Ingredients, used:

7g yeast, instant

215g lukewarm water

28g maple syrup

383g Bread Flour, +85g more when kneading by hand (and a little more for dusting board when shaping)

225g Cooked Sweet Potato, mashed

6g Salt

3g Maple Extract

28g

I made this recipe the other day from Serious Eats' writer Deb Currie of Cookistry fame. Of course, I use that phrase loosely. I took her ingredients and fairly ignored the procedure having enough experience baking bread myself to not be fearful of doing it my own.

That procedure differed like this. I mixed all the ingredients mentioned in my metric conversion above at once in my kitchen aid stand mixer. It came together but was still too loose for the dough you describe.

I used a white bread flour from "Farmer Ground Flour" out of upstate New York. It's a particularly hydrophilic flour I've found. It took 85g more of bread flour to get the consistency you speak of, as expected with a variance in flour. When I added the additional flour, I flopped the dough onto my counter and kneaded it in by hand. I like feeling a dough better anyway when it gets to the final steps. 

I then put it to rest in the fridge until the next evening. I pulled it an hour and a half before I baked it. I divided it into 9 instead of 15 wanting larger rolls, proofed those for 15 minutes of that hour and a half and baked at 400F of about 17 mins. 

They looked lovely and tasted fine, however with the added flour, they could have used more salt. And were I to do it again, which I will because you've peaked my interest here, I would brush with salted butter. I would also proof an extra 15 minutes instead of rushing it, to get a more airy texture. I got impatient due to personal bad timing and fired it early. 

Nice dinner rolls that had little to no flavor of sweet potato. I think the salt would help that. Will let you all know next time.

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An interview with one of my favorite authors takes me back to a walk up a seeming never ending ascent with our friend Yoshi and his own Japanese hillside and manages to say what everybody else has been trying to say about the state of the world, effortlessly, yet in reflecting on his own country's disasters and recovery post-disaster. If it is even post yet...

I think many Japanese people think this is a turning point for our country," he said. "It was a nightmare, but still it's a good chance to change. After 1945, we have been working so hard and getting rich. But that kind of thing doesn't continue anymore. We have to change our values. We have to think about how we can get happy. It's not about money. It's not about efficiency. It's about discipline and purpose. What I wanted to say is what I've been saying since 1968: we have to change the system. I think this is a time when we have to be idealistic again.

-via Sam Anderson and The New York Times Magazine, The Underground Man

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It's nearly been a year since we returned from our travels abroad. More than an interruption in our lives, more than a vacation or traveling, it changed our lives. Mostly it was the people we met and their conviction that had the deepest impact on us. Before we left, my friend and former boss, suggested that he'd need a hand when we came back with his private chef company. It was helpful to know I might have work coming back. 

And I've lent a hand as much as I can. From time to time I've helped them from cooking before and during events, to serving food, washing dishes, taking photos, and generally doing what I love, meeting a challenge head on. Maison Privé is their extraordinary effort at serving the best of ingredients, usually locally sourced, sustainably raised and organic. Their food is nothing short of spectacular. If you are priviledged and smart enough to afford the work they do, then you are also priviledged enough to know that skill and expertise of this level only comes from years of experience and focus. Quite simply, Jim and Jen are above their class as private chefs and caterers and some of the best people to work with I know and yet somehow remain fully grounded in the realities of starting a business and a family. 

So, it's not only with fondness and friendship that I've offered my hand its with profound respect. I try to do so as often as I may without breaking our own commitments, plans and boundaries set towards our commitment to build a spectacular food business of our own. When Jen went into early labor back in the fall, I tried to step in and help as much as I could, but admittedly they did all the hard work, particularly Jen in having this little guy, Lucca.

Jen and Lucca

Photo by Jim Vellano

Jim and Lucca

Photo by Jen Vellano

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to spend some time visiting with Jim and following up on some work I completed recently for one of his clients. One day in early May, as often is the case since we returned, Jim called me up,

Jim: Hey, are you busy?

Me: Not really what's up?

Jim: So, I have this client in Upstate, NY and he's interested in having a vegetable garden this year...you know something about gardening and farming so I figured I'd ask you first... are you interested?

Me: Absolutely. When and where do we start?

So, over the next few days we figured out over emails and various phone calls and one site visit and I put together a brief proposal. The client accepted it and I began work in late May. To come upon a garden after a month of time passes without seeing it is like time traveling. When I left, it looked like this:

And on Friday, after I spent a few hours tying and trimming leaves back, it looked like this:

Take a walk through the garden project overtime.

It's no small thing entrusting someone to take on a project that is outside one's expertise. I know, only because I've done this before, it is hard letting go. It is hard to accept the risk. A good leader will do it every now and again. Jim and Jen learned early on in their years in the kitchen, that everyone needs help and everyone will succeed given the opportunity. And Jen and Jim have entrusted me with things, which while I was uncertain I was the right match, I had a gut feeling I could be. It's nice to see things come together and grow, and get challenged and grow in the process.

In the past few months, I've  been extremely fortunate in learning to build and plan a garden, for others and for myself and my family. Jim is just starting as a gardener and will continue to learn, as will I, the care and attention it takes to bring excellent ingredients to the table. And through this, we'll all be better chefs and better people. Because in cooking it starts with respect for each other and is improved by learning to respect the ingredients.

Of course some will look at the food that Maison Privé prepares and the garden we've made and perhaps the house that the garden sits behind and say to themselves that this is all fine and well for those with means, but what about us lil' guys? Well, believe it or not, we are those lil' guys and it goes to show that the more people tht are willing to take a risk on small businesses and younger people, less fortunate than themselves, then others will have the opportunity to grow. Exciting and fun times and I feel extremely lucky to have such terrific friends and partners in business. 

Take a look at some of the food that we've done while cooking together. While I may have lent a hand at the stove and prep counter, the presentation, organization and clients are all wholly the intellectual force of Maison Privé, right now primarily Chefs Jen and Jim Vellano. 

Some events from the Spring and Early Summer of 2011

Jen Vellano, ensuring the wine pairs well with the food

Jim Vellano, drenched from being meat station, follows her lead

Mis en Place for client's 40th Celebration

Lubina, from Veta La Palma in Spain one of the most sustainably fisheries in the world 

 (I was ecstatic to see them using this. Dan Barber did a talk over at Ted about it.

Oh yea, Jen helped open Blue Hill at Stone Barns with Dan.)

Photo by Jen Vellano

A spin on Beef Wellington with Grass Fed Beef from Cabbage Hill Farms

Photo by Jen Vellano

One of the best salads I've ever tasted with greens from Cabbage Hill Farms

Jen finishing a dish, shoving Jim (lovingly) aside

Vegetables I grilled while being grilled by the client 

Delightful Maine Shrimp from Brown & Trading

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Read the update...

My friend David got me on to the path of a coffee snob about a year ago, maybe more. Actually, two steps back, I've always been pretty particular and critical of food and becoming a cook made me that much more of a pain in the ass, so the slipper to coffee snobbery was fairly close to my bed when I woke up.

Notwithstanding, I'm not consistentent about buying the best fresh roasted beans possible. Honestly, I don't have the patience to give two shits most of the time. But when I returned the iced coffee container to Crop to Cup the other day I picked up a bag of green unroasted coffee beans. Daniel, the sales guy and barista of the day asked me what I was planning to do with them. I said, "Honestly I don't know...roast them in a pan?" 

