Herbed Brown Rice with blue cheese and vegetables

Sunday nights we make our lunches for the week. Brown rice with roasted or sauteed vegetables is in our regular rotation because it is healthy, bulk rice is relatively cheap, and if you make enough all at once it can last well into the week. This week, a bunch of randomly-purchased and leftover ingredients inspired a particularly delicious version tasty enough to be remembered as a "recipe."

Rosemary-rice with Bayley-Hazen Blue Cheese, Roasted Delicata Squash, Steam-sauteed Leeks, Onions, and Red Bliss Potatoes

1 cup short-grained brown rice

1 cube vegetable bouillon

1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary

1 medium delicata squash (halved lengthwise down the middle, seeds scooped out, and sliced in 1/4 inch sections with skin on)

1 medium onion (halved through the root and then sliced 1/4 inch sections)

1 medium red bliss potato (quartered and then sliced in 1/8 inch sections--because the potatoes are the hardest to cook through really try to ensure uniform size)

3 cups chopped leeks (halved lengthwise and then sliced in 1/4 sections)

1/2 cup sliced shitake mushrooms (tough parts of stems removed)

a few sprigs of fresh parsley

1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese (our version made with Jasper Hill's Bayley Hazen Blue, which its makers aptly describe in part as follows: "Though drier and crumblier than most blues, its texture reminds one of chocolate and butter"--I think it is perfect for melting into a hot rice dish).

I love infusing herb flavor into rice while it cooks. So we added the fresh rosemary into the rice cooking water with a cube of bouillon to give it more flavor still.

(We cooked our rice following the recommended ratio of 3 cups water to 1 cup dried rice, but as usual we found that we needed to add more water as it simmered, covered over medium heat).

While the rice cooks, preheat an oven to 450. Lightly salt the half-moon slices of delicata squash, toss them in olive oil, and place them on a baking sheet--leaving plenty of space for each slice to lay flat on the sheet to ensure easier flipping and better browning. Roast until the flesh softens and turns golden brown (flip midway through cooking). This can be done ahead of time.

Meanwhile, on the stove, heat a large skillet (one that can be covered) to medium/medium-high with 1 to 2 tablespoons each of butter and olive oil. When the oil shimmers, add the potatoes, onions, leeks, and mushrooms and toss well to coat with the fats in the pan. Salt lightly and stir often so that the potatoes don't stick. As the veggies begin to brown and absorb the fats, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water and cover to steam sauté for approx. another 5-7 minutes until the potatoes are tender (add more water by the teaspoon if the potatoes are still too crunchy). By then, the golden-brown onions and leeks should have a silky texture and the mushrooms will be soft.

In a large bowl, combine all the vegetables, drained rice, and crumbled blue cheese. Salt and pepper to taste and garnish with fresh parsley. Serve hot--or as we plan to do reheated for lunch after a night in the fridge during which all the flavors can better meld.

Because we used the short grained rice and the veggie bouillon, this dish has a risotto-like creaminess that the blue cheese enhances. The squash, browned onions, and leeks give the dish nice color and sweetness. The mushrooms and potatoes provide earthy balance and caloric heartiness, while the fresh-herb infusion brings a brighter, lighter flavor to an otherwise heavy dish.

As noted above, this was a totally random creation (the best ones often are). We had left over blue cheese from an appetizer we made for a New Year's Day block party (crumble cheese on pan-toasted baguette rounds, drizzle with honey, and place on baking sheet in warm oven until cheese melts). The leeks were left over from another successful version of Julia Child's leek quiche recipe (Joslyn has really mastered this dish since her first attempt that I wrote about). We bought the potato, onion, and the delicata squash at the Montpelier Winter Farmer's Market simply because they are versatile and among the last local organic produce available. My cousin gave us a fresh rosemary plant that is hanging on for dear life so we're looking for reasons to use rosemary whenever we can.

I had a few spoonfuls with dinner and I'm really looking forward to lunch.

SaluBrious Eating Part 2

Here's our friend Bri punching down the pizza dough.

There's nothing like waking up to a plate of perfect peanut butter cookies. Apparently, Bri was a little restless when she woke up several hours before everyone else. Thankfully, she applied her nervous energy to rifling through our cookbooks, settling on "The New Best Recipe" from America's Test Kitchen. Everything we've tried out of this cookbook has been excellent, Bri's early-morning version of their peanut butter cookies were no exception. It's amazing that so many were still left by the time they were plated for that evening's dessert.

