July 31, 2008Tomato prep 101
My apologies to anyone who, like me, has spent many summers bent over a boiling pot and then a cold water bath, preparing tomatoes for canning or sauce-making or what have you. This entry is for anyone who needs a little instruction on tomato processing. Step 1: Boil a big pot of water. Drop in tomatoes, about 4 at a time, and blanch for about 60 seconds or until the skins split. 
Last night, when I took these pictures, I made a batch of tomato sauce. I chose not to bother with straining out the seeds, but next time I may try to strain them out for a cleaner sauce. I have found that I like the flavor of butter in the sauce very much. But I am still working on perfecting the recipe. Thanks to my good friend Randy for these lovely tomatoes. If I had to rely on my piddly plants, I'd have nada so far. July 30, 2008Smoking gun in the salmonella scare?Officials reportedly find samonella in the irrigation water at a Mexican farm: See CNN or The Washington Post Reader recipe: Wineberry Custard Pie
This photo was sent to me by reader Daniel, who picked a mess of wineberries on a recent camping trip and transformed them into this lovely custard pie. Daniel tells me he grew up baking and worked as a mess boy, and later a steward, on an oil tanker. Sounds like he knows a thing or two about baking a good pie. Daniel says he grew up eating fruit custard pies with everything from peaches or apples to cherries or blueberries. He runs into folks all the time who have never had a custard pie, and I'm racking my brain to remember if I've had a custard pie before myself. With all the pies my grandmother used to make, I find it kind of hard to believe I have never had some form of a custard pie -- besides pumpkin, of course. At any rate, Daniel shared his recipe for a custard pie, which looks too incredibly easy to pass up. A word on wineberries: They are a wild, raspberry-like berry that can be found in these parts during the summertime. My predecessor on the food beat, Beth Macy, did a column about wineberries once. I don't have much experience with them. My wild berry-picking experience is limited to huckleberries, wild blackberries and tea berries, which are really only good for eating right then and there, in my opinion. Below, you'll find Daniel's custard pie recipe. And if we're all very lucky, maybe Win will decide to share her recipe for rhubarb custard pie (hint, hint). Enjoy! Update: I forgot to note that Daniel says if he makes a peach or apple custard pie, he sprinkles cinnamon over the top before baking. July 29, 2008From farmland to suburbiaCheck out this poignant online documentary on the MediaStorm Web site about two Illinois families -- one that farmed their land for generations before they had to sell it and another that moved into one of the suburban homes built on the old farm. Photographer Scott Strazzante spent 14 years documenting the two families. The result was this seven minute doc called "Common Ground." Click the box in the middle of the site to watch. One quote from the doc: "It’s the next step and the next generation. That farmland changes to suburban and you still see the same qualities of life even though it’s no longer a farmland." Really? What do you think? Big cheese
Meadow Creek Dairy in Grayson County, Virginia has taken home more enviable awards in the world of cheese making! The dairy, which is headed up by husband and wife team Rick and Helen Feete and their children, claimed second place in the Best in Show category and first place in the Farmstead category at the American Cheese Society competition in Chicago last weekend. Both awards were for their Grayson (pictured), a rich, nutty white cheese that, like all the Meadow Creek cheeses, is made from milk produced by their own dairy herd. According to the society's Web site, more than 1,100 cheeses were judged. The winners of all 22 categories went up for the Best in Show award. Here's what the Feetes had to say about the awards on their Web site: "We're honored -- and a little stunned -- that the judges chose Grayson over so many other excellent cheeses, and even more flattered by the best of show award. Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years; you've helped prove that a small, local dairy can hold their own in the big time as well as anyone." If you've never tried Meadow Creek Dairy cheese, look for it at Annie Kay's Whole Foods, Harvest Moon Food Store, Gourmet Pantry, Eats Natural Foods, Vintage Cellar or the Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op. Read more about Meadow Creek Dairy here or here. Tuesday TidbitsGiven the pitiful number of replies to the cookbook giveaway yesterday, I can only conclude that: a) nobody was interested in that book, or Hopefully it was the latter, because this really is a beautiful cookbook. We do have a cookbook winner, however, and her name is Angela G. She wrote, "The dirt under my fingernails, my aching shoulders, and pinched back are all reasons why I deserve the organic cookbook you are giving away today. In addition to the 40+ hour work week I spend behind a desk I also work on an organic farm that provides weekly harvests of organic veggies and free range eggs to CSA shareholders in my small town." To check out Angela's entire response, look below the jump. Congrats, Angela! E-mail me your mailing address and I'll send "Organic Marin" your way. In other news, tomorrow is National Bring Your Salad to Work Day. That's according to Kraft Salad Dressings. I can't imagine how they would benefit from such a day. Marketing aside, it seems like a good excuse to bring a crisp, cool salad to work for lunch. I've got some romaine, cherry tomatoes, green pepper and garbanzo beans lurking in my fridge this moment. Next up, does anyone watch "The Next Food Network Star?" If so, it may amuse you to learn that someone on the Food Network's Web team accidentally revealed the winner online before the finale ran. Oops!! And finally, has anyone out there ever had a custard pie with fruit? As a lover of pies, I was surprised to realize that I never have had such a pie. A reader wrote in last night with his recipe for wineberry custard pie, which looks 10 times easier than actually collecting the wineberries for the pie. I'll post the recipe, along with his beautiful picture, later today. July 28, 2008Monday Giveaway!