So, this morning I wake up to no roasted beans left in house and figure its as good a day as any. An hour later I get this:

While it made a very nice morning brew, I can't say it was worth the hour at the stove burning natural gas in the summer heat. I look forward to Dyson's  upcoming home coffee roaster (Poke. Dyson, you make hand dryers and vacuums, put the 1+1 together and hit your target market with a great new product. And skip all the plastic parts, use glass and metal or something. Seriously, I'd pay $150 for a 2# capacity &$300 for 5#. PS-Pay me my 5% for creative idea. Thanks). Otherwise, I'll stick to buying pre-roasted beans, as freshly roasted as I can get (thanks David). 

UPDATE: Friday, July 8th, 2011

I roasted some again this morning. This time, instead of using a saute pan over a flame I opted for a simple low oven and a sheet tray. I originally thought that the beans would benefit from agitation in the form of stirring to achieve even roasting. Then this morning  I was thinking of all the times that I've roasted nuts on a sheet tray with minimal agitation and achieved even browning.

Today,  I roasted the beans for half the time and to half the darkness as yesterday and brewed a batch in the french press. The coffee today is rich in overtones of tobacco and undertones of caramel. I'm sure if my palate was cleaner I'd detect more. I'll check again tomorrow morning first thing. I feel this method was superior to the agitated beans in a saute pan. And indeed the flavor profile is significantly more rich and pronounced than quite any coffee I've tasted before. This inspires me to keep trying and find a simpler, more efficient way to do the home roasting. I'm interested to see the differences in slow roasting in a pan, versus a more efficient method. I'm also interested in using different locations for beans.

I hope you can see the differences in the two:

If you are interested in traceability of the stuff you buy, particularly food or in this case coffee, Crop to Cup's 'Burundi Bukeye' green coffee beans are probably the most traceable yet. Thanks to Taylor and Daniel and all the other good folks at Crop to Cup for making this happen. 

Home Roasted Coffee

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I've enjoyed the ten years I've been on the east coast, more or less, and I thought I understood and had learned to appreciate the seasons fairly well. Traveling for five months straight really opened our eyes and got us really seeing the weather, and now gardening has brought it all home and front and center. 

Everyday I am thankful for all the goodwill that has passed in my life putting my shoulder into a few hundred shovel fulls of soil and shaping a place for plants to grow misguidedly under my sometimes careless and ignorant hand brings a new lesson every turn. We have nursed many of the plants that travelled out to our garden in Fair Lawn from seed trays in our studio in Brooklyn, hastily set into egg cartons when temperatures were still bleak and light was constantly fading. So, it is a fine thing indeed to walk amongst the garden at the beginning of July and see the change that has come upon us. 

Three weeks turned out, whether by shear good fortune or dare I be bold enough and say good planning, to be the magic number of days to let pass without weeding or harvesting much. Tracie's father Peter has ventured out there on his own a few times to collect lettuces and nothing more, but our hands were the ones the garden had been awaiting. A hour and no more and the bulks of the predatory weeds were, vanguished on hands and knees, and then a few more put to trellising and we're nearly there and ready to head into the full thrust of summer. 

As in everything you do, it helps to have something to measure a piece of work by, so I'll share with you the starting place of this garden back in August of 2010 when it was more of an inkling of an idea and a hope and prayer.  I love this photo, I think it truly captures how little we knew what we were starting. But we had an idea, it could make a small piece of the world a better place, and I think it has. 

It started with lil' more than a patch of grass and a hunch

With no more than about a weeks work of honest labor, we have somehow opened a space for something like this to happen, and I am so happy we have had a moment to do it and enjoy it. We all live for moments like these. It just makes up for all those dark winter days and nights and super hot and humid days yet to pass. 

The glory of the soil and good weather brings bounty

After tomorrow, we'll step away for another few weeks, that at once excited to be away because I'll get to see family I haven't seen in years (what the hell, yea years) and on the other, I'll be just a touch edgy wondering what the weather and time will bring while we're away. Until then.

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But it sure is fun and rewarding. It's pretty great to see a physical project come together over a long period of time. This year, thanks to the graciousness of my father-in-law Peter, we're growing a vegetable garden for the whole family in his backyard. Here is how it looked back in August.

Just an idea. After arriving back from our 5 month inspirational journey, we wanted to get to work. So, we set to work mapping out the site, checking the light at various times of day. And we made a map in a sketchbook. That evolved into this.

The first half of the garden just after we spent an entire day uprooting and turning the carpet grass. It took another couple of days to complete the shape it is today. And then we seeded the soil with cover crop for the winter and let it lay fallow through the winter.

Back in October, cover crop just poking up, about to get buried by winter.

Winter came and gone and seemed to drag on forever and then Spring spring and we set out to build a garden. I arrived to lush cover crop and set to work on setting the fence from tree limbs we'd prined from the yard back in August.

It took me three days and three visits to turn it into this.

And then Tracie and I made it into what it will evolve from here on. This is getting exciting.

Excitement in slow motion. Picture it. Now take a walk through the progression, at various stages and locales.

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Back in high school I wrote a paper on Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I read, but did not understand the book. Nor should I really. Few Americans my age of my generation would. Others of other generations and countries might, but not mine. Not at the time. I found a yellowing paged Dell 1973 version at my father-in-law's this weekend and swiped it to refresh my memory. I was reading a few pages from it this morning and found a poignant thought wedged in there that I think says everything that needs to be said about the slaying of anyone.

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. 

 

I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machines, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.

-KV, Jr. -Slaughterhouse-Five

To put things into context for those of you not familiar with Vonnegut or the book in question, he's trying to write about the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, which took place on February 13, 1945 and had a greater range of human death and destruction than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 

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On a day when other folks were dealing with life threatening tornadoes and whilst I was surfing the web worrying about impending thunderclouds the cat wreaked havoc on my freshly translplanted seedlings. Miraculously, I saved all but one.

But I managed to get firecely worked up and screamed at the cat as if life on Earth was ending. Then I realized, hey, whatever, its gonna happen eventually. So, after upending and re-planting the nearly averted deaths of the majority of the seedlings I'd just thinned the day before, I planted a few more trays of seeds, just in case. Now, my heater is blasting in hopes to get the germinating process a little jumpstart. 

Yesterday, I discovered several slugs, fully grown in my seedlings indoors. Because, stupidly, I had left them outside in my covered garden box overnight, thinking, oh they'll be fine. Over the next few days these puke pink nodules formed everywhere on the undersides and top of the surface of the soil, like a fungus. I still don't know what that was. But the snail eggs I found in a few of the cells, clearish jellylike spheres that I should have taken a photo to identify. Blast. Critters! 

Sometimes it's the little things that really get me down and little things that can bring me back up. Time for a beer. 

This makes the second time the cat has done this and I have stupidly left him access. Last time, he set me a week behind. Wayne 1 : Cat 1. Fifteen : Fifteen. 

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It's hardening off time for seedlings in preparation for planting outdoors.  Hardening off is when you place your thinned and transplanted seedlings outdoors and expose them to mederate weather and sun over a period of a week or more. When your seedlings have developed five or more 'true' leaves, they are ready to start hardening off.

Many of our seed started plants for the garden we are growing in New Jersey have reached the right size to 'thin out' and re-pot into their own deeper containers. This year we've started all of our plants in egg cartons. I jammed in 4 seeds per spot, in the hopes of getting a few usable plants out of each. Now the cells are getting crowded and I also want to give them more room to grow deeper roots. So, I'm upgrading the ones that are nearly ready to be introduced to the outdoors to 2" wide x 3" tall paper pots. 

I remembered seeing a photo on Brooklyn Homesteader of how they used re-purposed old newspaper to make seedling pots, but I couldn't find how she made them. I did find a somewhat simpler design over laurabarnard.co.uk, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, kudos to her fine illustration though. So, I scoured the web and found a few hard to follow videos on how to make these little guys.