The tin full of perfectly-decorated gingerbread cookies that Bri and Leon brought with them is one reason why the peanut butter cookies lasted as long as they did. They were Bri-licious.

SaluBrious Eating

Eat to live; live to eat. This is the philosophy of an award-winning eater. I've been fortunate to find many friends who share this philosophy.

My law school friend Bri and her husband Leon are among my kindred culinary spirits. Bri is embarking on a new career as a massage therapist. On her new business web-site for "Salubrious Massage" Bri explains her holistic conception of a healthful and happy life with eating at its core:

To live a happy and balanced life, you need to take an interest in yourself. This includes developing good habits and making good choices in what you eat and do. Some days this means spending time being active and eating foods that are as close to their whole, original, living state as possible. On other days it means having a piece of cake and curling up with a good book.

Photography credit goes to sous chef Leon Godwin

When she and Leon visited us this weekend, Bri demonstrated the hand strength that will make her a masterful massage therapist by going to work on a whole mess of dough that drove a weekend of award-winning eating.

Exhibit A: the gorgeous loaves of bread she baked using the Basic Bread Recipe on page 94 of "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" by Mollie Katzen of Moosewood Cookbook fame. Bri may have added her own wrinkles by using King Arthur's "bread flour" instead of regular unbleached and egg washing the top of the loaf before it went in the oven. The egg wash creates a challah-like shiny crust that beckons the bread knife. Six of us devoured the first loaf with generous pats of butter on each slice as soon as it had cooled sufficiently. It powered us through two hours of X-Country skiing in the cold (Bri rightly observed that carbo loading isn't such a bad thing when you stay active). The second loaf ended up as thick-cut french toast, a perfect vehicle for Morse Farm Grade B Maple Syrup this morning.

Bri and Leon later collaborated to make enough pizza dough for four 13" pies (we froze one of the dough balls for another day). The dough yielded an easily-rolled out hybrid crust (partially whole wheat). Better still, it cooked up thin and firm but still toothy.

The first pie--by far the group favorite--is topped with Blackwell Roots red bliss potatoes, Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery goat cheese, Maplebrook Farm whole milk ricotta, roasted LePage Farm delicata squash, and fresh rosemary from the plant my cousin Pasqua just sent us (the abundance of fresh rosemary provided me the inspirational spark for this white pizza, which is a take-off on the first ever potato pizza I ate in Rome in a small pizzeria near the Pantheon). At the last minute, Joslyn drizzled a syrupy-sweet balsamic vinegar reduction she had made as a dipping sauce for fried beets the night before--a perfect finishing touch (simmer two cups of balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar on medium-low heat, stirring often until it reduces to about 1/4 cup of syrupy liquid, stir often so it doesn't burn).

If you're lucky enough to have dough pros like Bri and Leon (and the six hours it takes to let their scratch pizza dough do all its rising), it's actually quite easy to make this ecstasy-inducing pizza pie.

1. Leaving the skin on, slice one medium-sized delicata squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and then chop into half-moons 1/3" thick.
2. Toss with oil, salt, and pepper, distribute evenly on a baking sheet leaving plenty of space, and roast in a 450 F oven (turning once to brown lightly on both sides). The skin and flesh should be soft, but still holding their shape because they will cook further still on the pizza. Let cool until they can be safely handled.
3. While the squash cooks, slice two medium-sized red-bliss potatoes to a thickness of 1/8" (since the potatoes cook on the pizza, they have to be thin and uniform so I suggest cutting them with a mandoline)
4. Toss the potatoes in olive oil, season with salt and pepper and set aside
5. Coat the pizza dough with a generous layer of olive oil (roughly a tablespoon)
6. Starting from the edge and working around the pie's circumference to the center, place the potato slices on the oiled dough slightly overlapping one over the next.
7. Sprinkle a layer of rough-chopped rosemary over the potatoes
8. Then, because our potatoes are thin-sliced, we cover them with cheese to prevent them drying out and burning. Use a fork to scrape dollops of goat cheese off the log onto the potatoes and a spoon to fill in gaps with dollops of ricotta. Use the spoon to spread the cheese to your desired coverage, but don't go too overboard with these wet cheeses--you don't want a soggy pie.
9. Then top with the roasted squash, distributing evenly
10. It baked in a 415 F oven for roughly 15-20 minutes.

I won't bother trying to capture the effect of this amazing amalgam of fresh, wholesome ingredients in words; the genuine look of delight when I tried this pizza for the first time should say it all.

