For the record, last night I rang in the new year at Butcher & Larder. I don’t remember ever ringing in the new year with such a wonderful group of people, and I am not just saying that, these folks were fun, funny, wonderful near strangers I randomly decided to join. That said, it was also a particularly delicious evening. We shared course after course of, basically, fat. Whipped, cured, shaved, potted, we had it all. Topped by a chestnut dessert, which I found kinda fitting since chestnuts are probably the most fat-like nut. And while I am  not one for detailing meals in a blog post, I will share that I posted a few highlights on Twitter.

Suffice it to say, I hope I get invited back and make butcher shop dining a New Year’s tradition.

Which brings me to the real topic of this post: the tradition of peas.

I can’t remember any New Year’s tradition from my childhood. In fact, when I started writing this, I called my mom to ask what we did, her response was: “Beats me.” When pressed, her answer expanded to: “We might have gone out every once in a while, I guess. But really, not a whole lot.”

Which is probably why I have spent most of my adult life trying to establish a firm tradition for myself to mark this most auspicious day.

I’ve tried on much: Krug champagne smuggled into the midnight showing of Cape Fear, wearing yellow underwear a la Barbados one New Year’s spent on a cruise ship, reading melted solder with one of Dick Cheney’s former business partners on the Mellinnium, standing in front of a burning hawthorne bush the year I lived in London.

But as I settled into my life, I seemed to have fallen into making an annual breakfast of black eyed peas on New Year’s Day.

Really, this makes no sense. My parents are from Boston and aside from a handful of years in Orange County, I am solidly a Chicagoan. But it is what it is and so this morning, a full-on black-eyed pea breakfast is what I made.

You likely already know that eating black eyed peas on New Year’s Day is about good luck. To most Americans, the tradition hails from the south. But in reality, despite that honking ham hock that flavors most pots of peas in these parts, eating black eyed peas on New Year’s is a Sephardic tradition, celebrated for the Jewish new year.

So, as a nod to the Sephardi history of my peas, I like to include a pomegranate in my New Year’s Day meal. This year, I tossed that pomegranate into a quick salad of shaved Tuscan kale from the hoop house, parsley and cilantro from the garden itself, because the weather is so crazy it is still thriving, and walnuts.

Basically a version of Mary Klonowski’s Cancer-Curing Miracle Kale Salad, it was dressed with smashed garlic, good olive oil and vinegar. I got into vinegar last year so today, my kale got a syrupy Pepe Nero vinegar. If you haven’t tried making crazy vinegars, I recommend it highly. Honey vinegar, made with a moldy piece of bread, has pretty much become my go-to vinegar for anything and everything.

First off, you should know that I cook dried peas. Black eyed peas are often available fresh but that kinda makes no sense for New Year’s Day. Traditionally planted as a cover crop before the winter wheat, the fresh peas would be available in late summer, early fall (for the clever reader, you’ll note this is around Rosh Hashanah). So, fresh black eyed peas in Chicago in winter, even this crazy winter, is just forced agriculture. So, I use dried.

Black eyed peas are only soaked for 4-6 hours, unlike the convenient bean-soak of overnight,  so it can be a little challenging to get them on the table for breakfast. So, I pressure cook them. If completely crippled by a hang over, one could get them cooked in a pressure cooker in about 10 or so minutes. My process takes me a half hour because I go thru a few extra steps to make sure I have super delish peas.

So, here’s the process: saute onion in (insert any high smoke point but I use coconut) oil, add diced onion and saute. Then add a meaty hunk of cured pork (usually a hock), add about 1/2 cup of water (I really have no idea, I just dump in water, it could be a cup) and pressure cook that for about 10 minutes. Pressure cooking the pork softens it up and makes a tasty jus. Take the pork out of the pan and dice it up into smallish pieces. This way, when you eat your beans, you get little pieces of tasty pork along with them.

This year, the hefty hunk my peas got was from the country ham I cured in my garage last year. For a year a pork leg that had been brined in blackstrap molasses and bourbon rested in a old pillow case tied to the rafters of my garage.

Crazy levels of hillbilly working with that ham.

And probably the crowning point of my culinary life thusfar.

Which I guess says a lot since my culinary life thus far includes cooking for Julia Child. (It was one part of one course, if you must know, not the whole meal).

This ham is making me quite proud.

But I am writing about peas.

