Anna Blume

New news from this steadfast patron of farmers markets?

Focaccia/Chicago-style pizza w wilted escarole, spring onions, garlic scapes, feta and Royal Trumpets (Dough the product of a major typo in one of Paula Wolfert's books for olive-oil pastry; froze the misguided batch and managed to salvage thawed glob w yeast, rye and a bit more AP flour) Black raspberries

Word: Thomas Keller's English pea purée with Parmesan crisps. It's in the French Laundry cookbook and thus online at Google Books plus your local public library. Don't even need the parm crisps tho they're a nice touch. Don't need the truffle oil, def. I'd recommend cutting back the salt in the boiling pot of water to half required amount, at least. If you have a Vitamix or other tremendously powerful blender, you don't need to go thru the tamis-straining. Skip the mint for this--or sub tempura-style mint leaves for the Parm crisp. Hey.

Basta! Basta! My personal thoughts about whole-grain pasta and N. American nutritional concerns can be found elsewhere on this board and earlier on that other one, but I can respect medically imposed dietary needs. While skeptical about the whole fiber thing, I am a bit more willing to listen to recent cautionary remarks about sugar and highly-processed grains, ergo recent purchase of meh-ish whole wheat. Still do risotto w polished, white rice, ditto, paella, though I switched to brown rice otherwise long ago. Just finished most of a bowl of Vace's plain, old egg-based fettuccine [note the on-topic note--unfortunately not finishing everything before me is about as close as I've gotten to an actual weight-loss campaign thus far] with pesto and a glass of tap water since I'm with Alice on importing unfermented beverages in bottles.

Thanks for tips, lp. I will try the TJ stuff once current stock depleted. Buddy thing sounds good, but later. I need to get into the routine first on my own--otherwise I just resent having another obligation requiring me to be somewhere at x o'clock vs. a pleasant, leisure-time pursuit.

I'm with Zora on the chilled soup thing. Fruit smoothies and toast w peanut butter Fruit salad w mint, poached egg and toast; coffee iced Unorthodox spring rolls and their cousins, Vegetable tacos sprinkled w feta or chevre and shredded radishes Mashed avocado on thick, whole grain toast, coarse salt and drizzle of good olive oil, though hard to consume while walking on your hands and trying to swat flies off as oil drizzles down your fingers Salad of orange, fennel, mint, cured black olives and red onion (well, you've got the Med. thing covered, you say, but will add:) Leftover pasta con le sardi with lots of freshly squeezed lemon Sweet potato-chickpea salad w tahini dressing Anything with lime and cilantro. (Ironic how citrus cools, though no longer as good as it is in colder months. Darn equator.)

Hot, humid weather. Sweat. Outside lots. Socks that come up only so far. Biting flies attack. Ouch! Days after, hell of itching. Mosquito sightings, though now it's mostly flies. Respectful of greater plights, but seated at computer, trying to focus on reports and such, distracted. Will reapply hydracorteson or whatever, but other advice welcome. Thanks.

About to have one last sliver of this year's first cherry clafoutis. Highly recommend the organic Morellos from Country Pleasures (Dupont).

TJ "fresh-squeezed" grapefruit juice Coffee w Clear Spring whole milk Buttermilk pancakes w maple-poached blackberries (Garner's) and raw, Jersey-cow yogurt with mint 2 strips of 3 Pigs' maple bacon Best bacon I've had in long, long time--and yes, I agree that it's very expensive.

Who serves dandelion wine ?

Wow!!!! I am so impressed! Inspired, too. While I've made more of a concerted effort to get out and about on trails, I simply am not as fully into the routine as I was five or so years ago. Other baby steps: less meat; no longer picking up the weekly loaves of bread at the market; switching to savory vs. sweet snacks. Even bought and consumed some whole wheat pasta, though I still feel it has its place for certain preps, not all. After a terrible order of a new take on fries at my favorite source, I finally have curbed giving into urges on weekend afternoons. Indulging every now and again since utter denial is counterproductive.

