I Heart Farms

Phi Beta Keeper

I know, she doesn't look like a farmer. She isn't a farmer. Saturday, I attended our daughter's graduation from UCSC…my first college graduation ceremony ever. We knew Malaika was going to graduate with honors from the university and from her department, but what we did not know flabbergasted us.

I was flipping through the program and glanced down a page to see Malaika's name, one of twelve in her college, under the Phi Beta Kappa heading. WHAT?! I knew it was a big deal, but it wasn't until later, after come Googling and asking around just what a big deal this might be. 17 U.S. Presidents, 38 Supreme Court justices, and a slew of other people who can only be described as leaders, scholars, and more.

We're hoping it bestows a second round of free education for her: she intends to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience. (Her four years at UCSC were completely covered by a Regents Scholarship that included housing and more.)

My column today simply is to congratulate Malaika for working as hard as she could since she first set foot in kindergarten. She's a born student, an amazing artist (she paints, draws, does ceramics, etc.), and she has earned honors in almost every subject I can think of. Beyond that, she is a happy young woman who makes people feel better. She's a wit, a liberal's liberal, and an excellent cook—some of which I can lay claim to influencing her for the better.

Malaika, dearest: thank you for choosing your daddy and me to be your parents.

I promise to write more tomorrow: something important has come up.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “ΦBK —  Greek initials of the motto ‘Love of learning is the guide of life.’” —from the Phi Beta Kappa website.

Thanks for visiting.

I Heart NY

Pictured here: Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill restaurants in New York.

I have had New York much on my mind lately, and then a little flurry of good things came over the transom. (The link goes to an image, since I bet many of you young whippersnappers have never seen a transom in your lives.)

First, I was catching up on my blog subscriptions, and saw that, over at Edible Nation, Bruce Cole has posited that Chef Dan Barber has been body-snatched by an Evil Twin. Please set aside about 20 minutes of your life to watch Dan's most recent presentation at Taste3. Bruce writes:

Taste3 invited Dan Barber's twin to come and speak for the second year in a row, and I say twin because this guy is a masterful story teller, an actor and performer, and so obviously not the same Dan Barber the chef I've heard of. At last years Taste3, this Barber brought down the house with his hilarious story of carrots and castration, with special emphasis on Boris the boar and his back end (click here for last year's talk). In other words, can you say boar's balls?

(I recommended it a while back.)

Go Vote. Or Not.

Apropos of nothing, except perhaps my mood, here is a photograph of the full moon rising on New Year's Day evening.

What a surprise to hear that my blog was nominated as one of the Top Five Blogs (Rural) in the annual Food Blog Awards. Please go and vote for either Farmgirl Fare or Lucullian Delights, don't waste your vote on me: I don't want or need or deserve a win in this category.

My recommendations:
Best City: Becks Posh Nosh (Sam Breach: San Francisco)
Best Food Industry: Egg Beater (Shuna Fish Lydon)
Best Group Blog: The Ethicurean, hands down
Best Humor: How in the hell did MattBites and David Lebovitz get omitted from this list?! No recs! (Though I myself voted for the Food Whore.)
Best New: How in the hell did MattBites and Michael Ruhlman get omitted from this list? And a Rachael RAY blog "best" of ANYTHING? Dark times indeed. No recs!
Non-Blogging: Leite's Culinaria, of course. Gorgeous. (CHOW? Gulp. Nope. Nazis run the forums.)
Original Recipes: Stephen Cooks
Best Overall: La Tartine Gourmande
Photography: Again, no MattBites? No StillLifeWith? No recs!
Best Single Post: hands down, Gluten Free Girl's YES. Adam's post is pretty clever, too, but nothing approaches the inspiration and care that GFG employed in her post.
Best Recipes: 101 Cookbooks, of course.
Best Restaurant Reviews: again, BecksPoshNosh. Sam is the best.
Best Blog with a Theme: Meathenge.
Best Writing: Kitchen Notebook. What a lovely site to visit.

That's all. I am disappointed in  a lot of these categories, and disappointed that some really high-quality blogs are not on there—but maybe I should blame myself, because I was too busy to see that quality material was nominated. Derrick Schneider's blog, An Obsession with Food, for one, deserves an award. And the Eat Local Challenge as a Group Blog would have been nice to see. (Though I still would vote for The Ethicurean.) I'm disappointed that Cookie Crumb's "I'm Mad and I Eat" wasn't nominated for humor, too.

There should be a Best Activist blog, I think—for those of us who are having to strip the wool from people's eyes about what constitutes real, clean, humane, sustainably-grown food, and what food-from-a-box means, environmentally and socially and even emotionally. (Hint: Rachael Ray cooks with cake mixes, frozen vegetables, and Bisquick, for God's sake. See a comment below about that—I am not a saint, and I use frozen vegetables, but I absolutely will not support a multi-millionaire who recommends these products in a recipe or on her show.)