The evening's second pie: red sauce, steam-sauteed red peppers and onions, cherry tomatoes, cheddar, and shredded mozzarella.

Pie #3: Kale sauteed in olive oil with cherry tomatoes sits atop a dough coated with olive oil and sprinkled with a large rough-chopped clove of garlic. Add red onions, and more shredded mozzarella.

A Tale of Two Saturdays

It was a social Saturday, it was a solitary Saturday

It was a Saturday of dining out, it was a Saturday of cooking in.

Last Saturday, I was in the midst of Manhattan's millions and did my dining out. Jos and I walked more than 40 blocks from Grand Central and a few avenues through Central Park and to the Hayden Planetarium--all in the rain (no wonder I have a cold; but more about that later). The rain drove us into the shelter of "Lumi," just off Lexington.

Lumi was warm and dry with friendly service, but that's about the best I can say about our experience. Joslyn's spinach pansotti with pine nut cream sauce looked good on the menu, but tasted pretty average when it got to the table. The runny-thin cream sauce was the weak link; it was more cream and and melted butter than a cream "sauce." My dishes came out of order--a big no-no with this good eater--and aren't worth even talking about. Worst of all the prices were high even by Upper East-side standards, which we wouldn't of minded if the food was actually good.

Thankfully, the Gotham City that award-winning eaters know and love shined through at Tribeca's "Dylan Prime."

It wasn't our first choice. That was the Village's uber-popular "Spotted Pig." My Aunt Rowie, who knows these things, has dropped the name a few times, raving after each visit. The trendy "gastropub" has a fiercely egalitarian no-reservations-no-matter-what policy. Since everyone we'd mentioned it to gave it thumbs up and it was Saturday, we knew we had to get there early. 6:30 wasn't early enough to stave off what we were told was at least an hour, possibly two and a half hour wait. Joslyn said the list was a mile long--with no room at the bar and the waiting area packed, people stood out in the rain/snow/sleet. We'd had enough time outside so we moved on.

Dylan Prime's house-made kettle chips served with avocado-ranch dipping sauce

Our gracious host Moje and hostess Corinne saved the evening with their Dylan Prime suggestion. It was a short cab ride from their house and had a remaining open table for all of of us at 7:30 in their lounge (a bonus actually because it offered the full dining room menu, some much lower-priced and more-varied fare on the lounge menu, and two college football conference championship games playing on unobtrusively-located tvs).

Jos's "I-won't-eat-anything-that-had-a-face" diet (a.k.a. vegetarian), wasn't a problem even though Dylan Prime bills itself as an upscale "steak house." The "truffled vegetable pot pie" was a hit for $22--look at the generously-sprinkled flecks of shaved black truffle on the buttery, perfectly-browned crust in the photo above! The rich filling of green filet beans, carrots, and onions under that dome of deliciousness were also infused with the taste of truffle-likely truffle butter.

The family-style a la carte vegetables were a hit too, presented tastefully in miniature cookware like the spinach in the copper sauce pot above. Dylan's truffle-happy chef worked the fungal infusion into hearty corn-potato cakes that Moje had as a side. And everyone got a healthy does of my crispy caramelized brussel sprouts served in cast-iron like the kettle-chips shown above.

I hit the TriBeCa truffle trifecta with my truffled lobster grilled cheese. Flawlessly-rendered on well-buttered, well-browned white bread; it was the grown-up version of the pool-snack-bar classic I used to beg my mom for and still dream about.

Great conversation with old friends and interesting social scenery (were the tuxedoed thirty-somethings and their dress-wearing dates eating dinner at the next couple tables coming from a holiday party with a fancy dress-code or refugees from a lame wedding with bad food?) complimented the food perfectly.

That was last Saturday...

This Saturday, as alluded to above, I am in self-imposed quarantine trying my best to fight off the cold that is threatening to lay me low during the hectic holiday season. Instead of being rain-soaked in Metropolis, I am snowbound at home in Montpelier.

Seeking to end my sickness-imposed-solitude asap, I focused my home-cooking efforts on food that could help cure my cold. With no one else's palette to worry about, I figured I'd cook freestyle without recipes. After seeing my whiney Facebook post about being stuck sick at home while Jos hit Mad River Glen's opening day, a friend suggested lots of garlic might help (again not a problem for a day at home alone with no one to smell my breath).

