Fresh Pickins

Whoa boy, it's been a while since the last post. Well, rest assured, I've been busy writing SOMETHING. Just not on this blog. I've spent the last month and a half writing ... my dissertation! I handed beautifully formatted copies of it to each of my committee members today. Woo hoo!

After enjoying a nice cocktail upon my return home, my fingers were itching to connect with a computer keyboard. Almost like a Pavlovian response. I'm in the house, Nick's not home, I have an impending thesis defense hanging over my head ... I should write ... something. Thankfully, I have a lot to catch you all up on! (ooooooo, hanging preposition. What can I say? I live dangerously. Particularly when punchy on post-dissertation-writing giddiness.)

I swear, I only had one cocktail.

So let's see, where to start. I guess first and foremost, I should pay homage to the beginning of our separation from San Diego. Last week was our very last CSA produce share. For those who are not familiar with a CSA or a produce share, a CSA is a Community Sponsored Agriculture collective, in which you buy a share in a local farm and receive in return a weekly or biweekly share of the farm's harvest. I joined one of the best San Diego CSAs, Be Wise Ranch, during Nick's last deployment in 2005. At the time, there were probably about 30 people picking up shares at my delivery location - many of us just doing it biweekly. Over the last couple of years, though, it's been fascinating to watch the list of people at our pickup depot grow and grow (now there are ~130). When I called to cancel our membership, the woman on the phone said there were 182 people on the waitlist! Although our farm is one of the biggest CSAs in the greater San Diego area, that's still a LOT of people waiting for a share. Yeesh! It's been fascinating to see the country-wide awakening to the "buy local, eat local" movement, as well as the growth of the organic foods industry. The founder of Be Wise was one of the first certified organic growers in California and has spearheaded the organic movement in the state, so it's also been interesting to see how he runs the CSA. He occasionally includes organic produce from other small local farmers. The fires in 2007 really hurt the Be Wise farm, so the external supplementation was particuarly prevalent in winter 2007 through winter 2008.

Anyway, one of the Spring specialties in San Diego country is strawberries. The sparse winter rain, coupled with it being warm, well, year-round, allows San Diego to have beautiful ripe strawberries as soon as March and lasting through September. The reason our berries are so good is actually because we DON'T get a lot of rain. Too much rain makes for watery berries. Blech. Some growers here actually grow the notoriously temperamental french-style strawberries, which are small (about the size of your average early summer raspberry) and have long stems but are insanely sweet. Chino farm, up in Rancho Santa Fe, grows these and they're ridiculously good. But I digress. San Diego strawberries = delicious. We've routinely been getting POUNDS and POUNDS of strawberries in each produce delivery, which has necessitated some seriously creative salads (a girl can only have my standby, which is greek yogurt with local carmelized honey and fresh strawberries, so often. Which is pretty often. But still).

I love love love the flavor combination of strawberries and balasmic vinegar. I like to infuse high-quality aged balsamic with strawberries, then use it to make a viniagrette for a strawberry-arugula salad. But when I don't have the time for the infusion, I love making just a "plain old" strawberry salad. Some people say the perfect flavor combination is basil+tomato+buffalo mozzarella. But I think it's basil+balsamic+strawberries. So I make this salad, like, A LOT. The best part is that Nick couldn't really care less about berries, so I get it all to myself. Muaaa-haa-haaaaa.

Anyway, I've been toying with food photography lately, mostly because I don't want to become a "landscape photographer." In photography, you usually find that people segregate into "landscape," "portrait," or "macro." Sometimes two of the three, but rarely. I'm no portrait photog ... you know how some people can always capture that "special" moment or expression? Yeah, that's not me. I get people looking like they just ate a cockroach, or with their eyes closed, or with their nostrils flared, etc. I just do not have the gift of timing. And I'm certainly no macro photographer! I have neither the patience nor the budget for the crazy equipment necessary for getting serious about this kind of picture-taking. Food photography is something between portrait and macro, in that you want to take a "portrait" of the food but you need a reasonably good depth-of-field to capture the qualities of the dish (and thus include many "macro" aspects in the composition). Food photography combines two of my favorite hobbies - food and photography! =) If there were such a thing as Food Booze Photography, it might actually be my calling.

So I wanted to capture some special "moments" from my last produce delivery. I took some pics while making the strawberry-balsamic-basil salad.

Strawberries, stemmed and ready for slicing:


A particularly plump specimin:


Quartered, in the bowl:


A hydroponically-grown local basil plant from Archi's Acres, a company that employs recent military veterans and trains them for a career in hydroponic farming (run by a former Marine who learned about hydroponic gardening in another desert-like environment, Isreal).




