This is the second Ruth Reichl book that I'm reading. The first few chapters had me thinking about an herb garden. The secret to wonderful food is the freshness of the ingredients. This book starts out with a trip to Chez Panisse, one of the finest restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alice Waters, founder and chef, really believes in ingredients grown by people who care about what they grow. She really led others down the path of good food grown on small farms where animals and food get to do what they do best: grow without artificial enhancements. Unfortunately my raised-bed vegetable garden was invaded last summer by Bermuda Grass. You can kill it with Round-Up, but that would be introducing herbicides into our diet. So I will spend the next several weeks rooting this stuff out. I will, however, pour Round-Up on the Bermuda Grass that has enveloped our Honeysuckle and rose bushes. We don't eat them.
Last night we had spaghetti carbonara, which is amazingly simple to make. Restaurants often add cream for the sauce; Ruth Reichl taught me not to do that. Just put two eggs in the pasta bowl, beat them vigorously, add ground pepper and then had the cooked pasta. Toss it briskly. The egg cooks while you toss it with the hot pasta. Pour the bacon and its fat over the pasta (I didn't say that this was on the Pritikin Diet), mix thorougly and add parmesan cheese. There were also two cloves of garlic in with the bacon. They got all mushy which was wonderful. Yummy. We are having leftovers tonight. Drink red wine with the pasta to overcome the bacon and its grease.
Enuf on food; it's dinner time.
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1 comment:
my gardening bible (the joy of gardening) has a green and herbicide free way of getting rid of perennial weeds. he said to plant buckwheat in areas you want to cultivate and that have perennial weeds. till the buckwheat under before it goes to seed (but after it blooms to give the bees a chance to have some fun), then plant some more buckwheat. till it under when it blooms and then plant annual rye grass. according to the author (i can't remember his name) the buckwheat grows faster than the perennial weeds and by planting it twice like that you add green fertilizer and strangle the weeds. the annual rye is used as a cover for winter and can be tilled under in the spring.
i love that book. it's all about wide row planting, planting in series and other neat things, including not having to have to weed. he worked for toro and promotes their products, but despite that, it's a really good book.
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