Tag Archives: Slow Food

Slow News Day: A Bumper Crop of Gardeners

Posted on June 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

Last summer, I noticed a spate of news stories about the rise of home gardening. In July, ’08, Newsweek and NPR both reported that concerns about food safety, as well as an increasing desire to eat locally and healthily, was turning a lot of folks into Green Thumbs. People like Fred Davis and Yvette Roman Davis, bloggers at Beyond the Lawn, reported reclaiming their L.A. front lawn for a thriving Victory Garden.

I thought this was supremely cool, as it seemed to usher in an era of getting away from water-guzzling, appearance-oriented lawns and into practical, food-producing gardens. These prove beautiful, too, of course. It’s just a shift in perspective and priorities that allows us to bring the backyard up to the front. (Some neighborhoods have even loosened their restrictions on such sustainable practices as front-yard growing and line-drying of laundry.)

Peppers

As a bonus, front yard gardeners get to know — and sometimes feed — their neighbors. Community happens when we move yard and porch living out of the private and into the public. This summer, I’ve already heard about two monthly plant exchanges and a weekly vegetable harvest exchange in my neighborhood, as well as new farmers’ markets in my larger community.

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Of course, further afield, the Obama White House broke ground for its organic vegetable garden (involving local schoolchildren in the process), the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden in the 1940s.

I’m very moved by this picture of First Lady Michelle Obama and children in the garden, that appears in the White House blog. Food from the garden is feeding the White House and Washington, D.C.’s Miriam’s Kitchen, which feeds the homeless.

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Last week’s San Francisco Chronicle had another story about the rise in home gardening. Chris Romas, the president of W. Atlee Burpee, the world’s largest seed company, said he hasn’t seen this kind of interest in home growing in 30 years. Lots of currents are influencing people to turn or return to gardening — It’s a cost-effective way to supply one’s food, you have complete control over the way your food is grown, you can get in touch with the land, you can enjoy companionship or solitude, and it’s very satisfying to grow and make your own food.

I have fond memories of vegetable gardening with my dad, growing up. We had wonderful raised beds and great Southern California sun. But you don’t have to have either to enjoy growing food. I’ve grown tomatoes on a Manhattan balcony and pumpkin, corn, peppers and more on my fog-shrouded deck in Mill Valley. If you’ve been following my Deck Garden tales, you know the advice to use your vertical space, with trellises and vines. I also urge beginning gardeners to start small, follow seed-pack directions, weed out seedlings so that the hardiest new plantings will have room to grow, and harvest your crops, so you can enjoy them and also give new growth some room to come in.

I’m going to take my own advice and have a big home-grown salad for lunch. This is my 2’x 2′ lettuce box today:

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This is the box a month ago:

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Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

White House Garden Photo Courtesy of The White House/Joyce N. Boghosian

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Posted in Community, Deck Garden, Slow News, Sustainability, The Great Outdoors

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Cheese of the Week: Brigante

Posted on May 17, 2009 | 8 comments

Brigante

When Alex, the cheesemeister at my local Whole Foods recommends a cheese, I tend to listen, and this week he told me about a sheep cheese called Brigante, from Sardinia. Then he cut a slice for me to taste.

I found it an extremely pleasing cheese, very mild and so creamy as to be almost buttery in texture. Subsequent tastes confirmed that Brigante tasted a lot like a cow cheese, with the sheep taste coming on late, almost as an afterthought. As such, the subtle sheep flavor lends a pleasant tang to the buttery goodness. I tasted hints of something caramel-y and toasty, along with the buttery, milky taste, but those were very subtle. This is a mild cheese — It’s clean, supple, sweet, easy to like and, oh, easy to just go back for one more slice.

I haven’t even mentioned another of its great gifts. This Italian sheep cheese is a bargain, especially given its taste and pedigree. It’s from the huge Pinna dairy, in Thiesi, in the northern part of Italy’s Sardinia island. It is a Pecorino cheese, though it doesn’t have any of the Pecorino’s hard, crunchy texture or sharp taste. Brigante is a young cheese, matured only a few weeks, and it has a papery coating instead of a rind. The cheese’s attractive pale yellow color compliments its smooth texture and taste. You could easily offer it on a cheese board at a gathering, or have it on a picnic, with grapes and a light, fruity wine.

If Brigante were a dinner guest, it would be the one rounding out the party, not calling a lot of attention to itself, but being a good listener and guest — blending in, universally liked, the one everyone talks about the next day and invites back: What a nice cheese!

Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Butter and Egg, Who Moved My Cheese?

