Take note

I have a root vegetable recipe for you today. That seems sort of odd, I realize, given that it's currently 62 degrees outside, but let's keep in mind that it's the weather that isn't seasonal, not the recipe. (Not that I'm complaining! Weather gods take note!)

At any rate, I found the idea for the recipe in this month's Bon Appetit. It was one of those write-ins—someone from South Carolina had eaten at a restaurant in Atlanta and wanted the recipe for a roasted carrot and beet salad. I tucked it aside in my pile of To Make Soon clippings, but when I went to start cooking, I realized the page I ripped out had the ingredients, but not the directions. It didn't look like rocket science—there was a list of dressing like substances, then a pile that sounded more like salad fixings—but when I compared notes later online, it turned out we came to similar places, but via different methods.

I also decided that I wanted it to be more of a salad than just a pile of roasted vegetables, so I saved the beet greens, chopped them up, and added some arugula. I ate it with a piece of pan-seared pollock, and a few slices of grilled bread. And even though the sun was shining and I was wearing a t-shirt and feeling very far away from the root vegetable era, it really hit the spot.

I'm liking this November.

ROASTED BEET AND CARROT SALAD

Here's my version of the Bon Appetit version which in turn was an Empire State South version of a Spotted Pig original! Confusing! But so, so good.

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 cup olive oil plus more for drizzling

salt and pepper to taste

1 pound carrots cut into "carrot stick size" pieces

1/2 pound beets peeled and cut into the same size pieces

1/2 cup lightly packed finely chopped parsley

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves

a handful of washed and torn beet greens

a handful of washed and torn arugula

1/2 cup crumbled feta

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toast the cumin seeds over medium heat in a small dry skillet, stirring often. When they start to get fragrant (3-4 minutes), they're done. Grind them up using a mortar and pestle.

Whisk together the ground cumin seeds, lemon juice, vinegar, Dijon mustard, and 1/2 cup of the olive oil in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

Combine the carrots and beets in a Pyrex dish. Drizzle them with olive oil and roast them in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until just tender. Transfer the roasted root vegetables to a salad bowl and toss them with the reserved dressing, parsley, mint, beet greens, and arugula. Crumble the feta over top and serve at once.

Note: I ate my salad with the vegetables hot, but they could also be roasted ahead of time and served either at room temperature or even straight from the fridge.

The Local Food Report: keeping rosemary alive

Every spring, I buy a rosemary plant. And every winter, despite my best intentions, I manage to kill it. My friend Pete grows all kinds of varieties of rosemary, and he says it's not my fault. They're fussy. Still, he has some tips.

Here's the Pete Krumplebeck guide to keeping rosemary alive on Cape Cod:

1. Buy the right variety. Arp is apparently the only rosemary that has half a chance of surviving winter outside, in the ground, around here. It's hardy to zone 6, while most other varieties only make it to zone 8. We're in zone 7a, so Arp is a good pick.

He also grows Tuscan, BBQ, and a prostrate rosemary, but he keeps those in pots and brings them inside for the winter.

2. Keep them outside as long as possible. I usually bring my rosemary in around October, but Pete says this is too early. They like cold roots, prefer them even, and until there's a hard freeze, they're happier outside. He says he usually brings his in sometime between Christmas and New Year's Day.

3. Keep an eye on their water. Rosemary roots are very fussy, Pete says. They don't like to be dry but they also like to be well-drained, so you need to pot them correctly. He fills the bottom of third of his pots with perlite, then uses a regular potting soil mixture without too much organic matter on top to fill them. He says you should give the plants a good dunking every 7 to 10 days, and that when you do, the water should drain out in 2-4 seconds. And whatever you do, don't water with hot water—he says that's the easiest way to kill them.

4. Put them in a sunny spot with moving air and not too much heat. Inside, rosemary will get powdery mildew if it's left still for too long. Put it near a window or a fan, or dust it off every once in a while.

5. Outside, if you're having trouble with aphids or little white flies, give it a baking soda bath. Pete calls baking soda a multi-purpose "bugicide," and says it'll work wonders.

WATERMELON SALAD WITH ROSEMARY & FETA

I have long been a fan of the watermelon salad. We've been eating one version or another since the melons came into season a few weeks ago. But this riff is something new to me—I never would have thought of adding rosemary! Now I'm not sure I can imagine watermelon salad without it. It's sweet, juicy, and robust, and the feta adds salt and tang.

4 cups chilled watermelon cubes

2 ounces feta cheese, drained and crumbled

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

2 slices rustic bread

olive oil

sea salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste

Arrange the watermelon and feta in a shallow pie plate or bowl. Sprinkle the rosemary over top. Heat up a cast iron skillet or griddle, drizzle the bread with olive oil, and grill until golden on both sides. Cut into croutons.

Drizzle the salad with olive oil, arrange the croutons on top, and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Serve at once.

Time & tomatoes

They say amniotic fluid has flavor---that babies can taste what their mothers eat, and develop food preferences in utero. If that's true, this baby is going to have quite a thing for tomatoes.

I've been eating tomatoes at least once a day since late July. Most of the time, I've been eating them simply---cut up and drizzled with olive oil, tucked into sandwiches and salads, cooked down into soups and sauce. A few weeks ago, Tom, one of the cooks at the restaurant, made a creamy tomato bisque, and I must have eaten a gallon of the stuff. I can't seem to get enough.

Out in the garden, the season's almost over, but we're still holding on. There are a few more meals left out there, and just in case this baby's not quite sure yet how it feels about tomatoes, I'm going to make these last few meals count. We're going to eat tomatoes my favorite way: sliced into big chunks, topped with torn basil and big hunks of creamy burrata mozzarella and grilled croutons, then drizzled with olive oil and sweet balsamic glaze and sprinkled with sea salt. We had this last night for dinner, and the day before for lunch.

Today when it gets to noon, I'm going to head out to the garden, pick a few last red globes, and make up another plate before time and tomatoes run out.

HEIRLOOM TOMATO SALAD

There are so many different versions of this it hardly counts as a recipe. The most important thing to focus on is the quality of your ingredients---you need sweet, super ripe tomatoes, and a rich creamy burrata. Recently I've been using a brand called Maplebrooks Farm from Vermont, but I also like the gorgonzola-stuffed mozarella that Kathleen Kadlik sells at the farmers' markets in Orleans, Falmouth, and Provincetown.

2 large heirloom tomatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks

a handful of basil leaves, torn in half if large

1 four ounce ball of burrata or mozzarella, cut into bite-size pieces

2 slices rustic bread

olive oil

balsamic glaze

sea salt

Warm up a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium heat. Meanwhile, arrange the tomatoes, basil leaves, and cheese in a wide, shallow bowl. When the griddle's hot, drizzle the bread slices with olive oil and grill until golden and just crispy on both sides. Cut the bread into croutons. Drizzle the salad with olive oil and balsamic glaze, arrange the croutons on top, and sprinkle with sea salt. Enjoy at once.

