Valley Locavore

Parking Garage

Drove home from the Y, last night, get out of car in parking garage and a woman with few teeth comes over and apologizing, "i'm not bad," she says. i look at her, i lock the car, i say hello, she says "i'm not bad," and she takes her hat...

100-Mile Diet Day 30

RehabOk, i've fallen off the wagon a bit. First it was beautiful in the land of the 100-mile diet. I lost weight, I felt euphoric, the farmers were my people, I was pulling it off and had bragging rights. But after coming up with exceptions to the rule out of duty...

100-Mile Diet Day 33: Get Me Sylvia

Had to go back to Table & Vine since local blueberry wine doesn't go with anything.Tried to score some Sylvia but every time I asked somebody about it they just lookedat me strangely. Even up in BRATTLEBORO where everyone is strange, no dice on the Sylvia.So...

Locavore Thanksgiving a bust.

Thanksgiving with family was a cluster, couldn't eat a thing, so mad i couldn't even get drunk. Now that's mad. Wish i was on the farm, having some fresh goat cheese and a nice fire with grass fed weenies on sticks. What's a locavore to do?

Burger King Seeks Recruits

This video called Whopper Virgins illustrates a desparate world wide search for people how have not experienced hamburgers. I don't know about you but it makes me hungry…..http://www.whoppervirgins.com/

How to Pray for Peace

From How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher, a food writer from back in the day, comes a poem called How to Pray For Peace.Pray for peace and grace and spiritual foodFor wisdom and guidance, for all these are goodBut don't forget the potatoes….Prayer and...

Ponzi Potatoes

Ingredients: A bushel of potatoes. Instruction:Slice and quarter but do not peel to retain nutrients. Like most living things, potatoes begin dying when they lose their skin. Boil potatoes in milk and butter. Add sprigs of thyme before serving. This, believe it or...

Let them eat caviar – the cheap kind!

RECIPE: Pomme de Caroline.1. Call your press advisor to get advice about the wisdom of releasing a New Year's recipe and whether or not alcohol should be referenced. Call some the head of the Hyannisport Chef's Association to see if he/she has a nice recipe...

“Who ever decided to eat this?”

A guy talking on a microphone in a store on State Street picked up the gnarled vegetable and said to shoppers, "Where did they look at this thing and decide….'Ok, let's eat this!'" The guy was doing a remote in the produce section of...

Karl's Korn Chowder

Interview with Chef Karl Braverman of Sienna in South DeerfieldVL: So Karl, what’s new in fine dining?Chef: Everything. We’re gourmet food at Wolfie’s prices now, whole new scene. Come for lunch starting in January, or around then. We want people to...

Wanted: Dude with a back 40

This is not an image of me but it could be me. Other bloggers write about the news. Here's something about the news today. Two columns in the grey lady's "most e-mailed columns" refer to an upcoming depression, the likes of which could render us...

Free Harvest Supper Recipe

Maggie’s Farm Chefs’ Maggie Zaccara and Evelyn Whitbeck-Poorbaugh of the Hope & Olive Restaurant in Greenfield created the menu for the Free Harvest Supper. This recipe for Turkey and Peach Salad included turkey donated by Diemand Farm in Wendell and...

Is this your ride?

If so, meet me at the new burger place on main st. in noho next friday nite. i'll be wearing a white parka and black muck boots. The tractor is for farming corn. Last week I discovered that the corn that I froze last summer is now a big pile of starch because I...

Jesus a Locavore?

It's subtle but if you look really hard at the 16 billion pixels that represent a recent restoration of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper," (1498) a plate of grilled eels and an orange slice (the parsley garnish of the 1494). According to MHC Art Professor...

11 Foods You Really Should be Eating…….

Some foods that you really should be eating as noted in June and today again in the New York Times are foods that include cabbage (in season and see this photo), sardines (high in Omega #) and pumpkin seeds. The person who wrote the article said she only had two of...

