Dan has been baking a lot of bread recently, and I’m not complaining. Well, maybe I’m complaining a little, because I can’t stop eating the stuff. Why is bread so good? I know someone who once went voluntarily gluten-free. How could anyone do such a thing?

I came across these bread bags by Stelton, from Emmo Home, and I thought they were just wonderful. They have magnets and can be closed and folded over, like little lunch sacks, or stood up tall for corralling baguettes. They are so simple and functional, and seem to subtly suggest that my usual behavior — reach over and tear off a crusty hunk, disregarding the bread knife and cutting board — is perfectly acceptable.

I realized as I was looking at them that I was doing that thing marketers and salesmen the world over desperately hope for: I was imagining them in my house.

And then I was imagining that I could make them.

After I learn how to work my sewing machine.

via

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Do you guys know the Cheese Freak?

Well, neither did I until I stumbled upon a reference to him in my friend Lex’s blog. Turns out this particular fromagophiliac (sorry) is a denizen of Boston, Massachusetts. No, it’s not exactly the Berkshires, but the guy travels far and wide for cheese. In fact, back in November he came out here to the Berkshires and to our very own little co-op — where one of the volunteer cheese-cutters is none other than yours truly — in search of Berkshire Blue, a locally made blue cheese. He also picked up some of Cricket Creek’s delicious Tobasi, which he seemed to want desperately to grill between some nice slices of bread. Oh, yes.

But he’s not the first to notice that Tobasi would be amazing melted — Mezze Bistro in Williamstown has been serving up a pretty tasty Tobasi mac & cheese for a while now. Next time the Cheese Freak is in town, he ought to try it.

Go ahead, check out the Cheese Freak’s excellent video blog.

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Those of you who are new to the site, welcome! I am delighted to have you here. You can read the most recent posts on the homepage, or explore recipes by category, or, if you’re curious, learn more about me and the inspiration behind Plate to Plate. I’ve compiled a list of locavorish sources over there in the sidebar, but I’m always looking for more. Email me if you have suggestions, or just to say hi. I’d love to hear from you.

What a wonderful little write-up. Thanks, Berkshire Living!

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I recently — and very speedily, I might add — created a small, simple website for the upcoming Farm Film Feast here in North Adams and Williamstown, MA. If you’re at all local, and interested in sustainable food, rural farming economies, and the like, it will surely be something you’d want to attend. From the press materials:

Eating locally continues to be a growing and necessary movement in the United States. Who produces it, what methods are used, how it reaches us, and how it affects our health, our environment, and our local and global communities are questions that are more important than ever before.

Storey Publishing in conjunction with Images Cinema, Williams College, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and Mezze Restaurant is proud to present Farm Film Feast: Five Days of Film, Food, and Discussion in Williamstown, MA from March 10 to 14. More than a dozen films about food and related events will fill the schedule.

The films are cheap — just $5 — and the community-focused events promise to be a lot of fun.

Will I see you there?

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Lemons. They’re on the exceptions list. You know, the list you make up of foods you can’t live without, even when you’re trying to do the eat local thing? I remember putting together an exceptions list for One Local Summer a few years back, and lemons featured prominently — along with olive oil, salt, pepper, and walnuts. And rice (short-grain and brown, please).

But lemons are a necessity in this household. We need them for our water (well, need is a relative term, I guess), for rousing our soups from leguminous torpor, for brightening our garlicky greens. Their zest is irresistible in blueberry muffins and pancakes — and don’t even get me started on the lemon-ricotta pancakes some friends of ours made for brunch a few months ago. Good lord.

In the deep of winter here in the Berkshires, I’ve found that lemons go a long way toward perking me up at dinner time. And the perkiest lemons are these preserved lemons. I made them in October for a dish I wanted to prepare for Thanksgiving — you have to make them about a month ahead so that they can, you know, preserve — and I’ve been meting them out ever since. They are fantastic, savory and perfumed, sour and a little bit funky. They provide all the fun of the preserving process with very little of the worry due to all that salt and acid. (I’m not a scientist, so don’t quote me on that one. But it seems right.) And they’ll add an incredible, subtle little bite to whatever you add them to — they’re my secret winter salad dressing staple.