The jungle

What would you like to talk about today? Tomatoes? Zucchini? Potatoes? Our garden is chock-a-block full of all three.

This was our first year with a dedicated summer garden—until this season, we planted our summer veggies in with the winter crops, under the cold frame. But the timing started to get tricky—for optimal winter production, we really needed to be planting the beds in July and August. With tomatoes and zucchini and green beans that would produce until late September, that didn't happen, and for those beds, I'd end up having to buy seedlings.

So this year, with our friend Corey's help, we took down a few trees on the south side of the shed and turned over a ridiculously dense layer of tree roots—we broke a backhoe in the process—and dug down two feet beneath the old oaks and pines and blueberries. Then we got a truckload of pure compost and filled it in.

It looked like a plot of black gold.

These days, it looks more like a jungle—a 20' by 25' forest of cucumbers and squash and potato and tomato plants. A good two thirds of the garden is taken up by the tomatoes—62 in all, staked and caged and grown from seed. Most of them are full size varieties—things like Spring Shine and Amish Paste and Rose de Berne—but there are also a few Sun Gold cherries thrown in. Next come the potatoes: two full rows of Red Bliss, ready for harvest. Then there's a half row of broccoli, a wild tangle of cucumbers, and a row of zucchini and Waltham butternuts that spreads about ten feet in every direction. It's not at all neat or orderly, but it's the best kind of mess.

Right now, it's the potatoes that are pouring in. They are the one crop that is entirely Alex's department, and whatever he's doing, it's working. He says he learned from his grandfather how to grow them. First, he says, you have to dig a trough, to put the seed potatoes in. Then, once they start to sprout, you have to mound the dirt up over them, and as they grow, do this again, and again. Eventually, they'll get tall and start to flower, and right after the flowers fade is when you should start checking beneath them. We got our first potatoes about a month ago, and every week, he brings another basket in.

This week, I made potato salad with our haul. It wasn't anything fancy: just fresh potatoes and green beans from the garden with hard-boiled eggs and red onion. Still, it was good—simple and creamy and crisp—and every bite grown from our soil.

EGG, GREEN BEAN, & POTATO SALAD

I like to think of this as a potato salad that can be a meal. The green beans add crunch while the eggs add a much-needed hit of protein.

2 pounds fresh red potatoes, scrubbed and chopped

1/2 pound green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 and 1/2 inch lengths

1/4 cup red vinegar

4 hardboiled eggs, peeled and chopped

1/2 red onion, peeled and thinly sliced

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh dill

2/3 cup mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Throw in the potatoes and cook for 8-10 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork. About a minute before the potatoes are done, add the green beans. They only need to cook for about 30 seconds—just until they turn bright green. Turn off the stove and drain the vegetables.

Transfer the potatoes and green beans to a large mixing bowl. Pour the red wine vinegar over top and stir well. Let the mixture cool to room temperature.

Stir in the hard-boiled eggs, red onions, dill, mayonnaise, and mustard until everything is evenly distributed and well coated. Season with salt and pepper and chill before serving.

A garden recipe

Sometimes, I imagine our lives through the neighbors' eyes, through the windows across the street.

I notice a routine: a man up early, the green Chevy pulling away. A woman—now noticably round—out in the briars each morning in her nightgown and bare feet. She brings an old pint container for the berries: first the black, then the red, now the golden raspberries.

She snacks while she picks—then waters the carrots, checks the kale and broccoli for the little green worms that devour holes in the leaves. She disappears inside and then is back on the front stoop. A black lab settles onto the brick beside her, and she spoons something out of a porcelain bowl—granola and yogurt maybe, with a handful of berries.

Later in the day, she might come out and weed. The tomatoes need trimming, and the butternut squash vines are growing almost clear across the street. She checks the orchard—there were five ripe peaches before the birds stole two the other day—and sprays horticultural oil on the new pear leaves. She ties a loose asparagus fern to the others around the stake, pulls a few heads of lettuce.

Then she drives off, too—off to the restaurant in black skirt and shoes—and the yard is quiet for another afternoon.

GARDEN SALAD

We haven't been eating anything complicated recently. There's too much good fresh food to bother fussing with recipes and heat. But here's a suggestion for a simple salad with a tried and true dressing recipe that's good on just about any chilled spread of garden-fresh veggies. This recipe serves 2.

1/3 cup white vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 medium cucumbers, thinly sliced

2 ears of fresh corn, shucked and kernels cut off the cob

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

a handful of Thai basil

4 carrots, sliced into thin rounds

a handful of cheese—I used cheddar, cut into tiny cubes, but I also think goat cheese, shaved Manchego, or Parmesan ribbons would be good

Whisk together the white vinegar, olive oil, sugar, pepper, and salt in a small measuring cup. Set aside.

In a large shallow bowl, layer the cucumbers with the corn, cherry tomato halves, Thai basil leaves, and carrot rounds. Sprinkle or shave the cheese evenly over top. Pour the dressing on, and let the salad marinate at room temperature for at least 10 minutes before serving.

The Local Food Report: sorrel

Have you ever tried sorrel? I hadn't until recently. It's different than most greens—for starters, it's a perennial herb. Unlike spinach or Swiss chard, it comes back every year, and it produces tangy, thick leaves all season long.

According to my friend Lucas, who sells greens at the farmers market in Orleans, sorrel is popular in places like Europe and New Zealand and France. He thinks it's just starting to catch on in the states. It's not for everyone—it tastes pretty sour—but I think it's sort of refreshing in small quantities. Darina Allen, who wrote Forgotten Skills of Cooking, describes it as a sudden little electric shock in a salad. That pretty much captures it perfectly.

When it's cooked down, sorrel is good with cream. Pretty much every recipe I've found for either sorrel soup or a wilted sorrel fish sauce uses some sort of dairy, whether it's butter or whole milk yogurt or heavy cream. The best soup recipe, I think, comes from Julia Child—sorrel, after all, is a French thing. She calls it Potage Germiny.

Raw, I like it in salads. You can throw it into any old salad for a little kick and zing, but it's especially good paired with roasted beets. They're so sweet and the sorrel's so sour that they mesh perfectly.

Lucas says 2011 is going to be the year of sorrel, so sometime, if you have a chance, join in. The greens will be around all season long—from now through late fall—so there's plenty of time to experiment.

CREAM OF SORREL SOUP

This is Julia's recipe, just adapted a bit for simplicity. It makes six servings.

1/3 cup minced green or yellow onions

4 tablespoons butter, divided

3 to 4 cups packed fresh sorrel leaves, washed, dried, and cut into thin strips

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons flour

5 and 1/2 cups boiling chicken stock

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Warm up 3 tablespoons of the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Sauté the onions for 5-10 minutes, or until tender and translucent. Stir in all but a handful of the sorrel and the salt, cover the pot, and turn the heat down to low. Cook until the leaves are tender and wilted, about 5 minutes.

