The Chard is Dead, but Bugs Bunny Envies Me

It is winter...finally.

This morning when I let the chickens out of their coop, there were slivers of ice cracking across the surface of their water. Next, I went to check the garden. I knew the gang busting run that my Swiss Chard had this year had to come to an end. The leaves had a pleather texture. Frost killed. This did not, of course, deter the chickens from eating the frozen, stiff leaves. In fact, if their reaction was any indication, this might be the chicken equivalent of gelato.


The kale, like the chard, seemed similarly synthetic in texture. The Red Squire Kale has all but given up its ghost. Later this morning, I took kitchen shears and my bright red vegetable colander to harvest the last bit of lacinato kale. It had snow puddling in its dimples. I wasn't sure if it was salvageable or not. Happily, it revived in the kitchen, and was quickly dispatched in a pan of hot butter and olive oil. I ate a big plate of kale for lunch AND for dinner. I'm telling you, a girl's craving iron. If you like kale, you'll have to try it the way Molly Wizenburg suggests in this Bon Appetit article. Saute on high heat, finish with salt and lemon. That's it.

I also dug my entire carrot harvest, over 5 lbs. Since they seemed small earlier in the season (although they ARE Danver's Half-Long), and since I've heard that carrots get sweeter after a frost, I've waited for as long as possible to harvest them. It's true. Carrots do, indeed, get sweeter with a frost. They were practically carrot candy sticks. The entire time I was digging carrots in the snow (just flurries, but still). I kept thinking of Bugs Bunny. But, I suppose now I can understand his addiction.


This carrots were gorgeous. Luminescent even. Their smell was intoxicating. Bear with me here, but really fresh carrots smell like earth and soap. Yes, soap. Their aroma is deliciously clean, like crisp sheets that have been dried on a clothesline.




I blanched and froze most of the carrots. That was my big afternoon project today. I suppose most of them will be made into soup. I seem to have an addiction to soup that rivals Bugs's addiction to carrots.

But, I'm open to suggestions. What would you do with 17 cups of carrots in your freezer?

Autumn Means Soup

I went to several workshop discussions at Winter Wheat. The most amazing, though, was a poetry-based writing workshop which explored visual imagery as a prompt for writing. During part of the workshop, the facilitators handed out abstract black and white images. I loved how my subconscious was drawn to create meaning from meaningless black and white swirls. The image I fixated on was a circle. It reminded me of our dented, beat-up tea pot or a deep pot of soup. During the writing, here's roughly what I wrote based on an abstract image:

I tell him, "It's soup season."

He says, "There's a soup season?" a bit startled like he was unaware that we were supposed to celebrate a national holiday.

I put the garden to bed in November, poke little thumb-shaped nubbins of garlic into the deep, brown earth. It smells like moldy leaves, and the sun glows with a peculiar slant. I wonder, where do the earthworms go in December when the earth is hard like stone?

I take the teapot out of the cupboard. Like so many of our kitchen things, it has outlived it's original owner, but the stainless steel reflects us. In January, as the trees get brittle and grayer than the sky, my life feels narrow. I make Chamomile tea every night. I stare into the tea pot's chrome, the shiny glare, and try to imagine a world outside this bleakness. Beyond us. Beyond this kitchen with the stained, green striped dish towel. The kitchen is sunny, but cold. Crystals of ice like trapped, lost snowflakes coat the windowpanes. The tea kettle is an orb, a globe. It contains warm, rotund comfort.



As winter approaches, I find myself drawn to soup and tea. Liquid warmth that my very pores can soak up. Soon I'll tell you about all the fabulous soups I've been subsisting off of these past few weeks. But you tell me, what foods do you crave when it gets cold?

Pawpaw Adventure Part Three: Pawpaw Faux Pas

In theory, community cookbooks are a brilliant concept. Community groups, like the Ladies’ Auxiliary, the St. Francis Catholic Church, the Helping Hands 4-H club are all respectable groups that sometimes need to raise money. To raise funds, they just might compile a spiral bound cookbook for resale.

At its best, a community cookbooks is a contest of one-up-manship. Betty’s brownies are better than Mavis’s. But, man can Mavis bake a mean muffin. For years, my go-to cookbook for any baked good was the local 4-H club’s cookbook. Its cover was yellowed, and the green comb-tooth binding had a bit of a jack-o-lantern look from missing teeth, and the pages were splattered with batter stains, grease, and residual powdered sugar. That, my friend, is the sign of a good cookbook. A rare find indeed. Dozens of cookbooks later, I have Grandma B to thank for this wisdom.

