I should have been better about taking more pictures of the people and food, but I was busy grilling.  Megan also made a chocolate almond cake topped with cheesecake topped with dark chocolate frosting with raspberries on the side that was every bit as delicious as it sounds!  Here are some of the recipes so that I can repeat them some other day.

Spiced Chicken and Grape Skewers

These were fun because most people haven’t had grilled grapes before. They go really well with the chicken, and their juiciness makes up for the fact that I tend to overcook everything when I grill!  This is pretty much identical to the recipe from the Food Network.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1 pound chicken breast, cut into cubes
1 1/2 cups green grapes
8-10 skewers

1. Whisk together the oil, lemon, garlic, and spices in a small bowl.
2. Pour over the chicken and let marinate for 30 minutes (I kept it in a plastic bag for easy mixing).
3. Alternate grapes and chicken pieces on the skewers
4. Grill for about 3 minutes per side

Veggie Kebabs

A simple vegetable marinade with some middle eastern spice that goes well with the grape chicken above.  This recipe is also similar to one from the Food Network.

Ingredients
2 bell peppers
1 onion (I forgot to do this)
1 zucchini or summer squash
a few handfuls of grape tomatoes
1/2 container of mushrooms (not sure how big the container was…)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper

1. Chop up all vegetables into skewerable shapes, cut mushrooms in half
2. Place vegetables on skewers
3. Whisk together all marinade ingredients
4. Brush marinade over vegetables and sit for 10-15 minutes
5. Grill for about 3 minutes per side

Deluxe Israeli Couscous

This is basically the recipe you get on the back of the box from Trader Joe’s Israeli Couscous, but it is even better if you use their Harvest Grains mix since it has couscous and a few other colorful grains as well:

Ingredients
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/3 cup pine nuts
3 tbsp butter
1 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1/2 package TJ’s Harvest Grains(or just Israeli Couscous)
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
optional: lemon rind, parsley, etc
(Note: this is from memory, and may be wrong… if in doubt, follow the package)

1. Fry up 1 tbsp butter and the pine nuts until golden (2-3 min), then set aside.
2. Add remaining 2 tbsp of butter and fry up onions until tender
3. Add cinnamon stick, bay leaf, and couscous. Fry 5ish minutes, stirring occasionally
4. Add chicken broth and salt and bring to boil, then reduce to low heat
5. Wait until liquid is all absorbed (10ish minutes)
6. Turn off heat, add pine nuts, raisins, cranberries, and any other goodies you can think of

Back in May we bought some plants from the town farmers’ market to grow in pots on the porch.  We started with three types of flowers, two Early Girl tomato plants, and some cilantro.  We added basil a few weeks later.

Many of the plants have been growing well since then. The tomatoes started sprouting tomatoes a few weeks ago, although they haven’t grown much since then. The pansies and “pink” flowers have been doing great, although the snapdragons lost all their flowers and didn’t seem very happy after a week. We haven’t had much luck with the cilantro either… it quickly shot up very tall and sprouted flowers.

Originally we planted everything in pots that were much too small. Last weekend I repotted all the herbs and fed them and the tomatoes with some organic plant food. I did an experiment with the basil and only gave half of the plants the food… after one week its pretty clear that it does make a difference!

I’ll let you guess which is which…

The biggest surprise in our garden came the morning after we had a very violent thunderstorm at the end of May. We went down to check how the plants were doing and found this little guy hiding among the flowers! I have no idea how we got there–our porch is 10 feet above ground level and cement on all sides. My only guess is he was up in one of the trees to the side of our porch and parachuted down.

Gal made a fennel pork roast that has possibly the greatest gravy in the world. As you can see, we went through quite a few bottles of wine, including a few special dessert wines. There was a Chianti Classico that Aruna and Niranjan had picked up during a tour of the Castello il Palagio vineyard in Italy (which Bobby found especially irresistible as seen above). We also tried an unusual red ice wine — wine made from grapes picked after the first frost which gives it an extra sweetness, and a nice bubbly Moscato d’Asti.

We were all sad to see Gal go, but at least we got to celebrate his departure in style (and yes, I am wearing a tuxedo in the picture above).

They were all gone by the end of the week.

I had been to the top of the mountain once before, about a year ago with Nic and Alison. That time we went in the winter, and we had to trudge up to the top, at times through about eight inches of snow. It was right after a storm, so the trees were still beautifully coated with ice and snow.

On our way home from Mt. Holyoke, Gal, Megan and I stopped at Flavors, one of the best ice cream places around. The ice cream is so good because it comes from 2 foot tall miniature cows (see below). We also found that the cows also love the taste of ice cream. Delicious!