My thoughts ran to Aglio e Olio. It's an easy-prep southern-Italian classic that I rarely make. In my view, it's no good unless it's really spicy and Jos doesn't do spicy. But since she was not home...

As if by fate, I had some fresh, local garlic from the winter farmer's market, imported spaghetti, and velvety Frantoia EVOO on the shelf (contents of the cornucopia-shaped housewarming gift baskets from my cousin Andrew--truly horns of plenty)-pretty much all you need for the dish. In the time it took to boil the spaghetti, I roughly chopped two large cloves of garlic and fried them lightly in about an 1/8 inch of olive oil (heated-thoroughly first along with about five teaspoons of red chili flakes). Just before the garlic started to brown, I took it off the heat and tossed in the quickly-drained pasta. Dished up under a blanket of freshly-fallen pecorino romano, it was some deeply-satisfying, cold-fighting food.

After eating out so much last Saturday and during this busy work week, I decided to do more behind the stove this Saturday. Since I got my Kitchenaid immersion blender with a gift certificate at Capital Kitchen, I've been focused on soup. What better soup for a cold then carrot-ginger soup with orange juice?

Sticking to my no-recipe theme, I worked pretty much from memory of versions I've made before. We still have local organic carrots from Riverside farm on sale at our Co-op, and they were a good deal by the 5# bag as long you don't mind the misshapen ones. I grabbed the first 15-20 oddly-sized carrots from the big bag. Peeled and rough chopped, they and one and a half onions (some of the season's last grown by a farmer neighbor at her "Main Street Market Garden" plot on the grounds of Vermont Compost) went into a few tablespoons of medium-heated olive oil at the bottom of my stock pot. Then I went to work on what probably amounted to four or five tablespoons of minced ginger. Stirring and seasoning the carrots and onions as needed while they browned (sometimes leaving them covered to soften in their own steam), I added the ginger to saute for the last three to four minutes. I doused it with about 7 cups of water and enough vegetable bouillon to make 5 cups of broth, cooking it covered and uncovered on medium simmer for about two hours.

Then the fun part: immersion blending with the final ingredient--a cup or more of orange juice for sweetness. I really like using the stick blender rather than the food processor or stand-up blender because you can moderate the texture much more. When you blend soups, there's a fine balance between too much and not enough. The perfectly-blended soup would wait for tomorrow's lunch (soup is usually better after a night of melding in the fridge anyway).

Though I ate last Saturday night's dinner at a steak house, as you have already read, I went steakless. I try very hard (emphasis on the try) to eat local, grass-fed, humanely-raised-and-slaughtered beef. If you want to know why, watch "Food Inc." or read "Fast Food Nation." Our food system is still evolving to make that kind of meat option available at affordable prices everywhere.

Luckily for me and my Saturday steak hankering, we do have that option in Vermont. Regular readers know that our local beef comes from Roxbury's Flint Brook Farm (e.g., "Tenderloin Medallions" and "Where's the Beef"). This Saturday, I pulled two "eye of round" steaks from my 1/5 cow shares out of the freezer. Panfried in butter and the juices from button mushrooms and onions started a few minutes before, these tender two-inch-thick steaks may have had little direct benefit on my cold symptoms. They did, however, make me feel a whole lot better.

Dessert is also usually not advisable when you have a cold--sugars supposedly weaken the immune system. But when Joslyn came back from the dinner party I skipped while on quarantine with two of the leftover profiteroles Rory made, I couldn't resist. Joslyn had been eyeing them for weeks, looking gaudy and decadent on the cover of the latest "Cucina Italiana". Lucky for us, Rory loves to rise to a baking challenge. He did so with aplomb this time. I probably didn't savor them as much as I should have given the three hours that it took to make them. A few minutes later, I was licking the extra chocolate off the aluminum foil the profiteroles came in...

"Blogs by bloggers I've eaten with" Tribute Series Part 1: Thanks for Playing

Sorry I've been slacking lately. I've had plenty of award-winning eating experiences since I last posted Veteran's Day, and I have a lifetime of food memories to draw from if need be. But I seemed to have developed a form of blogger writer's block that my friends and I have dubbed "clogger."

On a food blog, the term "clogger" could have many interesting connotations so we don't need to dwell on whether that's the best way to describe the cause of my reticence. The point is, with Thanksgiving a day away, I've found some inspiration to blog again.