After the pork is cooked and diced, add it back to the pan and add in the peas. Add in some water to cover and some flavorings (a tea ball filled with whole cumin, coriander, black pepper and red pepper flakes is a good start) and cook on high for 10 minutes. Turn off heat and let the cooker come back to reasonable temperature on it’s own.

Boom, good luck breakfast.

Well, I also made cornbread, using Ruhlman’s Ratio app. There is a book, too, but I find the app to be amazingly helpful since I tend to have my phone nearby and it is small enough to perch it somewhere convenient.

As I started eating, marking the new year with a lovely meal and remembering the year that just past, the sun came out after a rainy/snowy/gray/cold morning walk. I am choosing to decide this is an auspicious sign that the coming year will be peaceful and delicious.

But I will point to what I believe is the genesis of our health crisis: business.

America is the only country with a employer-funded health care. It came about during WWII when the government imposed wage freezes that made it impossible for employers to attract workers with better pay. So, companies turned to offering better benefits and created the health care benefit.

The government further encouraged this by making those insurance costs a tax-deductible business expense. Of course, families/individuals purchasing health care on their own could not write off the expense. The seeds of our corporatocracy were sewn early in this country.

There’s a great rundown on the tangled web of crap this situation created in this New York Times article. Although I don’t agree with the article’s conclusions.

Because the writer is still invested in employer-funded health care and believes it can be fixed. These are the ivory tower thoughts of a theoretician who has not stood before a board of directors and explained a craptastic quarter. It is naive to believe that business-entangled health care can work because it relies on the notion that ‘businesses care.’

I believe one of the reasons Americans are all deep in the throes of diabetic/obesity/heart-related pre-death is because our health care system is at the mercy of quarterly reports.

Public companies (including health insurance companies) in America reckon with stockholders every three months. What this means is that companies are forced to focus on three-month goals. A good quarterly report means earnings and earnings mean you keep your job. A string of bad quarterly reports and your job is history.

Really, myopic short-term focus is bad business.

If you are aren’t a public company, you focus on the long-term. You can withstand bad quarters if you know your investments and decisions are going to pay off down the road.

You take care of what you have, your tools and equipment and people, because you know that there are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and even year-long bumps. Getting sidetracked by one of those bumps can be detrimental to business.

For an example of detrimental, I point here.

These kinds of detrimental situations are the result of short term decisions corporate officers are, really, forced to make. We as a society really can’t blame them because it is the game we set up for them to play. And, yes, this includes the corporate officers of health insurance companies.*

Not to be radical but I believe the stock market has been very bad for American health care. It shifts the focus from richly supporting systems for the long-term to sticking one’s head in the sand and hoping problems don’t occur — what are the chances? — and fixing them when they do. Our medical community can keep people alive a really long time, to be sure, but most seem riddled during that long life by chronic, debilitating (and often preventable) diseases.

The stock market rewards not solving problems but having the gonads to risk the problems won’t come home to roost (of course, if every board member in America had chickens, they would know… The bird always comes home to roost.)

Our food supply, tied up in the hands of a handful of public companies, is under the same quarterly burden. So, the what drives the decisions made about our food supply is profits. This is why low-fat!, low-cholesteral!, sugar-substitute!, trans-fat free!, low sodium! products dominate the market.

Because that is what Americans buy.

And this is what I had previously believed was the whole of our food problems in America. That corporate greed was creating more crap to eat — since it is easier to engineer a Lean Cuisine for higher profit than a plain, old turnip.

But I realized this morning that the real crux of the problem is that the safety of the food supply is now moving in the direction of The American Health Care Paradigm — a system based on the idea that you can cross your fingers, close your eyes and hope disaster doesn’t befall you.

It seems our country is obsessed with ignoring problems and instead, solving the ramifications.

I was sorta slapped in the face with this realization when I read this article about how food miles are making our food supply more insecure.

The saddest excerpt is this:

“But many in the produce industry have come together to try and improve the ability to quickly trace food from field to plate.

This is good business.”

It is now good business to focus on after-the-fact. After the outbreak. After people are sick, maybe even after people die.

I suppose it is good business, of course, because for each individual company, the chances of a Listeria outbreak in their cantaloupe is pretty freaking low. So, cut a corner or two, no one will notice — we’ll make more money!

This is the problem: isn’t good for your health or the health of your kids because you/your kids because, well, at least one person, maybe a handful really, have to get really sick and/or die before the awesome traceability measures are put in place. That one person could be you.

Which is really sick and disturbing.

