How can you tell it's winter in North Carolina?

I subscribe to a weekly online vegetable delivery service called Papa Spuds that packs a waxed box full of veggies and drops it off to your doorstep for the cost of a large pizza. Every week subscribers have the option of selecting from the available produce in the online menu, letting the delivery service provide the “default” delivery option, or putting the delivery on hold. You can go into your account and set your own defaults- if you want to eat healthy while contributing to global climate change for example, you can select “produce from Argentina and Peru”. My defaults are set for “local” and “organic”. I’m not interested in eating pesticide-covered strawberries or anything else from the dirty dozen, even if they are sold by a nice old lady in Johnson County, NC.

We’re fortunate enough in NC that we have access to abundant and varied local organic foods in all times of year except for, well, the season that passes for winter down here in North Carolina. One week in December I forgot to adjust my order, and found myself with a crisper full of 3 quarts of carrots, a large pile of beets, cabbage, and monster-sized sweet potatoes. So began what I called my Sunday carrotextravaganzas!

Carrot recipe #1- carrot-ginger-sweet potato soup, a lovely concoction of onion, carrot, and sweet potato sautéed in the bottom of one of my favorite pots, an NC State-red cast iron enameled dutch oven (purchased specifically for making Guinness stout pie on New Year’s Eve 2009). I gazed at the vegan soup with satisfaction after pureeing it and returning it to the pot, but then felt the pull of my French ancestry and finished it off with a pour of organic cream.

Carrot recipe #2- carrot cake. I’ve never baked a carrot cake before now. I’ve had difficulty understanding why somebody would put the time and effort into baking a cake that starred a vegetable. Just like I don't really understand how somebody thought to put zucchini in a sweet quick bread. But this carrot invasion called for extreme measures. I triangulated between 2 recipes- a Food and Wine site recipe that called for 2 cups of vegetable oil and one from a recipe that came with the delivery that called for 1.5 cups of oil. What would YOU do? Both called for raisins- needless to say I omitted them (why would anyone ruin a baked good with a shriveled black concentration of fructose?). The cake came out slightly fluffy, not dense and moist. The thick layers of cream cheese frosting saved it and my neighbors didn’t seem to mind one bit that the cake didn’t leave them with belly-aches. However, if you find yourself in this moral bind, I say go southern and fatten it up!

Carrot recipe #3- borscht. Beets are clearly the divas of this recipe, but it was really the perfect alignment of carrots, beets, and cabbage in my fridge that made this soup possible, as well as the free-range chicken stock I found at Trader Joe’s. I admit I tend to avoid cooking beets as my efforts leave my kitchen looking like an opening scene from {CSI, Bones, Law and Order- take your pick}. It all sounds so easy in the cookbooks, "the skins will slide easily off the cooled roasted beets with some gentle rubbing". During the massacre and much profanity, the rest of the mixture simmered. I started losing hope as the mixture of carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, herbs and stock bubbled un-deliciously on my stovetop. Imagine my amazement at the transformation that occurred after adding the finely chopped roasted beets and the thin slices of cabbage. Served with a dollop of sour cream and toast, this borscht was easily one of the most delicious foods I’ve eaten this winter! Unlike most of my leftovers, I didn’t tire of it after 2 meals, and ate it for several days. The recipe I referred to came from Crescent Dragonwagon's Soup and Bread cookbook. I do recommend cutting the strips of cabbage short to keep one’s face from looking like they shaved with a dull razor though. Yes, the effort was worth the result. No, I will not be making borscht again this season.

The carrots are finally depleted. Now what to do with all the potatoes that have been piling up?

Eating local in Belize

One of the joys of travel is experiencing how other people live, including how they eat. I recently adventured across Belize with Dan, seeing the tropical countryside and seaside locales, hearing about Mayan history, watching birds and fish, and eating tasty local cuisine.

