WANDERLUST: MONTEPULCIANO

WANDERLUST: AUSTRALIA

WANDERLUST: EGYPT

RECIPE BOX: ROASTED LEEKS

Leeks are one of my favorite vegetables. They hold a unique space in the vegetable kingdom, straddling the role of allium and as a stand-alone veggie, performing well in both categories.

We generally plant a few hardy varieties and start them indoors in open flats. They start out as grass-like blades, that get a haircut before being individually transplanted out in the field. We dibble individual holes and drop in one plant per hole. The up-front tedium yields long, straight white shafts without the need to hill.

To roast:

Leeks cook down considerably in volume, concentrating their sweet, wild flavor as they soften. Use more volume than you think you need, especially for feeding a crowd.

The ingredients:

• Good quality, sizeable leeks with long shafts. You want a leek that has been kissed by frost once or twice for heightened sweetness

• Extra virgin olive oil

• Sea Salt

Preparation:

• Heat the oven to 375 degrees

• Clean the leeks: trim the roots & trim the tops so that just the white and light green part remain. Remove the exterior layer and rise from the leek any remaining soil

• Slice into 3-4” lengths

• Quarter each piece lengthwise

• Lay flat on a baking sheet, generously drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt

• After 20 minutes, toss the leeks and return to the oven for 5-10 minutes

While other veggies mingle well in the roasting pan, I prefer to let leeks stand apart. The flavor of a roasted leek is a simple yet unexpected comfort that deserves its own moment on the palette. It is a great dinner party side dish as it goes well with a variety of mains.

THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF 2017

If you like cookbooks, 2017 was a great year. Let’s just say if I was let loose on amazon, I would have needed a new bookshelf. Here are a few of my favorites from the year:

The Lost Kitchen by Erin French (Clarkson Potter)

This is a straight up love poem to Maine. There is a touch of heartbreak in its exquisite simplicity. We had the pleasure of eating at Erin’s version of The Lost Kitchen when it was a brick and mortar restaurant in Belfast. We also had the honor of hosting her at Four Season Farm when we were farming there and the Lost Kitchen was operating out of an airstream. The day following her farm dinner, Erin cooked brunch for everyone on site that we shared in the apple orchard. This book brings me back to that table in the dappled summer light. There is love in every bite she prepares.

Favorite recipe: Skillet mussels with rosemary, lavender and lime

Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden (Artisan)

Joshua is the chef/owner of our favorite restaurant to both work with and eat at in Portland, OR. We had the opportunity to sell veggies to their talented crew when farming in Oregon, and also the pleasure of dining there for special occasions. Joshua is dedicated to vegetables and excels in bringing out the best in them. He got his training as a vegetable farmer at our Alma mater, Four Season Farm, and knows his produce cold. The book is organized by vegetable and by season, making it easy to explore.

Favorite recipe: Tomato, melon and hot chili salad with burrata

The Ultimate Pasta and Noodle Cookbook by Serena Como (Cider Mill Press)

As a lover of all things dough, I could not walk past this book in Costco without picking it up. It was the  illustrated glossary of all stuffed pastas that sold me. It is an amazing bible of all foods that can be classified as noodles or stuffed dough. I decided to buy it mostly as a reference book to read, however I have cooked out of it as well.

Favorite recipe: Pierogis with Potato, onion and farmer’s cheese filling

Dishing Up the Dirt: Simple Recipes for Cooking Through the Seasons  by Andrea Bemis (Harper Wave)

Andrea’s portrayal of small farm life is honest, relatable and inspirational. The book can feel a bit precious on the whole, at times reading like an ode to her partner, whose presence you feel on every page. I do love her vegetable-forward approach, and it is refreshing to get new ideas for veggies we are also harvesting from the fields. Many of the recipes are vegan or easily vegan-adapted.

Favorite recipe: Minty pea soup

 

 

Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray by Adam Federman (Chelsea Green)

Not really a cookbook, but rather a biography of Patience Gray and a kind of behind the scenes of Honey from A Weed. If you haven’t read Honey from A Weed, I recommend reading it first or alongside Fasting and Feasting.

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Special Mentions (New to us this year)

This is Camino (2015) by Russell Moore and Allison Hopelain (Ten Speed Press)

I love the attitude and approach to both cooking and running a restaurant that are fiercely collaborative and improvisational. The approach is unapologetic and so honest. The commitment to seasonality is so apparent, and appreciate how we get a behind-the-scenes look at the day to day of the kitchen.

