What’s corn-y and works as a birthday cake? What’s corn-y and works with homemade Coffee Butter Almond Ice Cream? How could we make something wonderful using some almond paste left over from the now distant year-end holidays? We asked these portentous questions as we prepared to celebrate the first birthday of our weekly Cornbread Suppers.

Time to consult with Chef Google.

Results:

Coffee Butter Almond Ice Cream made exactly by an equipment manufacturer’s recipe, using fine Kentucky country milk, cream and butter. The instant espresso powder, organic sugar and almonds from “away” got married to the fine Kentucky country milk, cream, and butter, and lived happily forever after, which in the case of this ice cream amounted to about one hour flat.

Almond Cornmeal Torte (photo above) that started out as a lovely Martha Stewart wedding pound cake recipe, complete with separately beaten egg yolks and whites, and ended up simplified as a sturdy batter that went directly from the food processor to the baking pan. Weisenberger cornmeal and flour, local eggs, butter, and sour cream from home paired happily with the almond paste, sugar and extracts from afar.

And so Cornbread Suppers enters its second year of Corn, Conviviality, and Community, riding on a little boost of almond, Amaretto, and espresso. Kids grow up fast these days.

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We hosted a “one time book group” last week about Independence Days, a book by Sharon Astyk about why and how to store and preserve food. It’s the why that can be troubling. Astyk asserts the wisdom of storing a substantial supply of tasty preserved food and drinkable water, given the volatility and finite store of petroleum for food transport, the intensity of natural disasters, the fading abilities of rescue entities to move quickly when destruction is massive, as well as the scary possibilities of war, famine, and even long-term job loss.

The book can cause middle of the night musings. Most of us who met to talk about it confessed to skimming some parts or jumping frequently from the narrative of why we need to store food to the recipes and sunny descriptions of how we do it. In its mildest form, Independence Days makes a fine case for growing more of our own food in our own yards and in our communities.

One of the thoughtful people at the book group explained that comprehensive land use planning in the Bluegrass could get a lot more complex than it has been. The need to protect land so we can feed ourselves may become part of comprehensive planning considerations.

And then here comes the Wall Street Journal describing ongoing declines in the amount of land available for farming in the San Francisco Bay Area — from which direction trends and circumstances have a strong tendency to roll eastward. See what you think: Fewer Farms to Feed ‘Local’ Appetite: Small City Plots Foster a Sense of Agricultural Revival, but Fail to Make Up for the Steady Loss of Farmland in the Region

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Millions of them are out there, getting ready for us – tall, green, nose-to-tail edible green garlic plants. Expect thousands to appear at the Lexington Farmers Market on opening day, particularly from cherished Blue Moon Farm. Opening day will be April 10, 2010 – in a fancy new glass pavilion, we trust.

I look forward to trying my favorite Blue Moon Garlic Scrambled Eggs with some of the tiny crop of green garlic growing in our urban side yard this year. The first shoots may be ready just in time to add green to St. Patrick’s Day.

Enjoy this fine article on green garlic’s wonders and uses from Amy Scattergood at the Los Angeles Times.

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Learn Cheese Making: Goat cheeses and goat milk soaps are new features of life in central Kentucky, thanks to young companies like Bleugrass Chevre (mostly soft, creamy cheeses and beautiful soaps) and Sapori d’Italia (mostly hard, aged, grate-worthy cheeses). Imagine the generosity of a small business built on milking (relentlessly, daily) a large number of wiggly animals and  hand/bottle-feeding dozens of kids ALSO agreeing to help produce the Kentucky Cheesemaking School right about now. I learned of this late, so prepare to attach yourself to the waiting list, but what an affordable opportunity. The school will address cheeses made from cow, goat, and sheep milk. (A chevre schmear to BBS and Keeton Communications in gratitude for the tip.)

Get Seeds In Lexington: If you haven’t ordered seeds yet, you can save postage, see friends, buy seeds from excellent suppliers and support a good cause at the In-Feed Seed Sale March 13. This is perfect timing for the March 15 recommended planting date for many early veggie crops in our part of the planet.

Books, Children, Food: I have not found it easy to follow the links and learn more about this Splendid Table audio story about using children’s books to influence children’s eating habits positively, but I like the concept, and you may, too. Children’s books about food can boost children’s interest in fresh food, gardening, and cooking. I plan to ask the good book sleuths at Lexington’s Morris Book Shop what books they would suggest for this purpose.

