CSA + Farmer's Market = Bliss

A Saturday in mid-August with a temperature of 85° is a gift, if ever something so public could be considered a gift.

In the "Victorian" hamlet of Bellefonte, PA (last I checked, the U.S. was never part of the Victorian Empire) today is ArtsFest. It's a good day for the town: people are walking, rather than driving, up and down the hills. The sun is sparkling in the sky, and the light plays off the leafy trees along the town's streets. For a day, at least, business is booming in the local restaurants and coffee shops. And this is in spite of the myriad kettle corn stalls, gyro stands, and pulled-pork sandwich carts that arrive with the fair.

Today is also market day in town: there's a growing farmer's market in Bellefonte, which takes place in the center of town every Wednesday and Saturday. It seemed to struggle a few years back, but recently it has benefited from an influx of patrons and dealers alike. There are even a few new farms; one, Setter's Farm, is a tiny acre or so outside of town that specializes in salad greens.

For lunch, minutes ago, we had a salad made from the farm's specialty green mix-- a combination of lettuces, herbs, baby greens, and edible flowers-- served with sliced heirloom cherry tomatoes and quartered hard-boiled egg. Alongside it was a secondary salad of micro-greens, dressed simply with a walnut oil vinaigrette.

How easy it is to forget that salads have flavor. But what a pleasure to be reminded. When a salad is more a bouquet than a bed of greens, this becomes increasingly possible.

What's more, there are still plenty of vegetables left over from our weekly CSA box, too. Thus tonight we're having P2 and S. over for a garden barbecue: I have fresh basil and tomatoes for a salad, and, for the grill, sweet corn and summer squash, as well as various shapes and sizes of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. I also picked up a round loaf of dutch oven bread; sliced, grilled, and rubbed with garlic, it might make for a nice accompaniment to all those grilled vegetables.

P2 and S. will bring some pork chops and-- they claimed, mysteriously-- some vegetables from their own garden. I didn't know they even had a garden. A miracle!

I Want a General Store, Too

The village of North Hero, Vermont lies on the Eastern shore of Grand Isle, looking out over the broad expanse of Lake Champlain. On a warm August day, the lake is alive with boaters, swimmers, and water-skiers. Sun-baked piers stretch out from the shore. And in the village the cottages and farmhouses all boast rows of Adirondack chairs lined up on the lawns, waiting for the diurnal spectacles of sunrise and sunset. The gardens are alarmingly well-kept; they spill over with black-eyed susans and tall white phlox.

At the heart of this little village on an island in the middle of a lake is a general store. It is a very impressive general store. There are nice things to buy there. I want one.

Some might covet the New Englandy wonder of the tumbled-shale beaches, perfect for strolling upon with linen suits, skipping stones into the lake at sunset. Some might covet the tidy colonial houses with their cottage gardens and covered porches.

They can have it. I want the general store.

Vermont has a knack for fancy, well-groomed general stores; one of the ways you can sniff out the influx of New York- New England tourist money is by poking through the merchandise in these local stores. Wine, designer cookware, imported cheese, freshly baked breads and pastries, local crafts, and, of course, the myriad permutations of maple syrup.

In central Pennsylvania, by contrast, most the country stores I've seen look like they're holding their breath. Cluttered, depressed, and out-of-date, they're waiting to let go and follow the light, beckoned up to heaven as the last of their customers head off to Wal-Mart. In the meantime, they're stocked with nonperishable pantry items, and with chips.

In Vermont, though, the general stores don't compete with Wal-Mart. This is largely due to the fact that there aren't any Wal-Marts in Vermont. But it's also because Vermont general stores have tourists to entertain, and not just a loose handful of cigarette-buyers and lottery-players to sustain.

But here's my question: which comes first? Must the tourists preceed the store-- or might it be precisely the general store that makes passers-by feel, suddenly, like tourists?

And thus I ask: might it be possible to transplant a Vermont general store to a state that isn't Vermont, and to have it thrive?

Can I have one, please?

