Anna Blume

Barbara: Thanks for the reports! 2) A trusted source who has a thing for Julia and has read them all disliked this book, if this is the new book by a journalist. A different DR says the writer gets culinary terms wrong and doesn't really have the background for his subject. Who knows? FWIW, I loved A for L for the information and at the time, it was the only thing around. Really gave me tremendous respect for Julia Child, if I found the writing style tedious. Favorite of all I read, though, remains the edited letters between JC and the friend she made over a set of knives. 3) I will always love Craig Claighborne for reasons I've related online before: he sent a ms., a typewriter-TYPED ms. of restaurant reviews to a grad student out in the midwest who wanted to to know where to take a brand-new college student out to dinner during a three-day trip to NYC. Never met my mother. Only asked that she return it to The NYT building during our visit, which we did. While she used his cookbook mostly for dinner parties, when passed down to me, I consulted the poultry chapter more than anything else. Okay, buckwheat blini. Thing is, before others in his sphere, he was more open to culinary traditions beyond la belle cuisine, including his own Southern roots.

^Felicitations! I know only one farmer who grows these around here--always fairly small--and they do have a tendency to split.

Thanks for the heads up! While there are often copper pots of so-so quality, every once in a while there are some stunners like the one you stumbled upon or gorgeous, thick Italian pots.

Try the golden pepper and yellow tomato soup some time, too. I just buy tomato seconds from one of the organic farmers and make a red soup, roasting yellow & orange bell peppers. I find 3-4 lbs. of tomatoes best (either prepared as stated in recipe or halved & roasted, too, w slivers of garlic and thyme branches stuck in the sections), with about 3 c stock/water vs. a quart. The pimenton and saffron are great touches and the soup is ten times better the next day w warm buttermilk cornbread.

Very late lunch or early dinner was a variation on this dish , the use of shrimp instead of prawns being the major change. After consultation with an expert, I decided the faces of some of the critters looked a bit too Francis Bacon, so I decapitated them before depriving them of limbs and intestinal tracts. Otherwise, shells and tails stayed intact. The bitter end note of a Spanish olive oil tempered the sweetness of yellow plum tomatoes (Golden Rave, Next Step Produce) used to make a delicious tomato confit. There is still more than a cup left and I am wondering what to do with it. Any suggestions involving vegetables or grains welcome.

??? ^ My guess is as good as anyone else's except in this regard: Imagine you are a small, local food producer or farm locally with a minimal number of hands to help. Say, on a farm that does 1 to 3 farmers markets vs. the operation that has enough staff to participate in 2 markets a day, 4 days a week. Since markets on weekends draw the biggest crowds and have the highest potential for sales, would you rather spend Friday packing a truck, driving 25 to 125 miles, setting up a stand, selling, breaking down that stand, idling in traffic along routes frequented by commuters headed out for the weekend, or picking tomatoes, washing greens and bunching carrots? Friday markets might be dandy for shoppers whose parents always took them to the supermarket after work at the end of the week, but I suspect they are not convenient for farmers. Probably not all that profitable, either, in a city with so many commuters and cocktail lounges.

More information about the school program at Watkins, can be found here.

The recipe for fresh corn soup with avocado mouse and lime in Suzanne Goin's Sunday Dinners at Lucques is a new favorite of mine. Prepared without dairy or stock, it develops a wonderful creaminess simply by major time spent in a really good blender--in small batches. Should be easy to adapt as a cold soup, especially given the wonderful last-minute squeeze of lime juice. Cilantro. You could skip the avocado garnish. There's a recipe for a cold corn soup on Food52, too, and of course, Zora's soup sounds perfect, too, especially given the extra flavor a cob-stock would contribute to something chilled.

It's been a while, so I don't recall what Wisconsin farmers call their frying cheese. Frying cheese, maybe? Trader Joe's sells it.

Hmmm on first point, wonder why, though I do know organic cukes were decimated this year due to effect of weather on a certain beetle. Cinda has had tomatoes for several weeks, though maybe not enough for the number of restaurants that come during final hour.

That was Jim at Anchor Nursery and it may explain why a bunch of restaurants in Penn Quarter love him so. Funny. I didn't go on a mission on Sunday since you already had found your supplier when we talked, but all the organic and on-the-way-to-organic-again growers have plum tomatoes, just not in vast quantities yet, in part, perhaps because of what Zora says, though I also think it's a matter of second-plantings vs. first. Next Step, New Morning, Tree & Leaf (always), Farm at Sunnyside...When tomato season FINALLY arrives, more people are thinking tomato sandwiches, insalta caprese, BLTs and other simple pleasures. You get your cherry varieties as the amuse bouche of the season [ © ], then the big Purple Cherokees, Stripy Germans and whatnot. Then as fall approaches and all those plates of pasta tossed w olive-oil marinated raw tomatoes, garlic, basil and ricotta salata build up a taste for cooked sauce. Ergo, farmers may reserve their plum tomato plantings for the second vs. first harvests. Theory. Last week at the Tuesday market in Crystal City, I was impressed by the mega-load of summer produce at Barajas, and while I was fixated on the peppers, I am pretty sure there were lots of plum tomatoes, too. Mr. Monavano or goldenticket might be able to give you the lowdown there if 50 lbs. aren't enough. I can also check out Garners at Penn Quarter on Thursday since Dana sells just about everything that grows in Virginia.