The Preservation of the Peach

Good luck with this because our friend Mr. Peach is all but gone from the fields but if you can get your hands on some, here is a good website that shows how to can all fruits for winter consumption. Freezing is a lot easier because there is no sterilization, jars,...

fleas

Suddenly on the window, on the computer screen and even near where i put the honey for tea there are these little infintesimal bugs or fleas. I wonder if they are from the mangy cats that visited or are they something I tracked in? But lately I've been trying to...

Jesus a Locavore?

It's subtle but if you look really hard at the 16 billion pixels that represent a recent restoration of da Vinci's Last Supper, you can barely make out a plate of grilled eels and an orange slice. The image is so vague that it could also be a plate of donuts....

ouch….! Bourdain vs. Waters

Anthony Bourdain, author and star of the food tv show, "No Reservations," said in his swashbuckling style that he hates the new mario butallo show with Gwenneth et al and he really hates alice waters, the promoter and high priestess of local food. In an...

McCain Ruins Breakfast

The bread element of the locavore breakfast is a complicated thing. First it has to be made by hand and second it has to be made of local corn meal, ground by a man on a bike in Hadley. And C, it can't go in the toaster because there is no toaster that works with...

Erudite yet kind…

Locavore diet today: soup at farmer & baker conference with raw ricotta and squash, greens with a fried egg on top, stilton cheese (england – 5000 miles) and locavore bread made of beets, local wheat, wicked strong starter and butter….and wine. Updike...

Day 10: Snack Time

Farmer talked me into buying, many, many corn on the cob ears. The colored kind that people usually put on their doors. I'm a huge popcorn fan and when this guy told me that, “sure, that'll pop” I figured I was set for a locavore snack. Party time!...

Casinos are green things too…..

Today, not sure what ate today….locavore bread french toast from noho with wheat made with "mystery wheat seeds" from Belchertown, and then some kale from enterprise farm in whately and parsnips from a little bag, maybe from whately, garlic from my...

Day 13: Damn you, Elinor Lipman

Got Elinor Lipman's signature on the book, Then She Found Me this weekend. Things were going fine at the writers conference where she was presenting at a panel discussion. "Make your reader fall in love on the first page," she said with the cute glasses...

Finger Pointing

At the farmer baker conference a man with a feed hat sitting next to me cried out, “please, just tell me how much flour you guys need?” His right hand was poised over the paper, waiting for an answer. On the index finger were a ring of fresh...

100-Mile Diet Day 14: Damn you JoJo

To keep the 100-Mile diet going in the early days, best not to be near “outsider food.” Who would think there would be temptation at Home Depot? Oh there is, at the hot dog place out in front, Jo Jo's. I figure I'll just check them out, all...

Locavore Diet Intervention

One thing about this diet is the depravation piece. First nothing seems impossible then going without coffee is impossible and then it seems that everything will be fine with just squash and dairy but then salt becomes impossible so you start eating lots and lots of...

Bill, Meagan, Michael & Dave

These are the chesnuts that bill sold me for the thanksgiving turkey stuffing that will be made with the cornmeal that michael grew and ground for me and the leeks that meagan grew and sold to me and the milk that i bought from Amy. #of miles driven in old honda?...

If it's red, don't eat it.

There is nothing left except butter nut squash – 3, 8 dried up sweet potatoes, a stub of parsnip, 2 red potatoes, and other stuff. i feel full of butter because i am full of butter and cheese and potatoes. it is 2/24/09. what will 3/24/09 look like????And then...

Chance to the rescue……

In Jerzy Kosinski's novel and award-winning screenplay, "Being There," the U.S. president turns to a plain-spoken gardener named Chance for wisdom at a time of economic crisis. The insight Chance offers is as simple as it is reassuring: Growth has its...

Peanut Butter & Salmonella Sandwich

In addition to the 300 brands tainted with salmonella due to improper inspection and recall by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), the most recent recalled food includes ice creams, snack bars, candies, trail mixes and more.A complete list and link to the FDA...

