Outside Lands Windmill -- recycle, compost, trash.
All Photos: Wendy Goodfriend

Outside Lands, now in it's fourth year, drew nearly 180,000 visitors this past weekend. I was one of them. On Saturday morning, as I walked along a dirt path through Lindley Meadow into a eucalyptus grove with parachutes and rope swings dangling from the trees, I thought of how this seemed a cross between Burning Man and the board game Candy Land. Ok, Outside Lands was fifty degrees cooler than Burning Man and it's in the middle of Golden Gate Park, rather than the desert. Still, the music festival has this collective feel where everyone comes together to appreciate artistic expression, be it music, food, wine or other artistic endeavors. Then, everyone leaves the land no worse for wear, hopefully. In fact, this was the most organized compost and recycling program I have ever seen at a big outdoor event.

Wind Chime Swing. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Choco Lands. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

Outside Lands also has this feeling that everything happening on the periphery is just as interesting as the bigger events, whether they are major rock bands or pyrotechnic shows. And just like Candy Land, curvy dirt paths take you from one fun land to the next. Instead of Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain you have Food Truck Forest, Choco Lands, Wine Lands and Eco Lands. Wander down a dirt path away from the polo fields, which hosted the likes of Phish and Arcade Fire, and you might end up, as I did, amidst cypress and eucalyptus trees watching a tiny carny opera with mime faced performers dressed in kilts playing Appalachian ballads and doing their own version of the River Dance. Before the opera I visited Eco Lands, which honors San Francisco's commitment to sustainability, with all sorts of educational booths, valet bike parking and emerging artists performing on a solar powered stage. This year introduced urban agriculture to Outside Lands with yet another land to discover, Farm Lands. Here you could play games like "Veggie Twister," take an urban gardening class and munch on organic watermelon slices from Full Belly Farms.

Arcade Fire. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

Flotsam's Wonder World Opera. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Full Belly Farms Farmers Market. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

With my appetite whetted by healthy produce, I set out to explore the higher caloric choices at Outside Lands. There are more than fifty local restaurants and food trucks at this event. For a little hog in the fog action, one could try Flour + Water's porchetta sandwiches. Head Chef Thomas McNaughton said, because they only work with small farms, it took six months to prepare for the concert. Eleven acres of arugula had to be planted and, to be honest, I couldn't listen when he explained how many pigs from near Nicassio were slaughtered, let's just say it was enough to make 7,000 sandwiches over the weekend. McNaughton said the idea was also to create a little buzz for Flour + Water's two new projects, also in the Mission, Salumeria and Central Kitchen. Maybe I just knew too much about the porchetta sandwiches but I ended up trying a different meal with pork, Korean tacos from Namu. They were not really tacos at all but rather pork or chicken wrapped in seaweed with a delicious kim chee remoulade. I also had a taste of a veggie samosa from New Ganges Indian Food and a grilled cheese sandwich, with peppers, from The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen. They were both good but not as interesting as the "tacos." You can also read about my time at Wine Lands where i discovered some very delicious small lot wineries.

Thomas McNaughton and porchetta sandwich assembly line. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

I am thinking Outside Lands might be worth another visit next year. I mean, what other festival can you listen to the arena-rock jams of English Band Muse while sipping a spicy Pinot Noir preceded by a worm composting workshop?

Muse. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Related posts:
• Outside Lands Recap 2011 at KQED Arts
• Guide to Outside Lands 2011 at KQED Arts

Gleaning with Farm to Pantry. Photo: The Perennial Plate

The Perennial Plate: Adventurous and Sustainable Eating - Episode 64: California Gleaning
Northern California is a bountiful area. So bountiful that there are often leftovers. This is usually the case with most farms. In order to make way for bad yields, bad weather, and unexpected disasters, (or just to make sure they have enough to satisfy their customers), most farms will end up with more than they can sell. What happens to all that extra produce? In the case of Healdsburg California, an organization called Farm to Pantry picks it, packs it up and delivers it to various locations "in need." It’s selfless, necessary and wonderful. Watch this video to follow the food from harvest to rehab center.

Tartine Afterhours menu from The Perennial Plate dinner. Photo: The Perennial Plate

Daniel Klein, creator of The Perennial Plate, an online weekly documentary series dedicated to socially responsible and adventurous eating, shares some thoughts about his new Bay Area episode. Under the guidance of Chef Samin Nostrat they visited three local farms, gathered stories, harvested food and then created a Tartine Afterhours dinner at the Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. Watch the episode about the farm visits and event.

From your experience traveling across country what qualities are unique to the Bay Area with regard to food awareness and food community?