What bothers me about all this, aside from the sheer stupidity of the strategy, is that we are now shifting our food supply from one that is focused on keeping food safe and healthy in the first place to one that is focused on solving any problems that crop up as quickly as possible.

And that’s just crazy dangerous.

It is sorta the same way we approach Type 2 diabetes: don’t focus on actually healthy eating, focus on making better pills to manage the chronic disease. Actually, I should clarify that, it is an entirely preventable chronic disease.

And, because our health care is so tied up in the stock market, it seems there is no turning back when it comes to our approach to Type 2 diabetes.

And I fear this trend will continue because our supposedly brightest minds are focusing on dealing with ramifications of problems, not solving problems.

Erik Olson, director of food and consumer safety programs for the Pew Health Group, says,

“Clearly the food industry has just changed enormously in the last several decades,” Olson said. “It would be virtually impossible to sit down and eat a meal and eat food that hasn’t come from all over the world.”

Which means my breakfast this morning was a Virtual Miracle!

Eggs from the hens out back cooked in butter made from milk bought from a farm downstate and accompanied by fruit from a farm one state over but still just two hours away. Lunch, BTW, will be chicken from a farmer nearby with vegetables grown in my garden.

Is it easy? No. I work my ass off in the kitchen and the garden to feed just me. I am so tired from all the canning I did this summer that I fear I really need a rest cure like celebrities take when they are “overwhelmed.”

But it isn’t “virtually impossible.”

Last I checked The Pew Charitable Trusts were a hearalded as some of our country’s finest minds. Last I checked they were supposed to be thinking up ways to help us, collectively, as a nation. In fact, in their own words:

The Pew Charitable Trusts is driven by the power of knowledge to solve today’s most challenging problems. Pew applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life.

And yet, one of their own — the leader of their food programs — isn’t even aware that backyard eggs, local milk and local fruit is even possible.

Which of course is an extreme exaggeration of his point, but my point is this: we don’t need our finest brains figuring out how to solve the horrendous life-threatening problems that occur with a food system as complex as ours.

We need them to figure out how the hell to make the food system less complex.

I am not forgetting Blue Cross/Blue Shield here but because this is a hot button issue that will surely make some people crazy, I will note BCBS is a complicated web of companies/organizations that actually includes publicly-traded companies. Also, many publicly traded companies use the system for the employees and the way those programs are set up pushes the short-term bottom-line focus away from the insurer and onto the client company. Again, good health loses.

I was looking out the back window, the butcher block and the men, silhouetted in the doorway of the garage, when I saw Rob’s practiced flick. “There goes the head,” I said to Allie, who was with me in the comfort of the kitchen while the menfolk did their work outside.

Allie and I, and I guess the baby who was due last week so technically should be here, were cleaning up after an impromptu dinner I threw together once I realized everyone was coming over at 7:30 on a Friday — a time generally accepted as “dinner” if you are a Midwesterner.

Not ironically, I served chicken.

I served it in a dish I refer to as “Last Minute Chicken” because it is something I can cook without thinking and serve looking like I had been. It’s from Casa Moro. They call it “Chicken Fatee with Rice, Crispbread and Yoghurt.”

The awesome part of Last Minute Chicken is that you can cook the components ahead a bit and then just dump it all together at the last minute.  Clove-scented roasted chicken, cinnamon and garlicky tomato sauce, cinnamon-scented rice with sauteed onion and chickpeas, sauteed eggplant, a tossing in of crispbread in the bottom of the bowl, and drizzle of some garlicky yogurt on top. Oh, and a topping of roasted nuts. They specify pine nuts, I tend to use what I have, which is mostly Marcona almonds.

Unless it is bitterly cold, if I am going to serve a “one-pot” meal, I tend to prefer a dish with distinction in its parts. It offers textural variation that can make it feel like a complete meal itself, rather than just a bowl of something to eat because it is dinnertime.

That said, I forgot to pour the chicken juices over the crispbread so, unfortunately, it hadn’t soak up the juices when we all had started eating it.  Note to all: this is an important step! Miss it and your guests could, in fact, start ribbing you for putting bagel chips in your dish. It’s embarrassing and, without the bonding opportunities of the Fall harvest wrapped into the evening, could in fact leave a scar.

Thankfully, Rob was about to pull a drippy mass of unformed egg goo out of the butt-end of Pot Pie. Despite his meaty life, the experience seemed enough to distract his brain from what he demanded were bagel chips.  I live in a Middle Eastern neighborhood, for the love of all things holy, I can get my hands on various crackery breads at the corner store.