After watching the videos a few times and practicing all the way, I got the technique down and thought I should share. I've taken a series of photos that I hope you'll find helpful with the accompanying instructions. Please feel free to comment with any questions or suggestions. 

I didn't have any newspaper, but we have a hell of a lot of Amazon's shipping filler paper, so I decided to put it to work.

Your final bag will look like this. 

This slide show will show you how to make them. The decriptions of each photo explain in more detail how to proceed from each step.

Here is a happy seedling growing away in a new bag.

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For those of you that have been under a rock for the past five years, Brooklyn, NY is something of a hot-bed of activity when it comes to learning about food traditions and methods. Standing on the shoulders of culinary giants all over the country, many lifetime and transplanted Brooklynites alike have found a welcoming and supportive environment to grow new ideas and businesses related to re-invigorating our culture with this knowledge.

And those seeds are growing some amazing resources and ideas. Some might say that the East Coast has taken the lead in blending the self-reliant hippie days of the 60’s & 70’s of the other coast with the pragmatic resilience and business acumen and a notion towards responsible development and living to create one of the most vibrant and diverse place to live here in Brooklyn, NY.

In fact, there is so much going on, that any given hour of a given day, I’ve missed an event I wanted to attend or chance to volunteer and help out somewhere. This weekend has been a Brooklyn neighborhoodie kind of weekend. This weekend, we shared a lovely evening and met a bunch of wonderful neighbors and made new friends.

On Saturday, I headed over to The Commons Brooklyn. In case you aren’t familiar with The Commons, it’s a great place for folks to share their skills and or host an event. And they now have a rooftop garden and host Foodshed Market, the borough's first year-round indoor farmer’s market.

Thanks to the extraordinarily involved Melissa Ennen’s organizing efforts, Leda Meredith, author of The Locavore’s Handbook, walked our group through as she put it “some of the master recipes of preserving and canning”. Having lived a full-year, and then writing a book, on living off local only ingredients, she speaks from some serious personal experience in preserving food and incorporating it in creative ways in cooking at home.

As a Chef, I’ll come right out and say it, Leda is no light-weight, she knows her stuff and shares it in a dynamic, interesting and informative way. She interjected snippets of history I had never even known. At one point she interjected, “Ever wonder how Salt and Pepper came into seemingly every savory recipe in western culture?” Then, she went on to tell us why. “Well, virtually everything was preserved in salt. And eating lots of salty food, leads to a very dry mouth. And sailors, after the ‘discovery’ of black pepper from the Malabar Coast, where virtually all of our pepper comes from, discovered that black pepper increases our salivation by ten times the normal amount. Not only does this lead to being able to swallow salted food easier, it aided digestion.”

Wow, that is exactly the kind of thing that appeals to a food geek like myself. If only every workshop could be interjected with bits and pieces of interesting facts such as this. Leda’s makes running a workshop or teaching look easy, and you know what, it isn’t. I’m looking forward to future workshops foraging in prospect park with Leda Meredith, a graceful moderator and intensely knowledgeable teacher.

The workshop was well structured and somehow, she managed to loop back every now and again to fill in deeper bits of knowledge in response to specific questions. I’ll do my best at sharing what she taught us with a little artistic license.

Master the Principles of Food Preservation with an emphasis on food safety.

If you understand these general principles you can innovate and create the pickles of your dreams and get started with other simple forms of canning and preserving at home. We didn’t cover Jam & Jelly’s in depth, Leda explained that it’s a issue unto itself, but we did go over general ideas at the end. Leda noted that for reference or if you really just want to jump from these ideas to canning and preserving in depth and need more info, you should get a copy of Putting Things By, now in its Fifth Edition in paperback.

Food Safety

Before we dive into pickling, we first need to understand the dangers involved in canning and there are many. This often makes the home cook wary of preserving and canning at home.

Whenever we eat, there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. Good bacteria are things like lactobacillus acidophilus (low-salt, fermented foods), lactobacillus casei (yoghurt), and others. Lacto acidawhat?, don’t worry about it, you just need to know that the good ones are ‘pro-biotic’ (read, good for you) and found in many foods you may even have in your belly right now, like yogurt. Bad bacteria are the ones that will make us sick or kill us, and the most fearful and well-known being botulism which most of us have never seen or lived to feel the consequences.

Commonalities that make bacteria problematic in canning and pickling: bad bacteria and good bacteria are both finicky and all live within a narrow range. Preservation is about making an unfavorable environment for the bad bacteria and sometimes a favorable for the good bacteria.

Mastering the Principles of Food Preservation:
Part 1, The Vinegar Pickle

Equipment Required

2-piece canning lid & jar, functioning burner, pan that will hold your pickling solution, canning tongs (optional/but useful) and large stock pot or canning pressure cooker (we’ll get there) that can hold enough boiling water to safely submerge your jars in boiling water. Vegetables of your choice, spices of your choice, sugar or honey if you desire.

A word on the lids

It is common for folks to wonder if they can re-use their 2-piece lids, you can re-use the rim, but it’s not recommended to re-use the flat piece with the gasket. The rubber wears out with use, and depending on the length of time of use, etc. You probably don’t want to go there. The gasket top forms the vacuum and that isn’t really something you want to mess with as far a safety is concerned. But stick around, there are methods where it does not matter and you can re-use them there if you wish.

Ingredients

Vinegar is the preservative and medium. And it has a long and exciting history. As Leda explained, you can dilute a commercially or homemade* vinegar with 50% water (commercially produced vinegars are typically 4.5% or more in acidity). If you are interested in some New York produced vinegar, Leda mentioned Arbor Hill & Race Farms. Personally, in the commercial kitchen I’ve always preferred Sparrow Lane White Wine or Cabernet Sauvignon for most pickles, albeit they are California vinegars.

*Important, if you use homemade vinegar, then you MUST test and make sure with an acid titration kit that it is 4.5% or more before you use it or dilute it, if it isn’t, don’t go there.

Water can be used to soften the strength of the vinegar and in the case you can use regular tap water. Just remember, you can only safely dilute the vinegar by 50% from the original strength vinegar. Commercially produced vinegars are 4.5% acidity, you'll have to run a test, as mentioned for homemade vinegars before safely using.

Aside: Traditional French Cornichons are harvested fresh covered with a little salt, given a little time curing, a few days, and then brushed off and stored in straight vinegar. White wine vinegar.

Jars and Lids: Using safely

Remember the goal here is that you want to end up with a product that is not only put in a jar but safe to eat and hopefully tasty to boot.

If your like me, you may have a few empty pickle, jam, or sauce jars lying about your home. There is a great temptation to use them, don’t for this pickle.

For pickles, we need a lid that will vacuum seal. More to the point, we need one that we’ll know is sealed. The easiest to determine if they are sealed, and hence the safest are those with the two piece lid.

2 kinds of two piece lids, Metal & Plastic

Metal

There are a variety of manufactures and all of them sell the flat lid with the gasket edge and the rings separately, in addition to including them with the original jar sets.They do this because that gasket wears out over time and use. The first time seal is the only one that is guaranteed. Each additional use is at your own risk of it not sealing, which is fine, if you stow those to use soon in your fridge, but inefficient and annoying if you are doing large batches of which you have to go back and redo a few of them at the end with new lids. Advantage to metal, with metal lids there is a convex part of the flat lid that goes concave and firm when the vacuum seal takes place. You press on it, it provides firm resistance.

Plastic

There is a new kind of plastic re-usable lid with a re-usable gasket, most available made by Tattler, available online, it’s plastic but CPA free. Disadvantage they don't show the seal, by going concave.