The general store in North Hero, named "Hero's Welcome," seems to have found both a niche and an expert store buyer. Sited in a keenly-refurbished historic building, the general store bears all the qualities of the well-rounded generalist. A generalist, that is, in the strong sense-- not in the sense of dilettante.

The store opens first into a small café, with a few wooden tables, lots of newspapers, and an array of freshly-baked pastries-- savory as well as sweet. Further down is a sandwich counter and a wall of bottled-drink coolers; on the facing wall is a scaled-down wine store, and, adjacent to it, a sweet-shop display of penny candy displayed in wide-mouthed jars (we bought some horehound candies, lemon drops, and molasses mints. Straight out of the nineteenth century... but more on nostalgic sweets anon, I hope).

After that, the room widens, and to one side lie shelves bearing the standard provisions (canned goods, ketchup and mustard, medicine, and the like). To the other side is a clothing shop, with a standard array of regionally-themed t-shirts, fleeces, windbreakers, and cowboy hats. Beyond that the store becomes truly particular. The next room boasts a cathedral ceiling and a loft. In the loft are a few shelves of whimsical toys and games, as well as local maps and a small but meticulously-chosen selection of books. With a substantial collection of books by Vermont authors and plenty of titles on Vermont history and the geography of Lake Champlain, the bookstore's real standout is the cooking section. Lots of books about canning and preserving; on garden-to-table cuisine; the L.L. Bean book of game and fish cookery; and so forth. I bought a book about Prairie food there.

Beneath the loft is a wide selection of cookware and tableware, similar to what you might find at a small but upscale cookware boutique. One wall of the store featured strange forms of cutlery, including dental equipment and an assortment of scissors, magnifying glasses, and binoculars. Then, out back in an outbuilding, there's an outdoor outfitters, with fishing gear and various boating equipment for sale or rent. Out! Out!

The point is not that these types of displays don't exist anywhere else (although the petite-yet- competent bookstore is becoming rarer and rarer). What's remarkable is that each element of this general store represented its genre well: no part of the store could claim to be exhaustive, but what you found was singular enough to seem almost unique. Of course, nothing was particularly cheap. But herein lies the store's genius: you don't go there for cheap things. You go there for good things.

Yes, a little Martha Stewart. And given the locale, the idiom fits.

But I hardly think that the inverse mode of general store-keeping is any more proletarian. Just because a store's depleted stock looks like it dates from the era of Stalinism doesn't mean that the store is somehow keeping it real.

So can I have one? Can I? Pleeeeeeeeease?

CODA:

As we were driving home from Vermont yesterday we stopped at another general store near the Grand Isle Ferry. Coincidentally, in the Burlington free city newspaper, Seven Days, was a cover story on General Stores. The article is a review of a new book by Dennis Bathory-Kitsz entitled Country Stores of Vermont: A History and Guide. One key feature of this book-- which makes it especially worthy of purchase-- is its discussion of the business plans of a number of successful stores. The article, like the book, aims to dispel the mythology of the stores as nostalgic curiosities, and instead to focus on the economic realities they face-- How and why they survive; the challenges they face; and so forth.

I will gladly this book for anyone who wants to open a proper general store in my town.

Attack of the Late-Night Munchies

Some years ago there was a fair amount of press coverage devoted to a curious spike in early-morning laceration cases throughout the US. Suddenly there were all kinds of middle-class bank tellers, lawyers, and schoolteachers rushing to the emergency room with bloody palms and sliced fingers.

The culprit? Frozen bagels. At the height of the "bagel craze" of the early 90s-- itself a by-product of the coffee chain explosion-- people who weren't from New York City were buying bagels and freezing them.

The problems arose when it came time to un-freeze them. How do you toast a rock-solid frozen bagel? In our own enlightened era, of course, we know the secret: it is essential to split bagels before freezing them.

In the early 1990s, however, such wisdom had not yet made itself known. And thus the early morning found the D.I.Y. crowd struggling to cleave apart their still-frozen breakfast fare. Chef's knives-- themselves a popular gift item during this same era-- presented a ready option. But carving into a solid toroid-shaped object is no simple task. Thus the slicer's task is a treacherous one : left hand grips the bagel, right hand holds the knife. You know the rest.