I guess I am scarred.

But at least I was not also scarred by the evening’s main activity, Pot Pie.

Indeed, it was a much different affair to have a butcher on-hand to navigate the way through the chicken. When I think back to that first night Friend X and I had together, all I see flashbacks I would very much like to forget. It was awkward and fumbling and, in fact, seemed very much more like teen sex than two consenting adults, carrying out a one of nature’s most natural acts.

When I think back on last night, the whole is something I’ll want to remember.

Mostly because the evening was really a glimpse into the community that can develop when food is honest.

Food is nourishment. Our very connection to the world around us — the earth and its flora and fauna — it is the nourishment of soul, the nourishment of friendship, the nourishment of body and the nourishment of humanity. In fact, when I think of the spiritual link that ties us all together — what you might think of as a higher power or a God — I think of the cycle of food and how it can enrich my days.

To me, it is that reverent.

It is why I choose to buy food grown by people I know — they become my congregation with whom I share values and beliefs. And why I choose to start with the raw ingredients of life when I cook — it is how I seek to understand the mysteries of my faith.

And it is why I appreciate the shared experience of a Fall Harvest, because my compatriots and I are practicing a ritual that connects us to one another in the most honest, and nourishing, of ways.

Pot Pie was one of the original chickens to come to my homestead. There were three and of them now there are none. I am sad, although I never much liked her and she seemed never to like me. She is being donated to a dinner this week, I think for a stew.

There are four chickens left: En Croute, who is my favorite because she is charming and loving; Mrs. Leghorn, who is standoffish at best; and Dumpling II, 1 and 2, who seem at once feisty and shy because I can’t ever tell them apart so their divergent personalities simply merge.

They will be joined by three chicks being picked up tomorrow.  And hopefully, soon, by rabbits if we ever get around to building the hutch. No one so much as brought up bees this year. I don’t know why though I imagine because the work of the vegetables can often seem like quite enough, thank you very much.

I wish this life, this opportunity to connect with the natural world so intimately, for everyone. I am sad when I realize so few even know what they are missing.

I made spiced peaches, though I wished I had spiced them more.

And I made brandied peaches, only with Madeira, because it seemed interesting in an 18th Century recipe meets 18th Century booze kinda way.  And then when I had more peaches and no more Madeira, I sub’ed in Chamboard. I guess that means that along with Madeira’ed peachs, I also made Chamboardied peaches.

Then, I got a little more serious peach-blueberry-vanilla jam with some fancy pants and insanely aromatic Tonga Island vanilla that lovely Rod of Rare Tea Cellar gave me from this year’s harvest.  I promised him some vanilla ice cream with it, but I can’t seem to collect enough eggs this year, so I thought the jam might be a bait ‘n switch he’ll rock.

If not, well, Grant and I are getting more chickens. I can only hope for enough eggs in one moment to make ice cream. In the meantime, I am shoving the vanilla in some expensive vodka just in case.

And yet — I still had more peaches. A half bushel, to be precise. And I had also eaten about 4,000, to be imprecise.

At which point I started trolling for ideas. When you have fruit, are looking to can it, and need ideas, the first stop is always Christine Ferber’s Mes Confitures. In it, I found a lovely White Peach with Lemon Verbena. Since I have an overgrown herb garden, that seemed like an awesome Christmas gift jam. A paltry four jars.

Then, on what must be the loveliest food blog out there, found a Peach Jam with Caramelize Onion and Bacon, which sounds good because I tend to have a surplus of bacon hanging about. Six jars.

And still, more peaches.

At which point I had one of those serendipity moments because I found a recipe for peach-chocolate fondue in a jar, using chocolate liquor. And, lo, I just so happen to have nearly a half gallon of homemade chocolate liquor.

Which I realize is a bit off. But makes sense if you you know the background.

See, a few months back, I had a craving for brandy Alexanders, which require chocolate liquor, which is, I discovered, just cocoa powder, vodka, and time.

I had cocoa powder, a lot, actually, since it is sold in a pound tin and mostly a recipe only needs a teaspoon or something. I had vodka, since I seem to need to feel I can make lemoncello at the drop of a hat. And I always have time to wait for stuff, since there is always other stuff I have started and been waiting on.

And so I dumped it all together and tucked the brown vodka at the back of the liquor.

Until today. Today, I tasted it. It rocked.