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The corner of Campsie and Campsie has pollinators at work! The perky crocuses by themselves bring cheer and hope in pastel colors. Add in busy bees, and visions of what the upcoming growing season can bring get even more thrilling.

Seedleaf plans to add bees to its new hive, located just a few feet behind our back yard in the Old Episcopal Burying Ground, but the bees we are seeing have some other lodging. Where? We wonder.

Twenty years ago honeybees were plentiful in the Campsie flowers. Then we went through years of bumblebees only — and learned to appreciate them as pollinators, too.

I would have thought nothing could add to the joy of crocuses and the joy of warm March sunshine after our February challenges. Enter another urban gardening surprise: The joy of healthy-looking, working honeybees.

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Knowing of my enthusiasm for Potato Onions, asparagus, and perennial vegetables, last fall a scholar-friend offered to introduce me to real experts. Onion Experts. So on a cold February day, with Kentucky dressed in white, we took a 70-mile trip I wish each interested gardener  could take. We spent a wonderful day with Gloria and Don Williams, Menifee County natives who grow both Potato Onions and another round-the-year type, the Winter Onion, which adds more months with fresh onions.

Gloria and Don gave me Winter Onions and information about how to grow them, and so much more. These extraordinary stewards of land and place gave me a day to remember, and more useful information in four hours than I will be able to put to use in four years. The visit was a whirlwind Master Gardener class concentrating on Kentucky’s finest foods, punctuated by a wonderful meal, about which more later.

As planned, Gloria and Don told me about Winter Onions, also known as Walking Onions, Topset Onions, Egyptian Onions, and Tree Onion. These odd creatures produce bulblets at the end of their long green stalks each summer. Left to the laws of gravity, the bulblets fall over and begin growing new onion plants, so established beds can offer some form of onions for the home cook nearly year-round.

Don and Gloria say Winter Onions are easy to grow, and online conversation confirms the sturdy, hardy ways of Allium cepa var. proliferum. I’m excited about that “proliferum.” I hope our own Winter Onions, added to Potato Onions, supplemented by chives, will mean we have abundant green onions for use most months, and fully grown bulb onions for most of the rest of our needs.

Don and Gloria both grew up in Menifee County. They have used organic methods for more than a decade, and practice seed-saving and skillful processing as they continue producing the grand Kentucky foods they and their elders have eaten for centuries. Thank goodness neither of the Williamses objected to the tape recorder that captured a lot of their advice.

Our midday meal offered opportunities to learn more about the provenance of the vegetables in the best vegetable soup I have ever tasted, and the naturally sweet-tasting cornmeal in Gloria’s cornbread. Flavor, flavor, flavor: That’s the word that came up over and over as we talked about provisioning a family in ways I know about but have never done myself and have nearly forgotten.

Here’s a small portion of what the Williamses do themselves, and for family, and neighbors each year, investing levels of skill and knowledge (and time) that seem extraordinary to outsiders:

• Grow proper varieties of corn, dry it, shell it, mill it into cornmeal, sift it, store it, and cook with it. Key point: Tennessee Red Cob and Boone County White are both good corn varieties; Tennessee Red Cob tastes sweeter.
• Maintain, sharpen, and use a stone burr mill to grind corn, with a tractor as the power source. Key point: Don’t grind the corn too fine; it overheats the stones and changes the taste of the resulting meal.
• Grow and keep seeds for the most flavorful varieties of potatoes — Irish Cobbler — green beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes, squashes, cayenne papper, carrots, sweet peppers, and many other vegetables. Key point: Knowing how to store vegetables successfully becomes as important as producing them in the first place. Gloria and Don like to can their green beans for winter. They have dedicated cool, dry storage space for their onions. Cayenne pepper and seed corn keep well in opaque plastic coffee containers. Gloria said keeping the peppers away from light protects their bright colors. Some vegetables will stay right in the ground through winter and be edible all along. Don had carrots in the ground under the snow the day we met.

My friend and I left Menifee County with heavy boxes packed with the living evidence of Gloria and Don’s generosity. Each of us brought home freshly shelled black walnuts (!), freshly ground Boone County White cornmeal, fresh eggs from their Doms (Dominique or Dominicker hens), potato onions, winter onions, cayenne pepper. I really did intend to share those eggs, but somehow each morning they called to me, begging to be poached so I could really taste them, and …. I did, at least, share the luscious cornmeal, making a triple recipe of spoonbread for Cornbread Supper.