I have to preface this entry by directly addressing the fear instilled by travel books and websites regarding "Montezuma's revenge", a common traveler's illness. Two weeks before the trip I was struck with "Raleigh's revenge"- a food-borne bug that landed me in the ER and required strong antibiotics that cleared my gut of any beneficial bacteria BEFORE ever stepping foot in Central America. I was still recovering when I went to Belize, contributing to culinary caution and appetite suppression during the trip. Not my favorite way to travel, but I rallied best I could and had many interesting meals. Local water is usually recommended against on international grips, since bacterial flora is different across the world. Drinking filtered water was easy throughout this trip though, as all our hosts and restaurants visited provided "Crystal", the Belizean version of Aquafina or Dasani. I had no problems with food or water on my trip- everything we encountered was clean and safe.

Our first choice for lodging was the Belizean-owned Crystal Paradise, www.crystalparadise.com, in the Cayo district near Guatemala. Meals were simple and served family-style, with our hosts the Tut family dining on the same fare as the guests. My touchy belly and I were happy for what I consider comfort food- rice and beans- served practically at every meal (including a black-bean paste daily with the morning tortillas and eggs or sausage). The resort provided a good taste of local Belizean life. Music from a local church punctuated the evenings, kids ran around during the day since they were on Easter break. A flock of chickens roamed the grounds, providing an interesting juxtaposition with their distant relatives the blue-crowned mot-mots and aracari toucans who feasted on fruit placed out on fences. We knew where the stewed chicken came from, and the tender pineapple, bananas, and papaya served for breakfast had a very short journey as well. I revised my wish for my municipal government (Cary, NC) to allow backyard chickens to wanting them to allow only hens- that damned rooster crowed ALL night long! I heard other guests querying why orange juice was the only juice served. Later as we drove our cranky rented "jimney" down the Hummingbird Highway to southern Belize, we passed miles of orange groves that populated the valleys between the mountainous forest preserves. Mystery solved.

Our next destination was Maya Beach, on a peninsula north of Placencia. I was pleased to hear a fellow guest at Crystal Paradise comment that their bistro was well known for excellent food. (www.mayabeachhotel.com) It certainly was a change from the simple but tasty family fare we ate in the Cayo District. I relished fresh snapper coated with peanuts and coconut (which the staff had cut down from a palm on the property), drizzled with a lovely papaya curry sauce. Here we drank filtered rainwater, which was just as fine on the gut as the Crystal. As water quality professionals, we both snapped photos of cisterns on all manner of houses in Belize and Guatemala. Everyone had at least one- and not those little 65 gallon barrels we see in stores in the U.S., but great big vats that captured rainwater intended for use on a daily basis (we also saw solar panels on even the smallest of huts in the countryside- we could learn a thing or two from Belize). Without the ipod, tv, radio or newspapers, we thankfully heard no international news on our trip. The big news we did hear came from Maya Beach's chef/co-owner about Belize's upcoming ban on imported dairy products. This American ex-pat shook his head in frustration at how it would effect his menu- local dairy producers would not be able to keep up with demand or provide any variety of cheeses. And pizza? Forget it. Producing his own mozzarella was too time-consuming and expensive. "At least I'll be able to stock up on Italian Parmesan reggianno, while there was no way to stock up on lettuce during their last ill-conceived ban". Apparently the Belizean government tries to occasionally regulate eating local. Clearly the country's one large dairy corporation had undue influence on the government.

One of our favorite eating experiences was sitting on a steamy veranda at Rumfish restaurant in downtown Placencia. As Dan ate a sweat-inducing spicy shrimp ceviche and I enjoyed a shrimp and vegetable pasta dish, the ocean breeze cooled us, and we enjoyed a local soccer match of "shirts vs skins" played on the public field below. We lingered with our gelato cones on the edges of an outdoor public meeting, listening to village council candidates explain the need for a "happy medium" between local culture and tourism development. A proposal for accepting cruiseships at Placencia was under consideration -currently cruise ships holding thousands of passengers dock outside of Belize City 3 days a week to disembark tourists for day-long excursions inland. Seeing the fancy homes under construction in Maya Beach punctuated the fact that tourism and ex-pat retirement was a rapidly driving force on the peninsula- U.S. money stretches much further in Central America than at home. We were sad to see some of the developments- they were obscenely large homes similar to what you might see being built in Myrtle Beach. However, without this driving economic force, it is unlikely that the bumpy, dusty road to the peninsula would be undergoing resurfacing as it was. A happy medium needed indeed- one candidate mentioned the benefits of zoning to protecting the local citizens' quality of life. You can hear almost identical discussions in our own coastal zones of NC and SC.