And so I made peach-chocolate fondue with homemade chocolate liquor. It had the benefit of using up a good portion of the liquor while concocting a delicious treat for the sure to be awful winter.

It will be awesome with vanilla ice cream, if I can ever get enough eggs at one moment to make some.

Actually, you could say it starts a long time before that, even, because bloody Mary’s need horseradish and there is nothing more horseradish-y than homegrown horseradish you’ve put up in a jar of vinegar.  They also need a good hot sauce, and that’s better cured a bit after you make it as well.  And they need a dried celery flavor, which I get from dried lovage since it is so easy to grow and celery is so not easy to grow (and have taste good).

Bloody Mary’s take a lot of work. Even before you’ve learned how to make homemade worchestershire (I haven’t.) (Yet.)  So, I made bloody Mary mix once a year, in a big 5-gallon glass carboy I fill up about half way so I can mix, taste, add, mix, taste, add, before transferring to small jars and pressure canning.

There is no “recipe” for my perfect bloody Mary mix. But there are some basics I can share.

So, one, homemade mustard.  I blogged about my Moutard d’Albany here. You need a fair amount, say half the batch.

Next, homemade horseradish. It’s super easy to grow, just shove hunk of a root in the ground, let it grow, and when you dig some up, leave some of that root in the ground each year.

After you get it out of the ground, scrub it up, peel off bits that look like they need peeling, and shred it up in a Cuisinart. I then pack it into quart jars with vinegar and shove it in the fridge, where it will keep for a year.  You need two quart jars with the vinegar for a batch of bloody mix.

Be forwarned, it’s some powerful stuff and you will cry when you shred it. Some people say you should do it outdoors, I say you should do it to some old sappy country songs so you can really get a good cry going for real. You probably don’t really get a good cleansing cry going enough, here’s a good excuse.

Lovage salt: grow it, dry it, pulverize it, mix it with salt. You need a fair amount, say 1/4 cup.

Hot sauce: ferment hot peppers, this year I used New Mexico peppers, by putting them in a crock, layered with a good amount of salt and letting them sit for a while, say a few months, maybe a year if you tend to avoid start projects and then forget about them for a while like I do. Remove from brine, rinse a bit,  blend the hell out of them with garlic, carrot, a little booze. You need about a pint for a batch of bloody mix.

Adam Seger taught me to put ketchup in my bloody’s, I forget why but I think it is the sugar. I usually don’t have much ketchup hanging around but I always have random homemade chutney I never seem to eat, so I tend to blend up a few small jars of chutney and add that to the batch.

Worchstershire. Next year, I shall conquer. For now, I use bottled.

Tomato Juice. OK, here’s where it might get tricky if you aren’t an OCD canner. Because I get my tomato juice by cutting up the tomatoes I can each year over a sieve so the juice gets collected. If you can 100 pounds of tomatoes, you get enough juice.

I suppose you could buy tomatoes and then juice them. But really, who wants to juice amazing summer tomatoes you bought from a farm or grew in your own backyard? It seems like such a waste to me.

So do whatever to get enough juice. Just don’t tell me that you bought already canned.

OK, add pepper and mix all that up.  Taste, adjust.  You might need salt. You might need more of one ingredient or another. You might need something completely different.

I know you think you need lemon and lime. You don’t. This is why: lemon and lime are bright flavors and to get the maximum benefit from those flavors, you can’t pressure can them.  And to keep the bloody Mary mix safe, you gotta pressure can it.

So. You are making this mix without lemon and lime.

But bloody’s need lemon and lime.

So, what I do is make lemon peel vodka (the base for lemoncello, basically) and when I make the bloody, I use this vodka in my drink. You get this great flavor from the oils in the lemon peel and, best part, you don’t need to have fresh lemons around (which always is the case the snowy Sunday morning when you decide a bloody Mary will make the winter seem tolerable — joyous even.)

That’s enough to perk up the drink but if you have fresh lime, you can add in a squeeze.

It seems like a lot of work, sure, what with the growing of the ingredients and the fermenting and curing and all that hullaballoo, but really, if you want the prime, you gotta put in the time.

And since you can make the ingredients over the course of a year or so and then you mix the bloody blend just once a year, it really isn’t that overwhelming to tackle.

Or you can just haul over to my house on a snowy Sunday morning and I’ll mix you up the best bloody mary of your life. (You can thank me by taking the dogs on their morning walk that day.)