Wait, what about those nice glass and ceramic containers with metal rings and gaskets?

Avoid them, they are much harder to determine the vacuum seal. Although, if you are interested in them, a good test for the seal is one that works well for the metal flats tops as well. Remove the ring or in the glass top case, the clamp after the vacuum has been done. Invert over a bowl, shake lightly. If it stays in, its sealed, if not, clean up and move on.

To sterilize or not to sterilize?

If you process the filled jars in a boiling water bath for only 5 minutes, which helps to keep the texture of the vegetables a little snappier, then you MUST sterilize.

If you process the filled jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, then you DO NOT have to sterilize, because that happens in the ten minutes.

Sterilizing the jars & lid.

Place a small rack, towel, or silicone hot pad in the bottom of a large pot (5 qt or greater if you are using pint jars).

Check your jars for defects. Immerse the jars in the water bath and ensure the water covers completely. Bring to boil and set your timer for 10 minutes. At the end of the time, drop the lids into the hot water, this helps keep the gaskets from deteriorating and they will sterilize while you pack the jar(s).

The Golden Pickling Liquid Ratio

1 part Vinegar:1 part water or 1 part vinegar

In the example at Leda’s workshop yesterday, she used a ratio of ⅔ vinegar to ⅓ water, because it meets the minimum of 50%, so you can play with it to your taste, in that range.

Some good rules of pickling to stick by

Load sideways when packing food in. So tightly packed, it doesn't float. floating leads to discoloration and quality detriment.

Food must be below the liquid/brine and leave 1/2-1" of space. Typically the bottom rim. Moral, cut the ingredients to be short enough to not stick out. Tricky for florets and other oddly shaped vegetables, save large pieces to pack at end and submerged the contents.

Seasonings are personal. Use any herbs, garlic, or favorite spice mix. Play, experiment, taste and try again. Have fun! Keep in mind, pickles age well (within reason). Your pickle a day later, hasn’t matured in flavors. Try them a week or more later for complete flavor development.

Processing the pickle:

1. Place a small rack or towel in the bottom of the pot you are using to prevent vibration and cracking of jars.

2. Bring enough water to completely cover the jar(s) you are canning, to a boil. Sterilize your jars depending on aforementioned guidelines. Leave in the water for up to one hour before you need to re-sterilize or use.

3. Make your pickling solution, with the spices you have selected in the solution. If you aren’t a fan of lose spices, tie them in a small piece of cheesecloth and place that in there. The flavors will be just as intense.

4. Bring solution to boil.

5. Fill the jars with your veg, cut to length no higher than ½” below the top of your jar. Jam it in there tight.

6. Pour solution over vegetables.

7. Place flat, gasket lids on jars. Loosely fasten threaded rim.

8. Using the canning tongs, lower your jars into the boiling water, quickly and carefully, leaving a little room to prevent bumps and cracking of glass between jars.

9. Set the timer for 10 minutes if not sterilized jars and 5 for sterilized jars.

10. Remove from bath and cool at room temperature and try not to jostle or move. Hot water sloshed could loosen the seal on the gasket.

11.When the lid feels stiff and doesn’t yield to pressure, the vacuum is complete. This is sometimes accompanied by the ‘popping’ noise from the convex lid going concave on the metal lids. The plastic lids should feel firm but will still be convex.

12. Store until needed in a cool dark place. Room temperature is fine.

Wait, my grandmother used to put wax on top of jams an jellies when she canned, is that necessary?

Paraffin wax keeps air out in sugar preserving, only for sweets, and it isn’t foolproof.

Pickles aren’t just snacks

Try and integrate them into your main course cooking. Pickle things that you wouldn’t ordinarily. Pickled vegetables can add the acidity you need to heighten your cooking. Add some pickled Swiss chard stems or carrots to sauté instead of a splash of vinegar or lemon juice, things like that.

Also, as I brought up in class and Leda highlighted as well, pickling juice has been used by folks to aid in digestion and as a beverage for years. Try it out, we did in Turkey and it was actually rather good. Especially with spicy food and or liquor.

Safety note

On Botulism. The only way to get botulism is to confuse the foods that can be processed without a pressure cooker canning, botulism survives boiling water, but cannot live in acidic or dehydration. Any non-acidic vegetable must be pressurized. Fruits are safe without pressure. Caveat, All vinegar pickles are safe, the acid destroys the bacteria. That is why we went through all that trouble. Veggies not pickled are not.

A word on tomatoes

Tomatoes sit on the line of acidity. Especially these days. Tomatoes used to be more acidic, but here in the states, we’ve bread our tomatoes to be on the sweeter side over the past 100-150 years. A ripe tomato used to be acidic enough to can without pressure.

To be safe on pickling tomatoes

1 tsp of vinegar per pint with any tomato and water will keep you safe. You don’t have to pickle them completely.

Shelf Life of Pickled Veggies or Fruit

Within 1 year quality heads south, so if you are interested in flavor and nutritional value, eat before then. In theory, it should last safely for many years. Opened pickles, 3 month maximum when refrigerated. If you think it has gone bad,its really cloudy,foamy moldy, or stinky, don’t eat it.

Wait, in what case do I want to pressure can?

Pressure canning is for vegetables stored in water with no low-acidity, not pickling, and animal proteins. Downside of pressure canning is it takes away flavor and nutritional value.

A little history of Pressure canning

Perhaps, the most daunting of preservation methods revealed. Pressure canning is the big hitter of food preservation, especially from an industrial scale mechanization perspective. Where would we be without canned fruits, vegetables, meats and seafood?

Seriously, all jabs aside about canned food, this is the stuff meals were made of on the battle fields for the last 200 years. It was invented by French chef Nicholas Appert* in 1795 and perfected and winning awards by 1810, killing soldiers here and there along the way from botched batches. Preserving by heat and pressurization fundamentally shaped the imperial expansion that explode over the 19th century with the invention of industrialization. *

We won’t go into detail about the procedures for pressure canning because others have done it better.

Mastering the Principles of Food Preservation: Part 2, Salt Pickling

I like to think of this as the professional chefs secret weapon and the home cooks delight.

Lacto-Fermentation, Salt pickling with a Salt Solution

Advantage, food is unbelievably good for you for digestion. Super healthy. Lacto-Fermented have more vitamin c than raw veggies. Dilly beans is one the most commonly available versions of this kind of preserving, very popular item in the local green markets these days.

Ingredients

Water

Water quality is paramount. Leda recommends using filtered water whenever possible for lacto-fermentation. Chlorine and additives in tap water can change the flavor and are unfriendly to the good bacteria.

Personally, I boil tap water and let it come to room temperature or sit overnight and this usually removes chlorine and other chemicals that evaporate that are in our tap water. Also, solar water disinfection can be used to rid bad bacteria, six hours in a glass or PET certified plastic bottle in direct sun or two days in partial daylight will kill most harmful bacteria. But filtered water is probably your easiest alternative.

Salt

Types of salt, coarse, kosher works well. No iodized, it turns the food brown. If you are a purist be aware that Kosher salt contains anti-caking agents, that's why your salt flows well in the humidity.

Vegetables and Fruit Salt Pickling

Pickling in salt solution is almost too easy to mess up. Which is in and of itself.

Equipment

For this method, because there is no need for vacuum, any jar re-purposed is fine for use and there is no need for sterilization.In Crocks or larger containers you need weights to submerge the ingredients. In re-purposed jars, the lids do this function. Harsh crock, has a perfect design for this. It burps the gases through a moat like water membrane that the lid sits in. Leda told a funny story about the first time she used one that she got from her CSA as a gift. She put it in her bedroom in the corner because it was, well, homey looking and it startled her in the middle of the night with it’s burping, thinking someone was in the room. So, if you don’t want to wake up heart thumping like her, maybe leave in somewhere else, perhaps under the sink?