Favorite recipe: We haven’t cooked from it yet (no grill set-up) but my favorite section is a week at Camino

Clean Soups (2016) by Rebecca Katz and Mat Edelson (Ten Speed Press)

This was a surprise book new to us this Christmas - simple, straightforward broths with recommended soup recipe pairings. This book is expanding and refining our broths (i.e. not just throwing veggies in a stock pot) and a I am approaching the process of soup-making with more intention. It’s a welcome companion in the winter kitchen.

Favorite recipe: Thai broth

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Still on the buy list:

Tartine All Day by Elisabeth Prueitt (Ten Speed Press)

On Vegetables: Modern Recipes for the Home Kitchen  by Jeremy Fox (Phaidon)

Dining In  Alison Roman (Clarkson Potter)

Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts by Stella Parks ( W. W. Norton & Company)

State Bird Provisions: A Cookbook  by Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski (Ten Speed Press)

Market Cooking: Recipes and Revelations, Ingredient by Ingredient  by David Tanis (Artisan)

BULBS TO BEAT THE BLUES

While I appreciate the break from endless harvests, I do miss the blooms. This year we trialed a handful of double flowering Christmas amaryllis from Van Engelen as a winter bloom. They continue to impress; most bulbs have sent up two shoots loaded with long-lasting blooms. They also last for weeks in the vase, especially if you prune off mature blooms as they pass. My favorite varieties have been Zombie, Snow White and Rozetta. 

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WANDERLUST: VIETNAM

My cousin is getting married this year, and he and his fiancee are planning wedding celebrations in both Vietnam (where she is from) and Maine (where he is from). I was so hoping that we would be able to attend the wedding in Vietnam and extend the trip for a few weeks, but it wasn’t in the cards for us this year. A few years ago when I was backpacking around Southeast Asia for an extended hiatus from 'real life', I spent three weeks touring Vietnam. While the travel was trying and I had more misfortunes than on any other leg of the journey (denied entry at the border, having a hotel withhold my passport, etc.) it has been on my list of places to return. I would fly to Hanoi for the iced coffee alone. Luckily we now have someone in the family to help us plan our next trip!

WANDERLUST: COLOMBIA

A few winters ago we took a whole month off and went to Colombia. It was right when Jetblue started flying direct to to Cartagena, so flights were cheap. It was my first time in South America, and it was such a revelation to take short flight in the same time zone and land in a completely different culture. We weren't alone in our thinking - that year Colombia blew up as a tourist destination (it actually already begun, hence the Jetblue flight) so our itinerary was more expensive and a little more crowded than we were anticipating. We mixed it up and got off the beaten path, camping when we could, hiking, and taking in some of the amazing cultural attractions in Cartagena, Medellin, Manizales and Bogota. We were hoping to escape the winter this year for another trip south, however travel funds were still low after moving ($$) and our wedding ($$$$). We are hoping to get away next winter - any recommendations?

| No. 2 | MONTH IN REVIEW

January is one of my favorite farming months. During the rest of the year I am so acutely aware of time passing - noticing every detail of changes in day length, temperature, the pace of growing weeds. Everything feels like a sprint, and I am always, always lagging behind. In January time is suspended. Life is quiet outside and the plant growth indoors is hardly measurable. The days are soft, time passing like a stroll through the woods.  And we do, in the month of January, gently stroll through the snowy woods. It is the time of year I recreate outdoors more than any other, (that is, if you don’t count farming activities). While we do start crop planning, its like we are squinting at the impending season from a distance, the details abstract, the outlines fuzzy. It feels far enough away that I can forget about the long harvests and longer market days, the inevitable failures and mistakes, and instead just dream of the colors, flavors and textures we will soon crave as we re-enter the accelerating passing of time.

Highlights:

-Deep-cleaning the kitchen, including rubbing mineral oil onto all of our wooden kitchen items (cutting boards, wooden spoons, and countertops). I’m ashamed to say I have never done this before. It felt revelatory.

-Getting together in San Francisco with my sisterhood. There are six of us living in various parts of the country, and we have made it a priority to all be together at a very minimum of once a year. It’s amazing what just 48 hours with my girlfriends does for my soul! It’s the ultimate reboot.