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First Peach of the Season: Make a Wish

Posted on May 15, 2009 | 2 comments

Some time ago, a friend told me about his tradition of making a wish as he bit into the first peach of the season. I’ve never heard or seen anything about this custom since, but I made a point of adopting it nonetheless. It’s such a happy moment when the seasonal farmers’ markets start up again and the grocery stores start offering local berries and stone fruit in season and at in-season prices.

WhitePeach

For me, that moment happened this morning, as I was greeted at the market with the first real deals on ripe, sweet berries and the first cherries, apricots and peaches. I chose the most local peach, California’s Summerwhite, which happened to be the one that felt the ripest. White peaches, though not the classic deep summer yellow, have a multi-colored soft peach skin, and fruit the pale yellow color of spring butter. They also boast a lower acidity than yellow peaches, which renders them sweet and flavorful, even though these first ones have a relatively short growing season.

White peaches also ripen more quickly than traditional peaches and they tend to taste sweet when picked, in contrast to yellow peaches, which sweeten over time, as they ripen and acid levels drop. Though white peaches have been around for about 30 years and are popular in Asia, it’s taken American consumers a bit of time to discover their joys.

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Once home, I washed the ripest specimen and bit right in, ushering in summer right then and there. It was sweet, wonderful, and extremely juicy. The air coming through the open window suddenly felt extra warm and the leaves on the trees seemed particularly green. My wish? A great, warm, sensual summer, with lots of time to enjoy family, friends and nature, to be outside, to make and grow things, to eat healthy food and to take enthusiastic bites out of life.

PeachJam

Last year, we made peach chutney and apricot-lavender jam, among other delights. I sense another good canning season to come.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Porch Swing, The Great Outdoors, To Market

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Cheese of the Week: Blu del Monviso

Posted on May 10, 2009 | Leave a comment


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If you love the distinctive taste of blue cheese, but would like to try something more creamy than crumbly, then Blu del Monviso, from the Serale family dairy in Italy’s Piedmont region, is your blue. It’s extremely soft and spreadable and, as a result, is excellent on a water cracker. Its dense, creamy texture gives this cow’s milk blue a great mouth feel and incredible staying power, which is good because the taste is wonderful — sweet, milky, a bit nutty and somewhat mild, but with plenty of traditional, pungent blue-cheese mold. Blu del Monviso is especially rich (60-day aging brings out the mold), but without a sharp bite, rendering the contrast between taste and texture an exceptional treat. It also has a chewy rind my husband calls “toothworthy” and, indeed, some of the most tasty cheese was right at the rind.

This cheese would be fantastic on a burger, or anywhere else you might use, say, brie. It’s also great spread on a thick piece of whole wheat walnut bread and accompanied with grapes. Being the port fiend I am, I had this with a 20-year Cockburn’s Tawny. The caramelness of the port offered the perfect complement for the Monviso’s distinct taste.

MonvisoPackage

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Cheese of the Week: Coolea

Posted on May 3, 2009 | 2 comments

coolea

On a recent trip to my old stomping grounds in Santa Monica, CA, I wandered down Montana Avenue and into a delightful, relatively new cheese enterprise, Andrew’s Cheese Shop. Not only was the Andrew on hand, along with some hearty cheese tasters, he personally recommended a Coolea cheese from Ireland’s County Cork. “Outfreakingstanding” was his word for it, and he was right.

Coolea (pronounced Coo-LAY) is hand-made on a small Irish farm (near the town of Coolea) by the Willems family, which is now into its second generation of cheesemakers. The family emigrated to Ireland from the Netherlands, and they employ their wonderful Dutch methods (and recipe) to produce a cheese that is indeed Gouda-like. It’s nutty and mild, with a nice semi-firm texture and a very pleasing mouth feel. Other flavors begin to come through as it sits on the tongue. There’s a hint of the Irish farm, of the earth, sweet grasses and flowers, which Andrew says make this cheese an outstanding example of Terroir — of its taste bearing the land from which it was produced. If that weren’t enough, a nice caramel note comes on from the back of the mouth, along with more earthen tastes, something a little damp.