The weekend flew by as usual, with a few blessings thrown in. I harvested my first round of cherry tomatoes (oh, the sweetness) and threw some lime on my other plants to hopefully rid them, once and for all, of the blossom-end rot. More importantly, I learned that blog reader Lori gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Samuel, early Friday morning. That makes regular blog reader Kathy a proud grandma! Congratulations to them!! Let's continue to brighten up this Monday morning with a cookbook giveaway! This week's feature book is "Organic Marin: Recipes from Land to Table" by Tim Porter and Farina Wong Kingsley. It was produced by Marin Magazine and includes a forward about organic gardening. Even if you don't grow or buy all organic, there are some wonderful recipes in this book. I was immediately drawn to one for a shaved zucchini salad with Italian sheep's milk cheese, which I will share below the jump. July 25, 2008The summer of the watermelon
It's all Kathy's fault. In other words, my friend and editor Kathy Lu is responsible for a warm weather craving that I haven't experienced so intensely since I was a child. No, I am not pregnant. But Kathy is. Early in her pregnancy, my friend started yearning for the ruby-red stuff. Its icy cold sweetness seemed to quell her first trimester discomfort in a way nothing else did, like an elixir for nausea. She began to bring it in Tupperware containers to work, munching on big chunks of it in her office. I'd walk in to talk about an idea for a column and spy her hunched over her precious fruit. One day, I brought in some fresh cantaloupe to share with my co-workers and Lu said, "Oh, good. I forgot to bring my watermelon." While reporting the ethnic market series, I told her one day that I was heading out to visit a few markets and see what I could find. "I forgot to bring fruit today," she said. "Could you see if you can find me some?" Okay, so her insatiable desire for watermelon this summer applies to just about any fresh fruit. But she isn't fooling me -- I know she'd take watermelon over anything else. Gradually, I began to have sympathy cravings. I discovered that almost nothing tastes as good on a hot summer day than a freshly carved watermelon. I don't eat it like I did when I was a kid, plowing my face into a big slice and working my way toward the rind, spitting seeds like an M-16, until my cheeks were sticky with juice. Now I'm more dignified -- I buy seedless, organic watermelon and store it in the refrigerator for a day or two before carving it into bite-size chunks. But oh, those frigid chunks are hard to stop eating. Biting down, I can almost feel every little cell of the flesh bursting between my teeth and releasing its cool, cucumbery sweetness. I brought some for breakfast this morning, and I've got some at home in the fridge. I know you're supposed to be nice to pregnant ladies and all, but Kathy isn't getting any of my watermelon. July 24, 2008Beautiful tea
I received a pretty little press kit this morning from the folks at Memorable Entertaining, a new Web site. It was a gold box wrapped in a purple ribbon which contained an invitation to visit the site. Also inside the box was a package of two cookies and a tiny plastic baggie containing a strange green and pink ball. Was it animal, vegetable or mineral? It appeared to be vegetable. My apologies to Memorable Entertaining (I will check the site, I promise), but it was this little ball that really drew my attention. I found, after reading the attached pamphlet, that it is a Numi flowering tea. If you steep the little tea ball in hot water, it gradually unfolds into a beautiful underwater flower. I guess it wouldn't have the same effect if you tried to steep it in anything other