Veggies and the Bee's Knees

I'm going to put my gloves on and spend the day tomorrow turning the "weed patch" into the "veggie garden". My oh my am I late getting this together this year. Since January I've been nursing San Marzano and heirloom tomato seedlings and they are screaming to be put in the ground. And of course I can't do that without putting in basil, lettuces, herbs, peas and on and on and on. It's gonna be a busy but fun day!

Sometime in the afternoon, when the soil is turned over and the planting beds are ready, I'll be dropping some very special seeds in the ground - magic seeds - and I'm hoping I can convince you to join me and do the same. I'm participating in The Great Sunflower Project, one woman's attempt to learn more about the decline in the bee population and what effect it was having on our gardens. This one woman, Gretchen LeBuhn, had an idea, sent out 20 emails to see if she could get people to count bees in their gardens, and within 2 weeks the idea went viral and 15,000 people were on board. This year 100,000 have signed up to help.

It's fun and easy to help out – after you sign up and give them information on your garden (here), you plant Lemon Queen sunflower seeds (everyone gets the same variety so we know we are comparing apples to apples).  Then once your sunflower blooms, you watch your flower for 15 minutes and record the number of bees that visit. That’s it!  It’s easy and fun to see the variety of bees.  You can immediately compare your yard’s bees per hour to state and national averages and understand how well your bee community is doing.

If you would consider helping, that would be the bee's knees! 

(beautiful photo of glove above credited here)

When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like A...

What a difference a week makes!!  Just after I whined about not having any ripe tomatoes, they all started turning at once.  I heard that beautiful heirlooms are $1.99 a pound at Whole Foods Markets today, but if you're in my area, come on over.  We'll have more than we know what to do with in the next few days!

The beauties in the back are the San Marzano variety.  I'll be cutting each in half and putting them on a parchment lined baking sheet, sprinkling them with sea salt and a bit of olive oil and roasting them in a slow oven for about 6 hours.  They are very meaty with few seeds, and they melt in your mouth when cooked this way.  I actually freeze them and use them all year.

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I just had a Caprese salad for lunch and will be having my favorite - Greek salad - for dinner.  

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This weekend I'm going to see if I can find a pizza sauce recipe (do you have one?) and maybe try grilling a pizza margherita.  Yum!   

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I have to admit, I'm now ready for autumn...you really can feel a bit of crispness in the air and pretty colored leaves are just beginning to line our streets.  Doesn't it inspire you to start cooking?  In keeping with the theme, this week's Pinterest share is from my "Foodie" board.  Enjoy!

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What will you be cooking this weekend?

It's not over until the fat tomato sings.

I don't want to sound like Debbie Downer, but I will go mad if I hear the term "end of summer" one more time. I'm not ready. This would be why.

This is the bounty from my tomato patch. Year-to-date. This one tomato. It was picked yesterday.

Better perspective. A dinner party this does not make.

This was one day's harvest from last year's garden. One day's.

Bon Apetit.

  

I still have tomato and avocado salads to make,

Caprese salads to share.

I'd like to make sauce.

I've been working on this for a very long time. I'm emotionally invested.

And we're close...

...very close.

So the brakes are on, and the flip flops stay out. I will be wearing white after Labor Day and cannot be persuaded to look at a fall sweater (sorry, Ronnie). Summer is hereby extended until I find at least one big fat red juicy ripe tomato in my garden and I've had my fill of Greek salad and BLT's.   

Who's with me?

I need a bigger bucket.

Bucket list (buck·et list)

noun

informal

a number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during his or her lifetime     

  : An Outstanding in the Field farm dinner is at the top of my bucket list

Two nights ago I checked an item off of my bucket list.  I've dreamt of going to a farm dinner hosted by Outstanding in the Field, and my wish came true on Tuesday night.  I’m bursting and must share.

First, a little history.   Jim Denevan, the founder of Outstanding in the Field (OITF) brings diners to their food by way of an 80-foot-long dinner table that is set up in a field, ranch, dairy, vineyard or community garden.   These delicious alfresco meals reconnect us to our local land and to the farmers and food artisans who tend it.  The ingredients come directly from the fields in which the great table sits and the individuals who work so hard to cultivate them share equal billing with the guest chef, and sit shoulder to shoulder with the guests. 

