From Rosalind Creasy

Early Americans welcomed the greens of spring, either from the garden or growing wild, such as dandelions and violets (Viola Odorata).

6 small organic eggs
8 cups lightly packed greens such as spinach, dandelions, mâche, or violet leaves*
1/3 pound thick-sliced bacon, cut in 1-inch pieces
1 small onion, minced
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1/4 cup cider vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper

Place the eggs in a saucepan of cold water bring to a boil, and immediately remove from heat. Let the eggs sit for 15 minutes, drain the water from the saucepan, then run cold water over the eggs. Let them cool, and then peel them and set them aside.

Wash the greens well and dry them in a salad spinner. Break leaves into bite-size pieces and refrigerate.

In a large pan, sauté the bacon until crisp. Drain the bacon on a paper towel. Remove all but 1/4 cup of bacon drippings from the pan. Over medium heat sauté the onion until transparent, about 5 minutes.

In a small bowl, blend together the sugar, mustard, and cornstarch. Add the vinegar and 2/3 cup water and whisk together. Add the mixture to the onion and blend, cooking over low heat for 1 minute, until it starts to thicken.

Cut the eggs in half. On four salad plates equally divide the greens to form a bed. Drizzle a quarter of the still-warm dressing on each plate. Garnish with the bacon pieces and 3 egg halves. Grind pepper on top and serve.

Serves 4.
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See also Jesse’s Bitter Green and Egg Salad Recipe
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*Edible Flower Disclaimer
Rosalind Creasy is author of Rosalind Creasy’s Recipes From The Garden: 200 Exciting Recipes from the Author of the Complete Book of Edible Landscaping.
Image Credit: Rosalind Creasy
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From Jeff Cox

It’s vitally important to know your growers and suppliers. Here are several correlates if you want truly great-tasting, fresh food. Like all generalizations, there are exceptions, but for the most part these rules hold true:

The Smaller the Farm, the Better the Food
Chances are that at small family farms, more care will be taken with the produce, the meat and milk animals, and the farm itself. At very large factory farms, produce and animals are commodities. There’s a machine designed expressly to machine-harvest every crop. Things are done by a schedule, including the application of agrichemicals. Small farmers, on the other hand, are much less regimented. They get “up close and personal” with their crops and animals. Their chickens are more likely to live in a pen by a henhouse, eat vegetable scraps and insects they find by scratching in the soil, and enjoy their lives than to live crammed together into cages under round-the-clock lights like agribusiness chickens. Which eggs do you think make the best omelets?

The Closer the Farm to Your Table, the Better the Food
The more local the food, the better, for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s going to be fresh and in season; it’s going to exhibit all the flavor it’s capable of. Because it doesn’t have to sit in trucks and railcars and on supermarket shelves for weeks, it can be one of those delicious but fragile varieties that doesn’t ship well. It can be picked ripe, instead of harvested hard and green and then gassed into obtaining color (but not flavor) on the long journey to the supermarket.

Also, the shorter the distance from the farm to your table, or at least to the market, the greater the chance you’ll meet the person who actually grew the food. You’ll be able to ask him or her questions about how the food is grown.

The Smaller and Closer the Farm, the Better the Effect on the Environment
There are environmental benefits to shortening those supply lines: Less fuel is used in transporting and storing the food. And local small farmers tend to be organic because they’re farming their own land, and they don’t want to expose themselves and their families to noxious chemicals. They also tend to be your neighbors and can be held accountable for their practices by their fellow citizens. If your neighborhood dairy is polluting the local creek by spreading raw manure on frozen soil (which allows it to run off into the local watersheds), you can do something about it. If your milk comes from cows penned on a thousand acres a thousand miles away, you won’t even know about its environmental problems.

Small farmers who own their own land also have a deep relationship with that land and a regard for it. They know where the pheasants nest and may decide not to plow there during those times of year when the birds are raising their young. They can see the effects of their husbandry on the ecology of the natural world and the farm world as these worlds intertwine and affect one another. Factory farms tend to plow every inch that can be plowed, from fencerow to fencerow, without regard for the niceties of nature. Small farmers can be held accountable if there’s something wrong with their produce. If there’s something wrong with the crops from factory farms, and you try to talk to the person responsible, you’ll be passed up the ladder of command until you reach someone who’s either unavailable or surrounded by platoons of PR people to smooth-talk you or lawyers to sue you if you get too close.