To sterilize or not?

No boiling or sterilizing of Jars required. Cleanly washed is good enough. Also, you don’t need to vacuum seal, in fact, you should not. This means all those old jars and lids you have lying around, put them to work with salt preserves.

The Golden Salt Solution Pickling Ratio (lacto-fermentation) 1 tsp of salt : 1 pint of water

Exception: Some vegetables you can pickle without adding salt, such as Swiss Chard stems, which are naturally salty. That is where a reference book like, Putting Food By, comes in really handing. It’s one of those kitchen reference books you’ll turn to time and again. Personally, I don’t have it, but my library has many copies of it, and I rely on my public library to fill in my reference library gaps.

Salt pickling procedure

1. Wash and prepare your veggies, cut however you wish to fit into the jar.

2. Cover with water to fill to the top. Close Loosely, it will leak.

3. Allow to sit at room temperature. For one to three days up to a week. Put something underneath, it leaks. It will start to have some sour smell. Taste it everyday if possible, so you know what is going on. Temperature affects the good bacteria. So cooler the area better, not above 55F or below 32F. Beware of placing in extreme cold or hot temperatures. If the room temperature is warmer, say in the summer months, the activity will come quick, perhaps only a day, and the reverse is true for colder climates.

4. Let sit for 1-3 days, depending on temperature, you can taste as it goes & adjust. Do not put away until you see activity. Once you see active fermentation, move it to a fridge and cool it down. The quality is best up to 3 months after it begins to loose texture and general taste degrades as well.

Using Lacto-Fermented preserves

Historically Provençal soups added lacto-fermented veggies at the end, it brightened the overall flavor of the soup, providing acidity and depth. Many still follow this practice. Try using it in this way or mixing them into pasta, again, free your cooking, pickles are not just condiments they can be use to brighten otherwise bland foods.

Some Classic Examples of salt pickling from traditional cultures

Sauerkraut

Merely slice cabbage thinly add some caraway and juniper seeds, for a traditional Northern European style, add the teaspoon of salt and the water, cover, and wait about 3 days.

Kimchi

Kimchi is a lacto-fermented pickle. The most familiar version has napa cabbage, some kind of radish, usually daikon, perhaps some greens (asian varieties such as bok choi, garlic chives, etc.), garlic cloves, chilis or chili paste, a whole fish or fish sauce, plus salt and water. You can vary the spices and ingredients as you wish. If you don’t want to fish, don’t put it in, although it adds umami to the pickle.

Of note

If you have fresh cabbage it has enough water to completely salt pack with no water. One of the many advantages to eating seasonally and preserving during season. Back when water wasn’t so easily charmed out of taps, any effort to conserve it was noticed and put in place. Perhaps we can learn a little something her for our own attempts.

Aside: Leda’s Martha Moment

Leda hesitantly shared a awkward moment on her ‘first and last’ appearance on The Martha Stewart show, when Leda was explaining the difficulty of the end of season options as winter merges with spring, Martha waxed poetic on how “she must get a root cellar...everyone must have a root cellar”, and Leda putting her foot in her mouth said that, her apartment being the size it is in Brooklyn, her fridge is her root cellar. I laughed out loud having been inside a few homes in Martha’s hometown (Visualize a ridiculously huge farmhouse like hotel, now turn it into a home for one family, yea, that big. This is the kind of stuff that makes workshops like this keep us interested in the topic, a lot of folks could benefit from stories like this.

Chutney, lacto-fermented

Most of us are familiar with the jammy sweet and sour version of chutney, and while that is an exceptional condiment you can also make a chutney with fresh fruit and vegetables without cooking them into that sweet and sour gastric.

Equipment

Re-purposed jars again, clean not sterilized. Remember to leave the lid loosely closed until you think the activity has developed enough flavor.

Ingredients

1 tsp Salt : 1 pint of Honey water or sweetened water (to your taste)

Follow the same procedure as above for other lacto-fermented pickles, the salt solution.

A word on the quality fruit and vegetables

Beyond knowing the provenance of your food, it is also good to know what is on it. Try to use organically raised fruits and vegetables whenever possible if you are concerned about the environment and potential ill-affects of residues from chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides that are used in conventional agriculture.

But if you are like us, and you live in a region where organically raised fruit succumbs to challenges other arid regions of the world do not, then you might want to consider Integrated Pest Managed (IPM) fruits and vegetables as a healthful alternative. In fact, if you buy from the local green markets and orchardists in the New York area you’ll find that most are using IPM to cultivate their fruits.

Integrated Pest Management

It's hard to near impossible to raise organic tree fruit in our environment in the northeast, farmer’s that use Integrated Pest Management are far more conservative than conventional farmers that spray from the beginning and even before they head to market. IPM farmers reserve the right to spray if needed, for outbreaks of pests due to our highly-wet growing seasons and mild temperatures, all of which while generally favorable to the fruit, are also favorable to their natural consumer, bugs, fungus and disease.

So, why do we grow it here? Our soil and water resources are favorable and you are supporting farmers that are smaller that the big fruits farms out west that supply satiate most of our demand for fruit. Much of the reason California is the largest domestic producer of fruit for our country is due to its completely artificial environment; an irrigated desert. So, hot that the natural bugs and fungi (such as powdery mildew )that we contend with on the in the Northeast is not present and it becomes much easier to not apply those chemical ingredients to fruit trees. Which raises the issue of which is more sustainable, a discussion we’re interested in but won’t cover at this time.

Troubleshooting Lacto-Fermentation

If it doesn't work, it shows signs it will get very cloudy, and smell off, not just sour. The appearance will be not slightly cloudy, but more sludgy like algae. If that happens toss it.

Mastering the Principles of Food Preservation: Part 3, Dry Salt Curing and Dehydration

One of my personal favorite books for cooking is Paul Bertolli’s, Cooking by Hand, in it he goes over a lot of these preservation techniques, but more to the point, he goes over preserving meat with salt cures. This is how exciting preserving can get. Salt mixed with a few ingredients can change the texture, preserve and enhance foods in ways that it is hard to imagine living without. I’d hate a world without salt.

But you need not read or learn how to cure a ham Italian style from Chef Bertolli. Instead, why not use one of the most practical dry salt cures of all, the herb salt?

The Golden Herb Preservation Ratio

4 parts finely minced/washed herbs or vegetables packed well : 1 part salt

This is the easiest of all cures in my thinking. And yet, how many times have you thrown out a soggy mess of wilted herbs? Stop. Keep a good knowledge of the contents of your fridge and make little projects like these from time to time. Herb Salts & Citrus Salts rank high up in a professional chefs repertoire and there is no reason they shouldn’t be in yours too. They are just too easy.

Take 4 parts any herb, combine with 1 part salt.

Use the same ratio with citrus zest and throw it into a food processor and you have citrus salt, and it will blow your house guest or families mind when you add a touch at the end of a dish, especially seafood, but even in a little homemade red sauce.

Aside: Managing the food excess in a kitchen is all about managing what you have and dealing with it, do this everyday you are in the kitchen. While you wait for something to simmer, wash excess herbs chop and mix with salt. Stow away on a shelf and come next winter, you’ll be thankful you did.

Dehydration

The problem with making sun dried tomatoes in the Northeast, is you can't dry in this region outside in the open, the humidity usually ruins it. That is why most dried fruit comes from the deserts of California or other Mediterranean like regions around the world. Turkey is a big one and has some of my favorite apricots in the world.