In Crystal City around dinnertime this past Tuesday, as someone who rarely goes to Virginia, I ended up spending more time on Metro than anticipated to go to Ray's Hell Burger for dinner despite recommendations that I try Good Eats. Glad of the decision. A little Big Poppa was the best hamburger I've had in a very long time.

Last Friday I made a huge Kurdish casserole of eggplant, frying peppers, tomatoes, sumac and lamb and w variations in sides, have not grown tired of it over the week. Wolfert's Eastern Mediterranean Cooking may be one of the fussiest cookbooks around but everything is worth the time spent gathering ingredients and prepping. FYI A medium-coarse bulghur I bought at Rodman's turned out to be the best I've found for making a non-gummy bulghur pilaf with caramelized onions, kale and allspice. Other recent, recipe-dependent dinners chosen to unburden the produce drawer of what's impossible to resist: Sweet corn soup w lime, cilantro and a mound of mashed avocado whipped into Greek-style yogurt. Tomato soup w roasted peppers, saffron and pimenton; skillet cornbread made w fresh corn and polenta soaked all day in buttermilk.

Sesame-peanut noodles w cucumber, scallions and cilantro for past few days. In oven now: a gratin inspired by Food 52 which now serves as my home page: cucuzza w salsa verde. Smells and looks gorgeous. Leftover salsa verde may be destined for last Sunday's tomatoes, popped in the oven since spots growing.

Update since I went to Crystal City for the first time in over a year myself this week and was happy to see Mr. monavano there. The date of the relocation of the market has been postponed, though the farmers and producers at the market should know full details by the time of next Tuesday's market, August 14. So, plan on visiting at its current location next week where the sound of welding overhead explains the reason for the move. EZ-Up tents are great when it rains, but they don't offer much protection from the demolition of an adjacent building.

Watermelon Coffee Popovers w homemade apricot preserves Tried the French method of steeping fruit overnight in sugar w vanilla bean. Nigel Slater calls for 750 g of sugar for 2 lbs. of fruit or 1.5: 2 which I dutifully used. Love the intense flavor of the fruit especially since I followed someone else's advice to blanch a few kernels extracted from pits and halve them once skinned to add w lemon juice. However, the sugary slush shrunk the apricots and there was so much more syrup than fruit at the end that I poured a separate jarful for glazing. A bit too sweet for my taste, so I am wondering how much I would lose in texture by decreasing sugar next year.

Welcome to the area, Valerie! You won't find a large market that is exclusively organic, but you will find farmers markets with many organic farmers and producers. A small, but excellent organic-only market is run by an organic pioneer in this area at the Sheridan School, New Morning Farm. (There's a topic in this forum on the Sheridan School market.) A friend from Davis, CA looks down her nose at what grows around here only because she's a zealous convert from life in Michigan, but you'd probably be happiest with the early Sunday market at Dupont Circle where you'll also find New Morning Farm along with Farm at Sunnyside, Country Pleasures, Next Step Produce and Tree & Leaf, all organic, along with plenty of other choices along the lines of grass-fed, biodiverse, free-range and all those other happy buzz words. Also see Marketfan's copious reports of the bounties available at her markets this weekend where there are great local organic farms such as Mountain View. All of these markets share a commitment to just-picked, local food.

Bison tagliata over arugula w Parmesan and lemon Pugliese Santa Cristiana

But, you can! While known primarily for her grass-fed poultry and meats, Julie Stinar of Evensong Farm (Maryland; cf. WaPo article about her poulets rouges) also specializes in herbs. She likes to grow unusual varieties of mint and basil and sells holy basil at Penn Quarter on Thursdays and Silver Spring on Saturdays.

Haddock dipped in buttermilk-Tabasco mixture in coating process Lemon Corn and blueberry salad w lots of basil and Champagne vinaigrette Haricot verts (aka French fillets at Spring Valley) w lots of parsley Handful of blackberries

What goes up the chimney? Almost. I skipped the cornmeal given plans for dinner and added canary melon. So used to believing in Wyler's frozen wild blueberries, I had forgotten how good freshly-picked blueberries are in a multigrain, buttermilk batter.

I highly recommend Toigo's mira corn. First appearance in the farm's many markets this past weekend. The drought's made corn hard to come by and we're watching scarcity for the past three years where Toigo (S. PA) is concerned. Last year, the long, cold spring followed by excessive rain delayed plantings, then after seeds watched away twice, there wasn't much if any corn. At this point, I forget what happened the year before. Best mushroom for pairing with corn: chanterelle. Summer is the wild mushroom's season. Any sightings of these foraged funghi in farmers markets?

Bins of flowers are packed late before market, after blossoms close. One farmer told me that upon arrival early the next morning, someone opened up a bin to start transferring the delicate flowers into thin wooden boxes. As soon as he opened the lid, hundreds of beens swarmed out and flew high into air...

Melon called "Gourmets Delight" by Garners Produce Coffee Autumn Wheat (Kashi) with John Boy peach (Twin Springs) and milk

Tacos w chorizo, onions, mushrooms and potatoes dressed w roasted tomatillo sauce. I love Rick Bayless.