The Shorter the Time from Harvest to Eating, the Better the Food
Although you may want to age your beef, cheese, and wine, and hang your game, most foods taste best and have the most nutrients when they’re just picked or freshly killed. They taste better and have the most nutrients when it is allowed to develop fully on the plant it grows on. If you could graph the flavor development of a tree-ripened peach on a bell curve, the very highest point of the curve would be the moment it’s picked dead-ripe from the tree. If that moment closely coincides with the moment you bite into it, well, it doesn’t get any better than that. This doesn’t hold true for every food. But we all know from experience that vine-ripened tomatoes taste better than supermarket tomatoes, and people who plant tomatoes in their gardens know that a tomato picked ripe and eaten on the spot tastes even better than a vine-ripened tomato from the store. Consumers put a premium on freshly picked corn because the moment an ear is snapped off the stalk, it begins to lose sweetness and flavor.

Enzymes are the catalytic agents in fruits and vegetables responsible for these swift changes in flavor after picking. But enzymes are evanescent molecules without a great deal of persistence, especially after their work is done. One of the reasons fresh food tastes so bright and complex compared to food that’s been trucked around for many days is the presence of enzymes, phenolis, and other plant substances that will wither away with every passing hour.

One of the best ways to shorten the distance and time from the farm to your table is to visit local pick-your-own operations. In Connecticut, a typical northeastern state, about 30 percent of the state’s fruit and vegetable growers have pick-your-own plots. The crops from these plots are usually sold at reduced prices because the farmer doesn’t have the expense of picking the crop. Over the past twenty-five years, there has been a gradual move by small farmers away from sales to wholesalers, who offer low prices for their crops, to direct-to-consumer marketing, where the growers get a fairer price (although higher for you, the consumer). A recent survey by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture identified about 560 state growers who market their produce through farm showrooms and roadside stands.

Visit PickYourOwn.org for a list of such farms in every state.
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Organic Radish Salsa Recipe

Makes about 1½ cups

The radish adds a different kind pf pungency to the peppery heat of a typical salsa. It also adds a nice crunch and color when red radishes are young and crisp.

Use for a topping for chicken, pork, or fish tacos; as an addition to meat, rice, and beans in burritos; or eat with chips.

½ cup finely diced organic radishes
½ cup seeded and diced ripe organic plum tomato (1 large tomato)
¼ cup finely chopped scallions (white parts only)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
1 teaspoon minced jalapeño or serrano pepper
2 tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Gently stir all ingredients together in a serving bowl.
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See also Small Farms Best Chance Of Feeding The World
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Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and The Organic Food Shopper’s Guide and lives in Sonoma County, California.
Image Credit: © Milosluz | Dreamstime.com
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From Greg Atkinson

Seattle’s “culinary diva,” Kathy Casey, introduced me to these tasty, bite-sized morsels, which she discovered in an old issue of Sunset magazine, improved, and appropriated as her own. Once I became aware of them, I started seeing olive poppers everywhere. They can be made with all different sorts of olives and all different sorts of cheese. I like them best with a snappy cheddar from Oregon and a soft green olive from California. After making them for large parties, sometimes hundreds at a time, I’ve found a couple of timesavers. First, press the dough into the shape of a log and cut it into exactly the number of rounds you need to wrap your olives. To make short work of the wrapping job, use the thumb of one hand to press each round of dough into a flat pancake in the palm of the opposite hand, and then wrap the dough “pancake” around an olive.

Makes about 24 poppers

1 cup (4 ounces) finely grated organic sharp Tillamook cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons organic olive oil
1/2 cup sifted organic unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
24 medium to large organic green olives, pitted

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F and line a baking sheet with baker’s parchment

2. In a food processor, or in a medium mixing bowl with a fork, combine the cheese and olive oil, then stir in the flour and smoked paprika.

3. Shape 1 heaping tablespoonful of dough around each olive, covering it well and shaping the dough into a ball.

4. Place the balls on the prepared baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Serve hot.
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Greg Atkinson is author of West Coast Cooking and lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
© Copyright Greg Atkinson
Image Credit: © Ekaterina Polyashova | Dreamstime.com
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From Gene Logsdon
Garden Farm Skills

With corn prices triple the historical levels, growing corn for your own table use looks more sensible than ever, especially when it is not easy to find organic corn to buy. Riffle through cookbooks and you might be amazed at how many ways corn can be used to make succulent foods. We treasure an old cookbook (1951) Whole Grain Cookery, by Stella Standard (forward by Pearl Buck !!!) which has 63 recipes for cooked or baked corn and cornmeal, from all manner of breads, puddings, soups, dodgers, johnnycakes, hoecakes, mushes, corn pones, pancakes, and various dishes from hominy. And this cookbook doesn’t even get into the many dishes that can be made with sweet corn, fresh, canned or frozen.