The first part of our trip was in the South where local food appears to be more along the lines of "the way things are" -- unless, of course, there is nothing -- food deserts are also often the case down south. But in the Bay Area it is a way of life in the sense that people are passionate about it -- where food comes from is important. And beyond that, California is where so much food is grown. In other parts of the country we say "oh that's from California" -- but here, well, it's all from California.

When you were putting this episode together what were the key points you wanted to communicate to your audience:

...about sustainable eating in the Bay Area?

I didn't really want to convey a message about sustainable eating, I wanted to share the story of our dinner at Tartine and the farmers that let us visit and harvest their crops. There isn't an intended message, more a hope that people will enjoy the spirit of the dinner and days proceeding.

...about the Bay Area farms you visited?

Riverdog Farm -- What an incredible farm. It seems they have held on to their ideals while expanding into a large and very professional operation. In my limited experience it seems to be a great example of what a slightly larger organic farm can be. Diverse and with incredibly pristine product. Really refreshing -- so many farms we visit are small, so it was cool to have the perspective of Riverdog (by industrial ag standards, its still tiny of course). We wanted to convey that it was larger, but also the spirit of its founder Tim Mueller.

Sunny Slope Orchard -- Bill is passionate about his stone fruit. He farms for the joy of it. But more than the farm, I wanted to share how delicious his fruit was. That plum and those apricots were like nothing I've ever had before. Truly eye opening/mouth opening? experiences.

Pluck and Feather Farm -- We were rushed at Pluck and Feather, the dinner was approaching and we needed herbs. Esperanza was there for us. We wanted to get something from an urban garden, and this place was perfect, especially with the giant McDonalds sign looming overhead.

...about the process of creating a pop-up dinner experience?

I wanted to convey that we didn't know the menu until the day of, that it was collaborative and just really fun. We chose some over the top music to drive home the culmination of two serious days of traveling, harvesting and cooking.

Preparing the Perennial Plate dinner in the Tartine Bakery kitchen. Photo: The Perennial Plate

How did you decide on the menu for the Tartine dinner?

We decided the day of based on what we had. Samin and I just shot ideas at each other and came up with simple but delicious food. Samin had made pasta a few days earlier, so we knew that was going to happen, other than that, it was just trying things out.

Cherry Tomatoes with Pluck and Feather Farm Oregano. Photo: The Perennial Plate

I know you worked together with Tartine Afterhours chef Samin Nosrat on this dinner. How did you connect with her to make this all happen?

We connected through our mutual friend Alex of 4SP Films, he suggested Samin as a story and then through a phone conversation we decided that doing a dinner together would be awesome. I could tell it would work as Samin is so lighthearted and fun.

What went into making this event a reality?

I had come out to SF for a meeting and I met with Samin. We hit it off, although I think she hits it off with everyone she meets. It was really just a matter of arranging a date. Samin in turn decided on which farms to visit. I think these were places that she really wanted to check out, so it was win win.

Trio of Daniel's Salads: New Potato, Roasted Beets and Shaved Summer Squash. Photo: The Perennial Plate

Were you able to make money from the event to help fund your project?

No, we look at the event as an opportunity to share our food and stories, not to make money. A lot of the work was on the staff, Samin and Tartine, so we were just happy to be a part of it.

I know you enjoyed a meal at Gather in Berkeley. What else did you and Mirra experience in the Bay Area that was memorable?

We went to Ubuntu in Napa which is similar to Gather in that it makes use of vegetables in unique ways. I don't know if Manresa is considered the Bay Area, but we ate there as well. All three of these restaurants represent a new wave of cooking that loves the vegetable as much as the protein, I think it's the future of cooking, so it was fun to try these three restaurants -- each has a very different take but I think a similar spirit in their dishes.

Sunny Slope Orchard's apricots al cartoccio. Photo: The Perennial Plate

It's summertime, and we might just be the one place in the country actually enjoying itself, rather than wilting under an onslaught of brain-melting heat and humidity. So get out of the house! Some of our favorite bloggers have already told you where to eat outside this summer. Still, maybe you'd like to find yourself some green, rather than spending it. Forget the food trucks for a minute; let's go hang out with the farmers!

Getting on the electronic mailing list for Marin Organic, promoters and advocates for sustainable agriculture in Marin, is a great way to keep on top of tours, talks, and special events happening just across the bridge. Coming up next month are a dairy tour of Straus Family Creamery, an orchard walk through the olive groves of McEvoy Ranch, and a discussion with bakers Chad Robertson (Tartine Bread), Celine Underwood (Brickmaiden Bakery), and David Muller (Outerlands) about their adventures in sourdough. You can also go to Sonoma Farm Trails to downloads maps and farm guides and plan your own tour of that area's rich agricultural offerings.