than a clear glass teapot, though. Still, these flowering teas are so lovely that it might just be worth it to buy a glass teapot and a collection of these teas for the tea-lover on your gift list. What a wonderful birthday or Christmas gift that would be. Not only is it soothing to sit down with a hot mug of tea when you're chilly or tired, but now your private tea party can be soothing to the eyes, as well. Or better yet, invite some friends over, open a box of butter cookies, arrange a few truffles on a plate and catch up while your tea blooms in front of you. Check out the Numi Web site to watch a tea ball flower before your eyes. You can also find flavors and ordering information there. Looks like a box of 18 tea balls can be had for only around $26. Photo source: Worldpantry.com July 23, 2008Food bits from around the Web
It's been a while since I cruised all of my favorite food sites on the Internet, namely because my Google Reader crapped out on me for a couple of months, displaying nothing but a blank page. When I finally talked to the IT department about it, they simply upgraded my Internet browser and everything magically reappeared. Genius me. Of course, by then, I had about 500 Serious Eats and Slashfood entries backed up to read. How in the world those people post more than 30 entries in 24 hours' time is beyond me. Moving right along, here's a snapshot of some of the entries that caught my eye: From the New York Times yesterday, a story about how affluent locavores in big cities like San Francisco are hiring companies to plant vegetable gardens in their own backyards. The gardeners plant and tend the garden, then harvest the veggies and leave them in a neat little box on the doorstep. I was amused by the photograph of folks hanging out on the patio, fiddling with a laptop, while some overall-clad fellow slaves away in the garden. July 22, 2008Should we stop buying expensive wine?
"This book is dedicated to the idea that blind tasting can help us stop spending too much money on wines we don't really like, and that it can help us start spending less money on wines we really do like." This book arrived in my mailbox last week encased in a brown paper bag. How fitting. The author assembled more than 500 blind taste-testers (experts and novices), who sampled more than 6,000 glasses of wine. In the end, they picked 100 winning wines under $15 that beat out wines costing $50 to $150 per bottle. So, which wines made the cut? July 21, 2008Three successes
Yesterday turned into experimentation day in my kitchen. After a long, hot day Saturday helping my mom with a yard sale in Alleghany County, I was ready for a relaxing Sunday puttering around the stove -- and, as it turned out, the grill. While rummaging around the refrigerator for random produce to throw into my scrambled eggs (artichokes, tomato, banana pepper), I saw the bag of green peanuts I bought at Global Foods in Blacksburg last week. They still looked okay, so I set them to boil in a big pot of water and dumped in an unhealthy amount of salt. Those of you who read the blog regularly know this made the second time I attempted to make boiled peanuts as tasty as the ones at roadside stands. Well, by golly, I did it this time! They took on the trademark dark, chocolate color and the wonderful, briny flavor. Now all I need to do to perfect them is cut back a little on the salt next time and boil them or let them set about one more hour. The key truly was to just boil the living crap out of them for hours on end. We finally ate them at 4 p.m. Success number two came in the form of a cannellini bean paste for bruschetta. I'd had something similar at a restaurant at the Biltmore in Asheville and have been meaning to try and duplicate it ever since.