• BHD #13: Filip made pig with baked sliced potatoes
• BHD #14: Tim made Yaki Soba
• BHD #15: Filip made cod and Emily’s (in)famous rum cake (which has no rum in it, but lots of vodka)
• Intermission: Tim and Filip realized they had been cooking too often
• BHD #16: Gal and Avigail made a kosher meal with orange and apricot chicken, asparagus, and fresh baked challah

The Dinners

The Diners

Community Supported Agriculture

Many small farms offer “farm shares” where you pay a set fee and in return receive a weekly share of their crops. Typically this comes to about ten pounds of vegetables. Rather than picking and choosing the few vegies that you want, instead you get whatever is in season. By giving some guaranteed revenue to the farm for the summer, you support your local farms, plus you get fresh, usually organic produce from a local source. This will be the first time anyone in my house has done this, so hopefully we will find a use for some of the more unusual vegetables they grow.

I’ve listed the price for a full (2-4 people) and half (1-2 people) share at each farm.  Most of them have a sliding payment scale so that some people can pay more to subsidize the share price of lower income folk.

Simple Gifts Farm

This is probably the one we will end up using because it is literally right down the street from us (now that’s local!). The pickup days are Tuesday and Thursday in the afternoon. The Simple Gifts Farm has been around since 1999, but they just moved their main operations to the farmland right in North Amherst (about a mile north of UMass) last year. If I read their website right, they have 38 acres of land and are in the process of being certified as organic (which takes a season because they changed locations).

• full share – $400-500
• half share – $225-275
• http://www.simplegiftsfarmcsa.com

Riverland Farm

This 18 acre farm is further north in Sunderland and has pickup on Thursday and Saturday.  I have known several people who used Riverland in the past and they are very happy with it.

• full share – $400-490
• half share – $300-390
• http://www.riverlandfarm.com

Brookfield Farm

This farm is in South Amherst, and provides CSA shares not only for locals, but for people in the Boston area.  They have pickup Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

• full share – $465
• http://www.brookfieldfarm.org/

Stone Soup Farm

Over in Belchertown, this farm has pickup saturday mornings.  Looks like they are sold out of shares for this season.

• full – $400-550
• half – $250-300
• http://stonesoupfarm.googlepages.com/csadetails

Food Bank Farm

This one has also already sold out of memberships.

• http://www.foodbankwma.org/farm/

More options

The Farm Fresh.org site has even more listings of local farms across the country.

• http://www.farmfresh.org
• Amherst Area search results

Eat Food

Sounds pretty straightforward, but of course it depends on your definition of food.  Pollan calls most of what is sold in supermarkets “food like substances”, and he definitely does not consider them actual food.  I’m inclined to agree, and I like his suggestion of shopping only from the outer edges of a supermarket – typically the areas which host fruits and vegetables, meat, and diary.  The center of the supermarket is home to the much more questionable food-like substances largely composed of high fructose corn syrup and chemicals with unpronouncable names.

Not Too Much

Most people eat what is in front of them. Maybe this is good manners, but I think it’s mainly because we are gluttons and would eat more if it were readily available in front of us. Americans in particular eat a lot, and we also eat in unusual places (a large portion of our daily calories are eaten within our cars). Sit down meals are extremely uncommon, a phenomenon I’ve never quite understood having grown up in a family where we ate dinner together every night.  By eliminating the social aspect of shared meals, we tend to eat more food, more quickly.

Mostly Plants

This one is a little hard for me, since I am generally a meat eater. However, I’ve increasingly found that my taste for meat is largely from habit and lack of experience with vegetarian cooking.  I have Indian friends who rarely eat meat because they don’t know many ways to cook it and it doesn’t fit their stereotypical meal – I am just the opposite. I would like to reduce my meat in take, because I know there are delicious vegetarian or low-meat options that are often cheaper and healthier than what I’d eat otherwise. Towards this end, last night we made artichokes, a vegie I haven’t eaten in about a decade.

Grow Your Own

There is a lot of interesting material in the book, and he does a good job of making the healthy diet he suggests seem doable (ie affordable) for most people. Of course Pollan’s beliefs about food go deeper than just the nutrition it provides us — he is also very interested in the ecological impact of our food choices. The final section of the book is where this comes out most clearly where he makes a passionate speech on why everyone should have a garden to grow their own produce.  I was inspired by it, and definitely at least want to start growing basic things like herbs. Who knows, maybe by this summer I’ll be ready for more advanced agricultural adventures.

It is great to have such a nice place within walking distance. We often head over there on weekend mornings for breakfast, particularly on Sundays when there is a small jazz band playing in the back. I’m partial to the “egg, cheese, and bacon on an everything bagel”… delicious.

Tonight we were short on food and it was beginning to snow, so I took a quick walk over there to pick up some food. I snapped this shot of the cafe, which is the first night time picture I’ve taken with my new camera. It’s a little blurry from me shaking (or shivering–it was cold out!), but it still came out pretty well.