Now turn the heat back up to medium and sprinkle in the flour. Cook for three minutes, then pour in the boiling stock, stirring well. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, blend the yolks and cream in a large mixing bowl. Slowly, drop by drop, beat in a cupful of hot soup. Gradually beat in the rest, pouring it in a thin stream as you beat. Return the soup to the saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes over medium heat. Do not bring the soup to a simmer—you just want to cook the eggs. Turn off the heat and stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter.

For hot soup, serve immediately, garnished with the remaining sorrel leaves. For cold soup, leave out the final tablespoon of butter and chill before serving.

SORREL & ROASTED BEET SALAD

Sorrel pairs well with beets because the green offers plenty of sour to the beets' sweet. I love the zing of sorrel in a salad—all citrusy and tang. This salad makes enough to serve 4.

2 slices thick, rustic bread

1/4 cup olive oil, plus extra for toasting the bread

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

salt and freshly cracked pepper

3 cups young sorrel leaves, washed and dried

2 pounds beets, roasted, peeled, and sliced (for a roasting tutorial, click here)

8 ounces goat cheese

1/2 cup toasted pistachios or pecans

Warm up a cast iron griddle over medium-high heat. Place the bread in the middle, and drizzle a little bit of olive oil on top. Toast for 2-3 minutes per side, or until the bread is sizzling and golden. Remove the bread from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes before cutting it into 1/2-inch cubes.

Whisk together the remaining olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a fork, and add salt and pepper to taste. Arrange the sorrel in a large salad bowl and layer the roasted beets, bread cubes, goat cheese, and toasted nuts on top. Drizzle with the oil and vinegar mixture and serve at once.

A new radish keeper

I can't stay for long today. I'm in Maine, sitting on my parents' couch. It's hot and sunny and beautiful, and Fisher's on his bed at my feet, filling the whole room with the smell of wet dog. He just went for a swim at Simpson's Point (the rest of us hardly got our toes in!) and in a little while, we're going to put a batch of pulled pork in the oven for my sister's birthday dinner. But I wanted to stop by, quickly, and remind you about the radishes.

I don't know if you took me up on any of those recommendations a few weeks back, but it's been a radish kind of spring around here. While the sun and the berries and the summer fruits take their sweet time, we've been experimenting with the cold weather crops all kinds of ways. The other day, I added a new radish keeper to my list: radishes washed, greens trimmed, and then greens and roots sautéed.

SAUTEED RADISH SALAD

In the summer, I make a lot of sautés for lunch—usually heavy on the greens, sort of like warm green salads. Recently, I’ve been using radishes—greens and all. If you have extra radish greens (or other braising greens) kicking around, feel free to add them. The greens wilt down pretty significantly, so it’s hard to add too many. This recipe serves two.

2 bunches radishes, with greens

2 slices bacon

4 cloves garlic, minced

a handful of crumbled blue or gorgonzola cheese (I like to use the mozzarella with the gorgonzola dolce inside that Kathleen Kadlik sells at the Provincetown and Falmouth farmers' markets)

olive oil

two slices of rustic bread

1/2 lemon, cut into wedges

Trim the greens from the radishes, leaving about an inch of stem still attached to the bulbs. Wash and dry the greens and set aside. Scrub the radishes, trim their tails, and cut each one in half the long way. Set aside.

Warm up a cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon and fry for a few minutes on each side, until it’s done to your taste (I like mine crispy enough to crumble). Transfer the bacon to a plate to cool.

Add the radishes to the pan with the bacon grease and cook for 5-6 minutes over medium heat. When the radishes are soft and a little bit golden in spots, turn the heat down to low and add the garlic. (Add olive oil or a splash of water to the pan at any point if you feel you don’t have enough grease.) Stir well and throw in the greens. Stir again and cover immediately. Cook for a minute, then take off the lid and stir well. The greens should be just wilted.

Transfer the radishes and greens to two bowls. Crumble a slice of bacon over each, and sprinkle half of the cheese over each salad. Turn the heat back up to medium high under the cast-iron skillet, and fry the bread in olive oil until it’s golden brown on both sides. Either cut the bread into cubes and throw it on top of the greens or serve alongside as a slice. Garnish each bowl with a few lemon wedges, and squeeze the juice over top to taste.

All sorts of keepers

You know where's a good place to find recipes? The Williams Sonoma catalog. Honestly. I find all sorts of keepers in there. The gadgets that go with them—banana slicers and salad dressing emulsifiers—get a little ridiculous, but the recipes are terrific.

Take, for instance, the roasted beet salad recipe I tried the other day. The base ingredients are pretty standard—watercress, roasted beets, toasted walnuts, goat cheese—but the dressing is something else altogether. Basically you take lemon juice and a little bit of crème fraîche and add oil and shallots and a big handful of dill. The dairy makes it creamy, the lemon juice gives it kick, and the shallots and dill make it feel big and zippy. When you pour it over the greens and beets, a sort of magic happens, and everything feels at the same time rich and fresh.

We've made it about three times this week, and today, I'm thinking of having it for lunch again. It's just the thing for a hot day—filling but not heavy, satisfying in a very summer sort of way. Enjoy the sunshine, friends.

ROASTED BEET SALAD

I made a few changes to the Williams Sonoma original of this recipe. For starters, I used arugula and spinach from our garden in place of the watercress. I also added homemade croutons (rustic bread seared in olive oil on our cast iron griddle) and swapped out the crème fraîche for whole milk plain yogurt and Cloumage cheese.

(Cloumage, for those of you who have never had it, is the newest cheese from the Shy Brothers. It tastes sort of like a cross between ricotta and crème fraîche, and they sell it at the Provincetown and Falmouth farmers markets.)

Finally, I upped the dill. I don't know about you, but I can't get enough of that green.

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 and 1/2 tablespoons Cloumage

2 and 1/2 tablespoons whole milk plain yogurt

5 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 teaspoons minced shallot

salt and pepper

4 cups arugula or watercress

2 large beets, roasted, peeled, and cut into wedges (for a roasting tutorial, click here)

1/3 cup toasted walnuts

4 ounces crumbled goat cheese

2 slices good rustic bread, toasted in olive oil in a cast iron skillet or griddle and cut into croutons

Combine the lemon juice, Cloumage, yogurt, olive oil, dill, shallot, and salt and pepper in a Mason jar or salad dressing container. Shake vigorously to emulsify and set aside.

You can plate the salads either individually or on a large shallow platter. Arrange the greens on the bottom, then layer on the roasted beet wedges, toasted walnuts, crumbled goat cheese, and homemade croutons. Drizzle with dressing and toss just before serving.

For the new year

Hi! Happy New Year. I already said that, I know, the other day, but I mean it. And besides, saying it now, I hope, will make things feel a little less Monday.

It was nice, these past few weeks, to be on holiday. I went to Alex's family's, in Wellesley, and then up to my own parents' in Maine, and then came back home for champagne and singing and fireworks on New Year's Eve. We did a lot of cooking, and a lot of eating, and to balance all that out, a lot of walking and a very hard yoga video that my sister found on Netflix. I also got a new camera, a Canon Rebel XS with a EF 50mm f/1.8 lens. Eeek! Here it is saying hello, with a plate of the roasted butternut squash and farro salad we made yesterday.


