Down In the Holler

As a self-proclaimed foodie, a registered dietitian and an environmentally concerned citizen, I think a lot about what I eat and the impacts that it has on my body and the planet. I’m a pretty well informed eater, though there is always so much more to learn. I am and always have been an omnivore though I’ve become much more conscious over the years about the meat that I choose to eat and how it was raised. We are very comfortable at home going days at a time with little or no meat.

Additionally at the hospital we are starting to look at ways to reduce the overall amount of meat that we are serving by offering more vegetarian options and reducing the portion sizes when we do serve meat entrees. This change in menu planning is motivated by several factors including health, the environment and cost (not necessarily in that order).

I’m thrilled to be able to easily buy local, sustainably raised beef, chicken and pork from a variety of local producers at our farmers markets, grocery stores and quite a few restaurants. Among our favorites are Riverview Farms in northwest Georgia and White Oak Pastures in south Georgia.

I encountered this happy grass-fed Niman bebeh on a recent work trip to Bolinas, CA

With all this in mind, I found myself nodding in agreement as I read the op-ed piece in the New York Times today by author, lawyer and rancher, Nicolette Hahn Niman, The Carnivore’s Dilemma. I particularly appreciated the closing paragraph,

Still, there are numerous reasonable ways to reduce our individual contributions to climate change through our food choices. Because it takes more resources to produce meat and dairy than, say, fresh locally grown carrots, it’s sensible to cut back on consumption of animal-based foods. More important, all eaters can lower their global warming contribution by following these simple rules: avoid processed foods and those from industrialized farms; reduce food waste; and buy local and in season.

Amen, sister!

P.S. Ms. Niman is a vegetarian.

Whew! Fast forward a few months y’all. We’re gardening, we’re cooking, we’re brewing beer, WE’RE GETTING MARRIED! This isn’t so much news to the folks in our circle. So I’m going to dive right in to where my brain has been going as we design this wonderful celebration.

At this point there are so many ideas swirling around in my head, it’s a matter of figuring out how to make them work together in a cohesive way or drop the elements that aren’t quite fitting in.

So far these are the things that I want to include:

Bunting & Pennants

Green Vegetables

Lavender and Lemon

Herbs

Glass Jars

Tin Cans

So it’s going to be a Kitchen-Vegetable-Garden-Party-Banner-Day … or something like that! It’s all starting to come together in my head somewhat. Next up on the agenda is getting our wedding specific website up and filming our Save the Date video to be emailed. Stay tuned!

A beer baby, that is, with all the trimmings!

Though it’s been over a month since the day, I thought it was high time I let the digital world in on a very real-world secret. With the help of several friends, I have brewed, fermented and savored my first batch of home-brewed beer. The result, which I have affectionately named Deep Holler Pale Ale, is astoundingly good. This represents the culmination of years (literally!) of planning, planting and learning my way around the exciting world of homebrew.

The process began around March of 2007, when I received for my birthday a gift that has kept on giving: my very own hop rhizomes. The vines that sprouted from them are now in their second year of production, and let me tell you, the produce is mighty indeed.

For the recipe, I used one called “American Pale Ale” that I got ingredients for from the good man Craig at Hop City over on the West side. The recipe called for a total of 2oz Northern Brewer hops and 1.5oz Cascade hops. Since Hop City sells plug hops in 2oz vacuum-sealed packs, I thought it foolish to let a good half ounce go to waste, so I threw those in during the last addition.

I was keen to use my own harvest in the brew, however, so I decided to dry hop the batch after it had fermented for about a week. I transferred the wort to a secondary fermenter and added a good helping (maybe 16 or 20g) of whole Cascade hops from my garden.

After another week, it was time to bottle. After still another week, I sampled the first beer late on the night of Kip’s birthday, and passed it around to friends. The results were surprisingly excellent! I feel like the flavor has only improved as the beer ages a little in the bottle. While the initial hop punch has always been significant, the middle notes have become more pronounced in the subsequent weeks.

Kip’s brother Paul, a graphic designer, is graciously designing label art for us to use, and we’ve got big plans to make the Deep Holler brand a mainstay of the local scene. Up next is Kip’s favorite style, a hefeweizen! Into that we plan to incorporate some coriander that we harvested from cilantro plants that went to seed in the garden. I just love using so many parts of the harvest!

Want to help with the brew next time? Just let me know!

Happy 4th of July!

