last week's booty

The reason I'm not posting recipes is that I'm just not cooking, except to soft boil an egg to serve over asparagus, or perhaps sauté some greens. Most of what I'm eating is from the farmers market, and so delicious in its simplest form, no recipe is required.

Raw, with sea salt, or sea-salty butter, or sliced on top of sea-salty buttered toast.

Pea shoots! Lightly sautéed, or mixed with baby greens for salad.

Doe's Leap Trappist. Sliced, bitches. Just slice off a piece and pop it in your mouth. No cracker or bread required.

Strawberries. At least twice a day I eat a bowlful of strawberries, usually with some Greek yogurt. Can't. Get. Enough. [Note to yachtsman: It's shortcake time, honey, which is like Hammer time, except instead of dressing up in your Hammer pants and lip synching in the kitchen you make me a little biscuit-like cake to eat with my strawberries. Can't touch this.]

Freshly picked whoopie pies.

This weekend I'm hoping for peas. Also, some deeply discounted peonies. Also, I hope whoopie pies are still in season.

they which do such things

If I were rich in dollars (in addition to love), I would have bought a massive bouquet of peonies at the farmers market on Saturday. I mean, HUGE. But for once in my life I showed some restraint.


Which I now regret like other people regret benders and binges and bad cases of crabs.

the nomadic oven

At the farmers market this weekend my stepmom stopped by a table of beautiful baked goods and got into a conversation with the baker about macarons—chewy versus soft, a certain bakery in Paris, blah blah blah...I spaced them out, contemplating the pile of whoopie pies. Not because I don't like macarons; I do. But I've eaten plenty and they've all been basically the same, variations on this theme: A pair of soft-yet-slightly-chewy, almost-meringue-like, pastel-colored cookies sandwiching a thin layer of filling.

After confirming that the macarons at the farmers market were the special Parisian kind, my stepmother bought one, pronounced it the best macaron she'd ever tried, and gave me a bite. Bitches, these are not your run-of-the-mill macarons. They literally melt in your mouth.

These were prettier when I first bought them; this photo was taken after they'd spent a couple hours in my purse.

They were so good, in fact, I assumed the whoopie pies I'd been contemplating must be bad. As I've noted here before, whoopie pies should not be fancy, and the macarons were very fancy. So I purchased three magical macarons and one whoopie pie, which I didn't try until I got home, at which point I RUED the moment I'd decided to buy only one. That whoopie pie was not too fancy at all. In fact, it had all the best aspects of both the high- and low-brow versions. The chocolate-cake portion was moist, unlike most fancy whoopie pies, and the chocolate was dark and rich. The filling tasted like a classy version of Fluff—marshmallowy, with crystalline sugary bits—but without the waxy taste of shortening most low-end whoopie pies have. I approve.


So I have a new favorite, worth-seeking-out local baker in addition to beloved My Little Cupcake. I know the Nomadic Oven will be at the one remaining Burlington winter farmers market, and her website says she does the summer Old and New North End markets. Let the stalking begin.

at last, summer

It's August, and summer has finally rolled her lazy ass into Vermont for a brief stay before it starts to snow again.


Which means I'm not doing much cooking.

Heirloom tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, basil, and Doe's Leap feta.

Mostly I'm eating creemees (to make up for all the creemees I didn't eat in June and July, when it rained every single day and the temperature rarely got above 70 degrees) and farmers booty in simple forms.

Baby artichokes, steamed and sauteed with a little olive oil, garlic, and white wine.

So I've got nothing much to offer you in the form of recipes or tales of eating. I suggest you console yourself with a creemee.

I know I'm going to.

scenes from a weekend

Farmers booty.

More farmers booty: to keep me company while I proofread crap.

Couch Jedi.

Couch Jedi with a view.

I was wrong about peaches: Thanks, Candy!

The sweetest boy in the world.

Moto photo.

The Kitchen Table: Thanks, Beej Rog!

Very, very wrong about peaches. Seriously: thanks, Candy.

how i spent my summer vacation

What I was supposed to do this weekend was proofread. What I did do was lie on the couch watching four episodes of Gossip Girl in the middle of a beautiful, sunny day, and clean the house.

Here's what happened: I got up nice and early Saturday morning so I could go to the farmers market before I started working. It began innocently enough -- baby artichokes and heirloom greens, cheese to bring to Mojie's for dinner and samosas for the yachtsman. But I started to feel like there was something missing. Something I wanted but could not name. I wandered from stand to stand looking for it. I bought bok choy and carrots and new potatoes. I sampled spicy pretzels and basil hummus. And yet I was still full of want. I continued to wander, thinking that when I saw the thing I longed for I would know what it was.