Grandma B had a cookbook buying habit. This habit was fed solely by Morrispress Cookbooks. Morrispress is the country’s largest publisher of community cookbooks. Their corporate headquarters are in Kearney, Nebraska, a 45 minute drive from where my grandmother lived. Anytime any sort of significant shopping needed to be done, my grandparents drove to Kearney. It also just so happens that Morrispress has a discount show room that sells remainder copies of community cookbooks. Coincidently, this cookbook show room also happens to be next door to Cabela’s Outdoor Outfitters. So, grandpa would drop grandma and me off at the cookbook store, while he shopped for hunting gear. This was dangerous.

Sure, the {insert ridiculous club name here} cookbook was only $2.00! But, the thing is, without any connection to the community or the people who wrote the cookbook, you were usually left with a book of sub-par, plebian recipes. It was hit or miss. Cooking through amateur cookbooks like these was a veritable landmine of fallen cakes and dry cookies.

Still, I have a soft spot for these cookbooks, perhaps because the first cookbook I ever owned was a three-ring bound United Methodist’s Women’s Club cookbook, straight from Morrispress, compliments of my grandmother.

So, when I Dave Reese of Kaleidoscope Farms, handed me a spiral bound copy of the Pawpaw Grower’s Association Cookbook, it had all the appeal of a Morrispress cookbook. But, instead of being judiciously cautious, I dove headlong, quickly agonizing over which of the pawpaw bread recipes I should make. There were 4 of them, named simply Pawpaw Bread One, Pawpaw Bread Two, and so on. The Pawpaw Buckwheat Bread recipe called to me. Pawpaws united with a bag of local, stone ground buckwheat flour, and eggs from Franny and Zooey, would be a true testament to the grand heights of localvorism I sought.

Instead, I baked three brown loaves that smelled like burnt fruit loops and tasted even worse. When I tried to feed the loaves to the Franny and Zooey (and Kent’s chicken Scrambly) they only looked at me out of the corner of their eyes with distrust, as if I were trying to poison them. I knew when my chickens, those garbage disposals covered in feathers, who eat out rotten produce out of the compost heap wouldn’t touch it that I had failed.

I was bitterly disappointed.

In my excitement, I forgot discretion and a critical eye. I should have know that a bread made with 100% buckwheat would not rise well or be light enough for the flavor of pawpaws to shine through. I was more angry at myself than the Pawpaw Grower’s Association Cookbook. I knew the risks involved when cooking from community cookbooks, but I was reckless anyway. And after two or three days stewing over my failure I realized one of my favorite things about cooking is that, as Judith Jones wrote, “Food has the tact to disappear, leaving room and opportunity for masterpieces to come. The mistakes don't hang on the walls or stand on shelves to reproach you forever.”

So somewhere in my compost pile are three loaves of pawpaw buckwheat bread quietly becoming worm food.

Winter Wheat Festival

Yesterday, I was part of a panel presentation discussing food writing with Amanda and Karen. It was exciting to meet other writers who were interested in writing about food, and it was also enjoyable to create a brief moment of community over shared food.

Part of our presentation included a writing prompt based on food we shared. The menu included:

Homemade Ricotta Cheese with Fresh Thyme
served on Garlic Crostini or Baguette

Zucchini Bread

Marscarpone served on Crackers
with Tomato Preserves or Love Apple Jelly

Roasted Red Squire Kale Chips

Local, Organic Apples, Assorted Varieties

So, I'm really curious. If you attended our panel, what inspired you? Did you discover anything by writing about these foods?

Please share your writing exercise by commenting on this post. I can't wait to read it!

Bone Marrow--"Light of my life, fire of my loins."

For fall break Kent and I went to Cleveland solely to eat. First and foremost, we wanted to eat at Micheal Symon's Lolita. Our expectations were high, and after rereading Micheal Ruhlman's write up of Symon in "The Soul of a Chef," I was ready to visit a place I'd only read about in a book before.*

I believe that a truly incredible restaurant experience should expose you to something new and inspiring. You might also say it should be innovative. Of course Revolver delivered that with the pawpaw creme brulee. And when I went to Lolita tonight, there was also a revelation, in the form of Bone Marrow.

The first thing to remember when going to a restaurant, is that you must know how to order correctly. For me, ordering correctly involves being slightly daring, but also knowing what fits my mood. Luckily, I ordered well. I was torn between two appetizers: the fried chicken livers with oyster mushrooms and polenta, or the bone marrow with grilled baguette.