Vignarola and when that's done, a green soup featuring sorrel that uses up the nettles and lambs quarters I blanched and forze last week.

Shirley Hazzard!

Either you have a newborn or you've been meeting a whole lot of deadlines for weeks on end since strawberries have been around for over a month now (things are very early this year). Not this weekend, but the week before, I'd say, was the peak for those from VA and MD, though there are still some later varieties coming out. The ones from S. PA have just started, so hi thine hide hither to a field or market!!! FTR, this past weekend brought early sweet cherries to market and the first crop of fava beans. Follow twitter feeds for your favorite farmers markets, sign up for enews and/or like Facebook sites. (I started to list arrivals for seasonal topics in this forum, but since no one else contributed, I stopped.)

Thanks, Zora. You have to check for tree nut and peanut allergies, etc. these days and I did. Only verboten things: mushrooms as stated and animals.

Okay. FTR, I am making a marinade of coconut milk, brown sugar and grated ginger for before and after fried, then broiled tofu strips. Rolls will have a pesto of garlic scapes, cashews and peanut oil, radish and carrot. Peanut sauce only a teeny bit of Red Rooster sauce.

Fishinnards and others, please note that current request is for vegetarian, kid-friendly suggestions only. No fish sauce, for example. Nothing searing in chili department. I am preparing non-traditional spring rolls with peanut dipping sauce as picnic fare. Plans are to make a garlic-scape paste in advance, perhaps with fresh fava beans and lime zest. Marinade, then fry up strips of tofu, then assemble wraps with shredded radishes, carrots, a little scallion and cilantro, an herb these children like. (They despise mushrooms.) No noodles or cabbage in filler, though I do have a bag of frisée and some Tuscan kale on hand. If anyone has suggestions for making the tofu yummo, I am all ears. Ditto on peanut sauce. Second, I forgot to pick up a head of Boston lettuce at the market this weekend. Should I plan on store-bought just as a way to keep the separate bundles unstuck for a couple of hours? FTR, a search suggests no one has addressed this topic in the Shopping & Cooking Forum before, so I trust this can be of further use.

Any closer resources for unusually good tofu for a DC resident who lives minutes from Maryland? I am hard-pressed to find a decent source.

Identity? Just ran out myself. ***************** Last night not memorable, but tonight planning on Macedonian nettle and cheese pie, variation on a Wolfert recipe, mixing nettles with lamb's quarters, radish tops, sorrel and a little Tuscan kale. Still not sure what to do with the first batch of the pastry dough with olive oil since I didn't trust gut and adhered to misprinted measurement, adding twice as much water as needed.

Okay. As you recognize, the choice of the location has more to do with the kind of real estate business owners in their late 20s can afford in this city as opposed to consumer research identifying and targeting demographics and evaluating convenience. However, I am not the only Petworth resident who finds the business more appealing than others I pass on a daily basis on my way to the places in the city where I work, play and do most of my shopping. It's too challenging to elaborate much further given rules of online etiquette and constraints on time. Suffice to say Palena sits comfortably in its surroundings in Cleveland Park and Michael Landrum boldly goes where other restaurateurs have yet to venture forth, but with steak and hamburgers vs. fennel pollen foam that bursts from within a foie gras gum ball. You can more easily coax a whole lot of farmers, producers and merchants to congregate on a weekly basis outdoors in downtown Bethesda than in Ward 8. What pleases me most, I think, is not the secure sign of this area's gentrification, but that at least for now, you get a bit of this next to a bit of that. It's not all This This This This and More of This, food- and otherwise.

