Of course, then it was the early nineties, and the craft beer movement was in full swing. That bar with the Guinness turned out to be owned by another, and considerably more obsessive home brewer, Ray McNeill, for instance, and so I had no shortage of good and diverse beer on which to cut teeth. But still it would be another ten years, almost, before my father would consent to drink aught but dark beers. Habits are stubborn things.

For myself, it took me years, as I outgrew the prejudiced (and slightly precious) palate of my late adolescence, to realize that IPAs were not to be drunk sitting down at table, unless perhaps there was pizza or bar-food on that table. That beer shouldn’t be drunk cold in winter, or for much of fall and spring for that matter. That (a crisp, light) lager has its place—particularly with Mexican food, with which there is nothing on earth better to drink, I am firmly convinced.

As, in my old age, I have started to drink considerably less beer, having finally realized that not every afternoon does a beer really agree with me, so has my desire for that beer to be the right beer increased. And so, this week, finally, I have come around to the idea (very late in coming) that I ought to keep any number of different beers on hand, more beer collectively than I’ve ever kept on hand, really, at exactly the time I am drinking the least beer of my life since age fourteen.

What a pleasing prospect.

Dress and cut it up. Put in pot, then bring to boil.* Break up spicewood branches, and put in pot with meat. Boil until the meat is tender. Remove; then salt and pepper; then roll in flour; put in 1/2 cup shortening, preferably bacon grease. Then put in oven and bake until it is brown.

Mrs. Ennis Ownby”

from Mountain Makin’s in the Smokies, published by the Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association, 1957.

*(“boil” is old-talk for simmer.)

Here are two homely jugs of happily fermenting homely home-squeezed plum wine. It’s been far too long since I engaged in fermentation projects, and I feel a tear coming on.

This particular project was a medley of expedients. I am bullish on plums, though. One day, perhaps next week, I’ll go land fifty pounds of Damsons and do it right.

Vegetarian even. For Christ’s sake.

If you’re not already aware of it, the dried-beans thing is a revelation. But now I think I’m souring on the pressure cooker too.

In honor of this joyous occasion (well, reminded) I’ve added a permanent link to Century Farm Orchards, the main commercial outlet for the author’s collection.

Good question.

The other question is when to stop boiling, but this isn’t so important. If you over-cook it, it will crystalize, and you’ll need to reheat it and add water. If you under-cook it, it won’t be as thick as it might be, and will go bad faster.

Some readers of my blog may notice that I’ve increased the standard size of my images from 450 pixels to 600 in width. I hope this agrees with y’alls screens as wellbetter as it does mine. It’s an old picture but I’m posting it anyway because it’s time again I put up a picture.

So, I am keen on these purple potatoes. At least one farmer in my neck (pain in my neck?) markets a purple potato as a novelty, which is not very reassuring, but I assure you they can be fantastic. First rate. Color aside. I don’t know anything about the ancestry or breeding history of purple potatoes. When I started buying them years ago I thought there was only one variety, but that was before I got smart. Some are, indeed, better than others, deeper colored or better textured, and some are certainly better named, but all I’ve tried have been decent to excellent for roasting.

With that, I present you with one of my favorite I’m-too-tired-to-cook recipes (though I make it as a side sometimes for some of my fanciest meals, too):

Roasted Dinner:

dice waxy potatoes
slice onions
possibly turnips
jerusalem artichokes if you got ‘em
that kind of thing;
throw in some unpeeled garlic cloves (or peeled)
so that all the things are roughly similar sized
or otherwise calculated to be done cooking at
approximately the same time,
and put them in a bowl
and slather them in fat
and sprinkle them with salt
and maybe herbs
or something
and put them on a tray,
fairly tight,
and put them in a fast oven (hot, fairly hot)
until done.

I hope you like it. It’s one of my favorites.

P.S. My mother calls this dish “roasted rooties.” Fair enough. My own name for it is drawn from the title of a book I own but have never opened, “The Transcendental Boiled Dinner.” I forget by who.