As we entered the beautiful grounds of Tres Sobores, we were greeted by one of the many happy staff members of OITF.  Imagine yourself arriving at a famiy reunion and having your cousin come out to greet you…yep, they’re that friendly.  The young man explained that we would first gather in the olive grove, and to get there we were to walk between the rows of grapevines and make a left. 

We were offered a glass of Tres Sobores’ Por que no? wine, a delicious red blend, or a  Gin-arita made with organic pomegranates from the property.  I, um, had both.  A few delicious hors de’oeuvres were passed and each picnic table had a beautiful salumi tray.

We were then welcomed by Jim and Leah of OITF and the property owner, Julie.  Under the shade of the olive trees, a glass of wine in hand, you could feel the comraderie beginning to develop among the guests.  We all could sense we were in for something very special.

As is tradition at these farm dinners, we walked the property of Tres Sobores.  Julie told us of its history and we learned much about the different grapes they’re growing and of the 100% organic methods they use.  We were introduced to their lambs and guinea hens, (otherwise known as “dinner”), and we picked and ate ripe strawberries from the organic garden, still warm from the sun.

In keeping with tradition we were then led to the long stretch of table with its white tablecloths, framed along its curve with grapevines, and topped with twinkling wine glasses.  If it wasn’t apparent before that Jim and his crew have been doing this since 1999, it was now – the string of chairs gently curving along the tableside were perfectly in line.  This was such a magical sight, and I saw a sparkle in Jim's eye as we all got our first look.

We were invited to pick any seat and each of us had our own dinner plate from home in hand…another wonderful tradition upheld.  As Jim states in his farm to table cookbook, “The dozens of individual plates set down the length of the table effect an incredibly striking visual testament to the diverse community we create every time we set up that table. “

Dinner was served family style starting with huge grilled Baja scallops.  Big bowls of salad with farm fresh vegetables and fingerling potatoes were brought out followed by heavy trays of spit-roasted lamb and guinea hen married with a moro bean and chard ragout.  We finished up with sweet and tender peaches and cherries topped with crème fraiche.  All of these courses were perfectly paired with Julie’s wines, and during the dinner we met many of the growers who provided their part of this generous feast.

On this beautiful day in this glorious spot of heaven called Tres Sabores, dozens of strangers gathered together in the late afternoon, came together to enjoy the fruits of the land and the labor of the chef and growers, and left as kindred spirits.  

Although I’ve crossed this incredible experience off of my bucket list, I'm adding another one right back on – I have the burning desire to experience another dinner with Jim and his crew at a Secret Sea Cove location somewhere here along our California coast.  Perhaps next year.  And if you find yourself at one of the 68 remaining farm dinners this season (there's a very good chance there's one near you), please tell Jim and Leah I say hi.

Foodie in Paradise

This is my neighbor.

And this is his store.

And this is my neighbor in his store.

My neighbor and his lovely wife Tolan are very generous.  Quite often they invite me to their store to meet very talented chefs and cookbook authors.  I walk over from my house and they offer me wine and cheese when I arrive.  Can you imagine what a Foodie like me thinks about all of this?  AAAAAGGGHHH!

Last week I met a lovely woman named Cate Conniff who works here.

Cate was part of the team that helped open The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, California in 1995.  She has been the marketing manager at Greystone for over 15 years and in that time she has been working, cooking, eating, gardening and going to the farmers' market with many of the chefs and other food and wine loving members of the Greystone community.  I immediately felt a Foodie Kinship with Cate, and then found out we grew up in adjoining neighborhoods in the midwest.  I really like this woman.

Cate wrote this cookbook.

When Cate talked about food and cooking, there was a certain hush throughout the store.  Her words are mesmerizing.  You can almost taste the food she speaks about.  I quote from her book, "I had something of a Garden of Eden story in reverse:  I reached out to pick a perfectly plump and ripe fig from a one-hundred-year-old tree.  I still remember that taste of my first fresh fig."

And then, after describing how she "scraped the carmelized flesh of the butternut squash from the skin", Cate served us this.

And perhaps it was the amazing Cali 351 Chardonnay that Cate's husband Michael was pouring, or the heady fragrance of the toasted pumpkin seed oil steaming from the soup, but I ran to the register to call this book my own.

Given that I can walk to Tyler's beautiful store, or drive to Greystone in 45 minutes, I truly am a Foodie in Paradise.