My brother-in-law, Dan Guttenplan, is a pro blogger whose lectured on the topic "The Rise of the Blog", most recently as part of the Moses Greeley Parker Lecture Series. He does his blogging at "http://thanksforplaying.weei.com" on SportsRadio WEEI's web site. WEEI is the sports talk radio station of choice in sports-addicted Boston so its site is legit. I confess that I don't read Dan's blog as often as I should because I don't follow sports that closely. But whenever I check it, I am reminded that it is about a lot more than sports.

Dan's latest post on "Thanks for Playing" titled "Men's Guide to Thanksgiving" is a laugh riot that takes you through the awkwardly-familiar night-before-thanksgiving- reunion with hometown friends to the leftover Turkey sandwich topped with mashed potatoes and craberries that you house when you get your second wind on the day itself.

Dan's is one of the "blogs by bloggers I've eaten with" I have linked to on my site. Since reading his post reminded me how fun blogging can be if you don't take it too seriously, I decided I would do a tribute to his blog as the first in a tribute series on all three blogs currently linked to my site.

I couldn't find any pictures of Dan and I sharing a meal, so this photo from his wedding to my sister Lilly will have to do. Several of the meals I've eaten with Dan have been featured in past posts such as "In Search of Celebrity chefs...", "Summertime, and the livin' is easy" and "Non-stick wild sockeye"

One key feature of Dan's blog is the "best of______" category. He usually gives a best tip, comment, stat, conversation starter, email, etc. of the week and then asks the question: "What would "fill-in famous sports person's name" do? So without further adieu, here's awardwinningeater's homage to "Thanks for Playing.":

Food Revelation of the Week: CAYENNE CARAMEL POPCORN. It's sneaky because the crispy-thick caramel coating dominates the initial flavor experience, but as the sweetness subsides the spice kicks in. If you love sweet and you love hot, you will love this popcorn. I must have the recipe!

This reminds me of the two reasons why I love night's when Joslyn has "Gourmands" cooking club.

First, it means I can eat meat without worrying about making a separate vegetarian course for Jos. This week Mike D. and I ate two Flint-Brook Farm beef 1/4 lb. burgers each, with side salads dressed in Frantoia EVOO (aka liquid gold) and steamed kale. I grilled the burgers on the stove top with my new Lodge cast-iron grill/griddle pan (love it!) having first laced the meat with minced garlic. A couple of Grafton 1-year Vt. Cheddar slices melted nicely over each patty.

Second, it's because I usually get a small taste of leftovers. The theme this week was "spice girls." Each dish was required to prominently feature something spicy. The cayenne caramel popcorn nailed it. Joslyn tried admirably to recreate a dish I conjured last year around Easter: ginger-pear stuffing. She used more than four tablespoons of chopped "fresh" ginger in a classic veggie bread stuffing with onions, celery, carrots, and browned pears added for some sugar. The ginger flavor didn't really shine through except on those bites containing large shreds of ginger she baked on top for good measure. But when I made it last year with much less ginger using the same method the flavor was much stronger.

Jos is hard at work on her version of my ginger-pear homemade stuffing.

This leads me to the question of the week: how the heck do you know if ginger is fresh? If you know the answer please post a comment.

Quote of the week: "Do you think Al's French Frys is still open?--Joslyn 11:52 p.m., Friday Nov. 20.

You know you married the right woman when she's suggesting late-nite grilled cheese and fries after the concert. We hit Al's--a Burlington, Vt-area institution--just before they shut down the fryulators. When a place advertises itself as a french fry joint and intentionally misspells "Frys" in its name, you know it's going to have good fries. Despite the late hour, we decided to go for a full quart of Al's frys. Not a single one went to waste. The last fry was as crispy and warm as the first.

Team effort meal of the week: Clancy, Rory, Jos, and I whipped up a Friday night feast of "luganega" style sausage, roasted broccoli florets and stems, and trufila pasta imported from Abruzzo (a gift from my cousin) in a mushroom and onion alfredo sauce. We finished nearly an entire loaf of Bohemian's sea-salt and rosemary bread as we cooked. I grilled the sausage and sauteed the mushrooms and onions while Clancy made the alfredo sauce and Rory whipped up a delicious batch of chocolate chip cookies. Jos lent a hand with all but the sausage.

It's pretty amazing we had room for second-dinner at Al's.

Conversation Topic of the Week: Clancy and I have a conspiracy theory that the big-food industrial complex tried to rebrand "high fructose corn-syrup" (HCFS) as plain old "corn syrup" on candy ingredient lists. We've been talking about the news that the ubiquitous, cheap sugar substitute may contain mercury.