*…the Art of French Cooking, Knopf 1961.

[**addendum** I thought I might add that the sunroom is just an old porch glassed in with old wooden storm-windows, two by fours and spray foam insulation. Took about a day and a $100.]

In West Virginia, my last attempt to buy a goose ended in “well, if you can catch one, sure.” I wasn’t offered to shoot one, and chances were good it’ve been a soup-bird. And a goose will bloody you in hand to hand combat. So. Before that, I bought my geese in Virginia. For a reasonable price. I’d have to ask my wife. It’s been a while now. Too long.

The last time I bought pork in West Virginia, I was given ten or twenty pounds of fat and a head, and a couple bags of bones, for the asking. Nobody else wanted them. They are not specially priced gourmet tit-bits there. This is an amazing, beautiful, sad thing.

I love to eat geese. I love pork fat. I love limitless amounts of stock in four flavors (pig, goat, lamb, beef) simmering on my stove all winter scenting and humidifying my house and filling my chest freezer for free. My sister’s first sentence was “goose a’bit me,” and I have now my own preverbal daughter. I really don’t know what to make of all these facts.

One must be resourceful.

In Vermont, we wouldn’t. At least not Vermont beef. It’s not beef country: pasture is too precious, what is left of it, land values and taxes too steep and the winters too long. The market, however, the ethical demand, there, will bear silly prices: twice the farmers’ market retail in West Virginia. Thus they have beef.

In fact, Vermont is not farmer country at all, rosy-goggled stereotypes aside. The only thing, that I can see, that a Vermont farmer (barring a dairy producer) has over a West Virginian is proximity to markets that will bear a premium price for premium produce. This is bad politics. If food can’t be produced cheaply, it can’t be sold cheaply, and then poor people can’t afford to eat much local food. I include myself in this category. It’s a shame. It’s a truism: local foodism is an uppermiddleclass phenomenon. The rest of us in a place like Vermont, if we want to eat well, it’s variations on beans and rice. Sometimes it seems like we are the serfs of the second-homers. As I see it, the future of economical farming in places like Vermont only clarifies this relationship: the only land economical enough for economical production will be leased from the rich under the stipulation that production be kept aesthetically pleasing. If that doesn’t make us peasants then I suppose it must make us artists, subsisting one way or another on the patronage of the rich.

Of course, lacking this market, despite all their advantages, West Virginian farmers typically still have to work full-time, outside jobs. And still are broke. But, the market is improving. The quality of their produce is improving. If local foodism escapes the mental clutches of the salesmen to the uppermiddleclass, West Virginia could be a farmer’s, and a poorly funded eater’s paradise.

If I lived in Vermont I’d probably fill a truck bed with coolers and go south every fall for my meat, food miles be damned. Clearly, there are some inefficiencies in the Natural Beef market. Failing that I’d have to pasture my own freaking cow. On borrowed ground. Keep it pretty.

“These animals, often called Kyloes in their native land, have been made familiar to the outside world through the art of Sir Edwin Landseer. They are a small, rough-coated mountain breed, having long horns. The original Kyloes were mainly black, but lighter colors—dun, red, fawn (and an occasional white with black points)—have since been established and are now preferred. They are essentially a beef type, and when fattened in lowland parks and feedlots produce a fine, though small, carcass of beef.”

—from The Cattle of the World, by Alvin Howard Sanders. (Washington: The National Geographic Society, 1926.)

—from Notes on a Kitchen Book, 1970.

Merry Christmas!

Well, a brine, my friends, made from rehydraded Nantucket sea salt, just ain’t so different from undehydrated Nantucket sea salt. Is it?

I feel a little bad about publishing three posts in a day when for many months I’ve barely managed one a month. What can I say?

Eric Asimov, one of my favorite wine critics, just did a column on different kinds of cider—very much worth reading.

Next year, barring natural disaster, I will fill a barrel.