Ham Sandwich Indicted!

The rabid jungle expanse that I refer to as le jardin , continues it's inevitable domination of my tiny backyard. The black krim, old German, and marglobe tomato plants have been staked up to the very top edge of the fence, and are planning their escape down the backside and out into the alley. I'm guessing its only a matter of time before I go out there one morning, and having failed to show up for work, my coworkers find me tangled in a viney web with a tomato stuffed in my mouth... In other news, my tomatillo plant finally produced some fruit--tiny, yellow tomatillos that I assumed would be green until I took a second look at the tag in the pot: " Dr. Wyche's Yellow ." Oh. So they're NOT supposed to be green. Due to poor planning/failure to do appropriate research, I planted the tomatillo in too small a pot, which resulted in an explosions of flowers through early August, but culminated in only about 20 or so slightly-smaller-than-a-ping-pong-ball siz...

I really like it when a recipe describes something as "rustic." It's an immediate signal that whatever I'm about to produce can be casual in appearance, with flavor being a more important concern. Don't get me wrong, a skillfully latticed cherry pie (for example) is great, but sometimes, it's 8:30 at night on a Thursday and you just have to do something with those berries otherwise they're going to meet a tragic demise wasting away in your refrigerator. The NYTimes had a recipe in June for a Foraged Fruit Tart , that I had printed out for the specific reason that it was "rustic" in the best way a pie/tart recipe can be: make the dough, roll it into a circle, dump the fruit in the middle, and fold up the edges. Bake. Eat. Technically, this style of tart is called a galette, but that just seems to be fancying up something that is really quite casual. I took the tart pictured above to my coworkers, and it was very well received--it apparently made ...

So, I posted a message on Columbus Underground about urban foraging and was surprised at the size of the response I got. As a result of the discussion, I created a google map, here , so that people can mark and share their locations--although I realize that some may want to keep their spots secret. ;) Happy Hunting!

After seeing an uptick in information ( NY times article here , and a website here ) about folks in California and Oregon engaging in urban foraging projects, I'm curious if anyone in Columbus has any thoughts or experience on the idea. For those of you who are wondering, urban foraging is nothing more than finding edible fruits es growing wild or in public spaces (or, in some cases, trees in private yards with branches over public sidewalks). The various urban foraging programs in other, more fruit-prolific cities have organized groups that coordinate distribution of the bounty provided by these trees, enabling someone with a lemon loaded tree to swap fruit with someone that may have an abundance of cherries in their yard. (See the NYTimes article above about Asiya Wadud and her creation of the fruit exchange Forage Oakland.) While I didn't refer to it as urban foraging, I was thinking about this a bit last year, when I noticed that a house one block down from mine had an appl...

I found a batch of wild poppies in an alley behind my house this weekend. I never cease to be surprised by what's hiding in the neighborhood! My Fruit CSA with Wayward Seed Farms has finally started (yay!), and my first delivery was 3 quarts of some of the most gorgeous strawberries I've ever seen: I froze some, turned some into a strawberry vinaigrette (pureed strawberries, fig balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, a little sugar, garlic, and oil), and put some into a strawberry tart for my dad for Father's Day: The pastry cream recipe is from the Cook's Illustrated New Best Recipe Cookbook . I received it as a gift for my birthday one year, and it is a staple in my kitchen. I find it's a great resource for ideas when you're looking at a random ingredient and not sure how you want to use it. Also, they've done tons of leg work and have figured out the best methods and ingredients for making almost every classic/basic dish out there. Also, I harvested my first bat...