Larry’s Produce

eat. Last Halloween I blogged about our friend Craig’s annual pumpkin-carving extravaganza in Fairfield, where Robin grew up. What I didn’t mention is that all 589 of the pumpkins and other squash carved by us were donated by Larry’s Produce, a place Robin and I have been wanting to check out ever since.

it’s so popular, a taco truck parks there all day long

We’re on a week-long road trip right now, and one of our first stops was Fairfield, to visit Robin’s folks. “Hey,” Robin said, “let’s visit Larry’s while we’re here.”

“Good idea,” I said. “We can buy goodies for a gift-basket for our friends Sandy and Tom” (whom we’d be visiting a few days hence).

Robin’s dad advised us to get there right when they open at nine o’clock, as it would be swamped with people if we waited until later in the day. We took his advice and were glad we did, as it was already so crowded that it was difficult to maneuver.

Larry’s provides wheelbarrows for customers to fill with melons, potatoes, peaches, corn-on-the-cob, green beans, chili peppers, beets, strawberries, and a wealth of other fruits and vegetables.


“Oooo—I want to use one!” I exclaimed. I grabbed the handle of the nearest wheelbarrow. Uh oh.... As soon as I started to lower it to the ground, the one next to it began to tip. I watched as if the events were unfolding in slow-motion: one by one, like rows of dominos, every single wheel barrow fell over, making a huge racket.


I looked around sheepishly. The checkers behind me were all staring, and several shoppers applauded. “Oops,” I said. The two young men who came to set them aright waived away my attempt at assistance. I slunk away with my bright yellow wheelbarrow.

Meanwhile, Robin—who had spied a bin of bright red cherries—was busy picking out the ripest specimens, one by one:


I wandered around the huge warehouse-sized building, checking out the goods. Customers were stocking up on potatoes,


lemons and limes,


and melons.



And as fast as folks filled their wheelbarrows, the dwindling stock was replenished:


There were a few people, however, who did not seem as excited as the others


I wandered over to a window looking out to the yard behind, and saw this idyllic, pastoral scene:


Our purchases complete, Robin took them over to the check-out counter to pay. As she waited in line, my eye was caught by a bin of bright red grapes: that would make a nice shot, I thought. I waited as a man examined the pile, taking a series of photos as he reached in to pick out the clusters he wanted.


After a minute I looked up to see a woman staring at me. “Oh, sorry,” I said, thinking she wanted to get around (though there was plenty of room for her to go behind me). As I edged closer to the bin I could see she had an odd expression. I smiled at her questioningly.

“I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to take a picture of a bunch of grapes,” she snorted derisively as pushed her wheelbarrow past, shaking her head.

* * *

We got to Sandy and Tom’s yesterday afternoon. The fruits and vegetables from Larry’s had been stowed in a cooler for safe-keeping, but shortly before we arrived we pulled over so I could arrange it in the basket we had bought. Robin suggested that I add a few wildflowers for extra color:


Very pretty, I thought.

Turns out they’re leaving today, however, which means they’ll have to schlepp the gift-basket along with them. So it was bit of a “poisoned gift,” as they say in French.

Rah, Rah, Raw!

eat. My nephew Nehemiah—who’s about to start school at the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute, a gourmet raw/vegan cooking school in Fort Bragg—came over Saturday night, declaring that he was going to prepare us a raw-food dinner.

marinated kale salad, garnished with vegan faux-parmesan “cheese”

I must admit I was just a tad skeptical; I mean, just how tasty could a meal be when nothing is heated over 120 degrees? Good cooking, after all, is all about chemistry—especially the interactions between ingredients based on heat—non?

Well, non, it turns out. What I failed to consider is that there are other important chemical reactions that affect food besides heat—most notably fermentation. (I should-a known better, given my recent thrill at making kimchee.)

Both dishes Nehemiah prepared included the fermented Japanese seasoning miso. But the miso he brought along was not your garden-variety kind: Rather, it was made from millet instead of the traditional soybeans and rice, and had a rich flavor as well as a wonderful, chewy texture.