One can see the appeal of spending time on coastal Belize- our last stop brought us to Caye Caulker, a tiny island just minutes by boat away from the incredible Belize Barrier Reef, second in size only Autralia's Great Barrier Reef. We saw manatees from the plane, and incredible sea-life during a snorkel trip with a native Caye Caulker man named Mr. Juni Salvidar. I later learned that Mr. Juni built the 24-foot sailboat with a bamboo boom on which he sailed us to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve. Although Juni does not eat fish since to him that would be like eating family (the way fish and stingrays follow him and enjoy his company is a sight I'll never forget), we heeded our host Luciana Essenziale's (OASI Apartments www.holidaybelize.com) recommendation to eat at Rose's Grill and enjoyed the freshest of seafood. Whole fish, shrimp, and stone crab claws were laid out on a table next to a grill in front of the restaurant. We chatted with the chef/owner and picked out our meals. The stone crab claws were delectable.

The trip was memorable for not only the meals, but for the show-stopping wildlife, land-based and underwater adventures, and friendly Belizeans and international ex-pats who hosted and fed us.

Return of the roots

This past week I welcomed my ugly old friend the rutabaga back to my kitchen, accompanied by rosy red beets, hairy carrots, and the overly large sweet potato (which, by the way, is actually more closely related to morning glories than to those big white tubers we Americans love so much). These changes of seasons are the highlights of eating local- it's like opening up the backroom closet and pulling out the warm and fuzzy sweaters I haven't seen since March (or since June, if you are reading this in Vermont). Oh, the joy!

I'll admit that I am still a bit intimidated by those beets- the way they stain everything they come into contact with, my inexperience in cooking them having grown up eating the canned version. Can I ever coax beets into the starring role of a borscht as delicious as the vegetarian recipe my friend Gigi received from her grandmother (Ukrainian if I recall correctly)? I should have watched carefully while I chopped up beets, carrots, and potatoes for her brew, but was fairly distracted that the recipient of this feast was Jane Goodall. It is testament to Gigi's cooking that I remember the soup as much as I remember the company. I am determined to learn how to cook a good borscht recipe this fall!

In the meantime, I'm kicking off the root vegetable season as I typically do- tossing them with olive oil and garlic and roasting them, boiling them and mashing them with garlic, and simmering them with onions, garlic and water and pureeing them into a hearty soup (do you get the common thread here?). As much I enjoyed the rutabaga-sweet potato soup this week, next time I think the onions will get sauteed in local, happy-pig bacon. (Happy= room to roam and snuffle in the mud with your family unit. Unhappy= raised snout to tail in multiple factory farms)

This is also the season where fresh kale and potatoes are both in season. Last week I tried an interesting recipe I found in one of Dr. Andrew Weil's books, simply called Kale with potatoes. While potatoes are boiling, chopped kale is sauteed in olive oil with garlic until bright green and slightly tender. Then the potatoes, cubed or sliced, are put into the pan (pushing the kale aside at first and with my own additions- a little butter to help brown the taters, some red pepper flakes for heat). To round out the meal I fried up a free-range egg and served it on the side, though the true star of this meal was the kale and potatoes dish. It is truly amazing how something so simple and nutritious can taste so good! A shout out of thanks to my little vegan brother Josh, who commented while here last spring that he and his girlfriend love kale- until then I had lumped it with collards as a green I didn't think I would ever want to mess with.

I'm still waiting to see the light on collards, though. Until then I'll keep experimenting with those hearty root veggies.

Eating local in coastal Maine

The craggy coast of Maine is a beautiful place, even if the summer is a rainy one. And Maine has had its share of rain this year- Portland rainfall was 300% over average at about 8" in July!

