The politics of arugula

Remember when then-candidate Obama was pilloried because he ate arugula? What a snob! Who eats that stuff? What is it, anyway? A leafy green that only shows up at name-chef restaurants where food was carefully “plated” and presented with swirls of exotic sauces and 100-word entrees describing the food’s provenance. For many people, arugula still sits in this precious space of privilege, eaten only by the elite. The opposite of iceberg, which a lot of people just call “lettuce.” But not at my house. Arugula has become for me what potatoes were for the Irish. A staple. And, the cheapest food I put on my table. Which means, I eat a lot of it. That’s because if you plant a little arugula in your garden, it will grow like a weed. And when I’ve snipped all my own, it grows across the street in such proliferation that my neighbors beg me to take most of it away. And it grows at Joseph’s house, also in profusion. This is not the delicate baby arugula you buy in a clam shell package at Whole Foods (which, actually, isn’t as tasty). No, this arugula, which wintered over from last season, grows in big bushes. Big leaves and small. When it gets this big, it takes a lot more work to pick and trim from the stems, and I guess it’s a little more bitter than the variety you can buy – but I still love its spicy, green flavor. Good thing. Even so, I don’t want to eat salads all the time, so I’ve learned to cook arugula. Today, I wilted it with some olive oil in a pan (allowing the water still clinging to the just-washed leaves to steam it slightly), and slid it into my cheese sandwich before I grilled it. (I usually use tomatoes in grilled cheese, but they’re running $3.99 a pound at the Farmer’s Market, and I can’t bring myself to buy the hard, greenish, grocery store variety bred for California-to-Maryland truck rides. So I’ll wait until they’re in season). I also love arugula mixed into whatever soup I’m having – it adds a healthy, and tasty, kick to lentil, or black bean, or minestrone, and it’s such a delicate leaf (even when it gets big) that you don’t have to cook it first. Just float a handful of arugula in your soup bowl, and the heat of the soup cooks it for you. For a quick, light lunch, some wilted arugula with a soft boiled egg broken on top, salt, pepper and a thick slab of homemade toast is also hard to beat. I even mimic those “fancy” restaurants—I actually love a beautifully plated meal—and wilt my arugula (again, just quickly sautéed in a little olive oil, maybe with a squeeze of fresh garlic from the garlic press) to use as a bed for a salmon filet. Arugula, snobby? Not so much. On a more serious note, food does, in some ways, continue to brand us as one class, or another. Not that we don’t cross those boundaries all the time, but to pretend they are not there is ignorant, whether you shop at Whole Foods, Shoppers Food Warehouse, or harvest from your own garden. Here, in the Huffington Post, are some interesting reflections on arugula vs. iceberg, Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Starbucks, from the last election, in 2008—worth considering, as we approach 2012. And in case anyone had any doubts, I’m voting for Obama for many reasons, among them the organic vegetable garden his wife planted on the White House lawn. I bet they have arugula back there.

Take back the meat

Used to be, everything “lard” was evil. When I first began paying attention to ingredients labels, trying to choose the most healthy options for my table, lard was the worst offender, the most backward, artery-clogging, irresponsible ingredient imaginable.

Now, lard is the new granola.

An entire, alternative, take-back-the-meat movement has sanctioned not only meat eating, but saturated-fat meat eating. The way to rationalize this is that the meat is now what my son likes to call, “righteous,” that is, free-range, grass-fed and humanely raised. (check out Nourishing Traditions, not exactly new but, for Moosewood devotees, still radical-feeling).

I have been embracing this notion of modified meat eating for a while now – I bought a whole lamb from a friend’s brother who is a farmer. I eat Bright’s Farm bacon every chance I get, when I’m in Floyd County. I like to buy the occasional roast or steak at the Takoma Park Farmer’s Market. And I am thrilled when our friends serve up the beef from the cow I saw grazing last season.

