The infamous dilly beans
I had no idea what a dilly bean was until I moved to Vermont. Turns out they’re just green beans pickled using the same herbs and spices you’d use to make a dill pickle, only they come out a bit more crisp than cukes. And if you tell people about dilly beans without enunciating, they’ll […]
Refrigerator pickles
If you’ve been paying attention to me at all in the last 11 years, you know I like to pickle a few things here and there. But not everyone is willing or able to buy a half bushel of produce, drag out canning pot, and spend the better half of a day steaming up their […]
The great scape
The first time I ever saw garlic scapes was at a mid-day farmers’ market on Main Street in downtown Buffalo back in 2004ish. A farmer had a bushel basket full of these swan-like curly tendrils that looked like a cross between a flower and a fairytale. He graciously explained what they were and I bought […]
Surviving salad season
If you have a CSA share, a garden, or both (if you’ve lost your mind like me), you may be eyeballing your harvest and asking yourself, “What the hell am I going to do with all this lettuce?!” Even though just three short months ago we dreamed of the tender green leaves of arugula, spinach, […]
Kombucha
Kombucha was a “thing” before it achieved superfood status, gave hipsters another reason to carry drinks around in Ball jars, and provided a convenient out for Lindsay Lohan to say she wasn’t hitting the bottle again. This mysterious fermented tea first surfaced in China around 200 BC, made its way to Japan where mothers would […]
Throwback Thursday Kitchen 2014 – show up
Dilly beans. Canned tomatoes. Homemade yogurt. Raw milk butter. Ginger green tea kombucha. Duck jerky. Sauerkraut. Herb-infused vinegars and teas. I make them. You eat them when I make them. You want to make them at your house. So you should. Introducing the Throwback Thursday Kitchen series, a chance to show up for a hands-on, […]
Local farmers, local chefs
In Vermont, chef-farmer partnerships are normal. Expected. Taken for granted, even. In other parts of the country – Buffalo included – the Sysco truck still fills the walk-ins at most restaurants. More Queen City area growers and culinary artisans, though, are seeing the value in forming partnerships that benefit the field, the fork, the patron, […]
I went to 16 wineries for work
And wrote this feature story for the 2014 issue of Niagara Wine Magazine detailing the character of each winery on the Niagara Wine Trail. Turns out there are some really cool things happening up there – it’s not all sickeningly sweet whites anymore! Grape varietals that are new to this country, blends that are surprising and deep, […]
Raising the raised beds
Two houses, two sets of orderly raised beds. The first house, half a duplex on a corner lot in Burlington, Vermont, had a backyard full of leaded soil. Probably a combination of peeling paint from 110-year-old siding and the trash burned by generations of the family who lived there before us (as we’re told). The […]
From kimmelweck to kimchi
How immigrants and refugees continue to shape Buffalo’s foodscape Like many former industrial cities in the northern United States, Buffalo’s food roots are deeply entrenched in the soils of other countries. Several of the dishes we now claim as this city’s signatures came here in the minds and hearts of first the Germans, who left […]
What’s in a name?
We don’t have leftovers. We have tapas, bento bowls, cold plates, and sampling menus. Sure, the ingredients are mostly small servings of “leftovers” that would be insufficient or strange as a full meal (four spears of asparagus, lunchmeat, half a can of cannellini beans, and a hardboiled egg, for instance). But when you look at […]
Geeking out about the garden
Tomatoes. Real ones. Not the tasteless, hard, orange stand-ins labeled “tomatoes” at the grocery store. Sun-warmed on the vine in the yard, with that musky green scent that is unmistakably tomato plant. If you’re thinking about growing your own this year, it’s time to start buying seeds and making garden plans; the first seedlings should […]
