Gazpacho: Cold, tangy, perfect for summer

Chilled, chunky and chock full of healthy vegetables, this lively gazpacho makes a refreshing, simple first course all summer long.

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I HAD PIZZA. I remember the first time I used chopsticks and the first time I made a pot roast and the first time I saw Terry and my first actual cocktail in an actual bar (it was a brandy Alexander—hey, I was an entry-level drinker—and it was Chumley’s). I no longer remember the first time I had gazpacho,though. Continue reading “Gazpacho: Cold, tangy, perfect for summer” →

Straddling seasons: Pot roast and fresh asparagus

Cooking for the calendar, this weekend saw some beautifully skinny fresh asparagus, simply prepared. Cooking for the actual weather, though, called for a hearty pot roast. Recipes below.

Before we get to the food, a quick little digression about blogging.When I started Blue Kitchen a year and change ago, I knew it would be a way to indulge my passions for food, photography and writing. I also knew it would make me think more about food and cooking, ultimately making me a better cook. What I didn’t know is what a wonderful international network of warm, sharing friends and fellow bloggers I’d be plugging into.

This kind of welcoming environment isn’t necessarily unique to food blogging, but it seems to be more prevalent here than elsewhere. Interestingly, according to a food blogger who specializes in restaurant reviews, it’s mainly found among bloggers who write about making food, not critiquing it. My friend Ronnie writes two blogs, the wonderfully eclectic Out Of My Head and the advice-filled Work Coach. She also reads a wide range of blogs and says she hasn’t found this kind of community anywhere else.

The latest example of this comes from Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry. She was just given the E for Excellent Award—by four different bloggers, no less. She then took a turn, passing the award along to five other blogs. Including this one. Thanks so much, Lydia! I learn something new every time I read your blog, so it means a lot that you thought of me.

And now my turn. The easiest thing would be to award it to everyone in my blogroll. They’re all wonderful sources of information and great reads to boot. But I’ll try to narrow it down to five. And I’m sticking with food blogs, just because [we food bloggers are a clannish lot]. Just as Lydia was in her choices, I’m every bit as swayed by entertaining writing as I am by good food. Maybe even more so. These bloggers deliver, post after post. Every one of them has made me think—and made me a better cook in the process:

Ann, at A Chicken in Every Granny Cart; Christina, at A Thinking Stomach; Jennifer, at Last Night’s Dinner; Patricia, at Technicolor Kitchen and Toni, at Daily Bread Journal.

Okay, back to the kitchen. Here in Chicago, the calendar says spring [yeah, it says that everywhere north of the Equator, I know]. The thermometer takes a different view, often dipping below freezing. In fact, the tulips you see here were an impulse purchase, something to remind us that it is indeed spring. So when we were planning one of those Sunday dinners we don’t do enough of, I decided to split the difference. For the calendar, I made fresh asparagus, suddenly plentiful and affordable again. And for the chilly weather, I made a satisfying pot roast, complete with chunky vegetables. Let’s start with that.

I’ve been on an oven braising kick lately. Soon the weather will heat up and I won’t want to do the same to the kitchen. But for now, it’s a great way to let tough cuts of meat like chuck roast get all nice and tender without drying out. You’ll find more about the technique here. My other pot roast recipe in the archives is a more exotic take on this humble, hearty meal, made with Biryani Curry Paste and pan roasted on the stovetop. I call it Terry’s Mysterious Pot Roast. You can use the stovetop technique for the more traditional recipe below, but honestly, oven braising will keep it more moist. Continue reading “Straddling seasons: Pot roast and fresh asparagus” →

Sweet fire: Chicken, chili paste and maple syrup?

East meets Nor’east in an improvised Chinese chicken dish that gets its heat from potent chili paste, its complexity from five-spice powder and its subtle sweetness from New England maple syrup. It’s paired with another improvisation, my first attempt at Szechuan green beans with garlic. Recipes below.

The first full day of spring in Chicago saw snowflakes the size of dinner plates. Lots of them. Just to the north of us, near the Wisconsin border, they got 11 inches of the heavy “heart attack” snow. Having lived here as long as I have, I’m not even surprised by this anymore. I am annoyed by it, though.

My first thought for this week’s post was something hearty—a soup, a stew—something that reflected the actual weather, not the calendar. But then I decided to turn up the heat with spiciness instead. My patented poking around—online, at the library, in our cookbook collection—got me started down the path to making something Chinese. When I found a pork dish that combined chili paste [you can also use chili sauce with garlic—see Kitchen Notes], five-spice powder—both Chinese staples—with maple syrup[?], I was intrigued. But having just served up pork here last week, I decided to adapt it for chicken.

