Play with Your Goat Cheese!

Smooth and milky with a upbeat tang, no wonder fresh goat cheese production and consumption has boomed over the last few decades. Likely there’s a small regional farm in your neck of the woods, say a 70’s homesteader like Susan Sellew’s Rawson Brook Farm near me, who chose her goats for their good looks and […]

Arugula, Beet and Blue Cheese Salad

Simple, classic and local — all from the farmers market yesterday. I roasted the beets while cleaning this morning, so they’d be ready to complete our dinner when we returned this evening. I hate to clean and tend to reward myself with food. The smells of simmering apple sauce or the happy longing for food […]

Bulgur Salad with the Season’s Best

Use this as a template for any bulgur salad, served warm or at room temperature.Throw in what’s fresh and local, cooked or raw, cut into small pieces as needed. Use contrasting colors, flavors and textures, and always a handful of coarsely chopped herbs or greens. This season, why not try chopped apples, tossed in a […]

Eggplant-Arugula Sandwiches

Before the killing frost, make sure to pick up some readily available eggplant and arugula. I bought my eggplant at the biggest organic farm stand in New York, McEnroe’s in Millerton. It’s firm to the touch with shiny purple skin. The arugula is from my back garden, now a little leggy and spicy and but […]

Last of the heirloom tomatoes…

Simple is best with the last of the tomatoes: Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pop in your mouth, close your eyes and remember. Hang on to the hope that there will be no blight next season, but an abundant crop —  a sea of staked tomato vines heavy with multi-colored fruit.

September Salad

Simple, but surprisingly good. I scissored garden arugula, young and lively, then added chives, which sit in a pot outside my kitchen door, diced Cortland apples from neighboring Taft Farms and young farmers market carrots. They all got a toss in olive oil and a hair of salt, just to coat, and then a light […]

A Locavore’s Perfect Weekday Pasta

Orecchiette and Broccoli Rabe with Cherry Tomatoes Opposites attract. And so today, as summer meets early fall, I’m celebrating the play of sweet and bitter. This dish pairs broccoli rabe, a tangy relative of the turnip, with candy-like cherry tomatoes.  They mingle happily on neutral turf — orecchiette, a pasta translated as “little ears,” which […]

Simple and Satisfying, A Local Food 50th

My pal Ruth has an affinity for birds, although I can’t seem to connect.  And so her 50th birthday, a friendly potluck affair, counted a green parakeet, Boodle, and 25 hens as guests. Actually we looked over the porch at the hens, penned in what reminded my husband, Tommy, of a Hollywood prisoner of war […]

Tangy apples and corn pudding

So the apple season has arrived — crisp and tart, mouth puckering. I try to resist the early apples, because they don’t have that biting fall flavor, but rather Paula Reds do the trick. If anyone is out there yet, let me know what varieties do it for you…. Tomorrow I’m going to a friend’s […]