I’m not much a of a planner. There are no to-do lists in my life. There are no schedules. There is no time management. There is only triage. Anything that doesn’t absolutely, positively, have to happen today gets the put-off. The extent to which this is a problem is in direct proportion to the number [...]
We’ve been cultivating plants for millennia (that’s “we” the human race, not “we” Tamar and Kevin), and have turned the plants that thrive in the wild, which are often bitter, woody, sour, or poisonous, into the sweet, tender, domesticated crops we have come to depend on. In the process, we’ve turned them into sissies. They’ve [...]
It seems we’ve gotten the reputation for being inveterate scavengers who will eat absolutely anything. I could be wrong, but I think this is because we are inveterate scavengers who will eat absolutely anything. Which is why, when our friend Geri saw her neighbor accidentally hit a wild turkey, she called us. “We have a [...]
I’m a slow runner, but slow has its advantages. I listen to audiobooks while I run, and being slow buys me more listening time. I never have race anxiety because I know I’ll be bringing up the rear. And I have time to look around for mushrooms. I’ve logged many miles on the trails of [...]
New Englanders pride themselves on their hardy stoicism. They take what comes, they persevere, they endure. If you’re going to get along here, you never complain about the weather, the traffic, or the fish not biting. I think this is why steamers, popular in this neck of the woods, never caught on anywhere else. No [...]
One day last fall, as we were coming off the clamming grounds at Bay Street in Osterville with a peck of quahogs, we saw two guys loading their pickup with two full baskets of steamers. Steamers, as all you clammers know, are generally harder to come by than quahogs. They bury themselves much deeper than [...]
It was time. Last May, we made our very first batch of dandelion wine. Up until then, the only fermenting I’d ever done was accidental, a result of leaving fruit juice, or black beans, or cooked barley sitting in the refrigerator too long. As this was our first attempt at deliberate fermentation, we followed the [...]
Nothing like two feet of snow to bring home to you that it’s winter. And, in winter, our food procurement efforts grind virtually to a halt. The eggs keep coming, but after that the pickings are slim. We can shellfish year-round, an unusually nice day might find us going after trout, and I keep hoping [...]
Of all the projects we’ve undertaken thus far, I think lobstering is the hardest. Not only does it require a lot of hard, cold, dangerous work, it involves the acquisition of expertise – what kind of traps, where to put them, how to bait them, when to check them. Lobsters are enigmatic and lobstermen are [...]
Since I’m in the business of reinventing state mottos (I did Louisiana a couple weeks back), I’ve got a few suggestions for New Mexico, where I now find myself. My frontrunner is: “New Mexico: Where the chairs are uncomfortable and the foliage is dangerous.” (The real one is “Crescit eundo” — “It grows as it [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
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