But that is not my main mission for this post. No, instead I am here to report that my husband, Web programmer extraordinaire Mike Subelsky, took it upon himself to “use up” something that had been lurking in our produce drawer for a few weeks: a big bag of radishes that he’d bought on a impulse buy (“they looked so good!”) at the farmer’s market. I think radishes look great, too, but aside from shaving them onto a salad or eating one or two for a snack, I never know what to do with them.

Now I never need to know because Mike has discovered he has a new hobby: making kimchee! He took that bag of radishes (and another bag he bought because “they looked so good” and because he hadn’t yet seen the first bag in the produce drawer—male pattern refrigerator blindness and all) and concocted three quarts of spicy kimchee, made with said radishes, green onions, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes, fish sauce and some salt. He put one quart out on the counter to ferment in the air overnight and put the other two in the refrigerator. This morning, he tasted the kimchee and declared it “very spicy and very good.” I sense the start of an addiction!

I recalled that memory last night at my own dinner table, when I told my 2-year-old daughter, “Eat your spinach and a few more bites of fish, and you can have dessert.” She is so young. She is so easy to fool. She took a few bites of the spinach—which, granted, was baby spinach that I had lightly sauteed in sesame oil (not the awful, coarse, raw spinach my mother used to foist on us)—and the fish—which she and my 1-year-old son liked, though I thought it was bland and mushy (and my husband covered it with Tabasco). Then she said, “I did it!”

I happily cleared her plate and served her “dessert,” which was homemade apple sauce. Like I say, the child is easy to fool. She ate her spinach and she didn’t even get a true dessert for her troubles. No ice cream, no cupcakes—just fruit masquerading as something sweet with the help of a dash of cinnamon.

I know that a year or two from now, I’ll look back at a dinner like last night’s, and think, “Glory days.” By then, my daughter will be savvier. She will be a more cutthroat negotiator. She will want to bring in legal representation before she agrees on a deal to eat something green in exchange for something sweet. And I’m sure there will be a night when she, too, will sit in the kitchen long after all the dishes have been cleared, staring at her enemy, wondering how her mother can expect her to eat something so dreadful, thinking she’ll never do that to her own children. Ah, youth.

Not so much.

For one, making chicken stock is a lot of work, especially if, like me, you are silly enough to throw ALL the bones in the pot. Doing so ensures you will spend precious hours (or at least 20 minutes) of your life running your hands through the strained stock to make sure tiny little bones didn’t slip through the strainer holes. (They did.) I was making this stock as part of making a chicken soup for my neighbors, one of whom is a 90-year-old fellow. I had visions of him choking on the soup and me crying out, as the ambulance came, “I’m sorry. The road to hell is paved with good intentions!”

Then there was the time factor. I simmered the stock for hours. Six hours. I skimmed the fat, added more water as it boiled off, and generally had to worry over it for longer than I wanted to.

And then, after all that bone-picking and all that time, the stock tasted….wan. Bland. Unremarkable. Certainly not worth the effort.

Luckily I had a few corn cobs in yet another Ziploc in the freezer. I tossed those in and within minutes they’d delivered a sweet, corn taste to my broth. They saved the soup. (And, no, my neighbor didn’t die from it.)

When I told my tale of woe to my colleague here, he suggested I buy some broth from Soup’s On Baltimore, which is right down the street from the Style offices. They sell it for $2/quart. That is money well spent in my book.

At first I was a little surprised when I felt her tugging off my ponytail holder. But then I settled in, and as she brushed my hair back from my forehead, my nerve endings tingled with pleasure. And, even more powerfully, her simple act of brushing my hair triggered a boatload of sense memories, memories of having my hair brushed by my mother and grandmother; memories of sleepovers where we’d do and redo each others’ hair into the wee hours of the night.

There’s something primal for women about having their hair brushed—even for a curly girl like me, who NEVER brushes her hair. It is synonymous with being taken care of. I now think hair-brushing should be part of all spa services!

Alas, it is two years later, and I am beyond bored with corn salads. They’ve become a cliche to me, the first idea that springs to mind and far from the most original. So, what to do with the corn? I could make corn fritters, as Style’s own Mary Zajac did for our Ye Olde Maryland dinner party a few weeks back. They were delicious (you’ll read about them in our November issue). But I wanted something light and summery. So this weekend I was delighted to find a recipe I had clipped a few years back for a Corn, Tomato and Basil Chowder..

After my Saturday morning trip to Waverly Farmers Market, I had cherry tomatoes. I had some corn in the refrigerator from last week (plus about 6 cobs I had stuffed into the freezer earlier in the summer). I had a bounty of basil in my neighbor’s garden (an overachieving weeder had pulled up all of ours a few weeks ago). And I had a bag of fresh limes. The recipe is simple—and it was really a great surprise to see just how much sweet corn flavor got imparted into the broth just by boiling a half-dozen cobs for 10 minutes. I didn’t use the sour cream or creme fraiche the recipe calls for, but I did add a few chopped-up jalapenos for some bite at the end. It made a great first course for an impromptu dinner gathering on Saturday night. And it was great just now for lunch.