I left Menifee County with such gifts from these stewards of the land and its produce. It’s not that the knowledge of several lifetimes can be handed over in a few hours, but something else can: a sense that we can take care of ourselves and live our best lives doing it, a sense of what is possible if we apply ourselves, a sense that the flavor of fine homegrown foods is beyond compare, and worth the work of learning and the work involved.

A few more useful tidbits:

• My visit with Don and Gloria made me want to know a lot more about perennial vegetables, to increase food security and (maybe) reduce some forms of work, while caring well for the soil. This looks like a good source: Perennial Vegetables for the Cold Temperate Zone
• Snow and cold kept us from seeing Don and Gloria’s mill, but I’m imagining it may be something like these here and here.
• Menifee County’s striking beauty and fine people make me want to keep coming back. Read more here and here.

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Our fearless leaders and wonderful friends at Seedleaf pitched in across two weekends in a Hoop House Raising near Lexington. I am so happy that hoop houses are coming to private farms in the Bluegrass, and that the wonders of collaboration continue to accelerate farming capacity in the 21st century. Read about the experience in these two Seedleaf posts:

Part 1: A Hoop What??
Part 2: Hoop House Part ii

Savoring Kentucky (which means a single human working comfortably indoors in a temperature-controlled location no matter what season) has been chomping at the edge of the pitifully empty locally grown winter salad plate for quite a while, as you can see here, pleading with already overwhelmed growers to add hoop houses (and months more work) so central Kentuckians can enjoy greens in winter. Just like the lucky people in Warren County have been doing for 13 years or so, courtesy of Au Naturel Farm’s hoop-house grown winter greens.

Seedleaf Education Director Becca Self spotted this interesting New York Times article, Field Report: Plow Shares, describing the work of a “Crop Mob,” a crew of 50 volunteers who came to work at a small farm. Author Christine Muhlke also calls the volunteers “pop-up farmers” and says the event is “a monthly word-of-mouth (and -Web) event in which landless farmers and the agricurious descend on a farm for an afternoon.”

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It’s definitely fun to be cool, to be among the Places With Macarons, the très French pastry that is sweetly nudging its way into the spotlight, according to Neda Ulaby’s “Move Over Cupcake” story on NPR.

For a while, I just enjoyed eating the incredible round meringue-y, almond-y pastries W&M Market sells. I did not know their name, but — civic pride demands that I underscore this — these beautiful bits of flavored airiness have been selling like…macarons…. on the corner of Second and Jefferson in Lexington for at least a year now. One day I looked at the name of these delicacies and learned I was eating what appeared to be a macaroon that was missing one “o.” So yes, we are chic here in Lexington, and have been for some time, thanks to W&M owners Krim Broughalem and Andrea Sims, and certainly to the smart local cook who makes those macarons.

I see that NPR asserts that Americans add that missing “o” to make “macarons” into “macaroons,” but surely we should Just Say Non. Let’s have our macarons and our macaroons, too.

Macaroons, to me, are those fantastic chewy coconutty things (or sometimes ground almond things, which does bring them perilously close to the single “o” status). Neither macarons nor macaroons need flour, which make them even sweeter for people who avoid wheat. Both can be made at home — in theory — though macarons famously require considerable technique, not just a recipe.

Famed former Chez Panisse pastry chef David Lebovitz helpfully collected a LOT of web-based information about making macarons. He also tried seven times to produce a French chocolate macaron, and then shared the recipe. This suggests that food trends like “Macarons Trounce Cupcakes in the Kitchen Bowl” follow a long, slow build-up of interest among professional and advanced amateur chefs and food writers. Aren’t we glad we have them, and especially glad they share with us when they get things working?

In the short run, though, those of us in Lexington — and especially those of us who can walk to W&M Market — are glad the professionals are on the job, and that Krim and Andrea help keep central Kentucky’s long-standing ties to France in smooth working order. W&M does not seem to have a website, but search for their active facebook page, “WINE+MARKET.”

Photo Credit: minik: Thank you!

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Jamie Oliver, revolutionary, intends to save lives though food.

His recently awarded 2010 TED prize comes with one wish to change the world. Jamie’s wish:

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

You can watch his 21 minute TED talk.