Personally, I used the pilot light in my oven to dehydrate herbs and thinly slice veggies and I’ve even made ‘overnight tomatoes’ that are pretty close to sun dried. But not everyone’’s oven has a strong enough pilot light and turning your oven on low is probably not the most efficient unless it vents outside. Dehydration requires a good amount of circulation, in fact, most dehydrators are mini-low-power convection ovens.

But dehydration is one of the best methods of preserving fruits and vegetables and for meats combined with salt, that is what kept our sailors and travelers for milenia able to move about. In short, volumes have been written on dehydration and you can find your own way to creating your own home-made dehydrator or buying a commercially made one, but either way, it is by far the safest method of preservation. Water is the enemy and once it’s gone, their is little that can cause you harm.

Mastering the Principles of Food Preservation: Part 4, Freezing

Any fruit will freeze. Freeze in a single layer, this keeps them loose. Also,make sure you have enough air-flow in your freezer.

All leafy green veg must be blanched to kill the enzymes that lead to decomposition. Blanching kills this. One minute boiling water and then ice bath. Broccoli, green beans or other chunky green vegetables, about two minutes.

Some say that you should blanch corn, or squash, or other similar vegetables before you freeze them. Leda does not. This is what frozen food manufactures do, blanch and flash freeze. On the home preservation front, you won’t notice much difference.

To be continued with Mastering the Principles of Food Preservation: Sugar Preserves, Part 5, another time.

Leda concluded the two hour workshop with a few tips on making jams and jellies saying that Jam & Jellies are something that she usually covers in a separate workshop and I agree. We covered a phenomenal amount of ground into the basics of some of the easiest ways to preserve and put food by for ourselves in a $20 two hour workshop. I look forward to the Sugar Preserve workshop and leave you to process and practice what we’ve just been over. Good luck and please contact me or comment with any questions of clarifications.

My thanks to Leda Meredith and you should visit her blog and buy her book, The Locavores Handbook:The Busy Person’s guide to Eating Local on a Budget. Read more on food preservation and her terrific tips in her own words over at her blog.

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A few weeks back I finished reading Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Freedom. We selected, by a pluralistic vote amongst our peers, that Freedom would be our next group read for the New York Women’s Book Club (men are welcome too). I wasn’t excited about it. I’ve tried ‘Franzen’ on before. I even read two other shorter books before I finally committed to reading Freedom.

I was vehemently against it, remembering when The Corrections came out and was lauded and I picked that up only to abandon it within the first ten pages. As I have since come to find out, I wasn’t alone, the characters were detestable and I just wasn’t curious about detestable people. If I wanted to read about detestable characters, I’d peel open virtually any section of a newspaper and read about politics or the happenings of the times.

Finally settling into reading Freedom, I felt again that tug to give up on the writing. The characters never feel fully fleshed out, they drip with self-involvement and the whole storyline itself, as my wife would say time and again, seems to pour back into the general navel-gazing of the times. If I wanted to hear about this kind of crap I could just flick open my twitter app on my iPhone, why read it in a book? But how often are lives fully fleshed out in a novel, how deep and long must we go into the persona of a character to consider them whole? This question drove me on.

I’ve seen it written that Franzen himself, secludes himself and ties off his connections to the Internet and the world when he’s writing, and I don’t blame him, as I do it myself when sitting down to put my mind towards anything. It is not without irony then that I found myself reading Freedom on a Kindle app on my iPhone. Not only was my experience a virgin leap into the world of Jonathan Franzen, but it also was a step into the world of e-books. I feel baptised on a number of levels after reading this work. You see I’m one of those readers that dog-ears the hell out of books or writes in pen or pencil. I take notes, circle shit, underline, bracket passages and jot them down in my journal. I do it to understand what I’m reading and partly to remember the things I had questions about or felt carried enough weight to remember them. The Kindle, made that super easy. More so than carrying a pen and paper. I went nuts on highlighting and note taking with the Kindle. According to the Kindle page on Amazon I have 13 highlighted passages and 56 notes in Freedom. Most of these were not positive.

In a passage where Franzen’s third-person narrator dives into to fleshing out Patty we begin to see the patterns that take hold in my antagonistic relationship with the author as he sets the ground for his anti-heroes and I set the ground for disliking him:

“From her first day in the neighborhood, she was helplessly conspicuous. Tall, ponytailed absurdly young, pushing a stroller passed stripped cars and broken beer bottles and barfed-upon old snow, she might have been carrying all the hours from her day in the string bags that hung from her shoulder. Behind her you could see the baby-encumbered preparations for a morning of baby-encumbered preparations; ahead of her, an afternoon of public radio, the Silver Palate Cookbook, cloth diapers, drywall compound, and latex-paint; and then Goodnight Moon, then Zinfandel. She was already fully the thing that was just starting to happen to the rest of the street.” Ibid pg.4 Freedom

And my response to that last jab forshadowing Patty and the narrators perspective on all the Mom’s in the suburbs.

“Wow, that’s fucking loaded!”

And it is, but that is where as a reader, I get uneasy. Am I mad at the characters, the narrator, or am I just caught up in it because it’s that good?  I mean, that fleshing out of Patty is so loaded, yet so good. Every one of the characters in Freedom, at some point, left a metallic bile taste in my mouth. I felt uneasy about them, their decisions and their viewpoint on the world. And finishing the novel, didn’t fully redeem them. Yet, when David and I were running a few weeks ago and I mentioned that I’d finished it and David being David, asked what I thought. I said, “It’s a book of the times.”

At that moment, the whole breadth of the work dilated in my minds eye. It grew into this large compositional work, not so much narrative as experience. I think what I meant by a book of the times, is a book of our times. Americans who are middle-aged or approaching middle-age, and have lived through the past decade of seeming unfurling chaos dilating out in electoral processes, national disasters, economic collapse, and retracting back to do it all again. Not just in the American experience but in this new, very global, yet at once detached version of society we sit atop. As our foundation wears out from under us.

It seems almost as if Freedom is bigger than its britches. In trying to take on it all, it feels very much like it dealt with none of it. And reading over only a handful of other reviews and interviews about the book and Franzen himself, I can’t help but reflect on my feelings as I progressed through the book. Early on the overall character of the story came off as fairly misogynistic. All of the women in this book are detestable, shallow and incomplete. As he’s building up the character of Patty, the momentum towards an inevitable relationship catastrophe sets in and he begins to set the stage for Patty the anti-hero, Patty the hated and as a reader he sets the stage for the impending doom.

“For all queries, Patty Berglund was a resource, a sunny carrier of socio-cultural pollen, an affable bee.” Ibid pg. 5 Freedom

My gut feeling and personal comment at the time:

“It's seems his sense of irony and sarcasm are pretty heavy here. I predict he divorces her. Is this an unflappable source of misogyny or something else?”

In an interview with NPR Jonathan Franzen claimed he over-identified with women and that his third-person narration of Patty’s memoir was a way of getting perspective on the three male characters in the book. But for me, the whole book gradually felt like a piece of psychotherapy for Jonathan Franzen, particularly when Patty shares her story through her auto-biography. The act of Patty using a third person narrative as therapy for herself, if anything, spoke more to me as this book being just that for Frandsen in turning to his own issues with women , social issues, and speaking publicly.

And in reflecting on Jonathan Franzen’s largely curmudgeonly public persona intertwined in interviews over the past decade, it seems clear that his characters as anything are very much amalgamations of his experience. There are elements of Franzen in Patty, Walter, and perhaps somewhere deep down Richard as well. Richard a weighed down lesser known music icon is as much Franzen as it seems to be an incarnation of his friend a tragic loss of David Foster Wallace. I’m surprised in finding an early assessment as much to that affect in my notes when I was about a third of the way through the book.