You'll also find it over here, where it's part of a new project I'm starting for the new year. A digital camera means easier (way easier!) uploads, and I want to make the most of that. My mother and sister and I are always swapping recipes and cooking ideas via email, and for a while now, I've been brainstorming how to get that same sense of community and participation going online, here.

This Tumblr page has everything I've been looking for. I can post photos—big, plain, food photos with recipe links and local sourcing notes—and most importantly, you can too. You just have to scroll down to the bottom, click on submit, and upload a photo of whatever it is with local ingredients you've been cooking recently. You can add notes if you like—links to the recipe if it's online and a little something about where you found the ingredients, and then once I give the okay, it's up! I'm new to this, so we might have a few hiccups, but between all of us here I think we could bounce some pretty cool local food inspiration around.

I'll start. If you head on over, you'll see the farro salad picture up there along with notes about where the ingredients came from, and a link to the original recipe. I made a few changes—halved the farro and swapped out kalamata olives for toasted walnuts—but otherwise, the dish is pretty much the same.

So go ahead and check it out, and I can't wait to hear what you think. I'm not going anywhere, just to be clear—I'll still be here, but I'll also be there. I have a feeling it's just one of the good places 2011 is taking us. I hope to see you every step of the way—with more good food and good cheer.

Inventory, of the fridge

Prompted by the eternal question: What is for dinner?

• 5 leeks
• 1 gallon raw, whole milk
• 1 pint yogurt, swirled with honey and pumpkin puree and peppered with nutmeg and cinnamon
• 1 cup leftover oatmeal, cold and lumpy
• 1/2 pound green beans, thawing, from our garden last year (overlooked?)
• beets—so many big, earthy, Chioggia beets

It took a while—a few cookbooks, a cup of tea, a brisk, sunny walk—but somehow, from there, we got to this. Happy chilly evening, everyone. I hope you're well fed, and warm.

ROASTED BEET, TOASTED WALNUT, & BLUE CHEESE SALAD

This recipe comes from the Balthazar Cookbook. I had it on my first visit to the restaurant on our trip last spring to Manhattan, and when I realized today I had all the ingredients, I had to have it again. I have swapped out a few of the fussier ingredients (i.e. sherry wine vinegar) for a slightly simpler salad, but be warned: as far as salads go, it's still on the fancy side. That said, if you prep out a big batch of the separate parts of this salad ahead of time, you can have it as an impromptu lunch or dinner all week.

1 cup walnuts
1 cup olive oil, divided
6 sprigs thyme, divided
4 medium beets
1/2 pound green beens (frozen are fine)
4 leeks, thinly sliced
1/4 cup minus 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sherry (optional)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup walnut oil
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
finely ground black pepper
3/4 pound mixed greens (I used young spinach and red and green lettuces from the garden)
1/4 pound Great Hill blue cheese, cut into 8 pieces

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spread the walnuts on a baking sheet and toast for about 3 minutes, or until fragrant but not browned.

Pour 1/4 cup of the olive oil onto a plate. Rub the beets in the oil, then wrap each one individually in tinfoil with a sprig of thyme. Bake for an hour, or until tender when pierced with a fork. Cool, peel, dice, and set aside.

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Cook the green beans until al dente, about 5 minutes. Remove the beans from the water with a slotted spoon and transfer to an ice bath to cool. Meanwhile, cook the leeks in the reserved (still boiling) water for roughly 10 minutes, or until tender. Remove the beans from the ice bath and set aside, and remove the leeks from the pot with a slotted spoon and transfer to the ice bath to chill. Once cooled, add the leeks to the beets.

Make the salad dressing: whisk together the red wine vinegar, sherry (if using), remaining 3/4 cup olive oil, walnut oil, salt, pepper, and remaining thyme (picked from sprigs). Toss this dressing, to taste, with your mixed greens.

Get out four salad plates. Create a bed of the beet-leek mixture in the center of each and top with a handful of green beans. Layer a handful of the dressed mixed greens on top of that. Lean two wedges of blue cheese on each salad up against the beets. Sprinkle with toasted walnuts, and enjoy at once.

Gorge yourself

Restraint Over Watermelon is one of the most demanding tenets of eating locally. I mean who can turn down airplane watermelon for eleven months of the year, and then not go a little overboard when the real deal arrives? Not me.

When the watermelon comes in, I devour it. I bought my first specimen at the Truro Ag Fair last Sunday, and I have since eaten four. Four! Granted, the nice thing about watermelons is that they are mostly water, and so the sick feeling you have after eating seven slices only lasts for about an hour or so, but still.

Last weekend, when my parents were here, we made one of the simplest, most delicious salads I've ever had. The only ingredients were yellow watermelon, fresh basil, burrata with gorgonzola dolce wrapped inside, olive oil, balsamic glaze, and a sprinkle of salt. We ate the whole bowl that night, and two nights later, with a second ball of cheese (burrata with herbed goat cheese this time), Alex and I made it again. We ate ourselves silly both times.

So quick—while the season lasts—gorge yourself as much as you can. It'll be a while until the melons roll around again.

WATERMELON, BURRATA, AND BASIL SALAD

This salad makes the best of late summer—it is best when the watermelon is cold, straight out of the fridge. It probably lasts a few days in the fridge, but we wouldn't know; it's never made it that long.

6 cups chilled watermelon
1 ball local burata or mozzarella
2/3 cup packed basil leaves
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
balsamic glaze, for drizzling
salt to taste

Cut the watermelon into cubes and use your fingers to gently remove any seeds. Put the fruit in a bowl and toss it with the cheese, basil, and olive oil. When serving, drizzle lightly with balsamic glaze and sprinkle with salt to taste.

Roasted beet, corn & basil salad

Monday, July 26th: lunchtime, at home

Something—a robin, maybe? a ghost?—ate every last green plum in the middle of the night. They are gone from the tree out back without a trace—no flesh, no pits, not so much on the ground as a twig.

Inside, the fridge is full: corn in its husk, fresh bluefish, arugula, broccoli. I can't concentrate on cooking—where are those plums? who stole them from me?—but I turn on the oven without thinking, then decide to roast the basket of beets.

When they come out—steaming, piping hot—I trim them, skin them, slice them into half tears, orange and ruddy. I husk the corn and cut the kernels from the cob; it's so sticky, milky when it's this sweet. I tear a handful of basil and arugula and toss them in a salad bowl, then squeeze a lime in, and a bit of vinegar, and olive oil. The corn and the beets go on top, still hot enough to fog up my face. I toss everything and then add a pinch of salt—mourn the plums and sit down to eat.

ROASTED BEET, CORN, AND BASIL SALAD

This salad is as simple as it is good. If you prefer your corn cooked, go ahead, but at this time of year, I eat mine straight from the cob, raw and milky. With the addition of cheese and a good slice of toast, this easily makes a meal.