Enjoy your weekend!

Bridget, a Bus, A Book and a Blog

I love to cook.  It’s my favorite pastime – right up there with gardening.  But I have a confession to make.  I’m really, really, really timid about cooking for people.  There, I’ve said it.  I’m Kim, I’m a Foodie and I have mageirocophobia – fear of cooking (for others).  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately for a couple of reasons.  First, the summer has nearly passed by and I haven’t had a single dinner party.  

It’s not like I don’t have the tools necessary...a beautiful cottage kitchen,

I have amazing copper pans, all the gourmet gadgets a girl could ever want, scads of table linens from the south of France and hundreds of cookbooks.  But when it comes right down to it, I have terrible cooking stage fright. 

  

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I even missed a meeting at the beach with a good friend once - I cancelled at the last minute because I offered to bring the food and then couldn’t imagine a ‘good enough’ menu.

I want to be like Bridget Jones.  During final preparation of a birthday dinner with an exotic and complicated menu, just as her dearest friends were about to arrive, she peeked into her leek soup and it had turned blue!  (not a good idea to tie leeks together with blue twine).  Bridget never faltered.  She smiled, had another sip of wine, and enjoyed the toast by her friend Tom, “Well done Bridge, four hours of careful cooking and a feast of blue soup, omelette and marmalade. I think that deserves a toast, don't you? To Bridget, who cannot cook, but who we love…just as she is.”  

Have you heard of Outstanding in the Field?  This amazing group, led by  Jim Denevan, feeds anywhere from 130 to 200 people at a time – without a kitchen. 

           

Their mission is to re-connect diners to the land and the origins of their food, and to honor the local farmers and food artisans who cultivate it.  It is a roving culinary adventure – literally a restaurant without walls.  

The talented staff arrives in this bus and puts together an afternoon/evening of magic.

Ingredients for the meal are almost all local (sometimes sourced within inches of your seat at the table!) and generally prepared by a celebrated chef of the region. After a tour of the site, they all settle in: farmers, producers, culinary artisans, and diners sharing the long table.  How I long to attend one of these…and to gather my friends together at my humble table with the same spirit and passion this group has.

handmade pasta - no kitchen here

they didn't have a kitchen for this either.

Uh huh.  175 guests.  No kitchen.

I mentioned that I've been thinking about my fear of cooking for a couple of reasons.  This is the other one - a great book and blog I just found out about by Sandy Couglin, called Reluctant Entertainer. 

Sandy comforts people who are reluctant to entertain and urges them forward through both inspiration and practical guidance. She encourages them to open up their home to others, helping them feel comfortable in their own skin, their own kitchen, their own home – imperfections and all, and to be free and real with other people! Sandy calls it real entertaining for real people.

So I’m going to spend some time on Sandy’s blog and in her book, and I’m going to schedule a dinner party.  And I will just be myself.  And it’s going to be magic.

Happy Summer!

Summer, what we've been waiting for so patiently, is here! Now that it's warmer, it's time once again for markets: Flea Markets, Farmers' Markets, Farm Stands! Finding unique varieties of fruits, freshly picked vegetables, and herbs, all ripe and ready to eat is one of the rites of summer.

One of the things I love most about the farmer's market is meeting the hard-working people who grow our food. I love the whole concept of 'farm to table' - if you haven't heard of Outstanding in the Field and their amazing mission, read about it here. When we meet the growers, we remember that we are interconnected. This is such a simple concept, but one that gets lost sometimes in the fast paced world we live.

Another favorite of mine during summer is the flea market. Call it a garage sale, a rummage sale, an estate sale or a yard sale - it is a treasure hunt, pure and simple. My love of the hunt started when I used to go with my parents to farm auctions in rural Wisconsin. I have fond memories of seeing the delight on my mom's face when she won a "mystery box" for $2, and then found inside a shiny silver spoon to add to her collection.

I also remember my dad carrying many an old radio home under his arm, soon to be refurbished in his workroom. How proud he was when I saw him a few weeks later and the darn thing was polished and playing.

I invite you to spend a moment at www.vintagepoppies.com to see what I've been up to and to enjoy our special savings of $10 off any of our French Style Market Totes, now through August 1st. If you haven't been to your local farmer's market recently, or experienced the thrill of the hunt at the flea market, I urge you to take the time this summer and enjoy these simple pleasures.