July 18, 2008Salad Superlatives
Roanoke Times photographer Stephanie Klein-Davis sends me e-mails on a regular basis with story ideas about food, cooking or traveling. Like me, she seems to have one of those topics on the brain at all times. Yesterday, she sent me an idea that piqued my interest immediately. Where are the best salads in Roanoke and the New River Valley? Obviously, if you've got the freshest ingredients at home, then perhaps that most delicious salad is on your own dining room table. But if you are too hot or tired to make dinner yourself, where do you go for a great salad when you've really got the hankering? Restaurant salads don't have to be healthy. In fact, much of the time, they are not -- particularly if they are loaded down with fried chicken tenders, cheese, egg, bacon and all that good stuff. But for the purpose of this blog question, let's throw healthy right out the window in favor of delicious. I can think of two of my favorite salads right off the bat. July 17, 2008Not your average peach recipes
You would pretty much have to be in a coma to be unaware of this season's bumper peach crop. (My apologies to anyone who is actually in a coma -- sadly, you are missing out on some good eating.) At any rate, WFIR, WDBJ-7 and The Roanoke Times have all run stories this week about how last year's dismal peach crop has been rejuvenated into a boom crop this year. Our friend Amy Hanek, a frequent reader of this blog and a blogger herself, has also posted a couple of entries about peaches this week. After an early warm spell and late frosts nipped last year's stone fruits in the bud, the stars aligned this year. Warm weather during pollination season, moderate rainfall during the fruits' developmental stages and Mother Nature's tendency to push for a comeback the year after a loss have put us in Peach Heaven. You can find the best peaches, in my opinion, down at your local farmer's market. My husband brought home one of the biggest peaches I've ever seen -- it's nearly the size of a softball -- from Ikenberry Orchards this week. If you've bought a big mess of peaches, it's possible that you'll get your fill of raw ones and need to cook a few up before they are overripe. Amy's peach crisp recipe, my mom's cobbler recipe and peach pie are all wonderful ideas. But I've been thinking about some less common recipes for peaches, too. Maybe something with a savory punch instead of dessert. I scoured a few cookbooks and located what I believe are some devilishly good-looking peach recipes. A few of them are ridiculously easy, too. Take a look and see what you think. And, as always, if you've got a great recipe you can share, fire away! July 16, 2008Great minds cook alikeOn the very same day I chose to blog about campfire cooking, this informative article, "Playing with Fire," was published in The Oregonian. July 15, 2008Campfire cookin'
So why do I still love to go camping? You're lookin' at it. Campfire cooking is one of my greatest cooking pleasures. I don't know if it's the smoky flavor that some foods take on or the challenge of producing a decent meal with limited resources. Either way, when my mother and I went camping this past weekend up in Bath County, we made sure to pack a bunch of goodies for breakfast. The potatoes came right out of the garden. We wrapped them in aluminum foil and put them down in the campfire the night before to let them bake. The next morning, we unwrapped them, cut them up and fried them with onions in the hot bacon grease. A shortcut for campfire potatoes is to bake them in the microwave before you leave and pack them in the cooler for the next morning. They take a lot less time to fry up that way than a raw potato. The eggs were scrambled later in the same skillet and the English muffins were toasted on a grill grate over the open campfire. They tasted of a hint of wood smoke, but we still slathered them with a friend's homemade blueberry preserves. After a breakfast like this, it's tempting to crawl back inside the tent. But there's no way I'm doing that....there might be spiders in there. Anyone else out there a campfire cook? Share your smokin' hot tips. July 13, 2008Green Tomato Ketchup
I must apologize to blog reader Jay for forgetting to address his question about green tomato ketchup. He posted another question about it on the blog this weekend hoping someone could share a recipe. I've never heard of green tomato ketchup before, unless you count that unnaturally colored stuff they feed kids. The thought of it instantly made me hungry, though -- I can just imagine it being slightly tart, slightly sweet and delicious on all sorts of foods. I don't have a recipe for green tomato ketchup, so the best I could do for Jay was a Google search, which turned up a few variations on the same theme. One calls for dry mustard, Worchestershire and pickling spices, another for red and green peppers and ground cabbage and another for tart apples. They seem to vary from a ketchup consistency to more of a relish or a chow-chow. I don't know what the ketchup Jay remembers was like, but I'd be curious as to whether any of these recipes sound close. I also want to know what Jay remembers doing with the green ketchup. Jay, if none of these looks good to you, run a Google search for "Green Tomato Ketchup" and check out some of the other results. Maybe you'll find what you're looking for. As always, if any other blog readers can help out Jay, please chime in. July 11, 2008We all scream...