The main course sort of nailed down, I started thinking vegetables. Just about our favorite restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown is Lao Sze Chuan [the only reason I slightly hedge my bets here is that owner/chef Tony has recently opened two new restaurants, also wonderful, Lao Shanghai and Lao Beijing]. And one of our favorite vegetable dishes at Lao Sze Chuan is the Szechaun green beans, crisp and garlicky. I knew I wouldn’t match these, but I thought I might find a recipe to help me come close. What I found was a bewildering array of recipes, none of them even sounding vaguely close to this pared down dish. So I improvised, coming up with something very different but pretty good, if I say so myself. Best of all, the most exotic ingredient in it is soy sauce. So if the chili paste and five spice powder have put you off the chicken, give these a try.

But first, about those exotic ingredients. Living in Chicago, I have access to a dazzling array of ingredients from many cultures and cuisines. And in many cities, both these ingredients are available in Asian markets and in a growing number of supermarkets.

Chili paste or sauce is made of crushed chili peppers, oil, vinegar, seasonings and sometimes garlic. It has been accurately described as fiery hot, but you can control the heat by adjusting the amount you use.

Five-spice powder is a dry spice blend that incorporates the five basic flavors of Chinese cooking—sweet, sour, bitter, savory and salty. Used widely in Chinese cuisine, there are many variations on the theme. But a fairly standard recipe calls for fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns. It is a very intense spice mix, not in terms of heat, but in terms of flavor. Recipes tend to call for fairly small amounts. Trust them.

I searched the Internet for what seemed like minutes for substitutes for these ingredients. Alas, no luck. The couple of recipes I found for chili paste sounded pretty dubious. And every recipe for five-spice powder called for Szechuan peppercorns. If you can find those, finding actual five-spice powder should be a breeze. And as Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry rightly points out, they’re not even really peppercorns, so substituting regular peppercorns will yield something that falls far flat of the real thing. If anyone out there has substitutes they’ve tried and like, please leave a comment.

Well, blah, blah, blah. How about some recipes? Continue reading “Sweet fire: Chicken, chili paste and maple syrup?” →

Rosemary Potatoes: Little spuds, big taste

A mix of fingerling and petite new potatoes adds more than just visual interest to Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Rosemary; each variety has a distinctive flavor as well. Recipe below.

Recent oven-braising adventures aside, I’m pretty much a stovetop kind of guy. Give me a pan and a flame, and the kitchen is open for business. So I’m just as surprised as you are that roasting the potatoes above led to making an entire dinner in the oven. And I’m not talking a one-pot wonder here—I roasted three separate dishes. Also being a keep-it-simple kind of guy, I can’t for the life of me say why I don’t do this more often. Everything was brainlessly easy, and dinner was delicious—better than it had any right to be, given the simplicity.

So how did I get started with the potatoes that snowballed into a stovetop-free dinner? I blame Daylight Savings Time. This twice-a-year ritual of moving our clocks backward or forward an hour has overstayed its welcome, as far as I’m concerned. And the Wall Street Journal recently reported on a study that shows that, even though Congress extended Daylight Savings Time by three weeks in 2005 expressly to conserve energy, it actually wastes energy.

It certainly wastes mine. My life is one long sleep deprivation experiment to begin with, so losing an hour of sleep is the last thing I need. My plan for Sunday had been to get over my fear of pie crust and bake something for Alanna’s Pi Day Event over at Kitchen Parade.

When I woke up even an hour earlier than way too early Sunday morning, my first thought was that baking a pie was not going to happen. My second thought was, “Great. Now what do I do for my post?”

The age-old question of “What’s for dinner?” that home cooks stare down every day gets ramped up considerably for food bloggers. You can’t just trot out one of your old reliables you’ve made a thousand times—it has to be something new. Preferably something photogenic and preferably something you’re not only happy to eat, but you’re okay with admitting you cooked.

Staring bleakly at the computer screen Sunday morning, I was cruising food blogs and checking the latest comments on my own, gearing up for a possibly long search for a food idea that would fit those criteria. Inspiration came quickly and unexpectedly, in the form of eight simple words tucked inside a comment on my pâté post, by Kelly-Jane over at Cooking The Books: “I only use duck fat for roasting potatoes.”