The first thing he did was chop up a big bunch of deep green kale. Into a large bowl it went, along with a few tablespoons of the miso, and a light drizzle of shoyu and agave syrup:


Next he squeezed fresh lemon juice over the greens, and then tossed them with sesame and olive oils:


This then went into the fridge to “cook”—i.e., let the acids do their work breaking down the fibrous kale—for a few hours. The finished product was truly delicious! (See photo at top.) Complex, intense flavors, and full of umami.

For our first course, we had miso soup. But once again, not the plain-Jane soup that’s routinely served in Japanese restaurants in this country. I was put to work cutting and chopping: dicing the tofu, cutting the nori into strips (not pictured), shredding the zucchini (the very first one from our summer garden!), and slicing up a couple bright orange zucchini flowers for the garnish:


Meanwhile, Nehemiah heated water (not quite to boiling), to which he added the nori strips, the shredded zucchini, and a healthy dose of miso (did I forget anything, Nehemiah?):


I divided the tofu among the bowls,


and then Nehemiah ladled the soup on top.


I’ll never again say that raw food is boring. You just have to know how to make it right.


And now for something completely different:
Unicorns are apparently not “the other white meat.”

I saw this post today, and had to share it with y’all. The National Pork Board apparently sent a cease and desist letter to online retailer ThinkGeek regarding its alleged “infringement and dilution of trademark rights” by their use of the phrase “the other white meat” in an April Fools’ Day gag about tinned unicorn meat.

Turns out unicorn meat is really red—not white—with lots of little sparkles in it. Who knew?

A Bloomsday Stew

eat. Regular readers of this blog may recall that I belong to a Finnegans Wake reading group, which meets twice-monthly at a local Irish pub to sip Guinness and ponder James Joyce’s encyclopedic romp through the history of everything.

Irish stew

My college roommate Cathy is a member of the group, and the two of us are planning a trip to the British Isles this September, which will of course include several days in Dublin. In preparation for our visit to Dublin’s fair city, I have been re-reading Joyce’s Ulysses. (And I must say, it seems awfully easy after struggling with Finnegans Wake). Ulysses, which (like the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?) is loosely modeled on Homer’s Odyssey, chronicles one day—June 16, 1904—in Dublin, as seen through the eyes of numerous characters, most notably the kindly, musing Leopold Bloom.

The term “Bloomsday” thus refers to June 16, on which date fans of Joyce’s book the world over annually convene to read snippets of the work, retrace Bloom’s steps (either in Dublin or via cyberspace), drink a few pints, and eat some down-home Irish food.

When our Finnegans Wake reading group decided to celebrate Bloomsday last week with a dinner at my house, I flipped through Ulysses to refresh my memory as to what Bloom himself would have fancied:

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Hmmmm.... How ’bout a nice Irish stew, instead?

Luckily, Seana—one of our FW cohorts (check out her blog about it here)—had just emailed me an Irish friend’s recipe for stew, which he claimed to have been handed down from his mother. Just the ticket. His recipe follows (with my editorial notes in italics and brackets), along with photos I took of the process. (I did change some of the timing; I think the Irish must like their veg mushier than do I.)

Adrian McKinty’s Irish Stew

Get a large slab of pork ribs (or your favourite cut of meat).
[I used a chuck roast.]


[I cut it into big hunks, tossed them with flour,


and browned them in oil. Browning the meat isn’t traditional for Irish stew, but the caramelization caused thereby gives it extra flavor.]


Put [the meat] in a pot with a [large] bottle of Guinness (or your favourite dark beer).


Add salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce and a beef stock cube [I omitted the bouillon cube] and maybe two pints of water.


Bring to the boil and simmer for one hour.

Chop two large onions and add those.


Let the stew simmer for another 20-30 minutes, and then chop up four large carrots into cubes and add them to the stew. [Adrian says to add the carrots at the very beginning, but I decided they’d end up too soft if added so early. As you can see, I used whole young carrots.]