4 beets
olive oil
4 ears corn
1 cup packed basil leaves
1 cup packed arugula leaves, torn
juice of 1 lime
1-2 tablespoons white vinegar (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan, for shaving

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place the beets—scrubbed but with about an inch of their top greens and their tails still on—on a baking sheet, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, and cover with tinfoil. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour, or until tender when pierced with a fork.

Husk the corn and cut the kernels from the cob. Put the kernels in a large bowl with the basil and arugula. When the beets have cooled down enough that you can handle them, cut off the tops and tails and peel off the skin. Then cut the beets in half, and then into thin half moon slices the way you would an apple. Add the beets to the bowl with the corn and greens.

Squeeze the lime juice over the vegetables and drizzle the salad with olive oil. Toss well, and taste for acid and oil. If you think it needs more acid, add the white vinegar one tablespoon at a time, tasting after each addition. If you think it needs more oil, drizzle with a bit more olive oil. (How much you add of both are really a matter of personal taste.) Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve while the beets are still warm, with shaved Parmesan over top.

The Local Food Report: like poetry

Lettuce varieties are like poetry:

There's Tango and Lolla Rossa, Tom's Thumb and Tennis Ball. There's Optima and Sylvesta, Cardinale and Sweet Valentine, Oscarde and Little Caesar bursting red, new spring green. There's Green Deer Tongue stooping down and Butterking standing tall, Formidana bunched into a tight little ball.

Some are looseleafs and never form a head. Others are Romaines, from the island of Cos, or sweet Butterheads—the Bostons and the Bibbs. Others still—the Buttercos—are a cross between the two, half heart and half crunch, in varieties like Rouge D'Hiver and Sucrine. Lastly there are the icebergs (or the crispheads), curled on themselves into tight, compact balls.

Recently, it's Little Caesar who's stolen me. He's a miniature Romaine, crisp and sweet with dark ruffled leaves and a light green heart bundled underneath. When you cut him in half he feeds two perfectly—touched on the grill, drizzled with dressing, Parmesan ribbons and chunks of garlic bread strewn over top and alongside.

I found him sitting proud with Barbara Dean of Orleans—and I'll be back for more at 8 a.m. sharp this Saturday on the green.

GRILLED LITTLE CAESAR SALAD

As implied by the name, this delightful summer salad requires a grill. If you don't have one, you can also sear the lettuce over very high heat in a cast iron skillet, but I'd recommend cooking over at a friend's house that does have a grill instead—the smoky flavor is key. Plus, if you're grilling lettuce, it's an excellent excuse to grill something else: marinated chicken? burgers? steak? shish kabobs? All, in my book, are a very good thing.

1 head garlic, top 1/4 sliced off
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
1/8 cup buttermilk
1 and 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 heart Little Caesar or other Romaine, halved
2 slices rustic bread
3 ounces shaved Parmesan

Turn the oven to 400 degrees F. Place the garlic in a piece of tinfoil and drizzle it with garlic. Scrunch the tinfoil together at the top to wrap it up, and put it in the oven to roast until the cloves are soft, 45 minutes to an hour.

Light a grill. (Woo!) Squeeze half of the soft garlic cloves into a mixing bowl or blender along with the buttermilk and lemon juice. Using an electric mixer or the blender, beat these into a puree. With your engines running (read: the mixer or blender on and moving), add the olive oil in a slow, slow stream. When it's blended, season with salt and pepper to taste.

When the grill is hot, drizzle the bread slices and the cut sides of the Little Caesar hearts with olive oil and season lightly with salt and pepper. Place the bread on the grill to toast. This should take about a minute per side.

Next put on the lettuces, cut side down, and sear for about 20 seconds. Flip and grill another 20 seconds, then place the hearts cut side up on two plates. Drizzle with the roasted garlic dressing and sprinkle with the shaved Parmesan. Spread the remaining roasted garlic onto the pieces of toasted bread, and serve alongside. Enjoy at once.

Dress them up

Every night when I was a kid, my mother made a salad. It was never anything fussy—some fresh greens, maybe a sprinkle of half moon radishes, sometimes a chopped up grapefruit wedge or two—but she had a certain knack for putting together the things she turned up in the fridge.

One of my friend's mom's told me recently that this skill—also known as the Throw-It-On-Lettuce-And-Call-It-Dinner technique—is the key to success as a parent, and although I can't say for sure, I have a feeling she's right. I also have a feeling that the key to my mother's particular success was her homemade croutons.

My mother makes excellent croutons. They don't take her long—they're the sort of thing she whips up right before dinner in between setting the table and waiting for the chicken to cook. She throws together a few slices of stale bread, a drizzle of olive oil, a good rub of garlic and rosemary and a generous sprinkle of salt, and in a few minutes, her little toaster oven starts steaming out dreamy crouton smells. They transform things like plain spinach and goat cheese into a salad for gourmets, romaine lettuce and store bought Caesar dressing into a plate from an upscale restaurant.


Recently, we've been making them a lot around here. The garden greens are growing faster than we can keep up with, but beyond radishes and scallions, there isn't yet much to dress them up with. Fortunately, we also can't keep up with the bread (have you been to the new boulangerie in town?!), or the rosemary, and we're only halfway through our winter garlic.

They might not be the key to every success, these homemade croutons, but I plan to keep making them anyway, full steam ahead.

ROSEMARY CROUTONS

I like to make these in the toaster oven so that I don't have to waste the time and electricity involved in heating a whole oven up, but if you only have a slot toaster, the oven will work fine. Also, I find that a nice, crusty, rustic bread like a sourdough or farmers' loaf works best, but I've used everything from stale hot cross buns to pitas with success.

4 slices rustic bread
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven or toaster oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking tray or toaster oven pan with parchment paper, and arrange the bread slices on top. Drizzle the bread evenly with the oil, and sprinkle the garlic, rosemary, and salt evenly across all four slices. Use your finger to rub the oil and seasonings in and spread them across the bread. Bake for 1o to 15 minutes, or until the bread is toasted a deep golden brown. Transfer the toast slices to a wire rack and once they're cool, crumble or cut them into bite size pieces. Any extras will store for about a week in an airtight container, if you don't devour them first.

Pretty magnificent

Well. I am happy to report that the market was a success: Fisher did not get any brisket, Alex and I managed to resist buying an entire bag of cider donuts and split only one instead, and we came home not with radicchio, but with a frisee-like baby mizuna, which was an excellent second best.

We also got eggs, and some bacon, and some Shy Brothers cheese. And although according to my friend Kristen fridges cannot actually talk, I could swear that while I was putting everything away the door was squeaking frisee ! salad ! with lardons, and a fried egg ! At least, that's what I heard.

Anyway.