A lot could be guessed from that statement but probably not the reality: a friend and I were going foraging for elderflowers.

Though I missed dandelion season this year, I did finally got around to making nettle beer for the first time and, well, if you’re into seasonality your heart likely leapt more than a bit when you read that. It’s hard to explain to those who aren’t.

In the Midwest, elderflowers follow nettles. They’ll go into cordial and wine and syrup, rather than beer. And elderflower foraging, to make said cordials, wine and syrup, it seemed needed paper bags and vodka, to be transported home from Michigan.

The paper bags is for toting them in a dry, airy environment so they don’t glob up from moisture. The vodka is for stuffing a canning jar full of flowers and vodka so the steeping can begin post haste after the flower picking.

My friend and I set off from Chicago at 7:30 a.m. on a beautiful late June day to drive to my friend Seedling Pete’s farm. Pete, it seems, has planted elderflowers on his farm but more importantly, knows an old-timer named Fritz who could show us where to forage elderflowers from the side of county roads.

Elderflowers and their resulting berries, are fascinating and, seemingly, ubiquitous, once you get to know them. We foraged around the remote farmy areas of southern Michigan before driving home, and noticing pockets of elderflowers growing all along the expressway to Chicago — and even in Chicago proper, here and there.

Called “nature’s pharmacy,” it is amazing to learn what they can cure. And even more amazing to realize that they aren’t planted, as a home pharmacy, in every yard in America. In fact, in America at least, they are considered a weed to be eradicated, despite their knee-bucklingly awesome curative powers, reported best by Wikipedia:

Black elderberry has been used medicinally for hundreds of years.^[5][6] Sambucus nigra L. may be an effective treatment for H1N1 flu.^[7] A 1995 study found: “A complete cure was achieved within 2 to 3 days in nearly 90% of the SAM-treated group and within at least 6 days in the placebo group (p < 0.001). No satisfactory medication to cure influenza type A and B is available. Considering the efficacy of the extract in vitro on all strains of influenza virus tested, the clinical results, its low cost, and absence of side-effects, this preparation could offer a possibility for safe treatment for influenza A and B.”^[8] A small study published in 2004 showed that 93% of flu patients given elderberry extract were completely symptom-free within two days; those taking a placebo recovered in about six days.^[9][10] A 2009 study found that the H1N1 inhibition activities of the elderberry flavonoids compare favorably to the known anti-influenza activities of Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and Amantadine.^[11] A 2004 study found that symptoms of influenza A and B virus infections were relieved on average 4 days earlier and use of rescue medication was significantly less in those receiving elderberry extract compared with placebo. The study stated, “Elderberry extract seems to offer an efficient, safe and cost-effective treatment for influenza. These findings need to be confirmed in a larger study”.^[12]

A 2001 study entitled “The effect of Sambucol, a black elderberry-based, natural product, on the production of human cytokines: I. Inflammatory cytokines” concluded: “We conclude from this study that, in addition to its antiviral properties, Sambucol Elderberry Extract and its formulations activate the healthy immune system by increasing inflammatory cytokine production. Sambucol might therefore be beneficial to the immune system activation and in the inflammatory process in healthy individuals or in patients with various diseases. Sambucol could also have an immunoprotective or immunostimulatory effect when administered to cancer or AIDS patients, in conjunction with chemotherapeutic or other treatments. In view of the increasing popularity of botanical supplements, such studies and investigations in vitro, in vivo and in clinical trials need to be developed.”^[10]

They can cure H1N1! for the love of all things holy! And can help cancer patients and AIDS patients! Why in God’s name are we all rushing around trying to eat the exotic goji berry, drink Kumbucha and shoving all manner of drugs down our gullets when we can cultivate the mother of all curative plants in our own yards?

Yes, in case you were wondering, I am making room for a few plants in my front yard.  I’m getting them from Hartmann Plant Company, where Seedling Pete got his plants.

And with the fragrant foraging haul,  I made some luscious bevvies:

Elderflower wine, made by soaking a handful of flowers in Target box ‘o wine for two weeks. Make sure if you make it, you strip off every bit of green from the flowers as they make the resulting wine a bit stemmy tasting.

Elderflower liquor, which I am attempting to turn into St. Germain liquor.

Elderflower syrup, which I made by making a standard sugar syrup, adding sliced lemon and letting it stand for a few days on the counter before straining and bottling for homemade soda.