-Attending the first annual Flowering in the North Conference. Since focusing on flower production, I haven’t found farming conferences to be as relevant until this conferences. It was so well planned with excellent topics, all tailored to flower farming. The bonus was that it was held  in Maine, so we got to spend an extended weekend in my hometown.

At the end of January we reach ten hours of daylight, which feels like a seismic shift. Everything starts to wake up. The snow comes and goes, however in the greenhouses growth rates are increasing, and it feels like mud season is right around the corner.

| No. 1| 2018 RESOLUTIONS: TO NOT HAVE ANY.

I am not making any resolutions for 2018. For the last while, my resolutions have fallen into predictable patterns. The categories are always the same - there is the exercise resolution, the dental hygiene resolution, and the be-nicer-to-people resolution. There are the goals to be more mindful, do more yoga, and eat more green things. At the beginning of every year, I end up just adding these self-help tasks to my growing to-do-lists. I’m done with that.

We had a big 2017. On the first day of 2017 we moved across the country. We picked up everything from our lives in Portland, OR spent three weeks traveling east to the Hudson River Valley in New York. We started new jobs. We got married and had bi-coastal wedding celebrations in the middle of the summer growing season. There were ups and downs and some steep learning curves. By the time we got to December, we were exhausted. We spent New Year’s Eve at home, fixing frozen pipes in the middle of the coldest, darkest days of the year. I had not even begun to process the last twelve months, let alone set intentions for the following year. I didn’t want to make a list of resolutions, I wanted to take a nap.

January has been a pause. I entered it feeling thankful for making it through an exhilarating year of unknowns, however recognizing that I wanted to do this next year with more intention. There were points of the year that felt like a runaway train, and we were just trying to not steer the whole thing off course. This month has had a lot of reading, resting, and of course farm planning, and in the process I have uncovered two new strategies for saying goodbye to one year and welcoming another, sans traditional resolutions.

1. January will be a month of rest and reflection. It’s a time of the year relatively free of obligations and is prime for journaling, processing and planning. I love the holidays, but the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are the opposite: full of (albeit fun) traditions and engagements, with little breathing room, and I would say an impossible time, at least for me, to properly reflect and make meaningful intentions for the coming year. December can stay what it is- an outward facing month, time to visit with family, friends, and do end of year reports, etc, and January will be a month for inward reflection.

2. February 1st is the new “New Year”, where I set an intention for the coming year. After a month of deeper reflection, I come out of the month not with a list of resolutions, but a single word, or mantra, that represents some action I want to incorporate into my life more fully. I will then have twelve months to work on incorporating this singular concept into my daily life.

I have had a pretty hard time coming up with just one word, and ended up settling on two, somewhat interrelated concepts, joy and compassion. We navigated a lot of stress-inducing situations last year, and I wish I can say I met the challenges with grace and composure. But even more than that, I realized that letting the stress take over also took away a lot of the day to day joy that I want in my life, which I think everyone deserves regardless of whatever is going on in the external world of politics, work, disasters, etc. And with joy comes softening, and with softening comes compassion. There were a lot of other words that spoke to what I want to achieve this year, but ultimately I realized that I won’t have success, at least in the way I would like to have it, without more of my heart opening. So, every day, every moment, my 2018 mantra is, joy and compassion. We’ll see where it leads.

| No. 3| WANDERLUST: JOSHUA TREE, CA

I have this theory about magical places - they touch your spirit in ways that are difficult to articulate. They are personal. Some magical places have universal qualities that make them special to many; some have unique characteristics that display their magic only to a few. 

I first went to Joshua Tree in the fall of 2014, and it was pure magic. The combination of open desert, otherworldly flora and no expectations met with mesmerizing oddities sealed it as one of my top places. I have been back twice since the first encounter, always for short excursions, and hope to plan a longer stay in the near future. 

Each visit has included a drive-through of the park, a visit to Pioneer Town, and various art - related excursions. 

TOP 5:
+ Saturday morning swap-meet
+ Pappy & Harriet's in Pioneertown
+The Palms for brunch in 29 Palms
+Wander around the boulders at the High Desert Test sites, specifically off ____ road near AZ West
+Drive through Joshua Tree National Park (go on a hike, take a climb or spend the night if you can) and listen to ________

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