Let the stew simmer for another 15 minutes and add maybe six or seven large potatoes, coarsely chopped.


Add more worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper to taste. The level of liquid is crucial here. If you don’t have enough the stew will burn, too much and it will be weak. I’ve found that it should just be enough for the last few potatoes to still float.

Simmer your stew for another half hour and it should be done.


Just like Momma used to (and still does) make, except she usually uses lamb or steak pieces. [I made mine the day before, and then reheated it in the oven, and garnished it with chopped chives. See photo at top.]

Serve with crusty bread and Guinness. [We also had a green salad.]

Four-Ring Circus

sing. The LA Opera—a young house, now only in its 25th year—has just put on its very first Ring cycle. This is a Big Deal for an opera company, and the LA Ring has been the subject of high anticipation amongst opera-lovers and the cultural mucky-mucks of Los Angeles.

Like the Ring’s chief god Wotan*, however—who ultimately loses all because of an ill-conceived power-grab—I fear the LA Opera may go belly-up as a result of its exorbitantly expensive attempt to prove its stature among the big boys of opera with an edgy, “modern” Ring.

although George Lucas’ estimate ended up being too pricey
to swallow, ultimate producer Achim Freyer couldn’t
resist throwing light sabers into his show
photo: Monika Rittershaus [source]

Wagner’s four-opera masterpiece, Der Ring des Nibelungen, often sells out. You see, like the Dead-heads of old, Ring-heads think nothing of traveling across the country—or around the world—to see the work when the full cycle is performed.

Robin and I went with my parents to see the first of the LA Opera’s three cycles, which ended a week ago Sunday. I was astounded to see that at least a third of the house was empty, on all four nights. The word had apparently gotten out about the production.

I’d call it a failure, for two primary reasons.

First, Achim Freyer’s directing managed to completely eliminate from the work any hint of emotion. This is on par with omitting humor from the Marx Brothers, or axing love from Romeo and Juliet.

A website about the Ring that I found on line contains this description of just how fundamental human emotions are to Wagner’s work:

[Wagner’s intent in the Ring was to depict] the human perception of the physical world, the inner world of man and the relations between people. And the myriads of emotions these relations lead to. In the Nibelung’s Ring we find an enormous range of emotions, from the deepest sorrow, pain and despair to joy, wonder and elevated pride, from fear and anxiety to self-confidence and firmness, from arrogance to heroism, from hate and rage to rapture and ecstasy, from betrayal, treachery and falseness to compassion, tenderness, love and total self-sacrifice. Almost every human condition is described with textual and musical means. And most masterly of all, the composer creates a multiplicity of transitions and transformations from one expression to another.

So what does director Freyer do? He has Siegmund and Sieglinde—two of opera’s most ardent lovers—stand across the stage from one another while declaring their mutual passion.

photo: Monika Rittershaus [source]

And check out the cold, unfeeling staging employed for the poignant and heartbreaking confrontation scene between Wotan and his wife Fricka, when he finally comes to grips with the fact that all his plans to save the gods are for naught:

photo: Monika Rittershaus [source]

Almost all the singers had their heads covered with some sort of mask, which only served to exacerbate the lack of emotion conveyed.

photo: Monika Rittershaus [source]

By the end of the cycle, I was frankly sick of the puppet show, the light sabers, the people in black who constantly crept slowly about the stage for some metaphorical purpose undecipherable by me or anyone else. (If you’d like to see a sampling, click here.)

The other major flaw was that the performance of Siegfried—sung by John Treleaven—was by far the worst I have ever heard in a leading role in a major opera house. His vibrato was as wide and heaving as the Rhine, and his voice consistently strained in an (often unsuccessful) attempt to hit the high notes. He was clearly was not up to the role, and I found myself grimacing whenever he sang. I sighed with relief when Hagen finally put him out of his misery with a spear to the back in the third act of Götterdämmerung.

