, because it has a recipe for making and preserving grape jelly. As you can see below, this recipe advises using slightly under-ripe grapes, which we had, and the grapes must be boiled and then strained. This is where the exploding grapes come in: *someone* among us had the bright idea to put the grapes through my food strainer. As you might recall from a previous post, this device is much like a food mill, which separates pulp from skin and seeds. It works wonderfully with apples...and not very well with grapes. It instantly became clogged, and then another *someone* had the equally bright idea to pull off the funnel, thereby releasing the grapes all over the table, floor, and us.

After we recovered from this explosion, we boiled down the pulp to exactly 220 degrees F and poured the jelly into sanitized jars. We made enough to share, learned several lessons about making grape jelly, and are all ready for next year's crop!


Grape Jelly Recipe: Joy of Cooking, 1967

Wash slightly underripe Concord or wild grapes
They are preferable to ripe or overripe grapes because of their tart flavor and higher pectin content. Remove stems. Mash them in a large pot and cook until soft and the grapes begin to lose color. Strain the juice, measure it. Bring juice to a rolling boil and remove from heat. For each cup of juice, add 3/4 to 1 c. sugar. Stir it over heat until dissolved and the liquid comes to 220 degrees F (or try the gel test on a spoon). You can add an apple to this mixture during the cooking to increase pectin content and guarantee jelling.

Thoughts from Sancerre

Typical scene: Frenchmen, livestock, and an ancient barnyard.

I have spent a lot of my life in France - and I don't mean quick visits to Paris to see the tourist attractions. I spent the first half of second grade in a French maternelle, we spent months each year in a tiny village, and I've had wine fresh from the barrel, cheese fresh from the goat, and baguettes warm from the oven. My sister and I started drinking aperitifs (*gasp*) at ages 9 and 12, respectively. When I reflect on this part of my life as an adult, I realize these experiences had a profound influence on my life. Not only are there times that I dream in French, but I yearn for the foods my mother created in her little French kitchen from the ingredients she got from friends, at the markets or little hidden farms, and those things we picked by the roadside. We were truly privileged to live this way!

My parents still spend time en France, where food is the focus of life. These are not the fancy sauces or gourmet dishes we see in French cookbooks, but simple foods created from produce that comes warm from a neighbor's garden plot or whatever can be procured from the boulangerie, marche, and fromagerie in town. This year, I asked my parents to photograph and keep a journal about their own experiences in local eating in the Berry, or the region of the Loire Valley where they live. I have adapted the journal here, for our reading pleasure. Mom writes from the village of Sancerre: "...the local foods have a rhythm, which we find fascinating and satisfying. We look forward to all the seasons and what the Sancerrois can produce for our table." As part of this adventure, they visit many small markets and local producers:

MYF purchasing local eggs.

"Today we visited the gardener's market on the banks of the Porte de Plaisance. There was a farming family there with melons, tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, cukes, squash, etc. I bought beets, basil, and a tiny melon. Also, from another vendor we bought a large boule of some heavy sour bread (4.50 Euro!), which was a bit serious for our tastes but is good in a toasted sandwich. Apparently someone is selling weekly "shares" because there were baskets all lined up with the same stuff in them waiting to be claimed. A far cry from Waltham, but a good start.

We also went to the St. Thibault market – very few people there. The lady in front of me was bargaining for a huge quantity of green tomatoes for making what she called the best confiture [jam]– better than any fruit. I doubt it to be true, but both vendor and buyer seemed happy with the deal and it was finally my turn. I bought three enormous beets at RCF's urging, tomatoes, and a bunch of small, pale carrots and, of course, lettuce – a big frilly head edged in red with remarkable flavor and crispness. RCF spent time ordering a jar of Provencal honey to be picked up next week.

Marche des Producteurs - selling traditional, regional cured meats.

The annual Marche des Producteurs [market featuring local producers] was in Neuvy deux Clochers this weekend. We ate frites and potato gallette, a specialty of the Berry region. MYF bought a pepper and a small eggplant from a vendor, who also had corn on the cob - a white variety, which looked to have been picked a bit young (corn on the cob is not traditional in France). She said the French were beginning to eat corn on the cob. We also bought pork liver pate, farm eggs, and a fresh cow's cheese rolled in shallot confit."

Pinot noir grapes from the Foster home garden.

Not only do Mom and Dad buy produce at the local markets, but they take full advantage of foods offered that can be gathered on public land ("pour tout le monde"). There is also a very communal feel in the neighborhood, where everybody shares food and trades garden goods. MYF writes:

"Collected mures (blackberries) in Vinon in our usual roadside spots. It was hot, but RCF persisted with the use of a metal pole for pulling the very thorny tendrils into reach. We got enough for MYF to make about a quart of tasty syrup. Went into our lower garden (where RCF, at great peril, cleared paths of weeds and dug up old stumps) to gather the ripened Pinot Noir grapes to make juice. The basketful produced two quarts of juice with some added sugar. The taste is somewhat different from the Concord juice we are used to. Many grapes still remain, which I will pick and give away because there will not be

time to drink the juice.

Albert dropped off tomatoes, St. Catherine plums, cukes, poirée, parsley, haricot beurre (wax beans), and parsley seeds to plant in the spring. RCF walked downtown to buy bread from the Rue des Juifs, where we have discovered a "crousti" – baguette with a particularly crispy crust, which we love. Upon passing Machecourt's house, he spotted M. with a large pannier [basket] of white peaches. M. said his wife was sick of peeling peaches and would we like them? So it was that MYF peeled and stewed 55 white peaches. We froze two containers and we are working on the rest, usually with yogurt and mure syrup.