This morning I sat surrounded by cookbooks and a stack of cooking magazines trying to decide what would best satisfy my craving for a baked dessert that would feature berries and pair well with ice cream or whipped cream. Because this sort of dessert, in my mind, is as essential to the 4th of July as fireworks and food cooked on the grill.

In the American Fruit Dessert section of the Joy of Cooking the first entry is a Pandowdy. Which has such a great name, I was instantly drawn to it. However, it is usually made with apples. While I could substitute berries, typically when I try a new dish that has some culinary history I like to honor its traditions and make it without wacky variations the first time I make it. Once I feel like I understand what its all about I’ll put my twist on it. Perhaps I’ll have a pandowdy report sometime during apple season.

Cobbler is a simple, tried and true preparation that I love. But since we are headed to a potluck style BBQ, I kind of had this strange desire to wow people with my silly named confection. I wanted to really spark the party converstation with the history of my dessert. You can tell I’m really the life of the party if this is what I think about heading into a potluck.

So I moved on to read about Grunts & Slumps. According to Joy of Cooking they both are relatives of puddings that were cooked in pots over a fire. While Alton Brown mentions in I’m Just Here for More Food (his baking cookbook) that a grunt gets it’s name from the sound of the fruit bubbling through the crust while it cooks. Both have great conversation potential, but I was craving something with a touch of crispiness to go with my sweet, fruity filling and these recipes all seemed to yield a softer more saturated result.

Of course a crisp would work, but what a bland name! So then I considered a Brown Betty which is made with sweetened buttered crumbs and has a history dating back to Colonial times! A darling name and plenty of historical conversation potential! But here again I ran into the issue of the traditional fruit being apples. So I have another fall dessert to research.

The last funny named American fruit dessert I brushed up on was a Buckle. Again, my priorities in choosing a dessert were slightly askew. I learned that a buckle is a type of cake with fruit folded into the batter and then generously topped with streusel. Sounds delicious! But also like the fruit might take a back seat to all that batter and topping.

In the end I realized that I had already made up my mind about what I wanted to eat and its cobbler! Easy, fail-proof, full of fruit, cobbler. I followed the recipe fairly closely (which I tend to do when baking, because its not my strong suit in the kitchen) for the Joy of Cooking’s Blueberry Cobbler with Sour Cream Cobbler Biscuit Dough. I even got jazzy and made a lattice top! I just made a few of my standard baking substitutions such as using natural sweeteners and whole wheat pastry flour.

I just pulled it out of the oven and my heart soared! It smells delicious and looks beautiful and browned and a little craggy and rustic. Just what I’ve been craving all day! And while I probably won’t get to wow any of the BBQ guests with my expansive knowledge of the history of American fruit desserts, I bet a bit of this cobbler with a dollop of fresh whipped cream will win their affections just the same.

I hope today you all get to celebrate being American in a really delicious way!

Blueberry Cobbler with a few Kip twists

Filling

3 pints blueberries

1/2 cup unrefined granulated sugar (such as Rapidura, Sucanat or Florida Crystals)

1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

Zest from 1 lime

Topping

1 1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour

2 tablespoons unrefined granulated sugar (such as Rapidura, Sucanat or Florida Crystals)

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 cup sour cream

1/4 cup heavy cream

To make filling:

Wash and pat dry the blueberries. Combine the sugar, flour and lime zest and toss with the berries. Spread evenly in a baking dish that has a 2 quart capacity and is about 2 inches deep.

To make topping:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add butter and toss with dry ingredients. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is like coarse breadcrumbs. Combine the sour cream and heavy cream in a separate bowl and then add it to the flour mixture. Mix by hand only until the dough comes together and can be rolled or patted. Gently knead the dough 5 to 10 times in the bowl if needed to press any loose pieces into the dough. At this point you can spoon little walnut sized dropfuls on top of the berries or you can roll out the dough to cut out shapes. Really you can do whatever you want to get the dough arranged on the fruit. To roll it out, dust the top and bottom of the dough with a little flour and roll the dough to between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick. I chose to cut the dough into 1 inch strips for a lattice. Once you’ve got the dough arranged, lightly brush the top with a lightly beaten egg and sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar. Bake 45 to 50 minutes until the top is golden and the juices have thickened slightly.