Dan and I recently camped on Somes Sound, next to Acadia National Park with two other couples. To the extreme joy of the locals, the sun was shining for a whole day! We were extremely fortunate to benefit from our friends' search on Mount Desert Island for soft shell clams and lobsters while we climbed up the Beehive (a great place to get away from the crowds) and ate popovers at Jordan Pond House. What a treat to come back to the campsite welcomed by fresh local seafood and a glass of wine. This was my first experience with soft shell clams, also called steamers- wow! I had no idea clams could be so delectable! After you shuck off the creepy black membrane from the neck, you dip it (the clam, not the membrane) in clam broth to wash off the sand, then dip in melted butter and pop it in your mouth. I could have eaten a hundred of them, if there wasn't a delicious lobster boiling for me off to the side. (Thanks to our friends' Keith and Colleen's campside seafood skills!)

I say we were fortunate because our friends' difficulty in finding the clams portended the closure of this shellfishery a few days later due to polluted runoff from the heavy rainfalls. A few days later I was reading the Burlington Free Press in North Hero, Vermont, and read about the closure of clam harvesting on the Maine coast. Almost a month later, the shellfishery is still closed- a sign above the shellfish counter at my local Harris Teeter provided evidence. They face the similar problem as all shellfisheries along the coast- rainfall washes bacteria and viruses from human and animal fecal material into the waters, where bivalves filter them and hold them in their flesh. (I never have had the desire to eat raw oysters...) . In particular this summer, the Maine coast has been plagued by a red tide-extremely toxic organisms.

The bacteria and viruses in runoff, and even the red tide, do not affect the lobster fishery, as those crustaceans do not accumulate these organisms in their flesh like bivalves. Lucky for us- we cracked open and enjoyed lobsters at the picnic table looking out over buoys in Somes Sound that marked lobstermen (and women's) trap lines. Eating a lobster is a lot of work that I find well worth the effort.

Right before leaving for New England I wandered into a bookstore looking for a vacation-worthy read to bring, and the first book that caught my eye on the table near the entryway sported a big red lobster claw on the front cover. The Secret Lives of Lobsters, by Trevor Corson, was a perfect fit. This book centers around the lobstermen and women of Mount Desert Island, and provides a great read about the Maine lobster fishery, the natural history of lobsters, and the interplay between scientists, policymakers, and lobstermen in producing a sustainable fishery.

To round out the Maine culinary experience, we snacked on clam chowder in the parking lot of the Dog and Pony Tavern in Bar Harbor (Although the tavern claims a love of dogs, they wouldn't allow our dog friend Willow to join us on their outdoor patio due to their insurance policy). It was still delicious- not too rich, full of clams and potatoes. No need to preface it with "New England" chowder - you would no more likely find the tomatoey version up here than you are to find a "Yankees" pennant in a bar. This is the heart of New England (go Red Sox!). We also picked up a blueberry pie and brought it back to the campsite to warm up over the fire and share with our new campsite neighbors while we huddled under tarps in the steady rain.

The next day as we drove southwest down the coast to head back to Vermont, we stopped for lunch in Belfast, Maine. The Dockfront Family Restaurant served up a lobster roll- lobster salad in a typical hot dog roll -with sweet potato fries. We also split a fried haddock sandwich. Maine seafood is a wonderful treat.

Flounder, fresh and fried

Now I'm going to get to the "slow" part. Flounder fishing season is in full swing down at the coast, (actually, I'm not really sure when it starts and ends, but apparently now is the time), and Dan had been eager to get out on the water with a fishing pole. He was not interested in buying bait - live minnows are used for flounder fishing. So we rode our bikes over to the north causeway, and threw minnow traps into the creek. A few hours later at low tide we drove back, pulled up the traps and found...grass shrimp.