So when we stopped into the Shaw's for a snack last night, we pored over labels in the candy aisle trying to avoid HFCS. Surprisingly, it was not on the label of most of the candies. We tried twizzlers, gummy bears, starburst, skittles--you name it. All we could find was an ingredient listed simply as "corn syrup." Suspicious that the big food companies may have gotten together with a corrupt Food and Drug Administration to weaken labeling laws, we decided not to take a chance that plain "corn syrup" is HFCS's new alias.

The good news: Neither "corn syrup" nor "high fructose corn syrup" are listed among the ingredients for Heath Bar and Reese's Peanut Butter cups...but what's really going on here? Has all the bad press on HFCS gotten candy makers to switch to a less potent form of "corn syrup" or is it all a word game?

What would Julia Child do? She'd add more butter!

She'd cook thinly-sliced potatoes in a skillet with simmering whole milk, then transfer to a casserole dish, adding lots of butter, then more butter and a smashed clove of garlic and bake at 425 for about 30 minutes. That's what she did on her potatoes edition of the "French Chef." She called it a "Gratin Dauphiniois" and it looked downright delicious.

Jos and I have been watching old episodes of the "French Chef" on netflix. She may not have had the production values of the Barefoot Contessa or Giada DeLaurentis's Everyday Italian, but her classic technique and butter-heavy recipes still hold our attention. Vegetarians be warned: Julia mastered a cooking tradition that uses every part of the animals that give their lives to be our food. Julia can be quite graphic in her anatomical descriptions. Jos learned that the hard way with the episode featuring tripe.

Happy Thanksgiving fellow eaters.

Chewing on Veteran's Day

We timed our breakfast so that we could arrive at the Montpelier Veteran's Day parade just as its lead honor guard passed through the intersection of State and Main. In our bellies: maple-syrup pork sausages from the Sharon Trading Post, red-bliss potato home fry with local, organic spuds and onions, and Vermont Compost eggs fried in an 1/8 inch of olive oil to achieve crispy, puffy whites and dense yolks. Bright morning sun made the marchers' job easier, though it didn't do much to bring out spectators to observe the parade (I'm not sure what the thin crowd at the parade says about our country as we continue to wage two wars).

After formally marking the holiday with a parade, we ran some errands in neighboring Barre, Vt. Cookie connoisseurs take note: Main St.'s Espresso Bueno has come close to achieving perfection with its chocolate chip and ginger snap cookies. About four or five inches in diameter, these $1.25 delicious disks of dough have captured the essence of two cookie classics. They're no frills. None are needed. Owner, baker, and barista Elizabeth Manriquez (an integral part of the crew during the golden age of now defunct Geisne's Confectionary), has nailed texture (crispy bottoms, toothy edges, moist and chewy centers) and taste (salty-sweet vanilla batter punctuated frequently with milk chocolate/spicy-sweet molasses). If you love cookies (who doesn't) and you find yourself in Barre, Vt., I highly recommend trying one of each.

After I briefly flirted with the idea of grabbing a Straffod Organic Creamery vanilla milkshake from L.A.C.E. to wash down the cookies on the way back to the car (their shakes are potable bit of heaven), we drove out to the Mad River Valley for a visit with one of our favorite veterans, Johnny, and his family. Before and after our walk down their road, we sat around their table breaking bread (first Red Hen baguette, then sesame bagels from Montreal, then slightly stale La Panciata--all toasted), eating pickled foods from their garden, Maplebrook mozzarella cheese, fresh apple, and dried sausage. I took most of my toast with butter--one of the simple pleasures in life that we should never take for granted. As we broke bread, we talked about wars past and present.

We asked Johnny about his service in the First Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm. He described witnessing a Patriot Missile shoot down an incoming Iraqi Scud missile from the vantage point of a nearby dock loaded with explosives. He cited this as the high point of his combat action. There were apparently some incidents of small arms fire behind the lines, but even then he didn't have to discharge his weapon during the ground offensive. We wondered about how our world would be different if only they'd marched all the way to Baghdad back then; although as Johnny's friends, we're grateful that he never had to fire a shot in combat. We wish the same were true for more veterans.

We bemoaned the elusive nature of world peace, we also tried to appreciate the peace of the present moment. Snacking on simple foods, we friends sat around the table unafraid that our afternoon repast would be disrupted at any moment by sudden violence. In this, we are fortunate.