Dinner around 10 since I made strawberry shortcake for a late-afternoon lunch (again) with a surplus of strawberries mostly from Next Step Produce and cream from Clear Spring Creamery. Walked off a bit of it when heading to and fro Qualia, chosing aromatic coffee beans from Sidoma as a splurge. 2 tacos filled w shredded chicken thighs braised in salsa verde, topped w slivered French breakfast radishes and their leaves and crumbled goat cheese Reheated arroz 'bianco" prepared with green garlic, spring onions and brown Jasmine rice Last of the macerated strawberries

When you're evaluating cost, please take into consideration what you're paying for. First, there's the fact that this is a new, first business run by two recent graduates of the Culinary Institute of America who are still in their twenties. Their expertise lies in advanced culinary education, though as recent stories in WaPo publications indicate, Jason Story did not learn much about charcuterie in school even if he has put in time with name experts in the field (cf. byline on what is usually called Michael Ruhlman's book on the subject). Second, he pays more for animals raised on small local farms, grass-fed, hormone-free, not sent off to feed lots, etc. This is a pricey thing to do, something that not every wonderful local maker of fabulous charcuterie makes a point of doing whether for reasons of cost, ability to meet demand or other factors. Nor something, say, Fish in the Hood may care about, though I don't know that for a fact having not done my research before posting. Finally, you're talking my hood. We've got third-generation natives living in the house their grandparents bought and newly transplanted Harvard J.D's; Ph.Ds, B.S.s, A.D.s, M.F.As, MSWs and GEDs; housepainters who discuss international politics with smart, informed fervor on the back of the bus; cops; teachers; musicians; prostitutes; shop keepers; construction workers; drug dealers; frugal, home-owning, retired ladies and their alcoholic relatives from afar; community activists; liquor-store clerks; high-class government employees with snazzy shoes hand-sewn by Daniel Day-Lewis... The mixed demographics of a changing neighborhood inculcate mixed businesses. If Manhattan has Brooklyn, why can't D.C. foster a nifty corridor of young, food-oriented businesses run with passion, skill and hard work, too? And in the words of Spike Lee, why can't we just get along (and dance)? Somewhere in between Alice Waters' belief that folk who pay mega-bucks for the latest Nike ought to sponsor their own organic peach tree and the lament of donrockweilers over the price of the food that is the object of their cult, there has to be a sensible middle ground. ******************************** Here's a link to the established topic about this new place in the Shopping & Cooking forum, though thanks for mentioning the sandwiches. I really enjoyed the pulled-pork, especially given the nobby bits of cooked vegetables in the eggy bun, though, I did wish the meat had been heated up again. I've also tried the jerky. Disclaimer: I was present when a farmer made a delivery and got to tag along during a guided tour of the premises where a slab of her pig was being transformed into yummy things, so I am more than a wee bit biased.

Giant Shrimp: What a beautiful post! (Don: I'd quote some of it but the one thing about this new version of Invision that challenges me is the 2 1/2 in.-tall box one has as a writing surface.) I'm a little curious about why anyone would call spinach bitter, too. Perhaps different varieties are, or the tougher, mature leaves of that crinkly kind just before it's altogether too hot to grow spinach in fields. Dandelion greens on the other hand.... You ought to go to the library and check out a copy of Hank Shaw's cookbook, Hunt, Gather, Cook which I fetched last night, turning off the lights moments after reading observations virtually identical to your own about the virtues of gathering the leaves of the ubiquitous weed. Should you feel especially industrious and know amateur winemakers who would be willing to loan essential equipment, Shaw has instructions for making your own dandelion wine. From what he writes, it is as memorable as the novel Ray Bradbury named after the home brew.

Did they tell you they have hydroponic beds for growing lettuce in water year-round? If so, I am sure there will be more botanical riches than that since cabbage, kale and such thrive after frost in the winter. Developed in New England back in the day, high tunnels permit a wide variety of other vegetables to grow in soil for year-round harvesting. Greenhouses, too. Root vegetables store...

It has been going strong ever since the temperatures shot up to the 80's---but just on hot, clear days. In any case, the farmers market is around the corner from the mosaic fountain for the next two weeks while Downtown Silver Spring holds special events on the stretch of Ellsworth where kids splash in the fountain. Farmers return to line up in front of the fountain on May 19.