Before you get started, be sure you have a screw-top glass jar you can store the lemons in. It should be fairly small — you really want to pack them in there. If you can get your hands on Meyer lemons, then you are luckier than I. Supposedly they are better for this purpose, though I’ve found that the regular old lemons have worked just fine. Finally, if these fragrant spices aren’t to your taste, omit them. You could swap in a fat sprig of rosemary instead, or leave it all out. The most important bits are the lemons and the salt.

Preserved Lemons

I haven’t provided real measurements here; just use your best judgment — you really can’t mess it up.

• Fennel seeds
• Coriander seeds
• Cinnamon stick
• Peppercorns
• Bay leaf
• Sea salt
• Some large, plump lemons, preferably organic, and well-scrubbed

In a small bowl, mix together the various seeds and spices and salt. Add a bit of the mixture to the bottom of your jar.

Make like you are going to quarter the lemons, but instead of cutting all the way through, cut them to within about a half-inch of each tip, keeping them whole. Pack the slits of each lemon with salt and spices and jam them into the jar, leaving very little space between, and adding more salt mixture as you go. Once the lemons are in the jar, add more lemon juice to cover. Leave a bit of space at the top of the jar, but be sure no lemons are poking out. Cover the jar and set aside for a month, shaking the jar every day. You can also keep them in the refrigerator.

When you’re ready to use the lemons, rinse them well, then remove the pulp and mince the peel. Preserved lemons are phenomenal in salad dressing, couscous, or stews.

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The root cellar is in the basement of the barn that serves as the distribution area. We’re lucky to be able to continue to pick up storage and root vegetables for as long as supplies last.

It’s slightly humid in the root cellar, and a little bit warmer than outside. The humidity has washed all the notes off the chalkboard.

For a while there were potatoes and garlic and onions in the root cellar, but now it’s just carrots and beets.

Not sure what’s in these bags. At the beginning of last season, the bags were stuffed with rutabagas, and Dan and I had the unpleasant task of rooting through them after they’d been stored all winter — some of them were less-than-fresh. Dan took to singing a 1920s-inspired tune called “Rotten Rutabagas!”

On the way out, I saw a cat resting in a sunbeam.

Outside, a cow relaxes before a backdrop of bare branches on the lavender-gray hillside.

See you next year, Caretaker!

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Hardwick is the little town that could. This scrappy little place — a dot on a map overrun with winding roads — has reinvented itself as an innovator in local, sustainable food systems.

On the surface, and in more than a few other ways, Hardwick and the northern Berkshires are similar. To be sure, they are different in many ways, too. But it is the similarities that interest me. I left Hardwick last fall wondering, first, how they managed to do it; second, who “they” were; and, third, whether a steady, meaningful, and lasting change of this nature could be possible in North Adams and the northern Berkshires.

An October, 2008 article in Gourmet touches on some of my questions. And as it turns out, the author of this piece has written a book on the same topic, to be released in March: The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food.

From the book’s blurb:

Over the past 3 years, Hardwick, Vermont, a typical hardscrabble farming community of 3,000 residents, has jump-started its economy and redefined its self-image through a local, self-sustaining food system unlike anything else in America. Even as the recent financial downturn threatens to cripple small businesses and privately owned farms, a stunning number of food-based businesses have grown in the region—Vermont Soy, Jasper Hill Farm, Pete’s Greens, Patchwork Farm & Bakery, Apple Cheek Farm, Claire’s Restaurant and Bar, and Bonnieview Farm, to name only a few. The mostly young entrepreneurs have created a network of community support; they meet regularly to share advice, equipment, and business plans, and to loan each other capital. Hardwick is fast becoming a model for other communities to replicate its success. The captivating story of a small town coming back to life, The Town That Food Saved is narrative nonfiction at its best: full of colorful characters and grounded in an idea that will revolutionize the way we eat.