Now I’ve even learned to embrace fatback – the mother of lard.

I first met fatback on menus, at roadside “Kountry Kitchens” in the South, at soul food joints in D.C., and I think I remember it at the school cafeteria way back when: it would be floating bits of white, adding flavor to soggy dishes of collard greens, or green beans, or anything formerly green, now cooked to death to a sort of olive-grey color. At the time, I thought, too bad to ruin a great dish like collards with the worst part of meat. And, hey, don’t cook ‘em to death, let them retain some green so you get a couple vitamins in there.

Then I met fatback again, this time in the frig at Misty Mountain. It looked like a hunk of white pig fat wrapped in plastic, like bacon without the meat part, only the fat. Which it is.

I figured it was good, since Katie (who’d left it in the frig), is a devotee of Nourishing Traditions – and it was from Bright’s Farm. But how to cook it up? Most recipes talk about cooking it into greens, but I decided to try it solo. I fried it up like bacon.

Wow. This is so good. Better than bacon. Rich but crispy at the same time, redolent with smokey flavor and a thick, smooth feeling in your mouth.

I knew this was a familiar food, even though I wasn’t sure exactly where I’d had it before. Then I remembered: when I was a kid in East Florida, I got to go to “the Lake” (was it Lake Okeechobee?) with my friend, Jeanne Drawdy and her family for the weekend. Her dad took us frog gigging in the airboat at night, and we had frog legs cooked over a fire for breakfast the next morning. And he slaughtered a pig that weekend.

I was wide-eyed over the carcass, and remember puzzling over how it was covered with thick, white fat. The fat was cut off and – yep – made into cracklins. Gotta love Google: I found this, and what I fried up in the pan is something similar, if not exactly the same (I think this woman’s fatback was not cured, the way mine had been – the clue is that the guy cooking it up adds salt, which mine most definitely did not need).
This link is worth checking out even if you’re not going to cook up cracklins – it is the most unpretentious cooking blog I’ve ever encountered. Much closer to real life, I’d say – at least when you’re cooking up fatback.

Which is among my new favorite things.

Country cooking

When we come to Misty Mountain, we never know what we’ll find. It’s always a rush to get out of the city, and I throw a bunch of stuff in the cooler and hope we won’t be missing something essential. Like, butter. But I hope there will be enough in the frig where the caretakers live, so we can poach a few essentials, in exchange for sharing the yogurt, or the bread, or fruit we brought.

This usually works out in a loaves and fishes sort of way – with a little innovation and an open heart, there is always plenty.

This weekend we cruised in as the caretakers cruised out, so we have the place to ourselves. A little background: this is a dome-shaped home built in the 1970s when all the groovy people came to Misty Mountain to try out homesteading and/or community living. It is set in the southwest part of Virginia near the Blue Ridge Parkway, and now is home to a young family and occasional weekend retreat for Joseph and lucky me.

One of my favorite things to do here is forage around to see what’s growing. It’s Easter weekend, the beginning of spring, and though the daffodils have faded, the azaleas are hanging on. That makes a cheery vase of blooms for the kitchen table.

Even better is when I find something edible. It might be blackberries, which grow along the pond; or grapes growing like weedy vines up a dead cherry tree (see what I did with them here); or three thin spears of asparagus that have survived multiples mowing and years of neglect and still push their little heads out of the earth. Once, I dug up sassafras root to chew.

This time, it was dandelions and violets.

So, lunch today was:
Grilled cheese on garlic-asiago bread we bought at the Roanoke co-op, with cheddar and old camembert we brought from home and accented with arugula from the Takoma Park garden; there was no butter, so I used fatback to grease the pan – that would be fatback from the local Bright’s Farm, where they raise their pigs on pasture.

I ate the sandwich with a salad of spinach from the frig and chopped dandelion greens I gathered in front of the Dome, with a sprinkle of violets.