It is time to be watching for the walnut trees to be dropping their nuts. We hope this will happen this weekend so we can put a quantity on the third floor to dry out over the winter. (P.S. collected walnuts Saturday and RCF stored them in the attic.) Because it is raining today we want to be alert for the first sunny warmer day to dawn. This means mushrooms."

...so their happy lives continue seasonally in France, where they have earned some lovely time to relax in their retirement. My parents continue to teach me about what it means to eat locally in a different part of the world, where they are part of a vital and productive community. I'm sure we will be hearing more from the Fosters in France!

Goodness from Enterprise

"Our CSA is making things happen!" This was the note that came from our winter CSA at Enterprise Farm recently. They weren't kidding - not only does our wonderful CSA in Western Massachusetts provide us with produce from small, organic farms all winter long, but they are also giving back to our community and providing broader access to local foods. Here is a chronicle of their good works and what our money goes to supporting:

-Low-income seniors in Dorchester and Mattapan received boxes of fresh vegetables all winter long (for those of you not from the Boston area, these are the more depressed areas of our city).

-Children at Whately Elementary will be eating salad grown by the kindergarteners.

-Our farm has purchased equipment for processing SNAP benefits (a nutrition assistance program).

-They travel every week to low-access neighborhoods in Somerville (yay!), Greenfield, Northampton, Holyoke, and Springfield.

-Incorporating Ag-Ed into their farm programming.

These farmers are so energetic and we are humbled by their hard work! We encourage all of you to take advantage of this wonderful resource. Now we're looking forward to getting back out to Waltham Fields Community Farm for our summer veggies.

Bees

California Poppy Sculpture, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Alison's most recent post on Ithaca's Food Web highlights the movie Queen of the Sun, which is a wonderful commentary on the plight of the honeybee and the threat to pollination in the United States. I recommend Alison's post for an excellent summary of the film, and encourage you to think about the origins of your honey - most honey, it seems, contains pesticides (injected into hives to kill mites) and can contain high fructose corn syrup (given to industrial bees to stimulate honey production). If you care about these things, check out this film and think about the origins of your sweet treats.

I have done just a little bit of research into honey and found that Purest Honey Apiaries sells chemical and antibiotic-free honey, but I am overwhelmed by choices. So, I would appreciate any information or suggestions you readers may have!

Kodiak Cuisine

Beautiful girls: Nora and Zoya make salmon cakes

Warning: For those of you who don't like hunting or eating animals, I advise that you stop reading here 'cause this post contains photos of hunting.

Otherwise: For those of you into meat eating, this is a sweet post!

I had the great joy of making a trip to Kodiak, Alaska this past week, where I attended the Kodiak Area Marine Science Symposium and spent the week living with good friends Patrick, Zoya, and their kids (click here to check out their blog about life in Kodiak). They were wonderful and generous hosts, as always. We have an enthusiastic blog follower in Patrick, and he made it his mission to give me as much local Kodiak food as he could - and he delivered! The selections were all protein, since local vegetable material is pretty tough to come by in Kodiak in the summer, let alone in April. In fact, Zoya went to Safeway one afternoon and found there were no vegetables to be had, even in the grocery store.

Patrick enjoying black cod (a.k.a. sable fish or butter fish) - it is sweet, oily, buttery, rich, and delicious.

As I've described in earlier posts, Patrick is a hunter and provides all the meat his family eats. This includes elk, venison, and mountain goat in various forms, as well as canned salmon and other fish. Patrick has completely altered my opinion of hunting and has broadened my vision of what meat-eating can be. I look forward to the spoils of his hunts each time I go to Kodiak, and I am in awe of the amount of work and skill that goes in to pursuing, dressing, and carrying a large animal out of the field. Below are a series of photos showcasing what we ate this week...as with everything else we eat, I think it's important to know where our meat comes from, and it can't get much more real than this. If you're interested in getting more detail, watch Patrick's video of field dressing a deer. It's amazing - and not gory - and was shown in the Kodiak Film Festival this year. I treasure my trips to Alaska, and this was one of the best!

Deer - this made a wonderful roast.

Canning salmon!

Sigh. When I first saw this photo, I thought it was a happy, grazing mountain goat. Nope, he became sausage and roast.

Maine's Maple Syrup Weekend

I think a post about maple syrup is destined to become an annual tradition. As a treat, Andrew recently bought me a ticket to Portland, Maine, where we met for a restful weekend away. I have always had this vision of Maine in my head (pine trees, craggy ocean cliffs, salty people), and it never disappoints. We stayed in downtown Portland, where we intended to wander the streets, eat yummy food, drink Allagash beer, and leave the car in its parking space. However, when we discovered we were in Portland on Maine Maple Sunday, we could not resist visiting some of the nearby sugar shacks. As you have read in other years' posts, Andrew has become obsessed with sugar shacks (yikes!) and all things maple.

During this particular visit, we saw the more touristy display, where they had maple cotton candy, carriage rides, etc. The best part was they demonstrated how maple syrup was made long ago: in cast iron pots over an open fire!

While this was fun, we didn't really feel like we had an authentic Maine maple syrup experience - until we noticed a tiny sign advertising syrup on our way home. We stopped and found a family of 4 who tap trees in their own yard for a small-scale, home production...and, of course, the guy running the show had been a physicist/astronomer at Rutgers in his past life. We spent a good, long time grilling them about their methods, eating ice cream with syrup on top, imagining our own sugar shack, and laughing about the small world of astronomy.