Usually in these situations, it is wise to defer to the server. As a former server, I know that I was always honest with guests, and that I developed a good palate because of the exposure to new dishes I had at the restaurants I worked at. My server, who was impeccable by the way, was ecstatic about the bone marrow when I asked. Sure, I've had sauces infused with bone marrow. It's a classic French technique, one that Julia Child herself was proud of. But to have it served straight, when it's known mostly for it's gelatinous qualities, intrigued me.

In this particular presentation my server explained to me, the bone marrow was served in the bone, split. The marrow is to be eaten "like tapanade" but without the olives. So, I ordered it.

Another part of ordering well, is rationalizing against the dishes you don't order. I began stacking up the cons list for the chicken livers. First, one of the only decent dishes Easy Street restaurant back home in Bowling Green makes is fried chicken livers. I order it all the time, so I supposed I could forgo livers this time. Plus, I need to make chicken livers for Amanda soon to make up for the chicken feet disappointment.

The bone marrow was delightful. Marrow is incredibly rich and really fatty. It's also sort of sludgy and gray. Like I told Kent, the secret of a good chef is finding a way to make pure unadulterated fat palatable. Think pork belly, think duck confit, absorbing impossible amounts of fat as it poaches. Or now, think of bone marrow.

It arrived at the table as promised, an eight inch long bone, split in half. The marrow was sprinkled lightly with a salsa verde: a mixture of poblano chilis, green onions, cilantro, and tomatillos. The result was a dish that was carnal, and as barbaric as digging marrow from the bone can be, but also refined, by digging it out with a demitasse spoon. The salsa verde, with its bright acids balanced and rounded the richness of the marrow, and the baguette, scored with black grill marks, and which was slavered with olive oil and rubbed down with garlic, lent a spicy smokiness to the dish as well. As a garnish, slices of sweet pickled onion further played with the slight spiciness of the salsa verde. It was bone sucking good.


* "The Soul of a Chef" is the best place to read about old school Symon. This was back before Lola, Symon's first restaurant, moved downtown, and Lolita took its place. So, technically they're not the same restauarant, but Lolita today is closer to the Lola that Rhulman writes about.

Pawpaw Adventure Part Two: Hoopla

A little information is a dangerous thing, as any dilettante can tell you. Being a neophyte pawpaw enthusiast, my first stop for information was, of course, Wikipedia's entry for pawpaws.

After reading about pawpaws, I was even more smitten than before. I suppose it's like having a great date, and then looking for your date's profile on Facebook. When you see your date's Facebook profile it only makes you fall a little bit harder for them. So it was with the pawpaws.




First, I admired their tenacity. Pawpaw is the only member of the family Annonaceae that can hack it outside of the tropics. They think nothing of harsh Ohio winters.

However, they are a little finicky. Pawpaws cannot self-pollinate, and their blooms are vapid and weakly perfumed. So they have trouble attracting pollinators. Pawpaws' main pollinator is the fruit fly. This made me feel a bit better about super race of fruit flies I have been inadvertently breeding in my kitchen--fruit flies that are impervious to traps of any kind. I should have bottled my fruit flies and taken them to the pawpaw grove when the trees were blooming. I also found out that some pawpaw growers place road kill under blooming pawpaw trees to attract pollinating insects or hang chicken necks from the branches, which rot and attract flies, to insure good cross pollination.




Even after imagining rotten meat swinging from the boughs of pawpaw trees, I was mostly in shock that I had never heard about pawpaws before. My first theory was that pawpaws simply aren't suited to industrialized agriculture like apples and oranges. According to Wikipedia, "the shelf life of the ripe fruit is almost non-existent, for it soon ripens to the point of fermentation." Slow food international seems to confirm this when they inducted the pawpaw to the US Ark of Taste in 2004.
As the US Slow Food website explains, "To qualify for the US Ark of Taste, food products must be:

"Outstanding in terms of taste—as defined in the context of local traditions and uses" (Check: pawpaws have a hauntingly tropic flavor-somewhere between a mango, pineapple, avocado, and melon.)

"At risk biologically or as culinary traditions" (Check: Who the hell has even heard of a pawpaw?)

"Sustainably produced "(Check: Most pawpaws in Ohio are wild, and pawpaws have few to no pests and require NO pesticides to grow well. In fact, a safe, organic pesticide can be made from pawpaw seeds.)

