Straight from the Farm

Last weekend, D surprised me by taking me to New York City to celebrate my birthday.  He’d already gotten tickets to a play (I Love You, Your Perfect, Now Change gets a big thumbs up from me) and had picked out a restaurant for dinner (aw, so sweet).  He did ask me though what I’d like to do in the afternoon before the play started. I immediately said “Union Square.” 

I’ve been to NYC dozens of times but never had the opportunity before to stop in at the granddaddy of farmers markets held in Union Square.  I’d heard so much about it, including drooling over some of the produce Deb’s bought there during the past few years I’ve been reading Smitten Kitchen.  Still, I wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity of the experience.  Hordes of people, none of which seemed to be paying any attention to anyone else around them to the point that I literally had to throw myself between people by times just to try to get a foot further among the stands of root vegetables, apples, and fresh baked goods.  Elbowing aside, it was still an awesome market, even at the brink of spring before anything green was ready for this particular greenmarket. 

Sad that there weren’t any ramps or asparagus to be had yet, I started scouting out for anything unique that I hadn’t had a chance to try before, even if it was just another “boring” root vegetable.  After about the third or fourth stall of potatoes (granted, there was a very impressive array of potato varieties and sizes), I finally found something totally new to me: burdock root. 

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I wanted to alert you all to a great contest being held this month over at Jugalbandi.  Bee and Jai put on a great monthly photo event called Click!, a contest I’ve been fortunate enough to win in the past.  But I’m even more excited this month because 1) it’s all about showcasing fresh raw ingredients and 2) they’ve asked me to be one of the judges. 

Now, as a judge, I’m allowed to make an entry that won’t be up for winning any of the awards but is meant to illustrate the month’s theme with pizzaz.  It took a lot of humming and hawing on my part to finally pick which photo to enter, but I finally went with yesterday’s shot of the fiddleheads.  They’re just too cool to pass up.  But, as you might all realize, this little blog of mine is all about au naturel so there were many photos that qualified.  I decided to post a few more here to celebrate the theme in coordination with Jugalbandi and Click! contestants.  

If you have a good au naturel food photo, be sure to get it entered in the Click! event.  The last day for entries is April 30th.   Photo-to-enter or no-photo-to-enter, be sure to visit Jugalbandi to look at all the great entries already streaming in.   

I entered this photo in the Click! Au Naturel Event!

What’s your favorite mythological creature? Unicorns? The Loch Ness Monster?  The Yetti?  Lake Champlain’s Champ?  El Chupacabra?  Up until yesterday, I might have said the Fiddlehead, had I been asked.   Like all the previously named questionable characters, there are many pictures to prove their existence (heck, there’s even a picture on one of my sets of business cards), and yet, somehow, I’d never seen one for myself.  The curly heads rising up on slender necks from the forest floor resemble an other-worldly creature for sure.  And in the culinary world, fiddlehead ferns are almost unmatched in their elusive promises of gourmet delight, much like morels or truffles. 

Only a few varieties of ferns yield edible fiddleheads, and they are most often foraged from the wild. To add to the challenge, fiddleheads, which are tightly coiled shoots that are just itching to unfurl into fern fronds, only come into season for a few short days each spring.  Since both their arrival and their point of unfurling are entirely dependent on the temperatures, rain levels, and amount of sunny days each spring, it’s amazing to me that anyone ever finds them. 

It’s even more amazing to me that I finally ran across them! 

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Alright, so first, let me tell you how grateful I am for the outpouring of support for my thematic tweaking of the blog and for my gutsy or wacky, depending on which peanut gallery you’re seated in, career change.  You ladies and gents rock!  I mean that!  I really have been second guessing my sanity the past few weeks so any and all morale boosters are much needed.  Did I mention I ticked off another decade this past week too?  I’m not telling you which one, but let’s just say I’m fearful I’ve left the “young woman” stage of my life behind.  On my birthday, I was on my knees, pulling weeds, and wondering which synapse exactly in my aging brain short-circuited when I decided to leave my cushy manager’s position for *this*.  Fortunately, I’ve since halted plans to surgically remove that faulty synapse, realizing after planting several 10-15 feet tall trees among towering 200 year old Hemlocks today, that this new role is pretty darn cool. 