Not only that, but Treleaven played Siegfried—supposedly one of the most heroic of all Wagner roles—as if he were a nine-year-old boy. One half expected him to be dipping Brünnhilde’s pigtails in an ink-pot.

photo: Monika Rittershaus [source]

And his costume was downright silly; in fact, it brought to mind a Smurf:

web image [source]

Or perhaps a troll doll:

web photo [source]

When Robin and I got back home to Santa Cruz, she said to me, “I’m sure glad we’re going to the San Francisco Opera’s Walküre next week, to get that damn LA Ring out of my brain.”

We went to the SF production last Sunday, and it was superb: full of emotion and passion. Compare director Francesca Zambello’s vision of Siegmund and Sieglinde with Freyer’s, pictured above:

photo: Cory Weaver [source]

In particular, the dynamic between Brünnhilde and her father Wotan was moving and powerful:

photo: Cory Weaver [source]

And Nina Stemme (singing Walküre for the first time) was the best Brünnhilde I’ve ever seen. Her voice was commanding but lyrical, and her transition from youthful exuberance in Act 2 to tragic resignation in Act 3 was beautifully acted. (See here for a review. It runs through June 30, if you want to go.)

A few other Wagner odds and ends:

If you’ve ever wondered about the Wagner vs. Tolkien connection, check out this article from the New Yorker.

And here’s a photo I took at the Ring costume contest that was held before Sunday’s Die Walküre at the SF Opera:

l-r: Wotan (with the eye-patch), Brünnhilde, and the earth-goddess Erda

* Robin would want me to note that—contrary to what is stated in the website linked to my reference to Wotan—he did not father all nine of the Valkyries with Erda. Rather, Wagner’s libretto makes clear that Erda is only Brünnhilde’s mother (the mother of the other eight is unnamed). That so many Wagner commentators (including the LA Opera music director James Conlon, who did so in his pre-opera talks) state that Erda is the mother of all nine really pisses Robin off, since the fact that Brünnhilde is the only daughter Wotan sired by Erda is central to the special love he has for her.

Dutch Oven Roast Chicken

eat. My mom has one of those oval, cast-iron Dutch ovens, which she calls a “chicken roaster.” It belonged to her mom, and her grandmother Nana before that. The day Robin and I arrived at my folks’ house last week, Mom had prepared a roast chicken in this oval pot for dinner. I could smell its delicious aroma as we walked in the door.


The chicken was so tender and moist that it almost fell apart as I carved it for dinner. Yet—notwithstanding that it had been cooked in the Dutch oven, which I would have imagined would have kept the skin moist as well—it was golden brown and cripsy, just like a good roast chicken should be.

When I got back to Santa Cruz, I decided to try out my mom’s method. All I have is the traditional round kind of Dutch oven (which belonged to Robin’s grandmother Nanny), but I figured the shape shouldn’t make much difference. And it didn’t, it turns out; my chicken came out just as Mom’s had.

The method is so easy, I hesitate to call it a “recipe.” Just oil the inside of your Dutch oven, pat the chicken dry and set it in the pot, and sprinkle it with whatever dry seasonings you want. (I used S&P, garlic powder, and herbs de Provence.)


Cover the pot, and roast the bird for about an hour at 400°.


That’s it. Really. Here’s what it looks like when it’s done.


No fuss, no muss, and as you can see, you’ll have lots of juices collected at the bottom of the pot which you can just serve as an “au jus” as they are, or make into a gravy if you prefer.

I may never roast a chicken in a roasting pan again.

Homemade Butter

eat. I have been in love with butter from as far back as I can remember. When I was a kid, my mom used to leave a stick of butter out on the counter in a dish, and I’d sneak out when no one was around and cut off a big fat slice and eat it. No bread, no crackers; just the luscious butter, all by itself.

two cups of cream yields about six ounces of heavenly delight

I’ll never forget that fateful day—I must have been about eight years old—when I sneakily sliced a surreptitious hunk of golden pleasure, put it on my tongue to melt, and then got the shock of my life.