But while contemplating a pint of sour cherries, I realized what I was missing was fruit. Not blueberries or raspberries or sour cherries. F*ck sour cherries. What I wanted was a peach. A juicy, sink-your-teeth-in, juice-dribbling-down-your-chin peach. I wanted to eat that peach, and then I wanted to eat another. I wanted to eat a peach every day for a month. I wanted to eat peaches until I was sick of peaches.

But there are no peaches in Vermont. There are berries and there are sour cherries. There are sad little plums. So I bought a chocolate frosted donut.


Which made me feel ill. And not just sick to my stomach or full. I was depressed. When I got home I tried to go into my office and work, but it was like there was a forcefield between me and that red pen. And there was also a Siren calling me to the couch. So at 10:00 on Saturday morning, I put on my Couch Jedi outfit, laid down on the couch, and proceeded to watch the last four episodes of Season 2 of Gossip Girl.

You may call it lazy procrastination; I call it a vision quest. There were low points where I questioned the meaning of life (for example the '80s flashback episode, which was so bad I had to fast forward through most of it). There were moments where I thought I could do anything -- wear headbands, live in New York, play basketball in a velour sweatsuit. But on a bathroom break during the season finale as I tripped over the yachtsman's winter boots, which were wrapped in a plastic garbage bag because they'd recently been sprayed with a fire extinguisher, I had a realization: I'd spent the first sunny day in weeks watching TV, and we were living in actual squalor. So I saw Blair and Chuck and Serena and Dan through their senior year, and then I cleaned the house.

I still want a peach.

[martha stewart] living high on the hog

If I were Martha Stewart, which I basically am, I would have a section of this bl*g called "Good Things."

Good Things
The littlest sister crocheted me a scarf, which I predict will be an integral element of my Couch Jedi outfit this winter.



New vegetable brush: I no longer have to use my fingernails to scrape the dirt from carrots.



Pork to the motherf*cking chop.

That's right, bitches! We are Americans in this house. We eat pork chops for dinner. Meat and motherf*cking potatoes. We listen to Wayne Brooks or whoever and hunt moose on the weekends and voted for John motherf*ckin' McCain. There was corn. From the motherf*ckin' Heartland. Of America.

Am I reminding you of Martha motherf*ckin' Stewart right now?

I thought so.

Here's the story, dear readers. I ran into my friend Jonathan a couple of weeks ago at the farmers market, and he recommended pork chops from Boucher Family Farm, where, according to Jonathan, "their pigs live happy piggy lives until they practically beg to be put down and butchered so we can enjoy their wonderful porkiness." Which is how I like my pork: happy. To die.

This past Saturday, I followed Jonathan's suggestion. Because I've never cooked pork (or, with the exception of a chicken-roasting debacle a few years ago when I was still a leftie vegetarian Democrat, meat) before, I asked the nice lady at Boucher if she had any pork-cooking suggestions. She recommended Shake-n-Bake. Which, frankly, is a little more Sarah Palin than Martha Stewart, so I e-mailed Jonathan for advice. He had numerous brilliant ideas. I decided on "heat a sturdy pan, film with olive oil, sear both sides of the chops for about 4 minutes total, reduce heat, add about a 1/2 cup of liquid (wine, sherry, chicken or beef broth), cover and cook for 10 - 15 minutes turning the chops once or twice, add additional seasonings (lemon or vinegar, parsley or garlic or shallot, pepper and salt, apples or dijon mustard, a touch of worcestershire sauce -- you get the picture). You can also remove the chops and then reduce the sauce if you want it thicker."

And then I decided I had too much work to do any cooking, so I put my Texas-born husband on the case and proofread while he made me some pork chops. And roasted potatoes. And fresh corn. And motherf*ckin' blueberry buckle for dessert.

Worth clearing the motherf*ckin' table for.

Pork, corn, potatoes, blueberries, butter, flour, and tapwater: All from Vermont.

pina coladas & pea soup

The yachtsman: What are you doing?
Me: Trying to write a bl*g post.
The yachtsman: How's it going?
Me: I got nothing.
The yachtsman: Why don't you do a Yachtsman Recommends?
Me: What do you recommend?
The yachtsman: Pina coladas. Getting caught in the rain.
Me: I don't know.
The yacthsman: I'm into champagne?

--------

What the yachtsman does not recommend is pea soup, but I ate it today in dip form


and thinned out, as soup.


It tastes just like ... peas -- sweet and fresh. Like summer.

Possibly the Best Pea Soup
From Bitten

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup finely sliced shallots (about 3)
1 clove garlic, chopped fine
1 pound shelled fresh sweet peas
1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
1/2 tablespoon salt
Pinch pepper
1/4 cup half and half or light cream

1. Heat olive oil in soup pot. Add shallots and garlic and cook over med. Heat until shallots are just wilted. Add 3 1/2 cups water, bring to boil, turn down heat and simmer for 1/2 hour.

2. Add peas, tarragon, salt and pepper and bring back to boil. Turn down heat and let simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temp. Purée in a blender in batches until very smooth. Force through fine sieve into clean pot, discarding small amount of pea skins left in sieve.