So anyway, eons ago, when the temperatures were below freezing (strange how that seems far in the past already), I had those wonderful Weeks of Bread.  Remember?  And in one of those carbohydrate crazy posts, I showcased a recipe for Pumpernickel Bread that proved to be a bit untraditional and promised to make a stab at a more traditional recipe in the near future.  Well, let’s see…3 months later, I’ve finally got that traditional Pumpernickel Bread recipe for you.  This batch was much more along the lines of what most people think of when they imagine those dark, dense loaves with a molasses nip in the flavor. 

It is very time consuming though, so be forewarned.  And it still didn’t meet the standards of the pumpernickel aficionado (D), supposedly too “homemade” tasting.  Um, yes, it is homemade, my dear; how insightful of you.  I personally enjoyed its moist dense interior and crackly exterior, but I guess D was expecting, yet again, a loaf much more similar to that which he buys in the store.  Take that review for what it’s worth.  I would suggest trying this recipe for yourself and, assuming you like it as much as I did, planning to bake big batches of it at a time and freezing it until ready to use.  The fermenting period, coupled with the long sauna session in the oven, make this particular bread a bit difficult to “whip up”.  For the record though, the initial step of getting the ingredients incorporated into a dough is one of the fastest and easiest of any bread I’ve ever made. 

As may be foreshadowed by my slowness to post this recipe, making traditional pumpernickel is only for those with some reserves of patience or mad multitasking skills. 

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Okay, I’ll cease with all the teasing and secrets keeping, although in my defense, I didn’t mean to keep you in the dark.  I’ve just been absurdly busy.  In any case, things will be looking a little different around SFTF from this point forward.  There will be a brief period during which I will be begging your forgiveness for posting less frequently (but still a couple posts a week, I hope).  But after these growing pains, I think you’ll be very delighted with what’s to come. 

I am changing careers.  And with this change of careers, I’m shifting the focus of this blog just ever so slightly, to include more grower’s information and fewer recipes.  Don’t you fret!  There will still be recipes and food photography.  After all, we still need to eat, don’t we?  I just anticipate having at least a post a week now dedicated to photos and discussions of some plant I’ll be growing, starting with discussions in the near future about designing a productive vegetable and ornamental plot.

Oh, you want to know more about the career change?  Well, I’ve left my marketing position with an engineering firm to pursue my passions:  urban greening/farming and sustainability efforts.  I’m now working towards becoming a bona fide horticulture professional, while at the same time starting up my own consultancy to write about and promote local and national sustainability movements and organizations.  Cool, huh?  I thought so.  But it does mean I’m busy between taking classes, going through an intensive apprenticeship at the world-renown Longwood Gardens (this and the previous post’s pictures are from there), and doing my freelance work, which includes writing for Green Options (check out this great sustainability blog). 

Whew, I’m getting tuckered out just thinking about all of it.  But!  But, I do desperately want to share all of these wonderful experiences and the helpful knowledge I’ll be picking up with you.  Urban farming, and Weavers Way Farm in particular, will still be a part of this blog, but I will now be growing my own plot as part of my apprenticeship and plan to use what I grow there almost exclusively in my recipes.  I am excited to learn a lot more technical information about plant identification, culture and habits; horticulture/landscape design; and permaculture/sustainability practices in the field of horticulture. 

So to summarize, in addition to local food and recipes, SFTF is now going to be a resource for growers and would-be-growers too who are looking for inspiration and information.  What do you think?  Sound good to you?   I hope so!  I’ve really grown to love writing this blog over the past year and getting such a great community going.  If you want more recipes and less plant talk at any time, just say the word and we’ll get back to our previously scheduled programming.  But for now, please don’t adjust your monitors!  Instead, stay tuned for some cool plants and how to grow them!