I plan on returning to the foraging ground in the fall, when Pete tells me the berries are ripe on the trees, and making some of the magical black berry elixir. If you get sick next winter, I’ll bring you some.

But that was until I tasted my own homemade vermouth, fresh as a daisy in spring.  And it was then that I remembered that the other thing that traveled around on those boats was hard tack. Not delicious.

Vermouth, you should know, originated as a way of recovering bad wine. And, in fact, you could likely use bad wine to make your vermouth.  I sorta did.  But not on purpose, only because I tend to drink that wine in a box from Target, which I started doing when I was super crazy broke a while ago and since I am still super crazy broke I still do.

Homemade vermouth can really be considered a gateway to homemade bitters.  And since it is a ton easier, it can also be considered a replacement for the laborious effort of homemade bitters, which I imagine you’d only do if you were really into cocktails more than just the kind of creatively delicious cheap drinkin’ I tend to go for.

First thing first with homemade vermouth is to get a bottle (or box) of wine and add in some eau de vie.  In fact, if you have eau de vie, you will likely find making your own vermouth to be an awesome way to use that eau de vie, since my bet is that you, like me, don’t actually ever figure out how to drink the stuff in any kind of quantity.

Next, you add in the herbs and spices by heating them with some of the wine. I added ginger powder, elderflowers, lime peel, a vanilla pod and some gentian.  I let it steep for a week then strained it. I made the ginger powder from dried ginger, which I highly recommend, and elder flowers from elderflowers I foraged and dried. Lime peel can be dried too, and stored like you would any herb.  Vanilla pods are just that and gentian can be ordered from Amazon, like everything else, but I have a lot left over if you need some and live nearby.

I make my vermouth in smallish quantities store it in the fridge, like Toby taught me.  I drink it with really good gin from Leopold Brothers. Rocks — as in on the rocks. But yes, it (also) rocks.

I am not really much of a martini drinker, but I think maybe part of that is that I tend to like a vermouth-y martini, and a dirty one as well, and most of the vermouth I’ve had in my life before making my own sucked, or likely sucked.

But now I can make my own, magically turning Target Box-o-wine into a special deliciousness that makes me feel like I just might be a martini drinker after all.

Well, they weren’t mine in that I didn’t grow them. I bought them from lovely Seedling Pete, grower of amazing fruit in Southern Michigan. By the cuff of Michigan, his farm sits.

And his strawberries are ripe and delicious. They inspire.

Most recently, they inspired me to make a gigantic frozen daiquiri with a dollop of whip.

It was as delicious as it was declasse. Only, like a white bread tomato sandwich, a properly white trashy strawberry daiquiri is a right of Summer. And note, I wrote right and not rite.

Because I believe that if you eat unprocessed foods, you can eat whatever you want, as long as it isn’t the garbagey crap our Corporatacray serves up in florescent-lit grocery aisle across America.

So, the whipped cream-topped frozen Strawberry Daiquiri is right.

This is how you make it:
First, make bottled strawberries in syrup, raw-pack. You should know that the Canning Matrons don’t allow raw-pack strawberries. But strawberries, to be as delicious as possible, need to be dealt with carefully and processed minimally. So, I don’t heat process my strawberries prior to packing and I don’t process my jam after canning it.

One experience with heat is all my strawberries ever have to deal with.

And, lo, I am still alive. More importantly, my middle of winter Strawberry Daiquiries and Strawberry Shortcakes are a thing of great beauty. (yours?)

So, back to the drink. Raw-pack strawberries, just dump the half pint jar in the Vitamix (thanks Alice). Add a solid couple shots of rum and a shot of Grand Marnier. Add some lime juice, some lime zest if you aren’t too tired or hot, and a pack in pile of ice. Blend. Pour into glass. Top with some whipped cream.

Yes, damn it, enjoy the strawberry harvest fully and whip cream it up.

This is the thing: you’ve bottled strawberries and if you are like me, you bottled somewheres around 24 jars. That’s two strawberry daiquiries per month. Delicious, local, real, white trashy blended strawberry daiquiries with whipped cream. Two per month to last a year.

People who really love food — not foodies, who are eye-rollingly ridiculous —appreciate the simplest things in their purest forms. They aren’t embarrassed by a whipped cream-topped frozen strawberry daiquiries.

They realize that iconic recipes are something to rediscover. And they seek to discover them.

I bought two flats of strawberries. So, I’ll share that I started some strawberry wine, made jam, enjoyed a fresh strawberry milkshake and also ate a bunch out of hand.