I made two other dishes from New York Times recipes this weekend. One was a Savory Ham and Gruyere Bread that was pretty great for brunch, but next time I would use a sharper cheese. And the other is something that’s become an old standby: Eggplant Salad with Red Peppers and Feta.

I also made a, if I do say so myself, awesome vegetable frittata. I have been making frittatas for years, but this was the first one I ever put half-and-half in. And I think, as they say, that made all the difference.

I am, in fact, planning to make a vichyssoise this evening. A month or so ago, I took frequent Style writer Sarah Achenbach to lunch at Petit Louis and we both had the prix fixe, which included a vichyssoise that I am still remembering vividly. So I thought I’d make my own. But just potatoes and leeks and cream seems too decadent. And besides, there’s zucchini to be used up! So this is what I’m going to make. And to do it, I will use my favorite tool in the kitchen: my stick blender. I have to admit to a bit of schadenfreude when I read recipes that instruct one to “puree the soup in installments in a food processor.” Heck, no. Just stick that blender right in the soup pot and let her rip. No chance hot soup will overflow your food processor. No bowls and blades and lids to clean. No worries.

In the Fall, I keep my stick blender plugged in at the outlet next to the stove, ready to be submerged into pots of cubed squash simmering in broth (butternut squash soup is a staple in our house), and all manner of bean soups. And now that my six-month-old is eating “solid food,” I use my stick blender to make him sweet potatoes, carrots, peas—anything.

There are so many kitchen tools that take up a ton of space and perform just one function. The stick blender is the antithesis of these, and for that, I sing its praises as I commence yet another soup season.

This can be particularly true for a magazine travel writer, who needs to be sure to see and do the most important/compelling/interesting/newsworthy things so as to be able to report on them. And it can be particularly true for a gal like myself, who once earned the title Bataan Death March Travel Planner after I treated a friend and myself to a forced march through Europe during college. “What, you’re tired of cathedrals? Too bad! We must see them ALL!”

Last weekend, my husband and I had the pleasure of traveling to the Northern Neck for a travel story for Style’s September issue. We stayed at a lovely inn, ate a great meal, visited a terrific museum and contributed to the local economy (i.e. shopping!). But all of these things I had read about prior to arriving and so, while they were enjoyable, they didn’t offer the thrill of discovery, that feeling of stumbling upon a jewel that only you know about (or at least you and a few others—not the major travel magazines and books).
Lucky for us, we listened to our innkeeper and stopped on the way back to Baltimore at a placed called “Something Different.” To call it a country store is to totally undersell the joint. Yes, it’s a country store in that you sit on crates and eat peanuts out of glass bottles and it is located in a tiny little crossroads called Pine Tree, Va. But it is perhaps better understood as the studio of Dan Gill, who calls himself an ethno-gastronomist. A former farmer who found he couldn’t make a living, Gill turned to cooking and cultural anthropology years ago and is still going strong. He’s the kind of guy who gets a question rattling around in his head, goes out looking for answers, then pens a treatise containing his discoveries and posts it on his Web site.
There were so many good things to eat, but my husband finally decided to get barbecued ribs and chicken with baked beans and hoecakes (out of this world delicious) and I settled on something known as “The Virginia Sandwich,” which is a smoked turkey and country ham salad immortalized in the book “American Sandwich.” Our mouths were stuffed with food when Dan Gill pulled up a chair to chat, but that was fine because we just wanted to listen, and, well, eat. Once he found out we were curious folks, he gave us samples of his cold cucumber soup (terrific), his barbecued tri-tip (ditto), and his premium ice-cream (outrageously good). I have never been a fan of butter pecan ice cream but Dan Gill’s made me a believer. All the while as we ate, he paged through a white plastic binder that contains his writings on everything from “Barbecue and Sex,” crab cakes and soda cracker pie, and something called The Magic of Umami. Based on Gill’s Umami writings, I bought a jar of kelp powder and plan to use it this fall in my soups. Certainly it tasted great in Gill’s She Crab soup, which we brought home in an insulated container along with some of his smoked salmon and a handful of his crab cakes. They were the perfect souvenirs from an unexpected and thus even more wonderful encounter.

Savory Bread and a super-easy looking (and creamy) Gazpacho.

One other great article in the Times this week about a woman who has kept a list of what she’s cooked for dinner since 1998. It’s an interesting lens through which to view your life. I’m sure the meals she cooked reveal who she was at the time and what her life was like—single, newly married, newly a Mom, and so on. It would also be a record of food trends, too, no? (For ex., sliders are soooo 2009.)