About those dandelions: among my very favorite flowers when I was small, their bright yellow heads such a cheery summer marker, the leaves are edible (sort of bitter, but in an arugula sort of way, lends a nice bite to a bowl of mixed greens) and full of vitamins A, B complex, C, and D, as well as minerals such as iron, potassium, and zinc. The flower can be made into wine, and the root can be made into a coffee substitute or a tea, which is purported to treat just about every ailment there is – much like the tonics peddled by 19th-century carpet baggers. I learned from Clara, who is digging dandelions on a farm in France,that you can dig up the whole plant, wash it and trim the roots and flowers to make an attractive bunch of greens to sell at the farmer’s market. Much less tedious than snipping individual leaves, as I had done. More proof that we can learn so much from our children.

And violets, did you know you can eat these lovely flowers? They are tiny little purple punctuations spots in the lawn; you’ve probably seen them candied, on top of fancy cakes. I found if I picked them in a miniature bouquet, then cut off the stems all at once, the gathering goes faster. They don’t actually taste like much, but they were lovely in the salad, helping to make a beautiful meal in the country.

Happy Easter

“Welcome happy morning, age to age shall say!”
This was my mother’s favorite Easter hymn, and it is one of mine as well. Its message of hope transfers regardless of your religion – or lack thereof. Spring is such a time of renewal and promise, a refreshing re-start for the earth, when all things once dormant and tired begin to wake with new energy.
Although this is the first year I’ve not put together Easter baskets for the kids (though Tyler did get a care package with chocolate eggs! and Clara got a card, far away in France), I am celebrating the day nonetheless, and in one of the most beautiful places, the mountains of southwest Virginia. It is a gift of a day, with bright sunshine and cool temperatures. A walk in the woods this morning revealed dogwood blossoms, fiddlehead ferns and barely budding trees everywhere. This afternoon, we’ll dig into the earth to help friends start their garden, then celebrate the rebirth of the season with a meal. I expect lots of locally grown food, excellent company, and live music from whoever remembers to bring a guitar or a banjo along.
Happy Easter, everyone!

Here, and not here

The kids are gone: College. Travel. Not here.

There is no laughter coming from the next room; no half dozen bodies sprawled about playing Settlers of Catan or watching vintage Disney. No strains of guitar between snippets of conversation, no one picking out the notes to Bach’s Minuet in G on the piano. There are no invitations to join in a game of Cranium, no curious conversations about the politics of eating locally, or the merits of graffiti.

No one is coming and going unpredictably, and at all hours; laundry is neatly contained in the hamper, instead of avalanching out; there is a sustained supply of milk and juice in the frig, instead of a perpetual shortage.

The children are pretty independent, even when they are here, but each of these details triggers some piece of my mama-brain when they are at home: guilt over allowing the laundry to get out of control; moralizing with the ghost of my mother over curfews; and a gut desire to be sure the kitchen is always fully stocked A) to guarantee the kids will hang out for at least as long as it takes to have a snack, and B) (and mostly B) for the satisfaction of knowing that I am the person who has taken care of these children for 18 and 21 years, from the homemade baby food right through ingredients for cookies-we-must-make-together-at-11-o’clock-at-night and “righteous,” non-GMO milk from grass-fed cows.

I miss the kids.

But I am growing accustomed to the quiet – what my own mother called “the crashing silence” that descended when I returned to college after a visit home. I actually enjoy creating my own rhythm. If I’m on a roll with work, I just keep going until I’m all rolled out, satisfied I’ve finished whatever project is on hand, uninterrupted by a compulsion to make dinner or a request to go to the store or look at a recent essay or, “smell my hair, do I need to wash it?” I go to dance class and linger to chat with friends instead of rushing home. I meet friends for drinks, which morph into dinner. Stay out late with Joseph. Luxuriate in long walks that take me into evening, and no longer worry that I’m setting a bad example by being in the park after dark.

The kids are not here.

And then they are.