Frozen or not, it was a recipe for laceration.

The injury became so common, in fact, that it spawned inventions like "the Bagel Guillotine" and the closely-related "Bagel Biter" (pictured). The principle of such devices, it seems, was to exact a measure of revenge upon the offending pastry itself. Take that, abuser! One could either execute it in swift yet definitive fashion (i.e. with the guillotine), or anticipate, in technological form, its slow, painful digestion (i.e. with the biter).

None of this is especially new. Here, for instance, is an article from franchising.com about the bagel industry's progress since those dark times. It's called "You've Come a Long Way, Bagel."

But are there any articles out there about late-night frozen pesto injuries? I think not. Yet the hazards of frozen pesto should be made known all the same.

I, for one, am the victim of a pesto injury.

It all started when K. across the street presented me with a little tupperware cup of homemade basil pesto. It was delicious. We were about to depart for Colorado, though, so I placed the tub in the freezer. It would be waiting for me when I got back.

And indeed, upon our return, there it was. On Monday night, just as I was about to go to bed, I found myself feeling somewhat peckish. The fridge was empty-- shockingly so-- since we'd only arrived back that day. There was food in the pantry, certainly. But there was no reason to do anything rash. I just needed a quick bedtime nosh, as the bagel crowd might say.

My thoughts turned to the pesto. It was frozen solid, but this was hardly a deterrent. In that sordid, bedtime way, I was ready-- eager, even-- for a few shards of pesto gelatto.

It was just a small tupperware tub, so I started hacking at with a steak knife. No need for anything heavy, I thought. No: a long, sharp, serrated blade would do the trick.

And it did.

An hour later, as I sat on a gurney in the emergency room waiting for stitches, I realized that the story I was telling about my injury sounded a bit louche. Hardly the stuff of sympathy.

"An unfortunate pesto incident," I'd explained to the triage nurse. "The blade hit mostly webbing, I think," I added, trying to sound tough. "Just between the fingers. I don't think there's any nerve damage."

"On the pain scale," the nurse asked, pointing to the diagram before me, "how much pain would you say you were in?"

This gave me pause. If I said "none," I'd be a laughing stock. One is a happy face, utterly content. Was I content? Certainly not: it was one in the morning, after all, and I never did manage to find the chunk of pesto that had popped out of the container as the knife pushed through the plastic and, in turn, my hand. I was still peckish.

"Two," I offered. That would make me look tough: yes, it was a pesto injury. But I was owning up to my pain. The injury might have been the kind of culinary disaster to befall the likes of Fraser Crane; but I was facing it like Patrick Swayze.

The doctor and I chuckled, indeed, about the classic Swayze vehicle, "Roadhouse," as he stitched up the front and back sides of the puncture.

"Imagine that," I said. "Telling the doctor he didn't need anesthetic."

"Hm," the doctor concurred. "Imagine that."

I chuckled, waiting for the anesthetic to take effect. And then I drove home and made some toast. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

A-Hole and Balls

It's all about keeping it classy, after all. Thus I promise: it's not as rude as it sounds.

It's a hot, sunny Friday afternoon in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We've just returned from splashing around in the principal spring itself, a bubbling, sulphuric pool that trickles into the Yampa river. At this junction in the river is also a small waterfall that empties into a deeper pool beneath. This, we are told, is the A-Hole.

The A-Hole smells like sulphur.

There are numerous other holes along the Yampa river as it passes through the town of Steamboat Springs: the B-Hole, the Peep-Hole, and so forth. If you rent an inner tube you can float downstream through all these sites; at each you will find kids jumping off the rocks into the deep water. It's really fun.

After diving over the falls at the A-Hole, we went to lunch at one of the older restaurants in town, Double Z's. It's the kind of place where you expect to hear George Thorogood on the stereo, and do. (Seriously!). They sell t-shirts featuring two pigs having sex, bearing the motto: "Best Pork in Town."