Our country, actually our whole hemisphere, grew up on corn, or maize as it is more correct to call it. There are still varieties around that came from ancient Aztec sources. Many early settlers would have literally starved to death without the maize that the native Americans showed them how to grow and cook. It is because of their size that ears of corn is so eminently practical for the gardener and homesteader. You can husk out by hand an acre or two of corn much easier than trying to thresh out smaller grains like wheat. Farmers used to husk as much as ten acres a season, taking all winter to do it if necessary. You can plant a half acre of corn with a low-cost garden planter in a day, and several acres in a planting season.

Because of the cold, wet spring this year, it was nip and tuck getting corn planted in the cornbelt. Corn farmers were almost frantic as the rain pelted down and the the ideal planting season— late April to mid-May— slipped by with less than half the crop in the ground. Some of what did get planted early, including some of mine, rotted in the ground rather than sprouted and had to be replanted.

We grow corn organically, which means that the ground must be prepared by working the soil to a fine seed bed first. (Even the commercial growers who use no-till planters and herbicides, are learning, or rather re-learning, that it is better to work up a find seed bed first.) So we plow under green manure (strips in one of our hay plots), then disk it, then go over it with a garden tiller since we grow only about a half acre’s worth. We would be better off to use just one implement, a heavy, tractor-mounted tiller, to do all three operations. (Plowing leaves a dead furrow on one side of every strip that is difficult to fill and level with the disk.) But that would be one more expense which we have so far been able to avoid.

I like to plant my corn in strips because outside rows in a corn field almost always yield higher than inside rows in a solid plot of corn. With strips there are more outside rows. Also, the sunlight can filter through the strips better too, to encourage clovers and small grains that I might inter-seed in the standing corn later. Also again, on sloping land, strips control erosion much better than a solid field of cultivated soil.

Because of the wet weather, farmers (including me) felt almost forced to work the ground when it was still a little too wet, a big mistake. Even after disking, this meant dealing with hard little clods when the soil did dry out. Locally there was a run on cultipackers, a clod-crushing implement not often used any more. Fortunately I have one which I use every year on the field corn because planting with my light, makeshift two-row garden planter (see photo above), the corn seeds do not get pressed into the soil tight enough for good germination. This year, the cultipacker (see photo at top) also crushed those troublesome little clods into a passably nice seed bed. If you connect two garden planters like I did, be sure to allow for enough room between the rows for your tiller or cultivator when weeding

We grow open-pollinated field corn even though it yields less than hybrids, because, as the neighbors say, I am contrary. That is not really the reason but enters into it I suppose. First of all o-p corn makes bigger ears on average than hybrid. It is faster to husk out one foot-long ear than two six inch ears. Also, we think, and so do other contrary neighbors who have purchased our corn for their own table use, that it tastes better than hybrid corn. We think our Reid’s Yellow Dent is superior to other open-pollinated varieties that we have tested. Ours is not as hard (easier to chew), which makes it better to feed as whole kernels to livestock and chickens too. The raccoons and the deer think ours tastes better too, unfortunately. They often bypass the neighbors’ hybrids for our corn.

There is almost an unlimited number of sweet corn and popcorn varieties from ancient to advanced. The new hybrid, high sucrose varieties are tastier to us, but if you want old, open-pollinated varieties, you can still get them from most of the mail order seed companies. You can grind meal out of sweet corn (a little too gummy we think) and even popcorn. Don’t forget parched corn from white or yellow sweetcorn. No doubt the many old corn varieties, red, white and blue, now used mainly for decoration, could also make meal or parched corn.

We figure that three fourths of an acre, half field corn and half garden corns, with field corn yielding a hundred bushels per acre (twice that is not uncommon, in fact three times that is possible), produces enough grain for all the table uses we enjoy, plus all the grain a cow and calf, 30 chickens, and a pig or two needs in a year, especially with some good pasture for the animals to free range. (We don’t feed our lambs any grain but they eat the corn fodder.) You will have to experiment to find out what your land is capable of.