I’m sitting here trying to remember what my family has eaten for dinner the past few days, and what it says about our lives.

Monday: I went out with a friend for sushi; my husband went to Sweet Sin Bakery and Cafe for some of their delectable food; and our daughter ate leftovers.
Tuesday: We got carryout Indian from Tamber’s Nifty Fifties Diner.
Wednesday: We grilled rosemary chicken thighs and zucchini and ate them with teeny potatoes coated in fresh dill and a touch of Dijon mustard and greens sauteed with raisins and cashews.

Hmmm. I think this shows that I’m someone who has good intentions as a cook but also has 2 small children and a lazy streak!

Friday afternoon I stopped by the store for sour cream and bought blueberries at a rock bottom price—2 pints for $3—and started the pies Friday evening. I got my recipe out and followed it step by step…EXACTLY.

Maybe I was tired and distracted. Or maybe it was just the curse of the non-baker. But I ended up not seeing the first measurement for flour (2 1/2 tablespoons), which was the amount to be added to the pie filling. Instead, I saw only the measurement for the flour needed for the crumbly topping—6 Tablespoons. Since I was doubling the recipe to make two pies, I put 12—count ‘em, 12!—tablespoons of flour into the custard, only realizing my mistake after the fact (of course). I was so annoyed that when I realized I didn’t have any vanilla, instead of running one block away to pick some up at Eddie’s Market, I reached into the cupboard, pulled out coconut extract, and used that instead. I had tried to be a good little baker and follow directions and failed. I didn’t feel like being well-behaved anymore.

The pies looked great when they came out of the oven. My husband delivered one to a neighbor with a new baby, along with a can’t-miss frittata (I figured one out of two would be good) and I wrapped up the other pie to save for Sat. night, when friends were coming over to play a new board game, Pandemic.

“I have retroactively remembered that a little coconut extract goes a long way,” I said, as I doled out the pie that night. “So this might taste like suntan lotion. Oh, and I put about 10 extra tablespoons of flour in, too.”

My friend Catharine, who has reliably good taste, declared that the pie tasted like coconut blueberry cream pie—in other words, it tasted like it was supposed to be coconut-y. I had to agree. And the excess flour? Well, the pie was certainly denser than I remember previous versions being. But that didn’t seem like a bad thing, either.

Regardless, I’m relieved to be done with the pie until next year!

And yet, and yet, there is a problem, and that problem is the monotony of eating only what’s in season in Maryland at any given time. For example, last week a friend who was going out of town kindly let us pick up his share from One Straw Farm at the Waverly Market. My husband was dispatched to retrieve the share and came home carrying what appeared to be a large shrub, but was actually 8 bunches of greens. That’s what was in season, so that’s what he got. Now, we did saute up the greens for side dishes a few nights and we did make a couple “egg messes” with them, too (basically you saute onions and throw in some eggs, greens and cream cheese for a hearty breakfast), so nothing went to waste. But it just wasn’t that exciting (with apologies to Michael Pollan). And I certainly wouldn’t want to get 8 more bunches of greens this week. I need variety!

That’s where Mill Valley General Store has come to my rescue. A friend tipped us off back in May and I hustled down to their center on 28th and Sisson Street and signed up on the last day for a share in their CSA, which offers items from a collective of regional grower/producers, rather than just one farm. (There’s nothing on their Web site, so I felt lucky to have heard about it.) There are three options: vegetarian, carnivore and omnivore. After looking over the pickings, I selected the “carnivore” option. I handed over my credit card and paid roughly $200 for the right to 4 items/week from mid-May through early August. Each week I get an email telling me what’s on offer. Here’s a recent one:

For the week of 6/24/10 - 6/27/10
Produce Items - Choose from
Black Raspberries * English Shell Peas * Crimini Mushrooms
Bulb Fennel * Zucchini * Walla Walla Onions

We are pleased to re-introduce chicken from The Hen’s Nest, located in Mt. Airy, Maryland. Bill & Theresa Hubert have raised these birds just for Mill Valley General Store customers. Raised in a humane fashion, supplemental feeding from crops raised on the adjoining farm, no growth hormone or anti-biotics used. These chickens, taste like chicken!

Each week, when I stop by the store with my little cloth bag and pick out my wares, it feels a little like Christmas. One week I got beautiful yogurt from a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. One week I got delicious strawberries from One Straw Farm. One week I got snap peas from Charm City Farms. One week it was bison burgers from Gunpowder Bison, and before that, beef sliders and rolls.

The collective CSA approach offers enough variety—veges, eggs, meat and dairy—to keep me praising the growing seasons rather than feeling imprisoned by them. So….let’s eat!