Ever had a baby carrot? Not the baby cut carrots wrapped in cellophane at your grocery store, but a real baby carrot, just pulled from the earth. Last weekend at the Lakeside Farmer’s Market, I noticed that Walnut Hill Farm had a feathery pile of brilliant orange baby carrots arranged on a wooden table, and the dreary, drizzly morning brightened considerably.
luscious shiitake mushrooms from Pine Fork Farm at the SOJ Farmer’s Market
They were the biggest, fattest, meatiest shiitake mushrooms I had seen. So impressively massive, in fact, that I had to ask Teal Brooks of Pine Fork Farm if they were a particular type or new cultivar. Nope, she replied, they were standard issue, but perhaps the clean and clear conditions at her farm in Quinton, Virginia were responsible for their luscious largeness, or perhaps they were grown with love.
It’s the age old question I grapple with : What will I take to work for lunch this week? I stand sulking at the fridge, peering at the jumbled contents. I try to make sense out of the possible ingredient combinations and come up with…zip. Nada.
Being a fan of all things winter, I must be dragged kicking and hollering into the freshness of spring. I got my wish for one last snow in Richmond March 24. Like most southern snowfalls, it arrived magically and left town abruptly, leaving traces here and there and front yard snowmen with collapsed torsos and lumpen, tiny heads.
Pity the poor rutabaga. Mislabeled, misunderstood, underused and unappreciated. Somewhat hesitant to list rutabaga as a solo agent on the menus of The Good Eats Company, I include it in, for examples, a creamy colorful root vegetable soup, and white balsamic glazed root vegetables. Folks ask me what rutabaga tastes like, and I answer, for lack of better comparison, that it tastes like a cross between carrot and turnip. But dear rutabaga is so much more than this simplistic description! Carrot haters and turnip despisers may remember childhood battles at the dinner table, bargains struck with parents offering vegetables in earnest, and rejection in the form of a tiny mouth set in a grim line and the Word : “NO”. And so my answer seems less than adequate.
There is nothing more satisfying than eating a meal that sticks with you for hours and makes you feel just right : invigorated and not drowsy, satiated and not bloated, comforted, yet knowing you have eaten your carbs virtuously. Today’s vegan meal is brain food. High protein black lentils and red quinoa, paired with the antioxidant power of cashews and dried cranberries, plus the beta-carotene of kabocha squash, et voila! Food for the brain, and the hungry belly. Sure, it all sounds healthy, but what you really want to know is…does it taste good? The answer is a resounding yes. Chewed thoughtfully (this meal cannot be fully appreciated on the run, as both lentils and quinoa require some jaw power) with a wispy side salad and your favorite beverage, this dish satisfies and uplifts the spirit. I call this dinner, but you may offer it up as a filling side dish; it would be welcome at any dinner or brunch buffet, enjoyed by diners of any persuasion.
End of summer means that field peas are in season. Sure, you could purchase frozen field peas, but nothing compares to the earthy taste and toothsome bite of those that are freshly shelled. You will pay a little more, but these are not mechanically separated from their shells; a labor intensive act of love has delivered these beauties to the market. Field peas are technically beans, not peas. They are cousins to the Asian Mung bean, traveling to the new world in colonial times with African slaves who recognized their value as drought resistant, nutrient rich, portable foods.