Last Saturday I woke up early and pedaled my bike all the way across town to the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market  in Buckhead so that I could volunteer at the Slow Food Atlanta table. I’ve only been to this market one other time and while it is on the other side of town from where I live, it is one of the best weekly markets in Atlanta. There are lots of vendors with a huge variety of foods in addition to the fruits and veggies that you expect at a farmer’s market. It is a really fantastic way to spend a Saturday morning.

My volunteer job was to stand at the Slow Foods Atlanta table and talk to people about what the Slow Food movement is all about as well as promote and sell tickets to an event that I think many of you will want to attend.

First let me speak to the glorious Slow Foods movement which was started in Italy by Carlo Petrini as an anti-movement to fast food. From the website,

Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable. Today, we have over 100,000 members in 132 countries.

This organization bascially takes a bunch of things that I find really important: health, the environment, social justice, culture and delcious food and wraps it all up together in to one fantastic movement. If you aren’t familiar, cruise around the websites for Slow Foods International, Slow Foods USA and Slow Foods Atlanta or come out and visit me at the market this month.

So as for that upcoming event that Slow Foods is sponsoring. Imagine if you were to have a chili cook-off where you buy a ticket and get to taste as many samples as you like of unique creations from a big group of both professional chefs and home chefs, but then you took away the chili and replaced it with ICE CREAM!

Saturday June 27th at the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market from 12-1pm Slow Foods Atlanta is hosting that very event! A super delicious ice cream social where all the ice cream offerings are homemade, but the flavors are sure to be unique and exciting. Tickets are $10 for all the flavors you can cram in. You can purchase tickets here. Or even better, you can come visit me at the market this coming Saturday or the day of the event and buy a ticket from me while you are picking up your groceries for the week.

Hope to see you at the market!

While I still consider myself to be a novice gardener, I’m starting to feel like I might be slowly approaching intermediate status. Every time I get out in the garden and poke around, I learn new stuff. There are continually sucesses (fava beans!) and failures (carrots) and things that fall somewhere in between (Brussels sprouts). This learning process humbles me; especially to the farmers who do this for a living and grow the food I eat.

Since we started working in the yard (January 1st 2008) we have drastically made improvements. It’s been quite a journey from the days when our primary biomass came from kudzu to today when we are cultivating a fairly decent variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers and other various plants.

When I share with people I have a garden, they almost always ask me what I’m growing. So here it is:

Vegetables

Fava beans (Windsor)

English peas (Grandma Denlinger’s Sugar Pea)

Southern peas (Whippoorwill)

Tomatoes (Roma, Brandywine, Beefsteak)

Peppers (Ancho, Cayenne, some mystery peppers that our friend gave us)

Lettuce (Bon Vivant Spicy Mesclun Mix, Oakleaf, Drunken Women Looseleaf, Buttercrunch, Bibb, Vivian Romaine)

Swiss Chard (Five Color Silverbeet)

Kale (Lacinato, Red Russian, Blue Dwarf)

Potatoes (Yukon Gold, Caribe, Russian Banana Fingerling, Rose Gold, Red Cloud, Cranberry Red, Carola, Rose Finn Apple Fingerling)

Zucchini (Tender Grey, Black Beauty)

Winter Squash (Delicata Honey Boat, Waltham Butternut)

Carrots (Little Finger)

Red Cabbage

Brussels Sprouts

Red Onions

Fruit

Blackberries

Raspberries

Blueberries

Pomegranates

Nuts

English Walnuts

Herbs

Sweet Basil

Thai Basil

Peppermint

Cilantro

Rosemary

Thyme

Oregano

Sage

Tarragon

Sorrel

Feverfew

St John’s Wort

Citronella

Flowers, Shrubs & Other Stuff

Cala Lilies

Cana Lilies

Hydrangeas

Gardenias

Sedum

Euphorbia

Yarrow

Daylilies

Irises

Nasturtiums

Roses (Knock Out)

Hellebores

Virigated Liriope (aka: Washington Grass in my family…another story for another day)

Vinca

Ferns (Christmas, Leatherleaf)

Creeping Raspberry

Yew

Nandinas

Acuba

Hops (Cascade & Chinook)

Things that grow whether we like it or not

Kudzu

Poison Ivy

English Ivy

Mimosa Trees

Mulberry Trees

There are things that are not on this list that we have grown in the past and may or may not grow again. There is a ton of stuff not on this list that I plan to grow eventually. One of the areas that I really want to turn my attention to next is more herbs, particularly perennial herbs.  I also have no experience with citrus, but I’d like to give it a try. Perhaps some dwarf varieties in containers? Have any tips for citrus or favorite herbs you’d like to tell me about?