Last summer's grill

Too bad its hard to taste the terroir of western MA in the grass fed beef burgers at the burger place in noho. Last night we had a nice malbec which saved a chaotic kitchen, burger cooked as if it were roadkill and fries that I would pay $100 for. A guy there eating...

Go Ask Alice

Elitist or hard headed woman who knows her way around the press and a compost heap??? This 60-Minute interview is the future of education, food policy, and, hopefully, day to day culinary encounters. Visit the link to your right….entitled...

Money Garden

Seed sales very big this year up 20 to 30 percent at wholesalers. Burpee, the world's largest seed company claims that a big seller is the $10 “Money Garden” package what promises to grow $650 worth of food. Look forward to next week's column to...

empty fridge

Nothing to eat. head of cabbage, eggs too beautiful to consume, some sweet potatoes gleaned in November that look like dismembered unmentionables, corn meal, 8 lbs, no more goat meat, even and for tea, honey and hot water. but today for a guest from this I managed to...

Kapusta Head

2 cups chopped cabbage1 bag saurkraut2 diced onion1 hunk salt porkthis your babcia's secret recipe. cut up salt pork and fry, add onion when smoking, stir in cabbage & saukraut and add water to cover. cook till done, around 45 min. just like babci but a lot...

$3 Thighs (Recipe)

Last night I made some chicken thighs I got for $3 down the street. The sauce made it. I cooked the f.. out of the thighs in boiling, over-priced olive oil to get the fat nice and seared. These were some cheap-ass thighs so the skins came right off and curled up into...

locavore meow from St. Louis

This from todays tireless news feed:White House garden inspires locavores and overdressed gardeners Kevin Horrigan[More columns][Kevin's Biography] BY KEVIN HORRIGAN• khorrigan@post-dispatch.comST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH04/26/2009 A couple of weeks ago, some...

David Byrne Wants Me

Today I get an email from David Byrne. Something about Amesty International and purchasing his new 'tracks.' Yesterday I get an email from Willie Nelson. Something about how 50,000 dairy farmer's are in danger. What, Columbia Records and Whole Foods...

Swine Flu

According to sources at the CDC and other outlets, the origins of swine flu are at a hog farm in Mexico where over 950,000 were raised for food in 2008. The farm, Granjas Carroll is a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods. News about th eswine flu outbreak in Mexico that...

Dairy Farmer Wants Me

"Dear Mary, I didn't become a dairy farmer because I thought it would be easy. It's hard work, with a lot of early mornings and a lot of heavy lifting — but it's work I love, and I'm thankful for it every day. If it were up to me, I'd...

Belle of Amherst Locavore

watch out window for gimpseof brother….. walk 1000 steps to the raspberry stand after dinner, sunsetbring 12 quarters for one quartmix with yogurt for breakfastmix with wine in jelly glass for cocktailgo to bed

Emily is pissed…

Here I am bored from staring out my windowlookingformy brother and all I see is thatsister in law (LAW!)out there.now i have all this cilantro and no tomatoes for salsarainso locavore valleycomes over to show me how to makeketchup? is that what they call it?I call it...

Locavore Emily Dickenson

morning light filtering through treeson my computer is the writing of last night and writing to do todayandcraig's list"wanted mohair goat male or female for wool. Goat experience in past"why does this cry out? like death…this goat is my...

bunny frenemy

locavores love the lapinand they love the sinewylittlebits of cartilagebutlittle bunnyisjust too far to go for meout my windownot in the housebunny isfrenemy

went to the “store” today…

so walked, out of house, for a small pint of raspberrieseach so tinyeach so exquisitelike the opposite of deathiwalked the steps required toneighbor's where"store" waslocavore now, must shop on streetwalked home 2000 steps from "store"to safety...

Emily Dickinson Encounters Wild Blueberries

This timea weekend nowfriends and early morning wheni awake at first light wanderto a field nearby where fishermen dried their netsgloucester housegift CSA blueberries local but sparyfield with wild blueberries dog walk encounterno hay field no spray field justhand of...