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah, big news coming up about some people here in town doing fabulous things with farm-fresh, real-life food. Watch this space for yet another reason to be visiting Santa Cruz.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Ultimately the Emmys are a popularity contest.” — William Devane

Thanks for visiting.

Happy Holidays

I hope everyone is enjoying family and friends and not too much stress and/or over-consumption.

We made a few dozen gingerbread cookies today—cardamom instead of cloves, and frosted with Grand Marnier. Grown-up gingerbread.

There is nothing like having a toddler in the house at Christmas time. Logan's mother and her sister were here to decorate the tree last week, and by the time morning rolled around, Logan had forgotten about it. I heard him run into the living room and crow at the top of his lungs, "POPPY! WE HAVE A CWISSMAS TWEE! IT'S A BIG, BEU-FULL CWISSMAS TWEEEEE!"

I'm sure you know that Menu for Hope III raised nearly $60K for the United Nations World Food Programme—my offer of the French Laundry Cookbook netted a nice number of  bids (or whatever you call the requests for a raffle prize), and I'm grateful for all of that. Our West Coast leader, Sam Breach, absolutely outdid herself with her above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty posts.

In the Awards department, the map I created for Chefs and Restaurants won the "Best Activist Map" over at the way-cool Platial site. (Thanks, gang—for all the great things you've done with your company, and for supporting what I do.) I really like Platial—any other map geeks out there?

Happy holidays to all of you. Thank you for the companionship.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Eventually, all holidays will become one. America will have one big day where a black Abraham Lincoln dressed in a Santa suit will carry a flag door to door begging Easter eggs from people who throw firecrackers at him while eating pumpkin pie and singing Columbus carols.” — Robert Kirby

Well, not if the owners of this house in Santa Cruz have anything to say about it. (It's over by the Boardwalk, overlooking the San Lorenzo River.

Thanks for visiting.

A Proud, Proud Mother

Well, this has nothing whatsoever to do with farms, but I am crowing from the rooftop right now.

My amazing daughter, whose face I've blurred out at left, is the recipient of a Regents Scholarship to the University of California. This is their most prestigious award, and goes to only 1% of accepted freshman applicants. It is both merit and need based, and covers every conceivable expense for four years: books, tuition, room and board, transportation, everything.

She's been offered a full ride at dozens of colleges around the United States, but doesn't want to leave coastal California. As she told her paternal grandmother, who wanted her to go to Baylor "to learn that everyone doesn't think the way California does!": "I've been to Texas, and if that's the way the rest of the country thinks, I'm glad to live here. I like my nice liberal values, thank you very much."

So, my beautiful, beautiful girl: congratulations on this well-deserved honor and gift. I know you will continue to do your best work and continue on the path of excellence that you've been on since before you were even born. You are awesome, and everyone knows that. (And now, even more people know that.)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!" —Louise Bogan

Thanks for visiting.

The Best Sunday Dinner Chicken You'll Ever Get Your Hands On

When faced with the opportunity to give an award in the 2006 Independent Food Festival for excellence to a single food item, I was looking at a crowded playing field. The instructions we received said: "You should feel very strongly and passionately that the recipient deserves the recognition and that the food you are describing is truly special."

I went through all my photographs and blog entries from the past year, to refresh my memory. (I recommend this. Go back through your blog and see all the wonderful food you've eaten. If you don't have a blog, use mine. Heh.) How could I pick just one thing from a list that included a Marin Sun Farms steak dinner on a foggy hilltop in Marin County, prepared by Chef Michael Tusk and the Quince staff; multiple meals and dozens of courses at Manresa, several trips to the Ferry Plaza marketplace, a chef's tasting lunch at Dévi in NYC, dinner at Blue Hill Stone Barns prepared by Chefs Michael Anthony and Dan Barber—or the figs, crosnes, cardoons and more that farmer Peter Jacobsen had handed to us during the visit to Jacobsen's Orchard in Yountville, where everything he grows goes into the kitchen at French Laundry? And what about that corn-lobster bisque I had at Theo's restaurant in my little village of Soquel, which was so good it brought tears to the eyes of Jasmine Roohani and Kirsten Roehler, the farmers who had grown the corn? And then there is that sandwich I get at River Street Cafe and Cheese Shop: Niman Ranch steak with a cognac-gorgonzola sauce, that I've recommended nonstop since I had my first one in December. Yow.

Not to mention the things my farmer friends grew: Cynthia Sandberg's Love Apple Farm heirloom tomatoes (145 kinds—though I didn't taste them all),  Rancho Gordo beans, Thomas Farm "Red Gold" potatoes, Dirty Girl Produce shelling beans or haricot verts, the yellow raspberries at Live Earth Farm, Happy Boy Farms' pattypan squash, the delicate pea sprouts from New Natives, Marina Di Chioggia pumpkins from Crystal Bay Farm, Swanton Berry Farm's strawberries, the amazing peppers from Everett Family Farm, the beautiful baby carrots that Ronald grows on Windmill Farms, or Betty Van Dyke's Blenheim apricots, so fragrant and flavorful?

This is not an easy choice to make.