“And this whole bromance between Walter & Richard must be a surrogate for one of Franzen's own.”

In every way it seems Franzen has been able to take his own issues, with death, irrelevancy, childhood, environmental catastrophes and marital challenges and channel them through the characters of Freedom. And so I ask you and myself, is that not a larger point of good writing, to deal with these issues of life? Then why is it that I feel that I’m wasting time, that I’m performing some desecrated act in reading this work? Does the answer lie in his attempts to measure freedom in these ‘everyday’ struggles of middle-class family, or is it just an exploration, and attempt to raise the hairs on the backs of our necks and egg us on? Maybe Franzen’s success is found lurking in the interweaving of socio-political issues of the time deep within his characters persona's. Perhaps it lies mostly in his interconnections to the literary establishment of the United States, which for all its alleged pride at diversity and equality, so often levels it praise on a select few.

I still struggle with this work. I’m finished with it, but not done with it. There are nuggets of truth that ring in some of the characterizations of familial strife and yet, there remains a haze that gathers about the eyes when I try and look back at these characters and the flesh of the fictional nature, something amiss about it all. Which brings me back to the humanity of it all. Life never seems well enough reflected or spun out as a story when one looks at ones accomplishments. No matter the status one attains, looking back, we often ask, is that it?

We never truly know one another. Writing is one of the most personal ways of expressing oneself, even when you are purposefully obfuscating and visualizing worlds, fragments of you end up within. Some will count Freedom at the worst for it and others the better, but in my book of an accounting of things read, it remains a book of the times. And now I turn my thoughts towards finishing a book that remains timeless.

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I have to take breaks from blogging.

I like to leap off and disappear for a while from time to time. Meanwhile, my closest group of friends and some family soldier on. Tweets spillover in my twitter window at a rate of on average several hundred an hour and I only “follow” a few hundred folks. Facebook updates have long disappeared and I’ll never catch up. Perhaps some of my friends have been insulted I’ve not seen their update, perhaps they have ‘unfriended’ me for my lack of response.

Maybe I should feel guilty about these things. That’s part of why I’m writing this post to begin with, an overarching feeling of guilt that perhaps I haven’t been involved. It’s not so much that I feel like I missed out, it’s more that I want others to understand why I choose to miss out from time to time. Moreover, I feel the need to figure out my place in it all. And I know my audience, it’s very small. There is no concern about SEO here, to what purpose? I can stop blogging whenever I want. My followers are typically people I love, respect or both. So when I feel guilty, it’s because I want them to understand they are still important in my life and more to the point, I do yearn to hear their perspectives on their own lives and the world. For your information, I missed 24 tweets while I typed the paragraph above.

While thinking about how to structure this latest post, I wanted to take a different path. Surely influenced by my latest reading, part Podrazik, part Kottke, part Proustian, part Harper’s Magazine, part wholly nothing. I feel the need to catalogue time. Part of that missing out that some people have written about of late, some have made fun of and others are trying to ameliorate at this very moment. Actually you just missed it, that moment. No, that one.

The title of this post could have been called 28 days later. That’s the last time I wrote on this blog. In thinking about time, consciousness, and living, which I’ve been doing a lot of in the past year, much less the last 28 days, I wanted this to take some kind of measurement of what kind of person I’ve been in the past 28 days, what have you missed out on about me, what have I missed out on reflecting.

So, this is that post. The one where I tell you that you are one of 3.565×10^-6 percent of Americans who have visited this site in those 28 days. Feel pretty small? I know I do.

But why is it that I haven’t blogged about life of late, and what did I fail to write about? I mean, what on earth could be more important than writing a blog post or two or three about things I’m interested in or have done? Shouldn’t you care what I put in my coffee everyday? Well, notice that a baby is the last thing that I posted? New babies, whether they are your friends, family members, or your own (I suspect) grab your attention and really get you thinking about what it means to live in this world.

Of course there is more to it, I already mentioned that hiatus thing I do. Perhaps you do it as well. You just get overwhelmed by it all. Or you get too busy, you know living without. We used to not have this you know? Ever since I first signed onto the Internet, which must have been sometime in the early nineties (only 20 years ago- that’s nothing by the way for you 20 and below and I’m not being snobby, you’ll see), time has had these extremely compressed periods and these seeming instantaneous leaps.

So, much has happened and been done in the past 28 days, maybe that is why I haven’t sat down to share it on the web, it is just too much. And I’ll admit, most have probably been through more. We let our year anniversary of travelling for five months virtually slip away unnoticed. The Bahrain protests had increased in violence a day after I last posted, on February 18th, probably right while I stood in line buying my Rubbermaid containers, that I turned into a worm bin a week later, only to have them die off last week, someone was being beaten down by a police or dictatorial force. Checking my primary Gmail account, I’ve only written 62 emails in that time while I’ve received over 338.

I remember I used to get more emails than that in any given day when I worked as a Systems Administrator for a non-profit. But back then I didn’t have a Twitter to check constantly, and few people knew what Facebook was, in fact, Facebook was barely launched. Plaxo was competing for market share with it and Myspace was still kicking it’s ass, as was MiGente according to my firewall stats. And LinkedIn barely had a pulse.

After visiting with baby Browne-Dash and hanging out with friends, again being lightly grilled by some on the progress of our business idea. Which is way slower and more complicated than I’d ever have imagined. I felt a renewed, heading out of the dark of winter, urgency for getting things done. I pushed myself to try and stay away from the Internet, especially Twitter as much as possible. And it’s not like I did not check these things or chime in from time to time, I just took it easy on it. But I continued with my new habit of listening to WNYC every morning or checking the New York Times, or just reading other blogs I’m interested in, but avoiding spending too much of my day on it, no more than an hour.

In the past month, just reflecting on what sits in my brain, I’ve heard about: Bahrain protests, Egypt protests and subsequent ousting of Mubarek, Sudan’s division, Syria protests, murmurings and quashing of China protests, Wisconsin’s threats to do away with collective bargaining for public sector workers, that the BP oil spill from this past year was basically a repeat of another oil well spill the Ixtoc operated by Sedco which became Transocean, the operator of the rig this past year, in the same area in 1979 from June to 13th to March 23 1980 ( but that well was not a deep water well), a friend’s fellowship decisions, Tracie’s invitation to try for her black belt in Karate, my father and step-mother’s 25th anniversary gift from us, a Peach tree, blossoming, my wife’s successful delivery of her new business’s, Auburn & Ivory, largest project to date.

I heard about my wife’s 92+ year old grandmother being rushed to the hospital where she headed back only days later from being released, after some serious lack of attention, and recovers at this very moment. I learned that NPR executives can be stupid and ruin the chances for hard-working NPR journalists/creators and create a media splash big enough to gather momentum for their potential detriment. I found out that my big-sister is engaged. I watched my friend launch into a new year of his online program The Perennial Plate with a US tour Kickstarter campaign. I’ve sowed the seeds for our New Jersey garden. I’ve listened to Yoko Ono and Kara Walker speak to a largely white audience and be asked uninteresting and shallow questions by a white male moderator and thought that MoMa could have done something better. I’ve made Salted Caramel Ice Cream for a private chef client that thinks I should open an ice-creamery, twice. I’ve ran over 39.53 miles. I’ve had to ice my legs and spend a week away from running because of shin splints from running too much & too quick.