What was this?! Not butter, that was for sure. I spat it out into the sink.

My mom had switched to margarine.

The history of butter, I learned from Jennifer McLagan’s Fat book, was largely dictated by climate. This makes sense: in warm climes butter wouldn’t keep, so you’d have to either alter its chemical makeup, or use some other kind of fat that was more easily preserved. Thus, in India they learned to make ghee, and in the Mediterranean they tended to use things like olive oil for cooking, and butter was used only for external purposes:

In fact, in many cultures the idea of eating butter was ridiculous; it was considered something only a barbarian would do.... The majority of people who ate their butter in its solid state lived in the cooler climes of northern Europe and the grasslands of Central Asia, where butter lasted better and the abundant pastures provided food for animals. The Vikings and Celts who spread butter culture throughout northern Europe also valued butter’s medicinal qualities, and their word for “butter” and “ointment” were the same....

Eating butter created a rough divide across Europe, with butter lovers to the north and butter skeptics to the south. Although we might think of butter as a luxury item, it was for a long time considered peasant food, especially among northern Europeans, who were prodigious butter eaters. Readily available, butter was ignored by the nobility, who had good supplies of meat.... The growth of the middle class in the fifteenth century boosted butter consumption, as did the Reformation, one result of which was that butter was no longer banned during Lent or on fast days. Butter appeared in a third of the recipes published in sixteenth-century cookery books, and by the nineteenth century it had become the basic building block of classic French cuisine.

Jennifer McLagan’s book provides instruction for making your own butter, so I decided to try my hand at it. (My best friend Nancy and I actually tried making butter once when we were about ten years old. But since we had resolved to make it “the old-fashioned way,” which—not knowing about butter-churns—we mistakenly assumed was with just a fork, not surprisingly it did not turn out well. I think we tired of the game before the cream had even reached its whipped stage.)

Buy the best quality heavy whipping cream you can find, and pour it into a bowl:


Whip the cream as you would to make whipped cream.


After a few minutes it will start to stiffen,


and it will then reach the point where you would normally stop, and use it to top a pie or mousse.


Keep going. I thought that it would turn to butter fairly soon after it had gotten to the whipped cream stage, but that ended up being only about a third of the way into the process (it took about 10 minutes for mine to turn to butter, but of course I was stopping often to take pictures). The cream will start to get a kind of lumpy appearance,


and then it will look kind of like cottage cheese. Use a baking spatula as needed, to push the mixture back down into the bowl.


Continue beating it with your mixer. The sign that you’re finally getting to the butter stage will be that the liquid (which is true buttermilk, hence the name) starts to separate from the butter.


From this point on, the mixing process becomes quite messy, as the liquid tends to splash all over the kitchen. So beware. Continue to beat until the butter is difficult to mix any further, and starts to collect on the beaters:


The next step is to place all the butter into a fine-mesh strainer,


and press as much of the liquid out as possible.


Save this buttermilk. It’s delicious to drink: sweet and flavorful, and not at all like the tangy store-bought variety, which is just regular milk to which lactic acid has been added. Or you can use it to make biscuits or pancakes.

two cups of cream yielded almost one cup of buttermilk

The next step is to knead the butter, to get out any remaining liquid (which can hasten the butter turning rancid). Using a dough scraper will assist in this process.

photo: Smiley Karst

Next, add salt (about 1/2 teaspoon for 2 cups cream) and work it into the butter with your hands, if you want salted, rather than sweet, butter. (I did not do this, as I prefer it sweet.) Then place the butter on a piece of wax paper,


form it into whatever shape you want, and wrap it up.


I let mine chill for the afternoon, and then pulled it out of the fridge about a half hour before dinner so it wouldn’t be too hard. (See photo at top.)

We had it with a loaf of crunchy French bread which I had warmed in the oven.


It was so much better than commercial butter: very creamy in flavor, with a delicate, slightly tangy taste. Well worth the price, which was about double that of commercial butter.