My mom took home some strawberries, which made me happy since she eats a lot of scary Driscoll dreck. I don’t think their deliciousness will encourage her to stop buying out of season strawberries, though I can’t imagine why.

With the last of my strawberries, I made a new take on strawberry shortcake that was so good I started thinking I needed to get more strawberries.

Fresh strawberries, sliced and macerated in a little brown sugar atop a freshly baked biscuit with whipped sheep’s milk ricotta and a drizzle of Pepe Nero syrup. I tried a Whole Foods pre-made biscuit, on the advice of a friend. Surprise! It sucked! I am reconsidering that friendship. To honor the strawberry, make a biscuit fresh. Pepe Nero syrup is made by reducing Goose Island Pepe Nero and then stirring in a bunch of sugar while it is hot. Whipped sheep’s milk ricotta is whipped with some cream. Please if you make this, invite me over.

I can’t imagine I’ll get sick strawberries by the time the cherries start rolling in. Any day now.

Neighboring Michigan is also known for its cherries, and I am sure there are cherry festivals there each year as well.  With those Michigan Cherries, I make a version of Cherry Bounce each year that I call Brandied Cherries. Brandied Cherries are basically the same thing as Cherry Bounce, only I leave the cherries whole and if you let the jar sit in the basement for a few years, they are pretty damn delicious, if dangerous, to eat by the fistful.  Especially during a snowstorm when there is no way you’ll be driving or interacting with humans until the city gets dug out and so, who cares if you are gobbling up fistfuls of boozy cherries.

And it is because I want to eat the macerated cherries during a future snowstorm I am sure will come, that my bounce of choice is rhubarb. Also, because I always want to buy rhubarb but then I never know what to do with it at home, since I can’t really make a rhubarb crisp for one and I don’t need more crap in my freezer, even if it is delicious rhubarb crisp.

I did make pickled rhubarb last year, which was delicious with goat cheese but still ends up a bit mushy and stringy at the same time. Most of it I ended up whizzing in the Vitamix and spreading on toast with soft goat cheese and bitter greens. It was delicious but not what I was going for so I have to futz with that recipe to get it right and I haven’t felt like it yet this year.

I make rhubarb bounce by chopping and blanching the stems. Seriously, blanch the stems only briefly and then plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking.  You want to preserve the rhubarb color but you don’t want to get rid of the crisp acid of the raw vegetable.  Then, I shove it into a gallon canning jar and let it sit until Thanksgiving.

This year, I might, since Rhubarb Bounce is basically Rhubarbcello for those following along, make Creamy Rhubarbcello with my Rhubarb Bounce.  I love, love, love Creamy Limoncello and since I like Rhubarb Bounce, I might as well see if creamy-ing it makes it ever so much more delicious.

Named for my neighborhood, Albany Park, Moutarde d’Albany is a Dijon-style sharp creamy mustard aged 75 days.

The basic recipe, which seems to be the same on all over the internet is as follows:

• 2 cups dry white wine
• 1 cup minced onion
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 tbsp honey
• 4 oz dry yellow mustard
• 1 tbsp oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp hot sauce

In a small saucepan, heat garlic, wine and onion, bringing to a boil. Then simmer for 5 minutes and remove from heat. Set aside in a bowl for 10 minutes. Add the dry mustard into saucepan and slowly strain the heated wine mixture over top to remove the solids. Whisk until smooth, ensuring to remove any lumps. Add honey, salt and hot sauce. Place over medium low heat and stir until the mixture thickens. It will set up more as it cools. Remove from heat, cool, then store in a (previously boiled) glass jar. Refrigerate.

But there’s certainly a lot more mustard fun to be had. First off, why use ground mustard when you can start from scratch!  Also, why just add spices when you can add herbs!

So, I went with this:

In two cups of apple cider vinegar, soak 1/2 cup brown mustard seed, 3 crushed cloves, a small bunch of cracked peppercorns, a teaspoon each ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, a few sprigs of chervil, the leaves of some thyme sprigs and a healthy portion of tarragon.  Also, minced garlic and some bay leaves and salt. Actually, I am not sure if I was hallucinating when I wrote all that. If you want to know how to make mustard, go check out the actual recipe page.

Leave that to sit for a few days.

Then, blend it until smooth in a Vitamix.  If you don’t have a Vitamix, you’ll likely have to strain it.  Pour it into a glass jar and let sit for 75 days.