An email comes to say Tyler has lost his phone. And then found it. Clara asks for the recipe for latkes. She sends a link to a global awareness campaign for gay rights in Russia. Should I sign it? Tyler calls: what ingredients does he need for pizza? He calls again: should he try to fix his computer himself, or let the shop do it? The mail comes with a postcard from Clara, in Paris. Or from Tyler, in North Carolina.

All the pieces fall back into place – or something vaguely reminiscent of “place.” I answer the questions. I put the cards up on the frig—which is still full of milk and juice.

Briefly, the kids are here. And not here.

Bar-room revelation

Things have changed since I was young.
But not exactly the way I thought they had.

I was in a bar a few weeks ago, and it was hopping. There was live music, a happy crowd of interesting people, and great “craft” brew, my favorite. We were sitting at a table, and I volunteered to get the beer from the bar, knowing that I would get service faster than my boyfriend. I love this about being a woman – yes, even though it’s sexist and maybe even wrong. Fact: women get served faster. Unless, maybe, the bartender is a woman.

Anyway, I shouldered my way in so I was sandwiched between a couple guys sitting on bar stools, then waited to get the attention of one of the bartenders. They were excessively busy, harried, even. But there weren’t that many other people who had shouldered their way in to call out their orders. Maybe the guys were still filling table orders for the wait staff. I tried to catch someone’s eye, get that registration of, ‘yes, I’ll be right with you.’ And, eventually, I got service, walked back to the table, pints in hand. But it took a while.

I heard later from our friends, who own the restaurant, that they train the bartenders to avoid eye contact. It’s a survival technique, they explained – when the place gets busy, the staff need to focus on one thing at a time and not get distracted by ten orders being shouted across the bar at a time. I wasn’t very convinced, and told them I’ve never experienced this sort of thing before, it must be a new technique. I gave them the whole shouldering-in speech, the women-get-served-faster theory. “It really used to work, I don’t understand what’s changed – I guess bars aren’t the way they used to be.”

And they gently told me that bars haven’t actually changed. I have.

Right. I am no longer in my twenties.

Last week I attended a conference in New York and wound up alone at a brew pub, where I sat at the bar and waited. And waited. Until finally the bartender came by and asked me what I’d like. I wanted to try a couple of their more unusual beers. He poured me two taste-size samples, then disappeared. For a long time. Way down at the other end of the bar. It took him forever to come back to take my order.

Behind me were a cluster of foreign-accented, well-dressed young people. Next to me, three attractive young theater people. Several similarly young folks were scattered across the other end of the bar. I must have been the oldest person there by 20 years, and I suddenly realized, people no longer notice me in this sort of crowd. I am simply another drinks-and-dinner order.

There’s something about humility that makes me want to order another beer. If only I could get the bartender’s attention.

Music in the margins

We went to look at colleges in New York recently, and I took in a lot of information, really I did, about dorm life and creating your own major and faculty qualifications and financial aid. But some of the most memorable moments from our visit were, as usual, about food.

This is my touchstone.

The first day was an impromptu picnic in Union Square. The weather was unseasonably warm, and a pair of skinny, bearded buys were hollering out some fine bluegrass, playing banjo and guitar. It was a foot-stomping, gotta-move sort of rejoicing right there along 14th Street, and a crowd gathered round and filled their guitar case with coins and dollar bills. I could have been in Floyd, Virginia, except we were surrounded by urban canyons instead of Blue Ridge mountains.

Major points to Eugene Lang the New School for being located near this classically New York experience.

Like a really good college book that’s already been read and marked up by someone else, our trip to New York was substantively about serious subject matter—college choice—but it had margins packed with bonus moments like this. “Pay attention to this part!” the notes said. “You’ll love the bit on bluegrass!”