Jamie Oliver may seem an unlikely change agent for us in Kentucky and the USA. He grew up as a working class bloke with dyslexia. Michael Moore is apparently his wardrobe assistant. Hair stylist: the Cookie Monster. Jamie builds his revolutionary headquarters in gritty places like Rotherham, England, and Huntington, WV, not in the glossy food capitals of the world. He’s from Essex, England, for crying out loud – and yet when he says he loves THIS country, the USA, ahhhhh – we love him back.

Thoughts of an earlier Revolution come to mind. The same two countries were involved, Ol’ England and a big land mass across the Atlantic. Some scruffy working class guys led that action, too. Motivated by a grand vision, they strayed outside the usual means of making change, used their common sense and street (trail?) savvy, and changed the world.

I’m betting on Jamie reversing the geographical direction of that earlier revolution. I’m betting he is going to win, or more accurately, help us all win back our birthright of delicious, delightful, nourishing food. Jamie’s ideas are Too Big To Fail, even though right now they seem too big to realize. His charisma carries us along on the premise that we can be both righteous and light-hearted while changing the world, since he seems to have fun with food and cooking.

Jamie Oliver and the TED organization have mapped out the revolution’s Macro Plan here, in case you want to finance or invent some large portion of this invigorating change process. The REAL revolution, though, depends on each of us cooking and teaching others, especially children, to cook real food grown nearby. Hundreds of thousands of us in Kentucky know exactly how to join this revolution.

More about TED

• Its mission: Spreading ideas
• History: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.” More background here.

Idea Credit: AC, for the “Jamie Wins TED” tip. Thank you!
Photo: Well, I hope it’s legal! It’s a badly shot portion of the Jamie’s Food Revolution book cover, done by RR with PhotoBooth, in the absence of a working camera.

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Whew. I got my at-least-annual “I don’t really garden” confession out of the way yesterday, and now I can indulge in writing about something I DO do. I cook. I value cooking as crucial to my independence in the world, yes. More than that, I cook because cooking delights me.

Recently I learned about Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food, and his pass it on initiative. First, I read Alex Wichtel’s fine New York Times article, “Putting America’s Diet on a Diet.” I immediately got in line for a library copy of Jamie’s Food Revolution, the cookbook that spells out this simple, profound idea: Teach four people to cook a specific recipe, AND extract a promise from each person that she or he will teach four more people to cook that same dish, provided THEY also make the “pass it on” promise.

The night I got my library copy of the cookbook, I had a hard time sleeping. Jamie’s math took over my head. He says:

Let’s say, for instance, that you teach four people how to make a recipe, then each of them teaches four more people….The cycle only needs to repeat itself seven times and we’ve packed out Yankee Stadium one-and-a-half-times. Repeat it thirteen times and we’ve got more than the entire population of the United States cooking — high aspirations, I admit, but why the hell not?

I realized I don’t have an answer for that question. Why don’t we all learn to cook? I have not worked out exactly how I will teach four people to cook a certain number of recipes just yet. I am finishing up projects, co-hosting convivial Cornbread Suppers weekly, helping with a certain political campaign, and working to sharpen my work skills so I can complete the work I do more quickly. But this is one revolution I intend to join.

Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton assert in Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil that we need “100 million new farmers and 200 million new cooks in the US, and more worldwide.” A Kentucky farmer I trust ranks cooking skills — knowing what to do with what the earth produces —  in first place as the thing most needed to advance direct sales of Kentucky farm products to Kentucky families.

Two more tidbits:

• Watch an engaging video of Jamie Oliver teaching us how to make a cheddar omelet (and tossing in side helpings of nutrition and cooking advice): Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution: Perfect Omelets (just short of five minutes)
• ABC will show six episodes of reality television (my first!) starting March 23, 2010, Jamie Oliver’s efforts to persuade and teach the people of Huntington, West Virginia, to increase their skills and commitment to cooking delicious, healthy food for themselves. Details here.

Hmmmm. I’m doing math again….Maybe a cooking class in the spring, followed by a video showing – six classes times six dishes – passed on to four people, who pass the cooking instruction on to four more people each, and in a mere 15 or 16 turns, we are a world of cooks!

That’s the world I want to live in, the world in which Jamie Oliver is the Prime Minister of Food, and every neighbor can reliably cook at least five good dinner meals for family and friends. Let’s get cracking.

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