"Culturally or historically linked to a specific region, locality, ethnicity or traditional production practice" (Check: Pawpaws only grow in specific parts of the US. Including Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio.)

"Produced in limited quantities, by farms or by small-scale processing companies" (Check: Pawpaws particularly short window of peak ripeness and rather soft, delicate fruit make it impossible to ship it thousands of miles.)

Armed with an amateur's knowledge of pawpaws, I decided to call Dave Reese at
Kaleidoscope Farms.

(Now I have extensive experience locating things outside of the formal economy. A few phone calls, some Internet networking, and miraculously, the universe responds to my wants and whims. For instance, I've found free chicken wire, whole fresh hogs heads, raw goat's milk, chicken feet, and pure-bred Border Collies, to name a few. Because of this, I'm used to calling up complete strangers and meeting them in remote locations. {Sometimes they have shotguns, as in the case of procuring the pig's head.}

Dave was generous and friendly, and I instantly knew I had a good connection for local pawpaws. He offered to get me a copy the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association cookbook, entitled "The Edible Pawpaw, and I gladly took him up on the offer. We arranged for an evening to meet and go pawpaw picking on his gorgeous property, about 10 miles outside of Findlay.

If you want the whole account, click over to AMR's Everyday Palate.

Stay tuned. For Part Three: Pawpaw Adventure Faux Pas.

Pawpaw Adventure. Part One: Awe

It started with an anniversary dinner. To celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary, Kent and I went to Revolver in Findlay, OH. For those living in the fine-dining desert of Northwest Ohio, Revolver is an oasis. It is by far the only place I know within an hour drive of B.G. that takes the food they serve seriously.

What this means is that when you go to Revolver, you'll get food that is not only prepared perfectly, but in most cases is also local organic, sustainable, and ethical. And this is not merely lip-service to the trendiness of the local food movement. On Revolver's website, co-owner Debi Bulkowski explains their philosophy, “We are in the heartland and have access to some of the most gorgeous produce available. We have been warmly received by the organic farming community and there really is something special about meeting the individuals who are responsible for the perfect arugula.” Revolver prints the name and location of the local farms whose products they are serving that night on the menu, and the servers, when asked, will specifically tell you where everything on your plate came from. Some of the places where our meal came from: Dickman Farms (Fostoria), Luginbill Farms (Pandora), Daisyfield Farms (Sandusky), Garden Spirit Farms (Mount Blanchard), Miller’s Meats (Findlay) and Wolfe’s Nuts (Findlay).

While every part of the meal was perfect executed down to the last detail (I'll spare you the bite-by-bite details), it was the dessert that blew me away in a excuse-me-while-I-pick-up-my-jaw-off-the-table sort of way. Pawpaw creme brulee.

When our server, Jonah, gave us the evening's dessert selections. He said, "We have paw paw creme brulee. You know about pawpaws, right?"

(This is also something to appreciate about Revolver, they are not the least bit pretentious, which means they'll graciously explain, in detail, everything you eat and drink there, if you so desire. But I digress...)

My little ears perked up because I never knew such a fruit existed. Being a dedicated gastronome is a lot like falling in love over and over again. But after awhile, it's easy to get jaded. However, when you really appreciate GOOD food, the first bite of something truly incredible is a lot like a first kiss. You never forget it. You remember that moment forever. Forget the diamond advertisements because that first slab of unctuous fois gras was orgasmically earth-shaking, or that first perfectly ripe, just plucked from the vine heirloom tomato. Or that first briny-sweet komomoto oyster. Or that first bite of sashimi tuna. And, then, there was the first taste of a pawpaw.

A pawpaw tastes a little like this: Imagine if a pear and a mango procreated, and their offspring mated with honeydew melons and pistachios.

Now, back to this creme brulee, it had whispers of citrus, hints of almond and pistachio, and a haunting afterglow of honeydew melon. Add those flavors to a perfectly caramelized sugar crust, sprinkled with just a few flakes of Maldon sea salt, and well, my eyes were practically rolling back in my head.

When I explained to Jonah how incredible an experience eating this dessert was, he told me about their pastry chef that had went to Kaleidoscope Farms, about ten miles from Findlay, to pick pawpaws. And, before Jonah dropped off our check (which was incredibly reasonable. Read: three courses with wine for two just under $100), he handed me a ticket from his server's notepad that had the name and number of the pawpaw grower scribbled across it.

Stay tuned for Part Two and pictures.

P.S. To ensure a blissful anniversary celebration, I respected Kent's wishes and left the camera home.