Even inspiration does not handle Daylight Savings time well. My first thought was basic—feral, even: “Want potatoes.” Gradually, almost reluctantly, another thought formed: “Hey! I have duck fat!” [I’d frozen some left over from last week’s pâté adventure.] You could almost hear static and the grinding of gears in my head as those two thoughts came together and synapses finally fired and I realized I’d found the basis for my post.

Once I got going, though, I started thinking where else I could take it. One thought was roasting a mix of vegetables: potatoes, carrots and big chunks of onions, perhaps. But remembering the amazing duck fat fries we’d recently had at Hot Doug’s, I came back to just potatoes. And as I started researching roasted potatoes, two elements kept coming up in recipe after recipe: rosemary and garlic. The rosemary sounded like a great idea, but as much as I love garlic, I didn’t want it overpowering whatever the duck fat was going to bring to the party.

Regarding the duck fat, by the way, if you don’t have it or are less than interested in tracking some down, you can substitute olive oil—see the Kitchen Notes. You can also substitute red or Yukon Gold potatoes for the mix of fingerling and baby potatoes. Again with the Kitchen Notes.

Now back to “What’s for dinner?” Once I’d decided on the potatoes and was on my way to the store, I settled on roasted chicken thighs for the main course and maybe a salad. Then I saw the fresh asparagus. Beautiful, slender, little spears. I could quickly steam them at the last minute. Orrrrr… I could roast them too. Perfect. I mapped out the oven real estate in my head [there was even room for Marion to roast a couple of beets for a later use] and decided on a temperature that would work with everything and went to work. Continue reading “Rosemary Potatoes: Little spuds, big taste” →

So easy, so impressive: Let’s get this pâté started

This easy make-ahead pâté makes for an elegant first course or party appetizer. Recipe below.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap]’ve been thinking about duck fat lately. It all started with reading about fries cooked in duck fat, maybe in Bon Appétit, but more likely in a breathless restaurant review in New York magazine. Next, one of Marion’s colleagues proclaimed that her favorite snack was duck fat french fries and a martini. Wow. I’m pretty sure if you look up sophisticated decadence in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of this very snack.

Then a week or so ago, Christina over at A Thinking Stomach did an excellent post that was not so much a recipe as a jazz melody line on cooking fresh vegetables that invited endless improvisation. Basically, you take some vegetables [she includes many intriguing things growing in her winter garden right now, such as fava beans, sugar snap peas and tatsoi], an aromatic or two, flavor enhancers [bacon, parsley, lemon juice…] and some fat. Read the whole post, because it’s much more eloquent and informative than this feral description. But the reason I mention it here is that one of the fats Christina suggested was duck fat.

Suddenly duck fat was popping up all over my radar screen, and I was wondering where it would land first. The answer came last Saturday afternoon at Hot Doug’s, Chicago’s wildly popular [as in line up around the corner for half an hour or more] “sausage superstore & encased meat emporium.” Doug is Doug Sohn, a graduate of Kendall College’s culinary school. Before opening possibly the best hot dog stand on the planet, he “worked in restaurants, did some catering and corporate dining gigs, and edited for a cookbook publisher,” according to a NEWCITY CHICAGO profile.

Hot Doug’s motto is proudly emblazoned on the wall as well as on T-shirts worn by the staff and also offered for sale: There are no two finer words in the English language than “encased meats,” my friend. And Doug takes encased meats to exciting new places. In addition to a dazzling array of perfectly prepared hot dogs, brats and sausages both Polish and Italian, he offers up a changing menu of exotic gourmet fare, including his “Game of the Week” sausages. This past Saturday, it was the Three-Chili Wild Boar Sausage with Chipotle Dijonnaise and Raschera Cheese, but every kind of game from alligator to pheasant to rattlesnake has been featured. And yes, he also does veggie dogs.

One of Doug’s offerings [and apparently yet another claim to fame], is his Duck Fat Fries, available only on Fridays and Saturdays. Now, if you’re a fries fan like me, you’re probably wondering how much better can they get? I mean, they’re fried potatoes, for crying out loud, nature’s perfect food. The answer is, to quote all three of us sharing a generous basket at Hot Doug’s, “Oh. My. God.”

Unfortunately, we don’t deep fry things at Blue Kitchen. We sauté, sear and pan roast like there’s no tomorrow, but no deep frying. We just can’t get our heads around that much hot grease at one time for one dish. So no fries were going to happen here.