If you have never had a frisee salad with lardons and a fried egg, well, maybe that's why your fridge does not speak. Because once you have tried this dish, you and your fridge will be asking for it every day. In the summer, I eat it all the time. There's a frisee salad with lardons and a superbly tangy mustard vinaigrette and a nice panko-crusted fried duck egg on the menu at Blackfish, and I have found that if I ask very nicely at the end of my shift the kitchen will make me one. My friend Kerry has figured this out, too, and a few of the other girls, and we've discovered that sometimes, if we ask extra nicely, the kitchen will even make us a big bowl of it to share. Not always with duck eggs, but still. We have an addiction to feed.

And over the winter, that addiction has been hungry. It has been angry and ugly and kicking and screaming and crossing its fingers and toes that we can just wake up already it will be May. Now that it's February and the days are a little longer and the birds are back and the sun is just a bit stronger, it's been seeming like it's high time to at least throw it a little tide-me-over here and there.

Which is why I was very, very happy to find mizuna at the market the other day. Mizuna is not a frisee, not really at all, but it shares several important characteristics with the endive. For starters, it is very stemmy and leggy with spindly little arms, arms that wave out in the same skinny, feathery, frisee way. It is also bitter, and very crisp, all in the manner of a good curly endive. It is smaller than frisee, and ever so slightly sweeter, but in the important ways—in the way it has plenty of places to catch mustard vinaigrette and goopy egg yolk and can hold it's own flavor-wise against the lardon bits—it is 100% there. (Lardon, in case you're not familiar with it, is just a fancy word for bacon cut another way.)

And so today, at lunchtime, I got out the mizuna and a chicken egg and some bread crumbs and a few slices of bacon, and I got to work.


It didn't take much. I fried the bacon in a skillet, poured off the grease, and fried the battered up egg in the leftover fat. Then I tossed the greens with a tangy mustard and shallot vinaigrette and crumbled up the bacon so it could fall through the leaves and then, when the egg was ready, balanced it on top. It was golden, and crispy, and from its perch, it had almost a proud, stately look. Then, when I cut in, the egg yolk burst all over the greens and coated everything in a rich, runny yellow. It was pretty magnificent.

So go ahead, get your groceries or your mustard or go in with a neighbor on half a pig, just do what you need to do. Only don't wait as long as I did, or you might start to imagine that your fridge can speak.

MIZUNA SALAD WITH BACON, A FRIED EGG, AND TANGY VINAIGRETTE

This recipes makes enough salad for two people. It is adapted, mentally speaking, from the way the frisee salad at Blackfish tastes, although it is fairly different. I like to eat it for lunch with a slice of toasted whole wheat bread and a little bit of Shy Brothers cheese, and then I like to make myself a second plate when dinner rolls around.

4 slices bacon
1/3 pound baby mizuna
1 small shallot, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
a dash of sherry
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste
extra fat (olive oil, canola oil, bacon fat, or melted butter) for frying
1/2 cup very dry bread crumbs
2 eggs

Haul out a medium-size frying pan and get the bacon going. While it cooks, whisk together the shallot, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, and sherry to make the mustard vinaigrette, and season it with salt and pepper. If it is too tangy for your taste, add a bit more olive oil. Toss the greens with the dressing and set aside.

Flip the bacon and continue cooking until it is crisp on both sides. Take it out of the pan with a good pair of tongs, and set it on a cookie rack or clean dishcloth to drain. Get out a small, heavy-bottomed pot, and pour the leftover bacon fat from the frying pan into this pot. Add the extra fat until the combined fats reach an inch up the side of the pot, and turn on the heat to medium-high. (How much you need will depend on how much fat your bacon renders, and how big of a pot you use. Just big enough to fit an egg is good.)

While the fat heats up, crumble the bacon over the mizuna and toss the greens again. Divide the greens and bacon into two portions, and arrange each half in the center of a dinner plate. Then put the breadcrumbs in a small bowl and crack one egg in. Carefully roll the bowl around so that the outside of the egg is coated in breadcrumbs. When the fat is hot, use a slotted spoon to drop this egg in. Cook it for 10 seconds on each side and place the fried egg on top of one of the salads. (This timing yields a runny yolk. If for some reason you want a fully cooked yolk, add about 10 seconds to each side.) Bread and fry the other egg, and serve the salads immediately. And don't be afraid to sop up any extra yolk with some bread.

The Local Food Report: green, in February

Green, in February, is a very welcome sight. It is especially welcome when it comes in the form of Chinese cabbage and pak choi and pea tendrils and crispy crunchy salad mix, and when it finds its way through a shower of creamy balsamic dressing onto my lunch plate. When it does that, it feels a lot like an August house guest who washes their own towels and sheets and makes the bed and empties the dishwasher before they leave. As in, it's a you-can-stay-forever-if-you-like! sort of a thing.

Generally, I'm a sucker for brighter colors like reds and yellows and oranges, but this time of year, I think they're a little overdone. Greens are the new heirloom tomatoes, or the new juicy peaches—that kind of thing. You know, at least they aren't winter squash. I think everyone can agree on that.

Not that winter squash is such a bad thing. It's just that, especially in leap years when Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow and you're going to have not just six more weeks of winter but actually Six Weeks And One Day, anything with the word winter in it starts to get a little old. Which is why it was nice that when I went to the Plymouth Winter Farmers' Market a few weeks ago, Silverbrook Farms had a good supply of greens on hand.

Actually, one other stand—the one I mentioned the other day, Allen Farms—had greens as well—pea tendrils—but those were the only two. (Everyone else had important things like storage onions and carrots and granola and bread and cheese and potatoes and winter squash, which I probably should have bought more of since the greens lasted all of a week, but sadly I did not.) Instead I picked up a bag of pea tendrils from Allen Farms and then headed over to chat with Bianca Meleo who was standing in front of the pak choi and lettuce mix and Chinese cabbage over at Silverbrook Farms. It turns out the greens were sort of a last-minute, fast-growing thing for them—something they've experimented with in the past, but that they just started seriously for the winter market this fall. Bianca's the farm manager, and the one you see at the markets alongside Andy a lot, and she's also a newly converted winter greens nut. After the terrible growing conditions in June and July, this winter's actually been better than the summer was for things like lettuce and cabbage and spinach, she says. She was telling me about how they keep they crops warm—how they plant them inside in greenhouses, but without any heat, and then cover them up with frost clothes to prevent moisture from landing on the leaves. This is what kills them—this getting wet and freezing. It actually isn't the cold temperatures, unless it gets so chilly that their roots freeze, which is pretty rare.

We also spent a lot of time chatting about what Bianca likes to do with the greens, which recently, has been very much focused on a pak choi-chicken combo, with avocado spread on sandwiches and peanut oil in stir-fries. She says it works because the pak choi is a little bit nutty, but also a little bit sweet. We talked about pak choi for so long, in fact, that you might have heard us talking about it on the radio today, right before my producer said something about me having a recipe for chinese cabbage and pak choi stir-fry for you today.

I do not.

Following a rather disheartening mishap involving a box of cornstarch and waaay too much white powder dumping into my wok and a tearful meltdown that I'd rather not discuss, that recipe is still a work-in-progress. So instead, what do you say we talk about that creamy balsamic dressing I mentioned up top instead? Because that has never let me down, and it is an equally good way to dress up your plate with green.