This year, with corn bouncing around six dollars a bushel, you might consider growing some for a cash crop. If you have a couple of acres not in use otherwise and use organic methods that avoid the current extremely high cost of chemical fertilizers and herbicides, you could get a 150 bushels per acre of hybrid corn easily enough. That could mean $900 for spare time work, mostly profit not counting your labor. Something your high schoolers might ponder as they try to save money for college…. or to pay their gas bills.
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See also Gene’s Sweet Corn From The Garden – In December
and Corn Is For Eating… or Drinking
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Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.
Gene is author ofThe Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land)
and The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life
Photos Credit: Carol Logsdon
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From Lisa Barnes

When did chefs become so popular and get notoriety like rock stars? Don’t get me wrong, I get caught up in the hype too. And I am usually more nourished and fulfilled by an amazing meal than a great song. But cooking, eating and food overall as entertainment seems to be a phenomena of the last 10 years. I don’t remember knowing names of chefs or watching them on T.V. when I was a kid. Now I have many friends whose children love to watch cooking shows and can tell you the names of the Iron Chefs, like a baseball line-up.

A few months ago I saw the advertisements for the Pebble Beach Food and Wine event and saw the list of chefs, food discussions and meals – and I began salivating. I bought tickets for my husband and me. I was not in a position to splurge for a weekend package or even more than one event, but that didn’t matter. We opted for the grand tasting. How could “grand” not be anything but wonderful?

We got there on a cool gray day and went into the tents, which were enormous. At first all we saw was Lexus advertisements and we wondered what we got ourselves into. Then we got the lay of the land (tent) and saw that all the chefs were around the perimeter. There were lines of foodies (although not too long) waiting to compliment the chef and taste their offering. However for each chef there were probably 20 wineries offering wine. Many more organic wines than I had ever heard of, which was nice to see and learn about.

In the center of the tent there were presentations and book signings. We immediately saw Chef Jacques Pepin was up first. Thinking there would be a big line waiting we headed towards the center. There was no one there but us and Jacques. He was a delight, and we took a picture (above). But it was kind of sad that he didn’t have a bigger following. Everyone was more interested in Trey from the last season of Top Chef. Don’t get me wrong… it’s one of the few shows I watch on T.V. (See below) But let’s show some respect to a pioneer and forefather.

Later in the day a crowd of people was trying to get a look at Top Chef Judge Tom Colicchio and a man was pushed into my husband. My husband helped the stumbling man and it was poor Jacques!

O.K. yes I like Top Chef. The biggest surprise was how nice Judge Gale Simmons was. I think she gets edited as the picky and hardest to please. In person she is very likable and seemed genuinely happy to hear about what I was writing for this blog and my philosophy about feeding children. We even swapped a Food and Wine Cookbook for a Petit Appetit Cookbook.

So as far as the food, some was great and some was unimpressive. My husband and I thought we were Top Chef Judges the way we picked apart and praised the food. Surprisingly some local S.F. favorites like Elizabeth Faulkner of Citizen Cake (a strange pudding shot with tasteless cookie) and Charles Phan of Slanted Door (a ho-hum wonton) were a disappointment. Our favorite savory offering was a duck and seared fois gras dish from Cal Stamenov at Marinus Restaurant at the Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley. At the other end of the tent was an amazing dessert table with carrot cake cookie sandwiches and “ocean” chocolate truffles (unlike anything I’d tasted) and that too turned out to be from Marinus. So guess where I want to go?

One thing I found missing at the event was signage. There are so many people with food allergies and intolerances and very few of the tables had a sign even saying the name of the dish/food item let alone the ingredients and where they came from. I thought this was remiss. Having a food allergy I didn’t like having to ask if something was hidden in food that may cause me to go to the hospital. A few chefs told exactly what was in the dish and where the ingredients were grown. Call me crazy but I expect to know (and don’t think we should assume) that the peas are organic and were grown locally when at an event such as this.

So what about children? Yes, there were a few in attendance. We even talked about how much our foodie son would’ve enjoyed some of the chocolate and seafood dishes. But then remembering the ticket price and the fact that this was a real weekend get-a-way date with my husband I was very happy he was home with grandma and grandpa.
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See also Lisa’s I Met Alice Waters
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Lisa Barnes is author of The Petit Appetit Cookbook: Easy, Organic Recipes to Nurture Your Baby and Toddler and lives in Sausalito, California.
Image Credit: Lone Pine at Pebble Beach, WikiPedia Commons
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