There was more foot-stomping in the subway station, a solo fiddler whose tunes got my feet moving in the approximation of clogging I picked up in the mountains North Carolina. A bit of Appalachia, in the depths of New York’s subway system. At another subway station, there was a woman with a beatific expression on her face, as if she were impersonating an angel, and she was playing a saw. The kind that cuts wood. She had a violin bow that produced an eerie, harp-like accompaniment while she sang Greensleeves.

Then there was a young man sitting on a bucket in the middle of another subway platform, finger-picking a curvy, spare-looking electric guitar that had only a perimeter of wood– through the center of the instrument, you could see the player’s shirt. His music reminded me of Pierre Bensusan, a mix of classical and traditional picking that showcases technical prowess as well as emotional depth.

Food for our ears.

For our bellies, there was our picnic, taken from a market that had delicious things waiting in every narrow aisle. There were dozens of cheeses, all neatly labeled in the case, and baguettes bouqueted in baskets; taste stations with humus and caponata for the semolina bread you could dip in; there were the best sort of chocolate cookies, set out in pieces for sampling, and in the produce section all manner of brightly colored vegetables and fruit, including “sugar plums” which we never did try. I believe the best places are the ones that leave you wanting to return, and I am sure I will come back to try these little gems.

We chose the easiest way to lunch: sandwiches from the deli counter where two guys moved with the quick efficiency and grace characteristic of so many New York delis. Clara got classic roast beef with horseradish -- and watercress. I ordered roasted vegetables with pesto and goat cheese on a heavily seeded bun, we added a bunch of green grapes and went off to sit in the sun at Union Square, between the playground and the dog park. Between bites, we matched people with their dogs, wondering whether the prim and mincing ladies with toy Chihuahuas and such were any more attentive to their canine companions than the dread-locked dudes with mutts. We noted the neon pink shoes and ripped tights on one girl, then traded tastes of our sandwiches, and pointed out the striped socks and rolled up trousers of someone else.

Our dinner that night was French. After surfing the internet we found Jacques, a cozy spot in Soho that was unpretentious and marginally less pricey than most. Our French waiter, who wore an unwieldy winter hat over what must have been a tangle of curls or dreadlocks, brought my wine in a miniature carafe, then poured it the glass, leaving some for later; this small gesture makes me feel coddled and makes the wine stretch. We ordered moules—mussels—which came in a ceramic bucket with a fine and buttery mariniere sauce, really more like broth, pooled in the bottom; the frites were stacked on end in a paper-lined cup. They could have been thinner but they were still good and I ate every last one and a couple of Clara’s as well. Then we chose profiterole for dessert, except they were cream-filled instead of ice cream-filled, and we dipped them in chocolate fondue. The dinner must have been especially good, as the conversation was one of those magical intimacies mothers and daughters share only when all elements come together at once.

Today, we had a lovely brunch with our friend, Lauren, in a find of a place, Ceci Cela (the food was so good it was gone by the time I took the photo, above). Up front this tiny spot looks like a take-out bakery with scrumptiously beautiful tarts and croissants, éclairs and other French treats. Through a narrow corridor, though, is a five-table café with French poster prints on the walls and miniature chalkboards at each table, announcing the quiche of the day. The menu is limited to all those sweets we saw when we came in, plus croque monsieur (basically a fried ham and cheese sandwich), quiche and a few sandwiches. Clara got smoked trout with orange butter and radicchio on thick, soft bread; Lauren went for the turkey on a baguette and I had the leek and onion quiche, with its thick, buttery crust and small salad accompaniment. Oh, and langue de chat, literally ”tongue of the cat,” cute little slivers of cookies that are rough with sugar, like a cat tongue. The servers were French, the language at the next table, Spanish. One of the things I love about this place is the efficient use of space: there is a stairway that goes to a storage loft, and once I saw what looked like a futon mattress there. Does the pastry chef sleep there while his bread rises before breakfast?

Three very different but equally enjoyable meals; four musicians, each exceptional in different ways, and two colleges. One good weekend.