3. Stir in half and half and add salt if necessary to taste. Can be reheated and served hot or chilled and served cold.

rebellion

The yachtsman and I had the following conversation last week, as he watched TV and I looked at recipes online.

The yachtsman: What are you reading?
Me: A recipe for pea soup.
The yachtsman: [PAUSES TV] Why?
ME: Why not?
The yachtsman: Let me be clear about one thing: We do not enjoy pea soup in this family. [RESTARTS TV]
Me: [LAUGHS]
The yachtsman: [RE-PAUSES TV] It's not funny. We do not eat pea soup in this family. [RE-STARTS AND RE-PAUSES TV] Put that on your bl*g and post it.

I did not do anything this weekend except proofread, go to the farmers market, go out for a creemee, and disobey my husband, which in some countries would get me stoned (not high, killed -- biblical-style).

At the farmers market I bought 2.5 pounds of shelling peas, thinking that would yield the 1 pound of shelled peas I needed for the recipe. I thought wrong. I ended up with 12 ounces of peas, which meant I had to 3/4 the recipe, which meant I had to deal with fractions, which did not turn out well. (When I dropped out of high school after my sophomore year, I was fairly certain I was not missing anything, and I was mostly right, with one little exception: math.)

I did not make pea soup, I made pea dip. Delicious pea dip, but dip, nonetheless.

(The yachtsman: [LOOKING DOUBTFULLY INTO MY POT OF GRUEL] That looks awfully thick.)

I'll take photos when I thin it out and eat it at work tomorrow. In the meantime, a stay-in-school public service announcement brought to you by all of us high-school dropouts here at GFD:

Click to enlarge.

it's hammer time

Actually, it's pea time, but "Hammer Time" sounds much cooler. If you're stuck in 1990. Otherwise, it just sounds dated.

Anyway, it's pea time.

I have a new theory about peas, which is that they are so delicious fresh, a couple of wizards decided to freeze them and can them, thereby making them no longer delicious and giving them the bad rep they have today. Which is a shame, because fresh peas are like candy. Candy that's good for you! So let's not be stuck in 1952, when frozen peas were first marketed by nonwizard Clarence Birdseye. Or worse, when Donald Suckass invented canned peas, whenever that was.

I was so busy earlier today I didn't have time to both shell and cook them, so I snacked on them raw.


Tonight on the phone with Mojie I asked if she thought ever-so-slightly steamed fresh peas with a little butter sounded good. "Frankly, no," she said. But she was wrong. In the words of a great rapper/reverend/dancer/bankruptcy filer, "Can't touch this."

all the cool kids are doing it

I finished The Omnivore's Dilemma over a week ago, and ever since then have been so freaked out/confused by food, I must comfort myself by eating lots of it.

One of the most disappointing things I learned from this book was not about the production of beef in this country (horrifying, but other than the incident with That Burger, I really don't eat beef) or the fact that corn is in everything (the diabolical, political aspect is disturbing, but other than that incident where I opened my cupboard, I don't eat many processed foods), but about "industrial organic" (the GAZILLIONS of dollars I spent at Whole Foods when we lived in DC was not necessarily money well spent!).

Now that I'm in Vermont I have lots of local options for eggs and butter and, during the two summer months, vegetables, but one thing I didn't know how to replace was canned tomatoes (apparently Muir Glen, whose fire-roasted tomatoes are a central ingredient in one of my favorite soups, is owned by General Mills), which I eat a lot of in the winter.

When I mentioned this in front of my native Oklahoman, ham-loaf-makin', cussin' mother-in-law, she said, "Well, why don't we can our own?" And why not, really? Er, because it seems sort of messy. And also, botulism? But my concerns were put to rest, and we're planning a canning session at the end of the summer.

Which I thought made us old fashioned, but it turns out that, like knitting and sewing and all that other crafty crap I can't do, canning is making a comeback. My mother-in-law is so HIP. Which anyone who's met her already knew.

sweet

I got these little carrots at the farmers market, and they're pretty sweet. I mean that literally, not as in, "Pretty sweet, dude," like some hippie says when talking about the new Phish reunion show dates, or whatever it is Phish people talk about.


The point is, I feel pretty virtuous when I eat them, in spite of the fact that they taste a little bit like candy, just as I feel pretty virtuous when I don't yell at white people with dreadlocks for being white people with dreadlocks.


I only feel slightly less virtuous for having eaten a third of a pudding after eating my virtuous carrots. I figure that if the pudding is made of tofu and the carrots taste like candy, I'm practically a saint for not yelling at Phish heads.

how do i love thee? let me count the ways

For now I'm happy eating them just like this,


but before the season's over I'm going to try this, eat lots of these, and use a coupon I received for my birthday to get the yachtsman to make me this.

Happy summer to me.