"What about that sign down the road that said live minnows 24/7?" I suggested. He was not having any of that. So we continued onto Pawley's Island to the boat ramp, put the canoe in the water and paddled over to a sand bar. Dan grabbed his cast net and wandered down the beach, while I sat in the sand with my feet in the water, reading the newspaper and drinking a beer. Thirty minutes later I walked to the other end of the sand bar to help him scoop up small fish. Finally we got back in the canoe and went fishing in the middle of the creeks that snake through the marshes. We each pulled up a couple blue crabs (I later pointed out that we could have had a pot of crabs for dinner if we kept them), but then after about an hour, Dan pulled up a flounder! It wasn't huge, but seemed big enough to keep. I was amazed that the daily catch limit is something like 20 or so flounder- we were grateful to get one.

Neither of us had ever cleaned a flounder before. Have you seen one up close? They are flat, and soft, with both eyes close and askew on the top of their head. Although they are scaleless, like a shark or ray, their top skin is grey and tough. The skin on their belly is soft and white. I hesitated for a moment before leaning over to watch Dan clean it- the fish was a little bloody from the thrashing and my stomach is not nearly as strong as when I worked for a veterinarian years go. But hey, shouldn't we see the reality of where our food comes from? I decided it was more respectful to acknowledge this and witness its preparation. After Dan spent much time scraping a filet from the top skin, we decided that perhaps it would be easier to separate it from the skin after frying it. We actually are both fish skin-eaters (shocking, I know!) so I don't know why we bothered worrying about it in the first place.

I dredged the filets in egg white and House-Autry breading(from Four Oaks, NC) & pepper, and fried them in canola oil and butter. I can't remember now what veggies we made with it- the crispy on the outside, tender on the inside flounder has eclipsed all else in my memory. And yes, the skin was delicious- top and bottom both! I don't order flounder in restaurants or buy it at the grocery, since the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Southeast guide rates it as a non-sustainable commercial catch. So that was a rare and delicious treat.

Now THAT is some slow food!

For more info on sustainable seafood, visit
www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx
They have handy pocket guides you can stash in your wallet or purse.

Ah, asparagus!

Here in the piedmont of NC, the asparagus season is quickly drawing to a close. I'm crossing my fingers in hope that I can still find some tender stalks at the NC Farmers Market in Raleigh this week. In the last month, I've eaten it grilled, sauteed in olive oil, and steamed, accompanying fish and local pork, and oftentimes nothing else. My new favorite way to eat asparagus comes from a recipe in Barbara Kingsolver's ode to local food: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
Sautee stalks in olive oil until slighlty browned
Lay a poached egg from a happy free ranging hen across the stalks
Crack some black pepper and sprinkle shredded parmesan over it.

Simple but delicious!

If you live in the Carolinas, run out to your local farmers market now! If you are one of those lucky ducks who live up north, you have a whole season of asparagus-lovin' in front of you!

Sushi in North Cary!

After eyeing a new Japanese restaurant that moved into one of those new, non-descript brick commercial buildings in north Cary, I decided to give it a try.

With the recent N&O review's 3 stars as back-up, we visited Domo on Saturday night. A few other tables were occupied in the sleek and modern space. Their silver conveyor built was moving (perhaps because the N&O review lamented that the restaurant didn't have enough business to warrant it), and we reached for some steamed edamame. (If you haven't been to a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, it's worth the novelty to check one out. The family behind us had gathered a large stack of colored plates that resulted in one happy, singing little girl).

The edamame on the menu was a dollar more than the conveyor belt plate- if you prefer yours warm than you may want to order it off the menu. The tuna nigiri we pulled off the belt was tasty- the wasabi-ginger set-up we requested to go with it came quickly. That was the end of the beltway adventure since there were only a few other items circling slowly around.

We ordered a salmon-lover roll on recommendation of the review and found it worthy of praise- salmon, asparagus, avocado- delish! We also ordered a spicy scallop roll (the name may be off a bit- now I know to bring a notepad with me!). While the tilapia on the outside was firm and tasty, my dining companion and I were both disappointed with the scallop inside- flaky in texture, perhaps cooked and shredded? We had hoped for raw scallop. The sauces for both rolls added great nuance to them, and saved the scallop roll for us.

The service was friendly, decor lovely, and location just down the road. we'll be back to try it again!