September Bounty

a farmers’ market haul from earlier this month

While living in the farming town of Pescadero, California, I became an exuberant local-food enthusiast. For those six formative years, most of my friends and neighbors worked in agriculture one way or another. And/or: they were insanely talented cooks. From 2013-2019, I was surrounded by people whose lives revolved around growing organic food or turning local ingredients into euphoria-inducing, nutritious, nourishing meals.

Before California, in my early twenties, I mostly ate pitas with hummus, or yogurt with granola, or slices from the corner pizzeria, or wings on $3-you-call-it-nights at the mountainside bar. I still gravitate towards quick-and-easy meals in the kitchen, and I still love buffalo chicken wings. But my mind was blown too many times by one friend or another’s deft use of a sheet pan and some vegetables. I have since become fairly obsessed with turning local seasonal produce into tasty meals for our family.

I started a cooking blog of sorts in 2019, when Matt and I started our sailing trip to move from California to Boston. Since then, suffice it to say, multiple logistics have changed. I no longer have a tiny floating galley; I now have a terrestrial kitchen. It isn’t huge, but there’s room for cookbooks on the shelves and a standard amount of pots, pans, and ingredients in the cupboards. I am no longer just cooking for two grownups; I am now also cooking for a three- and a one-year-old. I no longer have a lone adult body to move about the kitchen with ease; I now typically have a munchkin on my hip or between my feet. We are no longer on the move in the Pacific Ocean; we have rooted down near Boston where there is actually a pretty impressive year-round farmers’ market scene.

I’m excited to be starting a new section of this newsletter, a little “Mic’s Kitchen” dispatch each month or so. Some September farmer’s market delights have been: peaches, grapes, raspberries, blackberries, pears, apples, asian pears, tomatoes, cukes, green beans, corn, kale, lettuce, peppers, eggplants, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, summer squash, and brussel sprouts. Yes, yes, there is also cabbage, and yes, yes, there is also winter squash—but I’m not ready for those guys yet. Their day will come. We still have a good amount of time here to make sushi rolls with fresh cucumbers, to munch bell peppers as if they’re apples, to blast little tomatoes with stovetop heat so that they burst into a sauce that brings summer into your mouth.

Joshua McFadden, wonderful chef and author of one of my all-time favorite cook books (Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables) tells us we should toast our nuts and eat our veggies raw. While I lack the culinary sophistication to vouch for this approach with winter produce, I fully support this plan in the summertime.