Sassafras Peppercorn by Kevin Griggs

Last Friday, the 29th, we picked up an adorable new addition to our pet family from some friends across town. May I introduce you to Sassafras Peppercorn?

This little bundle of trouble is already creating quite a stir. We’ve mostly been keeping her isolated in the bathroom until she’s weighty enough to get vaccinated, and she’s wasted no time finding cute little messes to make. The toilet tissue tower has become a climbing toy.

Our friend Kevin Griggs came over last night to take some glamour shots of the new baby. He posted a few choice samples to Flickr, and she even made the first picture in a “Kitten Tuesday” post on their blog! Clearly, with all this activity, we have a heart-breaker on our hands.

It will be exciting to see how she matures, and how Binky (our other cat) takes to her. After the untimely passing of our cat George (may he rest in peace), I was half-jokingly excited to get another pet named George II, but Kip managed to knock some sense into me, and Sassy here is the result!

Please enjoy responsibly.

For my birthday in 2007, a couple of my friends gave me four delightfully fresh rhizomes of two varieties of humulus lupulus: Cascade and Chinook. I quickly got to work researching planting and growing techniques for these vigorous vines. Based on this reading, I was prepared for (and got) a relatively meager yield from the first season. The second season, which is now in full swing, is another story entirely.

My trellis design takes advantage of a steep North-facing slope that forms the upper end of what we affectionately refer to as the Holler. Three vertical 2×6 planks act as the top end of the trellis’ wire, with the bottom end anchored about 18 feet down the hill in two large safety-orange stakes. The wire traverses the hillside between these structures in a large “W” shape, which provides one vertical length of wire for each of the four rhizomes.

Last year, even at the peak of the growing season, the vines only reached about three-quarters of the way up the wires, and I was able to harvest a total of about 16 grams of flowers. This year, the Cascade vines are already stretching beyond the top of the trellis and bursting with flowers.  I will probably harvest as much within the next month as I did for the entire season last year.

The Chinook vines are slightly less vigorous in my setting, and I think it is related to a nitrogen deficiency. A couple of weeks ago I gave them a decent dose of blood meal and they have since improved significantly.

I am extremely excited about harvesting these fragrant beauties and putting them to use in my first batch of home-brewed beer this Summer. Stay tuned for details on that process, as I am sure there will be many tales to tell.

Brian and I got back from visiting his family in Jackson Mississippi early this morning. After brunch and a much needed nap I decided to venture out to Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market with my darling friend and neighbor Laura Louise. Generally I try to avoid YDFM on the weekends because it gets SO crowded. We are talking grocery cart collision and tight squeezes at every turn. Really it’s not for the faint of heart. But we were in dire need of a serious grocery trip and this is my preferred grocer for pantry staples and fresh produce. This isn’t a farmer’s market in the sense that there are farmers there selling, it’s more of a combination international market and natural foods emporium. But it’s a real gem here in Atlanta nonetheless.

I didn’t even think until I arrived that it is a holiday weekend so there were even more folks than normal milling about gathering BBQ fixings and trying to avoid grocery cart grid lock. Things got so bad on the aisle with the fresh corn and trash cans for shucking that I pulled a quick u-turn mid aisle, nearly causing a cabbage avalanche as I retreated to a less interactive area. But I digress.

I managed to sit down before we left and make a solid shopping list based on recipes that I plan on executing this week plus all the staples that we needed. My list was long and in the crowd there was to be no dawdling or perusing the merchandise. I put my blinders on got down to business. I did pretty well. But no matter how hard I try I cannot ever stick exactly to a grocery list. Shopping for food rivals shopping for shoes to me. Like admiring yourself in the foot mirror wearing a cute pair of wedge sandals and thinking about what sundress will pair best, I think of favorite recipes for the season and what I already have in my shopping cart, garden or pantry that will pair best. And on really inspired shopping trips I might imagine sitting in the backyard drinking wine with friends, wearing a cute sundress and wedge sandals and eating an artfully crafted seasonal dish made of a combination of fresh from my garden produce and whatever culinary object of desire that has captured my attention. Needless to say sometimes grocery store trips take me hours.