What I want to know is: Can Hardwick be a model for economic growth and change in the northern Berkshires?

Via the Claire’s blog, New Vermont Cooking. You can pre-order the book through the Galaxy Bookshop, in Hardwick.

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Good morning, everyone. It’s a fresh new Monday, and I’m feeling pretty chipper despite the gray skies and frigid temperatures, maybe because I just finished developing a handful of photos from this weekend’s Winter Fare farmers’ market in Greenfield. The place was packed — utterly slammed with produce-purchasing local food fanatics. It was awesome, but so much humanity made it hard to get a good picture. Before I share the few shots I did take, I wanted to remind you to stop by the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food event in North Adams tonight.

Finally, I was pretty excited to log into WordPress this morning and see that this is my 100th post here at Plate to Plate. Small change to some, for sure, but a nice little milestone. Later this week I’d like to share with you some photos I took of our last CSA distribution from the root cellar at Caretaker Farm, but for now, let’s take a peek at the Winter Fare farmers’ market.

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Brrr! This farm, just over the border in New York State, will not be at the market, but many others will.

My concept of “nearby” has been, shall we say, enlarged since spending a year living out in the vast desert southwest. Just to get married at City Hall, Dano and I and our families had to drive up and over a mountain. Things are far apart out there.

It’s kind of like that out here in the Massachusetts hinterlands, too — I find myself driving far and near, and up and over mountains many more times than I’d ever thought possible as a kid growing up on a flat sandbar sticking out of the side of New York.

So when I say I’m heading to the Winter Fare Farmers’ Market in nearby Greenfield on Saturday, well, you have to take the whole “nearby” part with a grain or two of salt. At just shy of 40 miles it’s kind of nearby, sure — there’s just that mountain in the way.

Maybe it’s time for an ironic bumper sticker on the old Subaru: Will travel for local foods.

Winter Fare Farmers’ Market

Saturday, February 6 2010, 10 AM – 2 PM
Greenfield High School, 1 Lenox Avenue, Greenfield MA

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Every week or so I receive an email newsletter from my CSA. I look forward to reading it; it’s always a well-written, thoughtful take on sustainable agriculture in action, and it helps me understand the reality of life on the farm when I know the farmer doing what it is that he does.

This week, Don reflected on his family’s recent trip to rural Chile to visit friends. All was not quite bucolic:

While in Chile, I was constantly struck by an uncomfortable present reality. Yeah, my Spanish wasn’t as great as in the past but it didn’t seem to matter that much. Of course, sleeping with our children in small twin beds for 2 months wasn’t ideal, but over time it just seemed normal. The problem was the sprayer. Almost every week, a tractor (correctly identified as a Massey Ferguson by our three year old son Micah) came down the dirt road and sprayed the peaches and apricots that were within 50 yards of the family’s house where we stayed. This was a boom sprayer and the smell would linger in the air for about 1 hour. Then, there were the mornings when the grapes in the valley were sprayed from the planes. During these days the smell was much worse as was my anxiety wondering how a person has the permission to spray over their vineyard yet fill the entire valley with a chemical fungicide.

In our life here in South Williamstown, I am not accustomed to the norms of conventional agriculture. You know, the methods that are used to produce the vast majority of the food that is available in our country. The majority of those sprayed peaches, apricots, and grapes aren’t going to be on the tables of Chileans, but rather are destined for supermarkets around the United States. According to the organic trade association, organic food now accounts for 2% of U.S. food sales. Two percent, that’s it! And, it’s not just the food that carries the repercussions of spraying. How about the workers, the neighbors, the water table, the land, and the natural environment? We are very fortunate. I’ve never experienced a plane dropping chemicals on our valley. We have returned from Chile with a renewed appreciation and understanding of the importance of sustainable agriculture. And, we are champing at the bit for the start of the season.

It is sometimes hard to remember, when your little canvas bag is stuffed with lush, organically grown goodies, pulled from the earth by someone you know by name, that you are a very small blip in a very large system.

Indeed, we are very fortunate.

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