Halloween '09

Joslyn's cooking club went with a Halloween theme last time around: trick or treat. You either had to bring a treat or a dish with some trick involved (e.g., a surprise ingredient, a play on words, etc.). Joslyn opted for the "trick" theme. Martha Stewart came through for her with an "eye-popping soup" recipe. It's a tomato-herb broth meant to look like blood with eyeballs (mozzarella bocconcini stuffed with olives) floating in it. Jos said it was really good--especially once the mozzarella melted in the hot broth. We had plenty leftover (always a benefit of cooking-club), but I was too grossed out to eat any of it (go figure b/c I ate duck hearts last weekend and I have a beef tongue and oxtail in my freezer, but for some reason my gag reflex drew the line at fake blood and fake eyes).

When the day itself arrived, I couldn't wait to get my hands on some candy. Even though I had a costume picked out and at age 33 am not embarrassed to go door to door competing for candy with 3 year-olds, I wasn't willing to entrust my one day of no-excuses-needed candy bingeing to the randomness of the trick-or-treat market. So around noon, I strolled in to our downtown candy store (you don't know temptation until they put a bulk candy store literally in view of your office window)--Delish--and filled my candy-by-the-pound bag up with the following confectionary melange: sour cherries, gummy army men, gummy penguins, gummy coke-bottles, gummy lobsters (see a pattern developing?), gummy aquarium fish, swedish fish, chocolate-covered gummy bears, "Aussie" black licorice, and Kookaburra strawberry licorice. The bag was nearly empty by the time we hit the candy trail with our little friend Scout.

Halloween is all about candy, right? Wrong if your aunt happens to make a gorgeous tray of brownies to go with dinner after the trick-or-treating is done. And that's just what happened to Scout.

You can just see the longing in her eyes as the aroma of cocoa hits her nose. At this moment, her full bag of candy sits forgotten on the shelf in the background; she didn't even dump it out. After downing the square pictured above, Scout started the sadly unsuccessful negotiation with her parents for another one. It was too much to bear as her parents calmly, but firmly resisted her pleas. Making matters worse for me, I was sitting right next to the half-full plate of still-warm brownies and because Scout couldn't have seconds, I couldn't have thirds--it would have made her parents' job that much more difficult.

At this point, you're probably hoping for the brownie recipe that's so good it can make a kid forget about candy on halloween. Well it's so easy, even Rachel Ray could make it. That's because these brownies were from a box: Continental Mills Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie mix. They're scary-good.

Bill's 89th Birthday fiesta!

If you want decent Mexican food in central Vermont, you pretty much have to make it yourself. And that's just what we did to celebrate our friend Bill's birthday.

Bill's fiesta brought me the chance to collaborate with a few of the most talented home cooks around: Bill's daughters Denise and Rilla and his son-in-law Tom.

I had the relatively easy task of bringing two taco fillings to accompany the pork shoulder carnitas Denise and Tom made from the pig they've purchased. For the carnivores, I brought browned, seasoned ground beef from our Flint Brook Farm cow. I also threw together some steam sauteed portobellos with red bell peppers, and one of the last local red onions at the market. As each batch cooked, I added fresh-ground cumin, salt, pepper, chili powder, and lime--all to taste. The mushrooms were a hit as I'd prepared them. But without a sauce, the beef was a little lacking. Fortunately, at Denise's suggestion, the beef came together with help from a hearty dollop of sour cream and a few dashes of adobo.

Before dinner, we snacked on chips and guacamole, crudite, and sliced tart. I devoured chips laden with Denise's smoky guacamole kicked up with roasted peppers from Tom's garden, and savored my one slice of Rilla's sweet-potato, rosemary, walnut, onion, and fontina tart from the pages of Eating Well magazine (recipe here). Rilla's rendition was delicious (Joslyn is making it for dinner tonight!)

When we got to the table, we found the full range of taco accouterments waiting along with this lovely jalapeno pie. I'd never had jalapeno "pie" before so these fluffy, cheesy, spicy folds of egg were a revelation. This was very much a family-style meal with lots of plates passing as we stuffed our tortillas and then stuffed our faces with them.

The best thing about being invited to a birthday party is usually the cake. Bill, however, is more of a pie man. After one bite of Rilla's intricately-latticed, citrus-infused apple pie, all thoughts of cake were banished.

The chefs serve dessert to the guest of honor

Abandoned apples reclaimed

I follow the old saw "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." So far so good on the doctor part and as a bonus I actually enjoy the flavor and texture of apples. They make for a great after-lunch snack in lieu of (or some times in addition to) a cookie from one of the bakeries in downtown Montpelier (La Brioche's standard chocolate chip is the most reliable, with Uncle Mike's deli a close second).