This is a very nice cheese. It’s solid, with a medley of meadow-y flavors. Because of the caramel aspect, it pairs especially nicely with grapes or with my favorite cheese-partner, a Warre’s Otima 20-year Tawny Port. Andrew recommends having it with an Amontillado Sherry. You could also go the ale route, to bring out the sweetness of the cheese and the uniqueness of the terroir.

coolea2

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Cheese of the Week: Rolf Beeler Reserve Gruyere

Posted on April 26, 2009 | Leave a comment

rolfbeeler

Wow! Master cheesemaker Rolf Beeler has swept this gruyere gal off her feet. I was already a passionate fan of gruyere – a greatly undersung cheese, I think, wasted in the vast melting pot of the typical less-than-exciting fondue. My fave cheese of late has been the L’Etivaz gruyere. So when I visited Berkeley’s eye-poppingly vast Cheese Board recently and asked the cheese expert what he had that was similar to L’Etivaz, he pulled out a great wheel of Rolf Beeler Gruyere.

Actually, he started me on an Emmi cave-aged gruyere, which was very good – tasty, redolent, interesting. But then he handed over the Rolf Beeler and, I repeat, Wow!

Everything about this cheese is right up front. Nothing holds back as an aftertaste. This bold cheese just hits you between the taste buds with its nutty, tangy, sweet, complex, cave-musty, buttery, slightly crystally, crunchy Wow. Bee-ler! Bee-ler! The man at the cheese counter elucidated how Beeler hand-crafted his cheese, visiting every cave and tapping on every wheel to choose the right ones for artisan aging. He’s definitely got a gift for gruyere.

Like L’Etivaz (also from the large Emmi producers), the Beeler is a raw-milk variety. It’s aged a full, old-school 16 months or more in carefully controlled, humid, cave-like conditions. Rolf Beeler is a relatively small-batch producer.

Unlike L’Etivaz, the Rolf Beeler Gruyere is not strictly an Alpage, or mountain pasture, cheese, a type made using only milk produced in warm seasons from high-altitude Alpine cows. Alpage cheeses have a reputation for tasting like the distinct Alpine flowers and grasses that make for summer grazing.

As the L’Etivaz is gone for the season, I’ll have to taste these Swiss gruyere giants against one another next year. In the meantime, I’m loading up on the outstanding Rolf Beeler.

This cheese pairs well with plenty of wines, especially a Syrah, but you may want to pop open a bottle of champagne to enjoy with the Beeler, toast the man, and celebrate the cheese’s specialness.

And, I know, you don’t have to tell me, it’s probably great in a fondue.

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The big board at the Cheese Board

Top photo: Ready for our repast. We enjoyed our Rolf Beeler Gruyere with French oil-cured olives and a fresh ciabatta.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Butter and Egg, Field Trip, To Market, Who Moved My Cheese?

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Cheese of the Week: Alta Langa La Tur

Posted on April 18, 2009 | 7 comments

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I first had this superb cheese, which hails from the Alta Langa Dairy in Italy’s Piedmont region, at Absinthe Brasserie in San Francisco. It was part of an after-dinner course of cheese, during which I thought, multiple times, Why would anyone ever have a dessert course consisting of anything other than cheese?

(For the record, the cheese course also consisted of a Monsenicio blue, also from Piedmont, which was drizzled with Il Caratello aged balsamic vinegar, and a Coupole goat cheese, from Websterville, Vermont, which was paired with cherry chutney. Yum!)

Even given those spectacular cheeses, the La Tur might have been the standout. This extremely creamy cheese is made from a combination of cow, goat and sheep milk. When store-bought, it comes in a disk shape in a pleasingly delicate paper wrapper. As the cheese warms to room temperature, it practically oozes from beneath its flavorful, bloomy rind, which itself adds an interesting juxtaposition of flavor and texture.

The flavors of this soft cheese come alive only after one takes in the buttery texture, and when they do, they yield a mushroomy and pleasantly cave-like taste that I can only describe as ancient. The taste is complicated, earthy, and redolent. The texture continues to add a sensuous and delightful element and, as is especially easy with such a creamy and interesting cheese, it is gone before you can say, “La Tur”, or “Do you think we can get some more?”

Because it spreads so well, La Tur is made to go with crackers or slices of baguette. Absinthe paired it with Medjool dates, as did I. My beloved Dalmatia Orange Fig Spread also worked (with a little going a long way, as the tastes toggled back and forth), as did a medium-bodied Syrah.

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Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Cheese of the Week: Istara P’tit Basque Sheep Cheese

Posted on April 12, 2009 | 2 comments

ptit-basque

You’ve got to love that hubby of mine. He keeps bringing home fun cheeses to try. This week he brought home a bit of Istara P’Tit Basque, and we had this yummy sheep cheese with port (me) and tequila (him).