In fact, beyond Bianca's winning description, I don't know why I ever mentioned anything about pak choi stir-fries in the first place, because this dressing has been on my plate every day at noon for the past fourteen days straight, ever since I stocked up on greens at the Silverbrook Farms and Allen Farms stands. It takes all of about three seconds to make, and best of all, it is so good and so simple that drizzled over a bowl of top quality, sweet, winter greens, the two make a salad without any need for anything else. It isn't at all fussy, and it certainly doesn't involve a wok or any cornstarch.

Instead, it gets its thickness from heavy cream and a sweet, oozy balsamic glaze. The only other ingredient is olive oil, preferably a green, spicy, newish variety like the one we brought back from Italy, and then if you like, a pinch of salt. You mix everything together with a fork, the cream acts as an emulsifier and binds everything into a light brown, creamy river the exact color of a nice pair of suede boots, and that's it. You're done.

So the next time one of these winter markets is open—the one in Plymouth, or the new one starting this! Saturday! in Marstons Mills, or even if you live a little further afield the well established one in Providence—keep your eye out for the little green patches. Then buy out the supply as quick as you can and ask in your most fervent tone for them to Keep On Planting More.

CREAMY BALSAMIC DRESSING

This is so simple that I am a little bit embarrassed to offer it as a recipe, but what it lacks in grandeur it makes up for in taste. The important thing is to make sure that your base ingredients—since there are only three of them—are of top notch quality. The olive oil should be a greenish, almost spicy extra virgin, the newer the better. The balsamic glaze is that thick, syrupy balsamic you see at specialty food stores that costs an arm and a leg but is worth it because it goes a really long way. (We use a brand called Acetum that we found at Phoenix Fruits in Orleans.) As for the heavy cream, don't do something silly like substitute half and half. The consistency will be all off, and the dressing won't emulsify like it should. If you get the ingredients right, though, it's very hard to go off track. The measurements below are just approximate, so go ahead and experiment with the proportions until you get it to taste. I tend to do it by eye, so it changes every day.

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon balsamic glaze
salt to taste

Combine the first three ingredients in a small measuring cup, and whisk them together until they form a thick, creamy dressing. Add a pinch of salt, taste and adjust as necessary, and once you have the dressing where you like it, pour it over a big bowl of salad greens. Toss well, and serve at once.

The Local Food Report: the proof is in

Would you like to see something beautiful?

That is a salad I made on Saturday, January 23rd entirely from Massachusetts foods. The green curls are pea tendrils, from Allen Farms in Westport. The maroon slivers and chunks are pickled beets and onions leftover from a big batch our friend Tracy made for our wedding at the end of October, with veggies from her very own garden. She made the pickled carrots, too. The white blobs, believe it or not, are actually not marshmallows, but little Hannahbells. Oh! and I saved the best for last. Those little golden things? Real, live greenhouse-grown pear tomatoes. Debbie Barrett is very proud of those.

If anyone tells you it's impossible to eat locally in New England in the middle of January because you're going to contract scurvy or starve to death or accidentally stab your neighbor for his Florida orange, well, the proof is in the pudding, people. Or the salad. Or whatever. The point is, that rainbow dish up there should get them to pipe down.

Also, our area now officially has two—TWO!—winter farmers' markets. One in Marstons Mills slated to start next Saturday, February 6th at 10am sharp, and another already underway on the third Thursday of every month from 3:30 to 6pm at Plimoth Plantation. When I first heard about both of these, I did a little dance in my seat. The best part it, the Plimoth one even has an online ordering shop so that if you're going to drive all that way, you can make sure you get what you want.

When I first heard about the online store, I was actually a little bit wary to tell you the truth. I was at the annual Cape Cod Buy Fresh Buy Local meeting, sitting in the back drinking my friend Jessie's homemade cranberry syrup-seltzer infusion and trying not to make too much noise eating smoked bluefish, and these two very smart looking women from Plymouth pulled a computer and a laser pointer out. While they talked about the software, and how the farmers submitted what they had, and then got a report back after the customers had ordered about what to bring, I realized that the whole idea made me just the slightest bit nervous. The thing I like about farmers' markets, after all, is that they are by definition very low tech, and rather than involving computers and telephones and wireless internet and e-trading, they involve people and wicker baskets and carrots and dirt. I had this flash-forward nightmare vision of the local food movement going the way of Big Organics, and for a second my mouth got so dry I had to push away my plate.

I thought about their presentation a lot over the next few weeks.

Eventually, I decided that the only way to get over it would be to call them up and see if they might want to talk. And so I did—I got in touch with Barbara Anglin, the market organizer, and Sasha Purpura, one of the farmers—and last week I ended up walking around with my recording gear and my camera and a big bag of fresh carrots and Chinese cabbage and homemade granola in the Plimoth Plantation parking lot. Then I went inside, and the more we talked, the more I was convinced that online ordering was a good idea after all. Here's how they got me convinced.

For starters, they said that their main goal with the online store is to give more people better access to local food. That isn't really a mission statement I can argue with. Secondly, they pointed out that there are a lot of working parents—mostly mothers, so far as they've noticed, but fathers too—who work during market hours, and therefore can never, ever make it there to do the household shop for the week. Even if they have the money and are into it and are willing to pay the price, they either can't get there at all or get there so late that the eggs and the greens and the grapes and all the good stuff have completely disappeared. Also, Barbara and Sasha argued that the online store has the potential to eventually expand what the market has to offer, because Barbara gives all of the farmers a print out every week showing them who put what up and which items sold like hot potatoes and which ones didn't. The vendors will start to see holes or overlaps, Barbara very reasonably predicted, and then they'll start ramping up new varieties and scaling back in places where there's too much overlap. Ultimately, that could lead to a lot of new foods on our plates.


But the most convincing reason they offered is this: Even though the store is geared toward busy, working parents, and even though they estimate that ninety percent of the people using it are busy, working parents, after these busy people pick up their boxes, they still stick around to shop. They wander through the stalls, and say hello to the farmers they ordered from, and usually buy a few other things. In other words, it's the guarantee they're looking for, not a whole different experience. They have time to say hello, but not to arrive ready for a week's shop and find out nothing's there. That's a wonderfully reassuring thing.

As it turns out, a lot of other people think the online store is a good idea, too. There are a few other places using the exact same program, which was put together originally by a market in Plymouth New Hampshire. The New Hampshire folks were the first people to do it, back in 2006, when the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative decided to brainstorm ways to get people to buy more local food. The thought was that this, in turn, would decrease these households' overall energy use—and a group of local farmers suggested an online marketplace. That's how the first Local Foods Plymouth was born. Right now, there are about six or seven markets in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, including the one in our Plymouth, using the software. There's also a different online ordering model—Massachusetts Local—at work in the western part of the state.