But I’ve also been thinking about pâté lately. Let me start by saying I don’t like liver per se—the mere thought of liver and onions makes me shudder. But oddly enough, a good pâté in a little bistro is one of the great food pleasures, as far as I’m concerned. Flipping through my recipe binders recently, I came across a pâté recipe I’d been meaning to try. It sounded good—easy to make too. So easy, in fact, that I of course had to tinker with it. I turned to the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking for some ideas. The recipes I found there were at the opposite end of the easy spectrum—not difficult, but involved. Still, I found a couple of ingredients and little tricks that made their way into my recipe. And I of course added a little twist of my own. Continue reading “So easy, so impressive: Let’s get this pâté started” →

Mushrooms: In praise of the basic button

The humble button mushroom packs as many or more antioxidants than more expensive varieties. And with a few simple ingredients, it packs amazing flavor too. A pair of recipes below.

After weeks of meat and fish, it’s time for vegetables to take center stage with another in the series of A Little Something on the Side.

We all remember the rotary phone, right? Before the advent of the touchtone phone, though, the retroactively dubbed rotary phone was just “the phone.”

And not so long ago in most American supermarkets and kitchens, humble button mushrooms were just mushrooms. Unless you were one of those people who trekked out into the woods collecting wild mushrooms [and in doing so, inspiring countless articles about the deadly dangers of toadstools], button mushrooms were pretty much the only game in town.

Now, between fresh and dried varieties, we have an embarrassment of mushroom riches at our fingertips. The portobello, once exotic and hard to find, is now almost boringly available in most stores. Shiitake, crimini, oyster, porcini, chanterelle, morel and a dazzling array of other fungi are increasingly finding their way onto store shelves and into our culinary hearts. Just this past weekend, I found enoki mushrooms, those slender, almost alien-being looking Japanese beauties, shrink-wrapped and sharing shelf space with portobello caps and pre-sliced “baby bellas” [they’re just crimini mushrooms, people—don’t get all wound up] in my neighborhood grocery store.

With competition like this, it’s easy for dependable old button mushrooms to get kicked to the curb, to be seen as somehow less wonderful than their more exotic, more expensive brethren.

Not so fast. Turns out button mushrooms have plenty going on, especially in the health department. According to a recent article in ScienceDaily [sent to me by fellow Internet magpie Carolyn—the magpie motto: “Ooooh, here’s another shiny link!”], “The humble white button mushroom [Agaricus bisporus] has as much, and in some cases, more anti-oxidant properties than more expensive varieties.” Who knew? For that matter, who knew that mushrooms even contained antioxidants, let alone that button mushrooms were particularly rich in them?

Which reminds me of a commentary I heard on American Public Media’s Marketplace last week. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, says that despite the growing cacophony of health claims from processed, packaged foods, the healthiest foods are still to be found in the produce section. “In fact,” Pollan states, “The more processed the food, the less nutritious it typically is. Yet it’s the processed food makers who have the marketing budgets to do the research to support the health claims and then shout them from the rooftops.” So we sometimes forget that “the hands-down healthiest foods in the supermarket are the unprocessed vegetables and fruits and whole grains. These foods sit silently in the produce section or the bulk-food bins. They don’t utter a word about their antioxidants or heart-healthiness, while just a few aisles over the sugary cereals scream about their heart-healthy ‘whole grain goodness.'”

So button mushrooms are healthy. What about taste? Now see, here’s the great thing about mushrooms—they are flavor sponges. In fact, you have to store them carefully so they don’t soak up flavors from your fridge [see Kitchen Notes for storage tips]. So while the more esoteric mushrooms offer delicious variations on the unmistakable earthy theme that make them absolutely worth exploring, button mushrooms, when combined with the right ingredients, can do some pretty amazing things too.

In the quick, simple recipes below, butter and salt combine first with garlic and parsley, then with port, to make the humble button heavenly. Continue reading “Mushrooms: In praise of the basic button” →

Two delicious: Pan-grilled fish, soba noodle salad

Fresh, flavorful and quick: Pan-grilled Citrus Yellowtail and Soba Noodle Salad. Recipes below.

Last week, I posted two recipes for cooking fish that ranged from simple to simpler. I kept them simple because I didn’t want anything masking the taste of the Hawaiian yellowtail I’d been asked to try by Kona Blue Water Farms. This week, two more recipes. First, Marion shows just how well this fish plays with other flavors. Then she streamlines a complex side dish into something quick, simple and simply delicious.

