52 Small Bites

The brilliant Amy has a new blog called "52 Bites; a site to help change the way you eat." She, along with everyone else I know, recently moved down South and has been exploring how to eat fresh and local on a budget, in a place that isn't totally obsessed with fresh and local like her old home (Seattle) was.

It's a nuts and bolts guide and breaks down menu planing in a way I find really helpful. I myself go to the farmers market, grab random things that look tasty, then scramble about to turn them into meals. I shop at the supermarket haphazardly and overwhelmed and then do crazy blog-fueled experiments like "Eating down my larder."

Amy is here to help.

As she describes the new venture: "Weekly advice on changing the way you eat over the course of a year. Healthier, cleaner, kinder, better - and without breaking the bank."

Carolina Gold

2 months ago I went to visit my peeps in Columbia, South Carolina, and took a moment to visit Anson Mills (see my photo gallery on the SFUSA blog). Glenn Roberts--heritage grain genius, artisanal food entrepeneur, and all around great guy--handed us bags of rice on our way out, bags that have been idling in my freezer until last week's potluck lunch at the office.

I made two iterations; the first was the filling in Mark Bittman's stuffed peppers (or as I like to call them, "Amy's stuffed peppers"). The second, I made up, and darned if it wasn't good. Mostly, I think, because it showcased the rice-beautiful Carolina Gold.

1 leek, washed, trimmed, and sliced into thin half moons
1 cup Anson Mills Carolina Gold rice
2 cups water
3 tbsp Kerrygold butter
fresh basil leaves, chiffonaded (ribbons)
the zest and juice of one lemon
salt, pepper


In a big saucepan, saute the leeks in 2 tbsp of the butter until soft and transluscent, salting a bit as you go
add the rice, stirring to coat
add the two cups of water, bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to a simmer
cook 15 minutes or so until rice is moist and fluffy
take of heat and toss with remaining butter, lemon zest and juice, basil ribbons
more salt and pepper to taste
if you don't like it, add more butter!

i left my heart in south kakalakee

This post is long overdue, but chronicles the weekend I spent observing what's so great that it could draw my two friends away from NYC, possibly for good. It turns out that life in Columbia, South Carolina is full of lovely surprises, and it's hard to begrudge anyone's decision to leave the grit and grim and trade it for smiles and sunshine--I mean, if you're INTO that kind of thing.

Some food and farm (and other) notes from my travel:

1. Free refills of seet tea. it turns out they aren't kidding around with the "sweet" part (yowza!), but isn't that kind and generous? Eternal free refills offered with a big ol' grin?

2. Coca cola with ice, sitting by/in the pool. The pool right outside your apartment. Your big apartment, the one with a guestroom and room for your surfboard. The one with parking spaces out front for both of your cars. In South Carolina, no diet Coke, only regular coke will do.

3. Lizard's Thicket. A local breakfast chain that you cannot visit for brunch at 1 pm, because they stopped serving breakfast ages ago. And all the well-dressed church ladies, eating a late lunch will look at you sweetly, shaking their grey heads. But a bright and early brekkie of sausage, cheese grits, giant biscuit and eggs is a really marvelous thing. Cheap, too, i bet, but I have friends who are too generous to let me know what a "bill" in South Carolina looks like.

4. Chicken Salad. Apparently cafes around here are competing for the best chicken salad. Embrace the mayonnaise--you're in South Carolina now--and you might not regret it, 'cause this stuff is pretty tasty.

5.The farm. My hostess had the brilliant idea that Labor Day could best be spent visiting her new CSA farm outside the city. We drove to Five Leaves Farm, a very small and lovely operation run by a husband and wife named Kristen and Ben Dubard. Ben took time out of his day to give us the tour, ripping japanese cucumbers off the vine and breaking into crisp green chunks for us to eat, nipping basil leaves for us to smell, and grabbing one of the last of summer's melons for us to take with us. it's amazing to see how much food can be produced from a small plot of land, and it was cool to see the very soil that Cerry and Ethan's fall food will come from.

Come fall, they'll be all settled in, and here in NYC it will become gray and cold, and there, in South Kakalakee it will be bright and sunny. It might just be heaven on earth...