It's hard to say whether or not the idea will catch on out here. But based on how well it's doing up north, if I were you I'd take a peek.

A very real possibility

I realized at lunch the other day that you might have some misconceptions about my husband-to-be. I mean, based on the picture I've painted around here, I can understand how you might think he just sits around popping out diamond rings and bringing home tubs of chocolate chip cookie dough and taking me out for Sunday boat rides. But really people, he has flaws. Take the other day, for instance. He came home to a first-rate afternoon spread of cold gazpacho, white linens, plated silver, a shady deck, and an arugula test salad for the wedding and informed me without a trace of regret after just one bite that he Did Not Like It. He said it perfectly nicely, of course, but it reminded me that he does have a flaw. Somehow, he missed out on the bitter-flavor-appreciation gene.

I first found this out over a bar of dark chocolate. I then rediscovered it over braised endives, a radicchio salad, and my cousin's Italian dandelion greens tossed with the most delicious green goddess dressing.

The man can't stand to put anything even the slightest bit bitter in his mouth.

He tells this story about when he was living in Vietnam, where he ate things like live, beating snake heart without batting an eye, about the time his host mom made bitter gourd soup—and he almost always, at least once or twice during the delivery, says he thought he was going to die. It's a little melodramatic, I think, but when I imagine the way I feel in front any quantity of tapioca pudding, I sort of see what he means. Some things just aren't meant to go down.

The point of all this is to say that even though my groom didn't like the arugula-wheat-berry-cherry-tomato-Parmesan-lemon-juice-calamata-olive wedding salad, I think you will. The exciting part about it—and the reason we started experimenting with it in the first place—is that the wheat berries will be coming from Maine. We're trying to keep our dinner as local as possible, but for a time there, it seemed like an all-Maine grain side was going to be an impossible thing. Then of course enter Katy and my mother and their combined love of Heidi Swanson, and what seemed like a reach was suddenly a very real possibility.

To that end, I'd appreciate any comments or variations or suggestions you might have on this. As you might imagine, I won't be hearing a lot at my table, so whatever goes on at yours, please, please let me know.

ARUGULA AND WHEAT BERRY SALAD

This recipe is adapted from one Katy found on 101 Cookbooks. I ordered wheat berries from Wood Prairie Farm in Maine, and they have proven to be an excellent new addition to the grain cupboard.

I changed things up a bit from Heidi's version—added fresh cherry tomatoes since we have them around in droves right now and went a bit heavier on the arugula—but for the most part, hers was a pretty fool proof combo. If you have something else nice you throw in, please let me know. I have a feeling that this version of the salad is just the beginning and there are endless directions in which we could go.

Oh, and where the recipes—there's one for the salad and one for the arugula pesto that dresses it—where they say grated Parmesan, I mean made from a block of cheese with a grater, not the granular type you buy at the store. If you use that, you'll want to use much less as there's a lot more cheese per 1/3 cup.

2 cups wheat berries, cooked and chilled
3 cups arugula, loosely packed
1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/2 cup calamata olives, pitted and halved
1/3 cup grated Parmesan
4 tablespoons arugula pesto, at room temperature (recipe below)

In a large serving bowl, toss the wheat berries, arugula, cherry tomatoes, and olives with the pesto. Once everything is well-coated, add the Parmesan, season with salt and pepper to taste, and toss lightly once more. Serve at room temperature.

ARUGULA PESTO

3 cups arugula leaves, packed
1-2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, to taste
3 medium garlic cloves
1/4 cup walnuts
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
salt and pepper to taste

Combine everything in a food processor and give it a whirl. Keep going until the pesto is thick and well-blended. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

The Local Food Report: dust to dust

Strawberry season, in my family, is a religious thing. We pick strawberries in late June and early July the way other families watch Wimbledon or take Saturdays at the beach—every year, all together, no matter what. 

We wake up early, at seven or even six, and we drive out to Bowdoin, a few towns over from where I grew up in Maine. We bring our stained green quart containers from last year and our sunscreen and our hats, and we haul flats of empty boxes down the rows at Prout's field until they're picked full. We pick until our fingers are stained and our lips are red, and we make sure to get forty quarts at the very least. 

Then we haul the berries back home, lay them out on the kitchen counter like checkers, and everyone takes their spots. My father pulls the greens from the berry heads, my sister washes, I chop. My mother pulls out the big pots for jam—the jars in a water bath on the back burner and the sugar and the berries bubbling up front. We make pint upon pint of jam, to last all year on toast and peanut butter sandwiches and stirred into plain yogurt sometimes.

But not this year. 

This year, between the rain and the hail and the grey fruit mold—between those three, the strawberries were done in. There were some berries at the markets, certainly; they were big, plump, and juicy, and they had hardly any taste. They could have been California strawberries for all we knew.

I talked to Tim Friary about it the other day—Tim from Cape Cod Organics Farm in Barnstable who sells the berries at the markets in Hyannis and Orleans. He said he'd lost 150 cases by mid June, $6,000 down the drain. He said they just melted—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But it was the terrific lack of sunshine that got them the most. The strawberries come in June for a reason, he explained: they rely on the longest days of the year, on the peak of light and loads of sunshine to get that sweet, signature taste. Needless to say, they got hardly a single day.

Still, we've eaten a few. We've brought home a quart here and there from Tim, or from Andy Pollock in Provincetown, and we've doled them out on tip-toe. Mostly, we've been stretching them out on salads.

That one right up there is one of my favorites: butter lettuce, basil, and balsamic with just a sprinkling of strawberries. They go on a long way on salad, strawberries do—you only need two or maybe three to make the whole thing jump. The basil doesn't hurt, of course—it's been thick with strawberries since ages and ages ago—and the balsamic makes an excellent third wheel. But the strawberries are the ones that round up the troops, bringing together crisp and peppery and floral into one big, ecstatic bunch. 

It may not feel like a big, ecstatic bunch sort of season in general, I know. But for this last week—before the berries disappear until next year—I plan to revel in the possibility all I can. 

STRAWBERRY BASIL SALAD

There might not be enough strawberries for jam, but there are certainly plenty to top a salad. Basil and strawberries are a well known pair, and the balsamic in this recipe compliments both. Look for a mild lettuce without too much of its own personality—that way the basil and berries won't have anything too strong to compete with.

1 pound sweet, mild lettuce, washed and dried

1 bunch basil, leaves picked, washed, and dried

3 tablespoons sweet balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper 

1 pint strawberries, washed and sliced

Toss lettuce and basil together in a large serving bowl. Dress with oil and vinegar, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the strawberries last, sprinkling them on top, so that they don't disappear to the bottom too fast. 

P.S. This year, I planted my own strawberry patch. Luckily, I wasn't counting on any berries just yet, but the plants sent out runners all over the place, and from just six plants they've nearly filled in a 10 foot space. Spring and August are the two best times to plant, so if you have any interest in getting a patch going, I recommend doing some research over here first. There are all sorts of tid-bits about choosing varieties and how to mulch and what not. Good luck!