CUESA, the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, is best known for running the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market, but they also organize periodic tours of local farms and producers. On August 10, you can join CUESA for an Organic Greens & Blue Cheese Tour featuring County Line Harvest, growers of excellent lettuces, strawberries, and more, and the family-run Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company.

Chez Panisse is planning a series of pricey fundraisers for the Edible Schoolyard in conjunction with its 40th birthday next month, but there is one free, family-friendly OPENeducation event happening on August 27 at the Berkeley Art Museum. (Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance.) The day is planned as a series of "interactive cooking installations" between museum-goers and a posse of farmers, educators, and artists, using corn, beans, and squash planted in the outdoor spaces of the museum.

And speaking of family fun, devoted Bay Area Bites readers may know Devil's Gulch Ranch as one of our favorite sources for locally produced rabbit, but they're more than just bunnies. They also host a ranch camp for kids, with three more weeklong sessions remaining.

Apples in August? For anyone born and bred on the East Coast, where apples mean autumn, the idea of this can seem a little bizarre. However, our California-grown heirloom apple, the Gravenstein, is a early ripener, ready for pie by mid-August. Celebrate its yellow-and-red striped delights at Sebastopol's down-home Gravenstein Apple Fair on August 13 and 14. You can even go up against this one-time grand champion in the Apple Pie Contest.

Most small producers have their hands full just getting their day-to-day chores done, especially when there are animals in the mix--which means your favorite cheesemaker or farmer is rarely available for drop-in visits. On August 7, Bay Area Green Tours is planning a daylong "Tomatoes, Peaches, Corn, and More" tour of Brentwood, with stops at Frog Hollow Farm, Dwelley Farm, and Smith Family Farm. (Don't forget your sunscreen and sun hat, as Brentwood bakes in the summertime. Good for the peaches and tomatoes, a little shocking to fog-dwelling San Franciscans.) On August 18, take a One Valley, Three Milks tour and get a behind-the-scenes peek of Bellwether Farms (sheep), Two Rock Valley Cheese (goat), and Valley Ford Cheese Company (cow).

You can also sign up (for free) as a member of Weirauch Farm, a small sheep dairy and creamery, and save the date for their next members-only tour on Aug. 13. The setting, in the rolling hills of Petaluma, is beautiful, and the sheep (pictured above) are as friendly and inquisitive as puppies. While owners Joel and Carleen Weirauch finish up their sheep-milking parlor (they're hoping to have it completed in time for next spring's milking season), they're making some delectable cows' milk cheeses, available after the tour for tasting and purchase.

But what if you want to stay closer to home, enjoying the flavor of local farms without getting mud on your shoes? Then head over to Potrero Hill's sweet, sunny Plow. Look for the metal pig hanging outside, or the many happy diners inside, all grooving on lemon-ricotta pancakes or (my favorite) dreamy French toast gobbed with mascarpone and topped with thick wedges of brown sugar-and-butter roasted Summer Zee peaches from Blossom Bluff Orchards.

The menu shifts daily, but a recent meal included breakfast and lunch offerings like a soft scramble with lambs quarter greens, mushrooms, and goat cheese; housemade yogurt and granola with fruit and Potrero Hill honey; cucumber-buttermilk gazpacho; green bean and Sungold tomato salad with purslane and fresh mozzarella; and a BLT stacked with Nueske bacon and glowing, gorgeous heirloom tomato slices. Farms, orchards, ranchers, bakers, and producers are thanked in four lines of small type at the bottom of the menu, name-checking all the purveyors we know from markets around the Bay Area: Mariquita Farms, Dirty Girl Produce, County Line Harvest, Hamada Farms, Frog Hollow, Straus Family Creamery, Marin Sun Farms, Acme Bread, and more. Happy summer!

Fruit, glorious fruit, now is your time. The farmers' market doesn't come alive until the strawberries and cherries show up, and now with stone fruit season in full, chin-dripping swing, we have months of glory ahead. Perfect timing, then, for Plum Gorgeous, by Romney Steele, subtitled Recipes and Memories from the Orchard.

These recipes are as much inspirations as instructions, of the why-didn't-I-think-of-that variety. Once you read a description like Strawberry, Nasturium, and Cucumber Salad, Heirloom Tomatoes and Peaches with Burrata, or Honey-Baked Figs with Lavender and Wine, you almost don't need to bother with the cups and teaspoons; the idea is enough. Which is how the generous, bohemian-spirited Steele wants you to cook, anyway. Get the adorable but steely-hearted Miette bakery cookbook for your Louboutin-wearing, alpha-domme gal-pal, the one with the pink KitchenAid mixer, unchippable nails and spotless counters. Plum Gorgeous is a little more messy, much more colorful and a lot more forgiving. Starting with great fruit, it would be pretty hard to screw up any of these unfussy, casually delicious dishes, both sweet and savory, all seasoned with a dash of whimsy. The chapters follow the fruit of California's seasons: winter's citrus, spring's berries, the stone fruits of summer and the figs, apples, quinces, grapes, and pears of autumn.