Terry and I both love to cook, but our tastes in cookbooks and food authors don’t particularly overlap. He avidly reads Anthony Bourdain; I go for obsessive re-readings of M.F.K. Fisher. His cookbook tastes run to the school of It’s Better If It’s French. My favorite cookbook is an obscure, grubby, out-of-print one about Szechwan food.

So we think it’s pretty interesting that, when Terry received that lovely shipment of Hawaiian yellowtail, we each, independently, turned to the same author. Ming Tsai—chef, restaurateur, star of two televised cooking shows and author of some very nice cookbooks—really has been our guide in understanding this amazing fish. When it was my turn in the kitchen, I found a pair of recipes in Ming’s Blue Ginger: East Meets West Cooking with Ming Tsai that became the foundation for a meal.

By the way, this morning a friend called and asked me what this fish tastes like. It tastes like standing on the edge of a high bluff looking straight out over the open Pacific, with the surface of the water like light beaten silver, and a faint cold morning wind washing over your face, and the wind has come four thousand uninterrupted miles straight to find you. It’s that clean and beautiful and pure.

The original and very delightful version of this recipe calls for ponzu sauce and snapper, and the fish, once cooked, goes on to become part of a salad with pea sprouts and a Dijon vinaigrette. Here is my foreshortened, non-salad take, abbreviated into a simple grilled dish. This recipe goes quickly once you begin it. Make sure your side dishes are in progress before you start on this. Continue reading “Two delicious: Pan-grilled fish, soba noodle salad” →

Cabbage, wine and a not-so-bad apple

Wine-braised Red Cabbage with Apples balances sweet and sour ingredients with rich, savory touches for a complex, satisfying side dish. Recipe below.

A few days ago, I got to thinking about apples. Specifically about how they don’t do much for me. For whatever reason, they never have—especially in their raw, most apple-y state. I don’t think it’s a problem with apples themselves—it’s probably more of a character flaw on my part. Certainly in the store, they are alluring. So many varieties and colors stacked high in dazzling displays of autumnal plenty. And that satisfyingly distinctive, crisp crunch of biting into an apple promises so much. But that’s where it ends for me. Then I’m left with nothing more than a mouthful of, well, apple.

But then I got to thinking that perhaps incorporating them into something savory and cooked might tame their tart sweetness and turn it into a positive note in a dish for me.

Of course, once something pops up on your radar screen, you start spotting it everywhere. Most notably, Aimee over at Under The High Chair posted a russet apple and gouda grilled cheese sandwich that looked so delicious I was ready to devour it on the spot, raw apple slices and all. I also thought that some crisp, thick bacon slices would make this sandwich even more wonderful. But then bacon is my answer for everything these days, isn’t it?

Bacon plays a role in this side dish, the latest in the ongoing semi-irregular A Little Something on the Side series. I can’t remember now how my search for a savory dish with apples took the direction of red cabbage, but when I saw a Bon Appétit recipe that included a little bacon and loads of butter, I figured I’d found what I was looking for. I had. The single slice of bacon imparts a subtle rustic quality. You may be tempted to add more, but it’s not needed and can in fact overpower the dish. And if you want to go vegetarian with this dish, you can certainly leave the bacon out—the butter provides a lovely, velvety finish that would stand well on its own. Oh. And the apple? It wasn’t half bad, even to me. Continue reading “Cabbage, wine and a not-so-bad apple” →

Potatoes and garlic. What’s not to like?

Garlic is the star, but it doesn’t overpower these creamy mashed potatoes. Recipe below.

When I opened Blue Kitchen almost a year ago, I intended to have a recurring feature called A Little Something on the Side. It was supposed to be “all about the dishes that play the supporting role to the star of the plate—and on occasion, steal the scene.” I said as much in my first something-on-the-side post, Marion’s kasha, which she makes every Thanksgiving and as many other times a year as we remember how wonderful it is when we’re planning dinner.

I’ve posted a few sides since then, but somehow, main course ideas keep taking over. They just seem more postworthy, I guess. But you need something to go with them to make a meal, don’t you? So I’m rededicating myself to posting the occasional side on a more regular basis. Sometimes fancy or at least a little exotic, sometimes humble and hardworking, like today’s.

To up their postworthiness [in my eyes, at least], I’ve enlisted my friend Matt’s help in creating a special graphic for A Little Something on the Side. Maybe that will encourage me to do more of these. Thanks, Matt!