I’ve learned that Jack Johnson, a more famous Texan, was possibly the best boxer the world has ever seen and remains one of the rarely recognized American influencers of our cultural development. I’ve seen someone dig deeper into Morgan Spurlock’s claims fast food is making us fat, and I’ve lost some pounds from eating too much fast food for five months while travelling. I’ve dove into Proust and then I’ve sat and listened while a Proust scholar and elder peers discuss the meaning and goings on in his Search for Lost Time.

I’ve grown disdainful and skeptical of Jonathan Franzen’s media acclaim as one of the best writers of our time after reading his book ‘Freedom’ and I’ve learned to look beyond some of Zinn’s seeming bias to get down to the history I’d never known. I’ve drank at least 56 cups of home-brewed coffee, and cooked at least 45 meals for my wife and or myself or others. I have grown shaggy in the head. I’ve stepped on glass. I’ve made a blackboard and filled it with ideas and tasks. I’ve completed some of those tasks and added more.

I’ve re-organized old recipes and come up with a few new ones, I’ve called my Mom more than a few times and spoken with my Dad a few. I’ve learned that the best way to discipline a cat is to leave him alone. I’ve started reading more books than I’ve finished, and read more books than I should. I’ve learned that magazines are an interesting expression of culture and had fun watching my friends explore discovering and analyzing new ones. I’ve read what felt like the longest New Yorker article ever. I’ve created about 50# of kitchen scraps. I’ve read an untold number of web pages and listened to as many radio stories as I’ve read online, god knows how many ads I’ve seen and not clicked on. I finished the train-wreck of a television series Spartucus while cooking for my wife and myself.

Lately, however, I’ve been saddened and mesmerized while I watched, read and heard about the heart-wrenching earthquakes and tsunami’s that have terrorized New Zealand and Japan. I have become more uneasy and distrustful with Nuclear Energy, so I turn more lights out, more often. I’ve been reminded that Nicholas Kristof is one of the most important reporters of our times. I’ve seen videos on YouTube of violence beset by tyranny, that would be suppressed and blocked for the very people it depicts. I’ve seen that development has come to our decrepit Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and watched as the iron was riveted and the cage of the arena lifted from the debris. And I’ve seen the first spring crocus’ rise up from our back-yard.

And I sit here flashing through all these memories and moments whenever someone asks me, what did you do today, or yesterday, and I think. I lived. How about you?

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Even the grumpy have days off. Babies make any weekend pretty awesome. 5 day old babies will melt your heart and fix all your worries. Anil and Alaina he is so beautiful! After my pass to Dan.

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Books come into our lives in mysterious ways. In mine, sometimes it
feels like I’m a giant electro-magnet and they hurl at me from the
shelves of bookstores, friends, neighbors, garbage piles, small dogs
and cats. When the recent controversial vote for our “monthly” book
reading for the New York’s Women’s Book Club came up, my wife chimed
in with “Oh, we should read that book... ‘The New York Regional Mormon
Singles Halloween Dance’! Yea, I thought, because I’ve always wanted
to read about that. What the hell has happened to Tracie? She must
have eaten something funny last night. Maybe this is one of those
mornings;where she wakes up and tells me all about her crazy dreams in
their Hieronymus Bosch forms. Maybe I slept through the first half of
the dream description and now she’s to the point where she is on about
Mormons.

So, it was not without reservation and to a large extent deeply
skeptical reservation that I succumbed to her advice that we should
read this book. And to some extent, guilt brought me to that decision,
 standing in the middle of Greenlight Bookstore I already had an
armload of books so I figured I should swoop one or two up for her
therby justifying my even setting into a bookstore without first
checking in with her. I could almost hear a stack of books fall to the
floor in our apartment a mile away. We have too many books. At least,
we go through this discussion from time to time. I should go through
them, get rid of some. Most of the time, we just ignore them,
until friends come by where we usually are able to pawn a few off,
exposing space for a few more.

Elna Baker’s book, was a couple of things I rarely find myself drawn
towards, a memoir of someone I’ve never heard of and Mormons. But
Tracie had gone on to remind me that we’d heard a story by her on
‘This American Life’ one day, remember? The baby story...? ...Um, no,
I did not. But I asked the shopkeeper if they had it, ‘cause I hadn’t
found it in the fiction shelves. She said, “...I think it’s in the
humor section...”. Sure enough it was. That is how when I needed a
break from our seriously depressing sociological history as
illuminated by the late Howard Zinn, I cracked the spine and started
to read and laugh over coffee.

It was easy to get into, her humor and humanity permeates every
sentence. And it was while reading this, a few days in, that I heard a
story on the radio. It was some famous critic talking about some
recent ‘memoir’ and they were discussing the recent onslaught of
“insignificant memoirs by the unaccomplished”, and I believe I got so
pissed that I snapped off the radio . The notion that one has to be a
scholar, a president, a famous actor, some measure of popular
‘accomplishment’ to be ‘worthy’ of being published grates on me.  A
box grater that catches on the back of knuckle as my grip slips and
blood oozes on the counter.

So, I dove into reading my memoir of another, so far, short-lived and
‘unaccomplished’ by traditional publishing standards memoirist and I’m
glad I did. Its kind of awesome that we have this freedom, to write
about our diverse experiences, our challenges, the breadth of
religious struggles and battles with faith that go on in our lives.
The fact that it has a place to be shared and discussed and reflected
on, that is why publishers should publish books like these, and why,
when they don’t, we should find other ways to do so.

I think young women all over the world, from all backgrounds, will
read books like these and want to share their stories as well, and I
think this adds to the richness of our cultural diaspora and wouldn’t
have it any other way.  It gives us a sense of calm and ease with one
another, an understanding. If I had to highlight one aspect of that
comes across as  the Elna Baker ideal, without ruining the book for
you, it would be her ‘Yes’ to life. Elna Baker embodies an eagerness
and willingness towards an adventurous and boundlessness in life. I’m
happy she took the time to share her moments in her deep and continual
battle with her belief systems, her conflicts with the paternalistic
boundaries of her religion, and her overcoming these challenges. She
illuminates for those that know not and those that yet need reminded,
we have these privileges to challenge our beliefs and yet can remain
faithful to those beliefs because of what we’ve built as a society.
And she makes us laugh out loud in the process.

Without saying anything about her writing, I hope I’ve convinced you
her story is worth your time. In case you still need a little swaying,
take a moment and listen to this segment from ‘This American Life’ her
story, one chapter from this book, ‘Babies Buying Babies’. Enjoy.

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Friday Night Lights the TV show is partly to blame for our new found interest. Super bowl parties come down to a few things, that for us, parallel pretty well with the meaning of life. Sharing good times, heartbreak in upset, joy in success, tasty food, and all in the company of friends. The game doesn't make or break it, but it takes a lot of bullshit out of pretenses for getting together.

2 Thai Bird Chilis, whole
1 1/2 Cups Jacob's Cattle, Dried Bean
1 Cup Pink Beans
12 g Salt
1tsp Cumin
Water

First, pick through the beans real quick, best accomplished on a wide surface (sheet pan) and then rinse them well. Then, combine ( yes salt included) and cook until very tender. No soaking method, cover with twice as much water as beans ( at least) and put it all on high and reduce to simmer once up. Cooks for about 1 1/2 hours, depending on your beans ( don't blame me for your old goods; ).
Puree beans reserve cooking liquid. add as needed to desired consistency. I use all of it.

Season/ Finish with:
Juice of 5 Limes
Juice of 1 Lemon
1 tsp Paprika
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 Serrano Chili w/ seeds, minced to paste ( knife skills yo)
2Tbsps Olive Oil ( or Fat of your dreams, maybe excluding butter

Make it Purty:
Cilantro, Fine mince, sprinkle over dip & serve cold
Or top with the herb or spice of your choice. Smoked pimento is nice.

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