The B-Hole has been renamed the ZZ-Hole in honor of this Steamboat institution.

After our plunges through the A-Hole, we visited the Double Z for lunch, because this, of course, is the restaurant in Steamboat known for serving Rocky Mountain Oysters.

And the verdict? A) the good part: bull's testicles, sliced and flattened, are similar to sweetbreads in both flavor and consistency. Thus, as I had hoped. Not only were they inoffensive, they hold the promise of being delicious. A delicacy rather than a dare.

B) the bad part: as the photo we took illustrates, the "oysters" were deep-fried virtually beyond recognition. And fried food tends to taste, well, like fried food. So if we reached a saturation point in our testicle-munching, it was less for the peculiarity of the organ than for the limitations of the preparation.

But there's a world of possibility here-- and I wonder which adventurous western chefs have explored this organ for its highbrow possibilities. Not that I think it requires a highbrow preparation. I wonder if, just like real, aquatic oysters, there's a way to enjoy them simply. Not raw, of course. But perhaps roasted over a prairie fire?

Quickly, Green

Two nights ago at Camp E-Colo we celebrated taco nite. C.W. made some fabulous shrimp tacos, marinating the shrimp in tequila, lime, and salt before pan-searing them. The other revelation was to serve the shrimp with shredded red cabbage and a salsa verde-sour cream sauce. A keeper, for sure.

I made carnitas from that wonderful recipe I've used over and over these past few months-- here, again, is the link. There was enough meat not only for the tacos but for pork po' boys last night as well.

The other element of the taco dinner was an improvised pork chili verde I'd made earlier that day. I am sure there are recipes out there for chili verde, but I refuse to look at them. Imagine composing a song in your head, only to realize that the song you'd composed was in fact something you'd heard subliminally. I find such revelations unnecessary and somewhat depressing. Besides, wasn't there a Bugs Bunny cartoon about this once?

So no need to go through the process of researching the recipe to uncover any accidental plagiarism. The idea does, in fact, have a source: one day, perhaps a year or so ago, I found myself watching a show on television about a Western-style covered-wagon cook-off competition. It was riveting, like a traffic accident. The chaps. The frontier dresses. And, perhaps most of all, the mustaches!

The essential point was that everything had to be cooked over an open flame, and to involve, it seemed, a Dutch oven. So there was a lot of cornbread, and a lots of chili.

Someone, I recall, made a green tomatillo and pork chili, and the image stuck with me. It became a fantasy. I wondered about the contents, before realizing that it was a matter of cobbling together all the green things I could think of. And what better place to experiment with such cowboy fare than in sunny Colorado?

Here, to the best of my recollection, is the recipe.

Starting with a pork shoulder (I couldn't find a boneless one, so the first step involved removing the awkwardly-shaped shoulder blade), cut off any hard fat and then cut the meat into a 1/2 inch dice (or so). I used about 2 1/2 or 3 pounds of meat. Salt the meat. (This can be done in advance, too, as in the carnitas recipe).

In a heavy bottomed pot, sear the pork cubes in vegetable oil, which will require several batches.

Reduce the heat to medium, and, in the accumulated fat (unless there's more than a 1/2 inch of fat in the pan, in which case, drain off the excess), sweat 2 chopped onions, 3 chopped green peppers, 2 chopped serrano peppers, and 6-8 cloves of garlic, diced. After about 5-7 minutes, add about 1 1/2 pounds of chopped tomatillos, and continue to sweat the mixture until the vegetables are soft.

Add the pork, as well as healthy doses (1 tbsp or more) of chili powder, cumin, black pepper, oregano, and ancho chili powder. Add water to cover the meat.

Simmer for several hours, until the meat falls apart and the flavors are melded. Add salt, tobasco, and additional chili powder to taste. I also added, at some point, a small amount of honey and a small amount of cider vinegar to bring out the sweetness.

Serve with diced onion, cilantro, and sour cream (or C.W.'s brilliant combo of salsa verde and sour cream).