The potato—still #1. For all the low-carb, no-carb hysteria still occasionally gripping the media, potatoes are the most popular vegetable in America. Regarding the whole carbohydrates issue, without launching into a dietary diatribe, you need carbohydrates to live. Period. According to the Dietary Reference Intakes Report issued by the Institute of Medicine in 2002, “the minimum amount of carbohydrate that children and adults need for proper brain function is 130 grams a day.” So wise up. Have some mashed potatoes.

And since you’re having them, make them Yukon Gold. Yukon Gold potatoes are a relatively recent phenomenon in North America, but yellow-fleshed potatoes are common in Europe and South America. They’re the norm, in fact. The Yukon Golds we know and love [enough to pay more for] are the result of years of work by a Canadian research team. They’re a cross between a North American white potato and a wild South American yellow-fleshed variety [we all know that potatoes originated in South America, right?].

The result is an all-purpose potato with a naturally buttery flavor. In texture, it falls between the Idaho or russet [a potato with high starch content, great for baking, frying or mashing] and waxy or red potatoes [low starch, high moisture potatoes that stay firm when boiled and stay moist when roasted]. So while Yukon Golds don’t bake as well as russets do, they do just about everything else just fine.

Including making fluffy, delicious mashed potatoes. Buttery, rich and golden. I make them a lot of different ways, but my favorite is with plenty of garlic. There are probably as many ways to make garlic mashed potatoes as there are cooks. A quick search on epicurious.com turned up 198 recipes. Some called for roasting entire heads of garlic before adding them to the potatoes; some called for sautéing garlic in oil, then adding it to the cooked potatoes. And with some, like mine, you add raw garlic to the water while the potatoes are cooking, letting it impart its oils and flavors to the potatoes—and its wonderful fragrance to the kitchen.

Garlic amounts called for varied wildly too. One recipe called for sautéing a single sliced clove of garlic in oil, then discarding the garlic and adding only the flavored oil to two pounds of cooked potatoes. That one fell firmly into the “why bother” camp for me. At the opposite end of the spectrum, our friend Joan advocates three large cloves of garlic per potato. I haven’t had the nerve to try that one yet.

So without further ado, let me throw one more garlic mashed potatoes recipe on the heap. Continue reading “Potatoes and garlic. What’s not to like?” →

Road trips and letting the pasta drive

Flavored pasta brings plenty to the table tastewise, so stick with a few simple ingredients. Recipe of sorts below.

We took a road trip to St. Louis last weekend. This was supposed to be a nice, chatty post about the wonderful, underrated city where I grew up and some of its unexpected delights. But things are suddenly hectic at Blue Kitchen. So today I’m just going to focus on its farmers market and one of the delights we discovered there.

Soulard Farmers Market is one of the oldest farmers markets in America and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. It’s been in continuous operation since 1838.

It’s also one of the most colorful farmers markets around. That, as much as the cheap produce to be had, made it part of more Saturdays than not when we lived there and a required stop anytime we visit now. Not manufactured colorfulness like mimes and face painters, either—I’m talking white-haired old ladies sucking down cold cans of Busch beer while doing their weekly shopping at 10 in the morning.

Besides local produce and not so local stuff [I’m assuming the bananas and kiwis I saw weren’t locally grown], you’ll find plants and cut flowers for sale; baked goods [both artisanal and otherwise]; an excellent spice shop; fresh meat; live rabbits, ducks and chickens waiting to become fresh meat; and a pet shop where live animals await a decidedly happier fate. We were happy to learn this visit that the pet shop serves as a kind of no-kill shelter. The kittens and puppies they sell aren’t from pet factories or puppy mills—they take in unwanted litters from people in the neighborhood. And they seem to do a land office business.

There are also purveyors of T-shirts; incense; sunglasses; “art” on mirrors, velvet and other, um, interesting surfaces; tiny doughnuts pumped out and fried by an ingenious little machine that not only cooks and flips them before your eyes, but also lures a steady stream of customers—and last Saturday, at least, a genius of a salesman/showman on par with Ron Popeil and Ed McMahon—Ken Baker. His demonstration of the Super-Shammy, his own invention, bordered on performance art. We bought some. If he had a website, I’d even provide a link here. But he only does business through a P.O. box in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and on QVC and the Home Shopping Network.

Continue reading “Road trips and letting the pasta drive” →