Today it was a bag of rich, egg yolk colored, organic Meyer lemons from Florida that captured my attention. I’ve never seen them at YDFM before, and while I know that their season is usually Winter, they looked to be in good shape and they didn’t come from another hemisphere. Perhaps they are finding ways to extend the growing season or they are the product of improved storage techniques. Either way these looked beautiful and a little rub of their fragrant skin sealed the deal for me.

I had plans to make preserved lemons with them…well I still do. But one of them found it’s way into dinner tonight. When I got home and took a walk through the garden I noticed that we had plenty of darling little sweet green peas ready for harvest. When I planted these peas earlier in the spring I had visions of recreating a green pea risotto that I once had at a wine dinner at Nell’s Restaurant in Seattle. If someone were to ask me what Spring tasted like, that risotto from Nell’s is the answer. Fresh and sweet and green, tender and yielding, but still toothsome like a proper risotto should be. Every bite has a few tender fresh peas in it that pop with little bursts of green sweetness in a way that frozen peas could never manage.

So here I am on Memorial Day weekend, the holiday that usually ushers in Summer, and it’s still rainy and cooler than any May in Georgia that I can remember. My sweet green peas are just ready for harvest, my baby basil plants have grown big enough so far that they can afford to lose a few leaves and I’m lusting after a citrus fruit whose season is usually months over. All these circumstances created one of the best risottos I’ve ever made. This one doesn’t taste exactly like Spring, but it does taste like something awesome.

And with preserved Meyer lemons on hand I can make this again when I have more peas and/or recommend this recipe in good conscience without fearing that I’m supporting a combination of ingredients that you’ll never find in season together again. So here it is:

Meyer Lemon & Sweet Pea Risotto

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
• 1/3 cup dry sherry
• Zest and juice of 1 Meyer Lemon or 1-2 tablespoons minced preserved Meyer lemon
• 3/4 cup fresh shelled green peas (may substitute frozen)
• 1/2 cup basil chiffonade
• Salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Heat stock in a small sauce pot until warmed through. In a seperate pot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Saute garlic and onion until translucent. Add rice to garlic and onions and cook until rice is translucent on the edges and opaque in the center (about 2 minutes). Add sherry and stir constanly until mostly absorbed. Reduce heat to low and add 1/2 cup of warmed stock, stirring frequently until stock is mostly absorbed. Continue adding stock 1/2 cup at a time and stirring frequently until 1/2 cup of stock remains (un-added to risotto). Stir in peas and last 1/2 cup of stock. Continue to stir frequently. Once stock is mostly absorbed, stir in basil and cook until basil is wilted and risotto is al dente. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

For a period of time yesterday and then again today my brain was consumed with stress over finances. I was mostly fretting over student loans. And while I (and we) are in a stable financial situation, every time I look at those big balances I wince a little. Or really I want to pull a Rip Van Winkle and go to sleep for twenty years and wake up when it’s all over.

But what I did instead was call my sweet, comforting, level-headed father and asked for some sound advice on the best strategy for continuing to chip away at those daunting numbers. He gave me good advice, but best of all he reassured me; he gave me some perspective and he told me he was proud of me.

Throughout the course of our conversation I began to think about things that are important and things that I value. I thought about things that I’m willing to live without and things for which I’m willing to pay extra when I can. I also thought about how fortunate I am that we are in a stable enough financial situation to be able to make the choice to pay extra for some things.

Food is one of those things that is really important to me. I’m often willing to pay extra to get better quality when it comes to food. This doesn’t mean that we lounge around the homestead eating beluga caviar, Wagu beef and gold foiled chocolate confections while swilling it down with vintage Bordeaux. But it does mean that I’m willing to pay the price for locally raised grass-fed beef and pastured pork. It does mean that now and again I’ll shell out some extra bucks for artisan goat cheese. I am also willing to regularly pay extra to stock our kitchen with mostly organic and sustainably produced foods, whether I’m shopping at a conventional grocery store or a farmer’s market.

We offset these extra costs by growing some of our own food, making most of our food from scratch and eating most of our meals at home. But by doing these things we get more back than just the ability to buy more nice food. We make an investment in our health. We support our local economy and local farmers. We hone our cooking skills. We learn about new foods and new flavors. We create an environment for wonderful shared meals with friends and neighbors.

All those things are really important to me. And while I love to go shoe shopping just like the next red-blooded American gal, I’m willing to make the shoes I have last another season if it means I get to eat well.