Luckily, for most of the year our Co-op gets good-tasting, Vermont-grown apples in standard eastern varieties like Macintosh and Cortland and even some heirlooms grown in Dummerston, VT by Zeke Goodband on a farm whose orchard dates back to 1791. Round about the late winter/early spring the supply of local apples kept fresh in cold storage since harvest dwindles to the point where the aforementioned cookies begin to play a more prominent role in the daily diet. Of course, I could go with one of the ubiquitous apple varieties from Chile, New Zealand, or Washington state that seem to be plentiful in the supermarkets all year long. But those picture-perfect apples tend to leave me unsatisfied from a taste/texture point of view (usually they are too sweet and either unpleasantly mealy or rock solid) and they don't score so well on the carbon-footprint calculator either.

This time of year, I find another source for my apples. Like much of rural New England, central Vermont is full of derelict apple trees. You see them still at the edge of people's yards, growing by dirt roads, or along hiking trails in lowland forests. In the apple chapter of Michael Pollan's best-seller Botany of Desire, we learn that some of these trees are relics of a time when North America abounded with apple varieties, many of which were produced for home consumption in backyard orchards of just a few trees. These forgotten orchards have become harder to see. Other vegetation grows in around the apple trees and the trees themselves blend in to the tangle when left to their own devices without the careful manicuring they receive at commercial orchards. Many still bare fruit that is as good if not better than the waxy Red "Delicious" apples you find in most cafeterias or convenience stores.

So I've decided to pay more attention to these persistent fruits. Wild apples: once domesticated but now free to grow as they please, often overcoming obstacles they were never intended to face without the assistance of humankind.

To be sure, there's a lot of trial and error in this endeavor. Aesthetically, you've got to channel Joni Mitchell's "i'll take spots on my apples, leave me the birds and the bees" attitude. Many of these reclaimed apples have blemished skins, but there's nothing wrong with them. After rinsing them in the sink, I feel safer eating these than I do most of the store-bought varieties that have been sprayed with chemicals and pawed over by countless people and machines. On the flavor front, I've spit out more than my share of bland or bitter first bites from mystery apples plucked from the low-hanging branches of long-untended trees. As Pollan writes, many of the varieties were grown for apple jack--a form of hard cider--and so don't make for good eating.

Every once in a while you can be rewarded for shaking the right tree.

Two weeks ago, I encountered such a tree while I was out for a walk along a dirt road in the countryside surrounding Montpelier. The tree was battling to be noticed, set back about ten feet from the road in wet soil among a stand of other second or third-growth hardwood trees all with spindly limbs reaching for the best place in the sun. Its fruit, shown above, was covered in a light-yellow skin accented with dashes of red. Underneath, the flesh was crispy-but-not-hard and bursting with sweet-flavored juice. It tasted exactly like an apple should taste, but at the same time I am hard pressed to compare it to any of the varieties I've gotten from the store. I liked it so much that I shook the tree again until I'd gathered enough of the golden orbs to fill my lunch bag for the week.

The world is full of rare and overlooked flavors. To be an award-winning eater, you must learn to seek them out. If you're lucky, you won't have far to look.

Farmers market finds

The summer's wet weather presented a huge challenge for local vegetable farmers. Though they've had less overall to offer in terms of variety and quantity of produce, I was still able to come home from last week's market with some amazing specimens of our area's cultivated and wild edibles.

Exhibit one: this stunning heirloom tomato grown by Jael Pulskamp (I hope I spelled her name right) at her Main Street Market Garden plot on the site of Vermont Compost--less than a mile from our home and the marketplace. It was an honor to purchase this tomato. As we walked home from the market, people literally stopped on the street to marvel at it and discuss its beauty with me. Some people even asked me if they could hold it. I was glad to oblige, knowing that so many gardeners had lost their own tomatoes to the blight this summer.

Exhibit two: these chicken of the woods mushrooms. Though it's a bit of a cliche to say that something "tastes like chicken" the flavor of this fungus really does resemble that of its feathered namesake when cut into small pieces and sauteed thoroughly in butter and/or oil. These particular shrooms were foraged by farmer and master mycologist Alan LePage. Earlier this summer, I bought some delicious lobster mushrooms from him. Not only do those taste like lobster, they actually look like lobster meat too when cooked. Nature is so amazing in this way.