It's National Ice Cream Month! Oh, joy, this is so much more fun than, say, National Liver Month or National Mountain Oyster Month. Perhaps it's all the fresh peaches rolling in to the farmer's markets or the strawberries I still have frozen in my freezer or the dark, sweet cherries that will be in season for about another week, but I've been thinking a lot about homemade ice cream. I don't own an ice cream maker, but it might be time to think about investing in one. Meanwhile, I have noticed a vendor down on the Roanoke City Market on some days who is making ice cream right there on site and selling it. I haven't tried it yet, but I have been pretty tempted. Homemade ice cream can also be had at many of the pick-your-own fruit sites. Speaking of which, I was just talking to Frank Levering of Levering Orchard down in Ararat and he says he'll be open this weekend. He has sweet dark cherries, yellow cherries and sour pie cherries. Is anyone out there a homemade ice cream expert? Perhaps you could share some advice about the best ice cream makers and methods with the rest of us. Meanwhile, I'm going to share a quick quiz with you guys to test out your knowledge of ice cream. As a bonus I think I'll tack on a recipe for peach ice cream. Have a COOL weekend! July 10, 2008The RT lunch ladies (and one lunch guy)
We used to run a little wire piece in Inside Out every Thursday where several women who called themselves the "Lunch Ladies" would eat and rate convenience food products like frozen dinners. I had to think of the Lunch Ladies recently when I received a huge box packed with four frozen dinners inside a styrofoam cooler. The brand was Claim Jumper, which owns a chain of restaurants out West. They have also staked a claim in the land of frozen foods, and although you can't find one of their restaurants in our area, you can now purchase their frozen dinners, pies and other goods at local grocery stores. They looked pretty good in the boxes, which were huge. The flavors were Chicken Marsala, Cheese Ravioli, Beef Pot Pie and Shrimp Scampi. I believe they go for around $4 or $5. Four co-workers agreed to eat and rate the frozen dinners. Check out our ratings (on a scale of 1-5) after the jump, then tell me whether you think you'll try Claim Jumper frozen foods sometime soon. If you have already tried them, feel free to add your own ratings! Continue reading "The RT lunch ladies (and one lunch guy)" » July 9, 2008Dessert for breakfast?My Aunt Cindy is the queen of dessert for breakfast. On holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the rest of us forced down a piece of pie or cake after dinner despite the fact that we were already disgustingly full, she was smart enough to save it for the next morning. According to Cindy, there's nothing better than a piece of leftover pie with a hot cup of coffee in the morning. I wish that we could all eat dessert for breakfast every morning without becoming either fat or malnourished, depending on our respective metabolisms. But this morning, I ran across a recipe that might just be healthy enough for breakfast, and it sure looks delish. These Cherry Whole Grain Cereal Bars contain a mixture of whole wheat and all-purpose flour. They are sweetened with a mixture of Splenda and brown sugar. They contain rolled oats and dried cherries, both of which have some nice health benefits. Of course, there's butter in the recipe, too. But everyone needs a little fat in the morning to get them going! I only wish this recipe called for fresh cherries, because there's been a bumper crop of them this year. If anyone wants to get experimental and try to make it with fresh or frozen cherries to see how it turns out, I'd love to hear about it. July 8, 2008It's a jungle out there
And now I present to you...Amy T., the winner of the latest Cookbook Giveaway! Amy won "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea" by Martha Hall Foose by being the first person to e-mail me a picture of her tomato plants. "All green. Horrendous," she wrote. Well, maybe the cookbook has a few ideas for green tomatoes, Amy! Thanks to the others who sent in lovely photos of their tomato plants. Everyone else can save themselves the trouble of running out to the garden with a camera. And now, I leave you with the runners-up: Long overdue cookbook giveaway!
Geez, I've been slacking on the cookbook contests. It's been weeks since I last gave away a decent cookbook. This time around, in honor of mid-summer, I think I'll offer up Martha Hall Foose's "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook." I love this book because the first time I cracked it open, I was greeted by a huge picture of brown beans cooked with green beans and a big, glistening ham hock. My grandmother always used pinto beans to mix with canned green beans. It was one of my favorite country side dishes (green beans are also wonderful cooked with tiny new potatoes). In "Screen Doors," Foose doesn't just stick to the old standards like fried chicken and collard greens. Her recipes for stuffed sweet onions, sweet potato dumplings, cornbread crusted white chili and root beer-glazed ham made me want to shut down this computer and go home to cook. Below the jump, I'll share a recipe for her Tallahatchie Tomatoes, a zesty casserole dish that she recommends as an atypical offering for Sunday brunch. Want to win this book? Be the first person who e-mails me a picture of your tomato plants, whether they look good or not, at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com. July 7, 2008New restaurant -- free food!I love Fourth of July weekend, but if I don't see another hot dog or hamburger for a month, I'll be a happy camper. Ditto that on pasta