A chiffonade of basil over the quartered strawberries:


I also like to add in the beautifully sweet and tender Persian cucumbers that we occasionally get in our delivery. The skins are thin and flavorful and these are my favorite cucumbers EVER.


I toss the basil and strawberries with very very thinly slivered red onion or scallions, balsamic vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil (I like the basil-infused olive oil from the Temecula Olive Oil Company), which has a store just down the street in Old Town. I also season the dressing with salt and pepper. I toss with the cucumbers and serve over a bed of wild arugula.


Side note: arugula is one of those strange beasts that you either love or hate on first taste. I've never been a huge fan, but the wild arugula that is grown by my CSA and is increasingly available in stores is much more mild than the overtly peppery, soapy-tasting stuff with round-ended leaves that has been the grocery store-arugula staple. Wild arugula has more feathered leaves, and looks a lot like thin dandelion greens.

Savory-sweet combinations make my freakin' day. Another favorite summer combo of mine is a watermelon salad that includes grape tomatoes (or heirloom cherry tomatoes, if available), onion, brined feta cheese, cucumbers, and pine nuts in a champagne vinegar / pomegranate juice / olive oil dressing. Urban Solace in San Diego was the first place I had a combination like this and I was in seventh (eighth, ninth) heaven. So now I make it at home all summer.

We also get a ridiculous number of oranges every delivery. I cannot possibly consume this many oranges myself, so they also become salad fodder. Oranges in salads pretty much have to be done one way and one way only: supremed. It's a French word, fancy-like for "sectioned." You remove all of the peel, pith, and membrane and are left with beautiful sections of the best parts of the orange. Since mine are heirloom varieties, they all have seeds (a lot of seeds, actually), the removal of which makes for gaping holes in your sections. But since I'm "cooking" for a party of one, I don't really care. So here's my first pass on supreming an orange:



You cut down the sides of the whole orange, just past the pith, and end up with a gorgeous globule of orange-colored flesh. I then clean up any remaining pith (like you see in the picture) with a quick swipe o' the knife. Then cut out each section along the membranes and discard the trivial-pursuit-game-piece-looking remnants.



I personally like to squeeze the innards for any juice before I discard - the juice, along with a little lemon juice or champagne vinegar, a squirt of Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and olive oil make a great simple dressing. Orange sections, sliced hearts of palm, slivered fennel, red onions, and baby lettuces are gorgeous dressed with it.

Anyway, long way around, RIP Be Wise Ranch. You have transformed me from from a person who was very cynical about organic produce to a true believer. Moreover, I have become super enthusiastic about eating locally (somewhat easier to do in SoCal, where we have produce growing year-round). Romaine lettuce that stays good in the fridge for three weeks or more? Yeaaaa local! I've become addicted to every variety of organic chard (swiss, rainbow, northern lights, etc). And I make a mean kale-tempeh breakfast hash. Okay, okay, that's going a little Berkeley. But dandelion greens have found a place in my diet, as have other bitter salad greens that you normally only find in restaurants that charge $30 for two bites of food. Most people I know dislike beets, even fresh ones. But that's because the ones you get in the grocery store still have their greens attached, and the longer the greens are attached, the more sugar they suck up from the beet. This leaves a bland and musty beet that no one in their right mind would like. But when you get them the day they're picked, cut off the greens (which are the sweetest and most lovely greens you could ever saute), store the beets in the fridge, and eat them even weeks later, well gosh, they're amazing. Heirloom tomatoes ... baby eggplants ... kumquats ... the best Italian parsley I've ever had in my life ... purple scallions ... scrumptious parsnips ... I'm going to miss you all!!

In a global society, it's easy to forget how to eat seasonally. Our direct ancestors knew how - did they expect to get plump strawberries in January? Uh, no. If they wanted peaches, they came from the cellar, where they had been canned during the previous summer's bounty. Yes, mangoes and pineapples are a delicacy. But they're ... a delicacy. 'Cause they're not grown in North America! I really believe that when you eat a winter-squash-stew in November, you feel like it's November. And nectarines in August make you tolerate the heat and humidity. Like a reward. Eating seasonally is one of the only ways I feel connected to the seasons here in San Diego (where there would otherwise be NO indication). Fresh fava beans have a three-week window in the spring. Fava bean and raw asparagus salad with pecorino-romano shavings is my food du jour. I can't get enough. I'm going to dream about it all fall and winter ... and relish every bite next spring.

Just to show how much this "eat local, eat organic" movement has taken off in the last few years, there's an "eat local" chapter in Dayton, OH, for chrissakes!

So much more to write about ... will save for later.