the life I picked

a bushel of gumption, an ounce of grace

June STRAWBERRIES

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Need I say more…

Five kilos about to connect with some sugar and strong-brewed Harney Lapsang Suochong to evolve into a divine preserve. That first smoky note on the palate may bring to mind–dare I say it–bacon!!!!

strawberries basket 6_27

Herondale Farm

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This wonderful farm in Ancramdale has some of the very best meat around. Buy some at their farm store to bring home, or find it on the menus of local-quality committed, thinking chefs like Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Dan Smith at John Andrews.

I just love Herondale‘s new ad:

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Along with Ronnybrook dairy, Amazing Real Live Food Company cheese, and local organic produce including MX Morningstar and Sol Flower, you will find les collines at the Farm Store now, too!

 

 

 

 

 

first local rhubarb

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The first local rhubarb harvest of 2014, this one from Westendlock Farm.

On a most gorgeous morning this past week, my job was to harvest rhubarb, the first local (oh so thrilling, after the winter that would not end), from Westendlock Farm. The farm sits on a hilltop with views to the Catskills and is surely among the most lovely in the state. A few fluffy white clouds skipped across a very blue May sky. A sow and her piglets romped across a field. This basket is what I carried out.

Nice work if you can get it, huh? Fingernails stained by quarts of rhubarb juice. Who needs a manicure? xo

PS Find les collines at The Farmer’s Wife in Ancramdale now as well!!

Oh, rhubarb (part 2)!

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 rhubarb preserve from local, small batch jam, jelly, and preserve maker les collines

Rhubarb, first fruit of spring, after the hardest of winters (and not quite done yet!) you surely merit a second flavor. And this chock-full preserve lives up to its long name: rhubarb preserve with vanilla bean and Earl Grey.

Inspired by the recipe on the sensible and appealing Food in Jars, the predominant notes are rhubarb, cut chunky, vanilla beans scraped clean, and very strong brewed Earl Grey tea. The tea is a most subtle background note in a complex layering. Whereas that pink jelly below is a bursting zing of rhubarb flavor, this preserve takes a more seductive approach. The rhubarb becomes almost creamy, the tiny vanilla seeds are teensily crunchy, and the tea hovers round. The perfect thing on buttered toast for teatime on a blustery day.

And is that white stuff in the frame outside the window— can it be— yes, several inches of snow that fell overnight, in mid-April (o cruellest month!!), snow which was on top of ice, which was what the windswept rain had turned into when the temperature plummeted during the evening. It changed fast enough so there were areas of ice that were as frozen waves inching across the yard. Amazing. Truly one must have a sense of humor to bear weather in the Northeast.

Like a Highlights challenge, on the upper right side of the frame you can see branches of the prolific though biennially producing crabapple tree that made for so much fine jelly last fall. Dried and frozen fruit still clings, and it fed birds, deer, possum, and any other number of hungry comers through the hard winter. And if you look just to the side of the jar on the lower left you will see Clarence’s head, nose pointed upwind, on early morning woodchuck patrol…

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Oh, rhubarb!

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rhubarb jelly from les collines, small batch jam, jelly and preserves from Columbia County, NY

Rhubarb, like you may not know it. A silky flavor-packed cool sweet essence of rhubarb, that stalky fruit we love so well in pie. But this jelly will give that pie a run for its money. And oh, the color! It is a guava pink that fairly sings of coming spring. For though the calendar says we’re two weeks past the Equinox, the weather is just beginning to get with the program. The treacherous six-inch deep ice pack on the northern side of the house has, finally, succumbed: there must be hope….

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