salad, potato salad and deviled eggs. Well, I guess I could always force down a couple of deviled eggs. If you're like me and are ready to move on to more exotic flavors, perhaps this news is for you: Doreen Sidor, a personal chef who formerly taught cooking classes at Twist & Turns in downtown Roanoke, has opened up her own restaurant at 4210 Brambleton Avenue called Doreen's Gourmet (in the former High Point Coffee building). Not only does Doreen plan to sell gourmet meals to go, sandwiches, salads, coffee and tea, smoothies and more, she also wants to continue having cooking classes from time to time in her new kitchen. Keep an eye on our Foodie Calendar in each Thursday's Inside Out for details about those classes. Doreen is having an Grand Opening celebration at her new restaurant tomorrow and Wednesday night from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The event will feature free wine tastings from Valhalla Vineyards, free gourmet food samples and live music! I'm betting there will be no hot dogs on the menu... July 4, 2008Goin' where the water tastes like wineHappy Independence Day, everyone! July 3, 2008Practice makes perfect peanuts
Over the years, I have become quite the fan of boiled peanuts. I remember the first time my father bought some from a wizened old man at a roadside stand in the Carolinas. The shells were an ugly, dark brown color and the peanuts themselves looked more like pinto beans or kidney beans to me. They were soft like cooked beans, too, and salty. Not everyone in my family likes them, but my own devotion to boiled peanuts was sealed when our buddy Mike started bringing them to the beach every summer. There's nothing like sitting back in your beach chair, listening to the ocean and sucking on salty boiled peanuts. Yesterday, I came across some green (raw) peanuts in the shell at a local market. I wondered: Could I possibly recreate the boiled peanuts of the roadside stands in the Carolinas? The answer was a resounding NO, I could not recreate them. At least not in about 45 minutes. I did try, however. I boiled them for about 20 minutes in salty water, then let them soak for another 10 minutes or so. At that point, everyone got impatient for a snack, so I drained them and served them up. The shells looked nothing like the lovely ones pictured above. They just looked like tan peanut shells. I wondered where that dark color comes from. The peanuts inside were softened and had a nice flavor, but they were nowhere near as salty as roadside boiled peanuts. I realized then that every time I've bought boiled peanuts, they've come out of a big cauldron filled with hot, salty water. Who knows how long they have been sitting there? Perhaps all day. And maybe steeping in that liquid for hours turns them a darker color and lets the salt soak in. I'm sure some Southerner out there has the answers to these questions. I don't consider this a failed experiment, just the first attempt at a snack that I'm determined to keep practicing until I get it right. Isn't that the secret to most good cooking? July 2, 2008Ode to the Mason jar
In case you missed it, check out today's Front Burner column about the Mason jar's 150th birthday this year. The actual birthday, I guess, would be the patent date of November 30, but with so many pressure cookers hissing away during the summer months to preserve veggies from the garden, it seemed like a great time to wax nostalgic about the versatile container. As I wrote in the column, my memories are full of Mason jars. And those jars in my mind are filled with everything from Grandma's damson preserves to Paw-Paw's honey to the squirrel torsos Mom used to can for Dad's eating pleasure. In fact, our pantry was always lined with a whole rainbow of fruit- and veggie- filled Mason jars. And that was just the beginning. They hung out in the shed, filled with seeds, and in the garage, filled with nails and pins and anything else my dad or my grandfather saw fit to fill them with. I'd love to know your fondest memories of the Mason jar. Does anyone collect them? As you'll see in my column, they can be worth quite a bit of money if you know what you're looking for. Matthew Rowley, who wrote a book called "Moonshine!" shared a recipe with me for the story, but it came in too late for press. I'll share it here instead. It's not what you're thinking, you naughty kids! That stuff is illegal! This is a recipe for a spiced-up homemade "ketchup" that Rowley says is tasty on everything from sandwiches to soup to roasted meat. Sounds like a great way to spice up meatloaf, too. July 1, 2008Beets me!
Why don't people like beets? I pondered this question last night as I slowly chewed and savored my tiny, baby beets. It made me think of how my mother used to serve us sliced, boiled beets for dinner and I would scarf them up with just a little salt to complement their naturally sweet flavor. What kind of little kid eats beets without complaint? Well, maybe I'm recalling a rosier version of the tale, but I'm pretty sure that kid was me. Fast forward to earlier this month, when my story about local food producers was published in the newspaper. Splashed across the front of the Extra section was a picture of Richard Ursomarso up at Waterbear Mountain Farm holding a big clump of dirt-covered beets that he had just pulled from the earth. Somewhere along the way, they were incorrectly identified as turnips in the caption. By the time the proofs came around, I was on vacation. Would I have recognized them as beets instead of turnips? I'd like to think so, but since it's been a coon's age since I ate a fresh beet, I decided that I had better reacquaint myself. |
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