What struck me immediately (well, right after the cute size — even a whole wheel is about as big as a large beefsteak tomato) is that it had a clean smell that had a little bite to it, almost like fresh air. I thought: That’s it, The air of the Pyrenees has come in on this cheese, and I was transported and hooked.

The P’Tit Basque was instantly pleasing to bite into, its texture somewhere in that perfect mid-range between soft and hard. If I could smell the air, I could certainly taste the sheep. This was nuttier than a typical cow’s milk cheese. While somewhat creamy, it had a dry, salty finish and a slightly gamey undertone. In short, there was a lot going on. It also retained its interest long after the cheese was gone — indeed, it lingered on the palate an unusually long time. And yet, as wonderful as that quality was, we didn’t content ourselves with the lingering, but kept going back for more until our petite P’Tit was but a memory.

The earthy taste of P’Tit Basque makes it a natural for pairing with strong foods such as a truffle salami (should you be lucky enough to have one of those), or anything else in the mushroom or cured-meat families. Hearty red wine (or port – I had a 20 year Warre’s Otima tawny) will complement this pastoral cheese, as will a great crusty wheat bread (I like La Brea Bakery’s Whole Grain Loaf, which is widely available) or, of course, a bunch of grapes.

So now we can thank the Basques, a hearty ancient people who have endured a tumultuous history in their small, mountainous region between the often-dueling Spain and France, for one more thing: It’s the Cheese.

The wonderful, near-herringbone rind of the P’Tit Basque:

ptit-basque-rind


Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Cheese of the Week: Emmi L’Etivaz Raw Milk Gruyere

Posted on March 25, 2009 | Leave a comment

etivazgruyere

I love this cheese unconditionally. It’s exciting. It’s complex. It’s redolent. And it’s mighty tasty. It’s the taste that provides a wonderful surprise, because L’Etivaz has virtually no smell, no hint of the musty, aged quality it unearths on the taste buds. Like any good gruyere, the cheese is just firm enough to have a nice texture, and just soft enough to still offer a little give. The taste is strong and distinctive, somewhat nutty, with a slightly sweet aftertaste. Many different flavors mingle and linger, so that one enjoys the complex taste long after the cheese itself is gone. It’s got a bite to it, and a good mouth feel. Serve it with a full-bodied red wine, a hearty mushroom dish, or strong, tasty figs. You may also be inspired to bake with it — perhaps a French onion soup.

Cheese-o-philes already know this one’s special. It’s made by a small group of family cheesemakers in the Swiss Alps (near the village of Etivaz), who created it to preserve the old methods of heating milk in copper cauldrons over open wood fires, before processing it and aging it in caves. The milk is from high Alpine cows who graze only in summer, on a rare and fleeting combination of grass, flowers, and herbs. You can taste the tradition, geography and care in the cheese. Knowing its heritage, I feel extremely fortunate that it’s available at the corner market, and even more so that my husband brought some home, mistakenly thinking he was buying his favorite, and different, cave-aged gruyere.

Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Vanishing Breed: Milkmen

Posted on March 24, 2009 | 6 comments

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It seems home milk delivery is up. Of course, through mid-century, most Americans had milk delivered to their doorsteps, from horse-drawn wagons, and then from trucks. In Southern California, the Adohr man left cold bottles in a metal carrier outside our door. But supermarket milk seemed more convenient, and many routes were discontinued (like Adohr, and then our Helms Bakery truck), and by 2000, less than one percent of Americans had their milk delivered.

If there’s a slight uptick, we’re part of it. We’ve been getting milk delivered for nearly 10 years. We started because I wanted my daughter to have that experience, to be able to mark time by the simple routine of a weekly delivery, as well as taste farm-fresh organic milk — produced the same day we get it, we’re told. Because our driveway is too steep for the milk truck, we would even wait for it to come driving up the street below. If we missed our milkman, no problem. Glass bottles could be left in our oversized mailbox, which serves the same purpose as a tin cooler of old.

Our milkman is Ron LaMariana, the Sonoma-Marin Milkman, who calls himself “Mr. Moo.” His milk is from the Straus Family Creamery, in West Marin, the first organic dairy west of the Mississippi. We even took a tour of the Straus Creamery, to complete the loop. To say hi to the cows that give us our milk, to walk the land, and to churn butter so fresh you could taste a hint of spring grass in it. Even now, I like the weekly routine of going down to the mailbox and returning with a crateful of milk. Sometimes we’ll even get a nice cream top on our 2%, so thick you have to scoop it out with a knife.

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Posted in Butter and Egg, Nostalgia, Sustainability, Vanishing Breed

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