Strawberry, Nasturtium, and Cucumber Salad. Photo: Sara Remington

Leafing through the book, it’s impossible not to be charmed at first sight. Read it cover to cover, though, from chirpy, service-y headnotes to poetic musings, and you might see how the whole thing risks falling into the sugar-coated, envy-making genre I'd call how nice for you. In her previous book, My Nepenthe, Steele told the story of her grandparents, the founders of Big Sur's fabled restaurant Nepenthe, and her family's involvement with the place through the decades. She alluded, gracefully and with the lightest of touches, to the challenges and complications of combining business, family, and the coastal counterculturalism of the 60s and 70s. Here, though, there's almost nothing but sweetness. Not every cookbook needs to be a memoir, especially not one whose ostensible purpose is simply fruit and fun. But without revealing a real story, a backbone of truth, writing that's aiming for a romantic, color-drenched poetry of the senses can end up reading like advertising copy, breathless and aspirational.

The photographs, by Sara Remington (who also shot My Nepenthe), are absolutely gorgeous, ravishingly styled and lit to look perfectly effortless. I wanted to live in the place captured by these photographs, and I also wanted to know if the cute skirt and candy-colored wellies on page 15 came in my size, and if there was express-shipping for polka-dot red dress blowing in the breeze on page 106. Was this a cookbook, or the latest Anthropologie catalog? The more Steele pushes the poetry of the idyllic years she spent raising two children in a mountainside cottage, surrounded by fog, flowers, and fruit trees, the more the reader notices how much she's assiduously sponged out. No sharp edges, no stress, just children spooned in the same bed "warm and tender like new-rising bread." Whispers run throughout: a murmur of returning home to Big Sur both "discontent and comforted by the coziness of home," of “closeness being at once beautiful and a challenge, heartbreaking and poetic.” But what happened? How did she end up, presumably a single mother, in that tiny house? A little more heartbreak explained might have balanced all that honey.

Kumquats and Toasted Couscous with Halloumi. Photo: Sara Remington

Maybe I'm just being crabby, envious of those azure Big Sur mornings and her memories of baking tarts surrounded by the lemon-yellow walls of Henry Miller's kitchen. Or perhaps it was too many lines like this one: "By this time we were drinking wine and nibbling on the last of the kumquat and couscous salad—just photographed for the book—under the shade of a grapefruit tree in the garden as the sun went down, and lavishing spoonfuls of rose petal jam onto toast with runny cheese for dessert." Well, how nice for you. This is the sort of thing that can take a lot of Raspberry Ratafia to swallow. Honestly, I could deal with the grapefruit tree, the sunset, even the kumquats. But did the jam really have to be "lavished?" Wasn’t a spoonful enough?

Of course, no one’s buying cookbook-memoirs called My Trip to Safeway for Another Box of Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies. Every book like this, however based in real experience, is packaging a fantasy where the grapefruit trees are shady, the jam lavishly spread, and the kumquat salad always ready for its close-up. So enjoy the view, whip up the Rhubarb Mustard, Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Moscato Apricots, Plum Blackberry Sorbet, or Tomato-Grape Ricotta Flatbread, and imagine you’re in a cottage overlooking Big Sur. Now where I can find that perfect polka-dot dress?

Plum Blackberry Sorbet. Photo: Sara Remington

It is time once again for my annual raspberry post. You see, early June is my time to contemplate all things raspberry. Why now? What’s stopping me from meditating on the delights of baked and fresh raspberry dishes in, say, April when spring starts, or July when everyone is making juicy fruit crisps? The answer is simple really: raspberries are actually in season now. Not in April or July. Now. Sure you can buy raspberries all year long; and if you’re a commercial grower I’m sure you can extend the season from early spring to late summer or even fall. But if you are a home gardener, this is your raspberry moment.

One thing to know about growing your own raspberries is that you can pretty much forget about the vines for most of the year. In my backyard, they sit alongside a fence near the barbecue. Throughout the summer they pretty much act as a green foliage background to cover up the fence. When summer is done, their leaves change color a bit and then start to fall, memories of their luscious fruit barely concealed by the apples that are ripening heavily above them. By the time winter arrives, I’m focused on pruning, cutting back dead wooden stalks to make room for younger shoots that will emerge soon, the skeletons of old flower buds that once housed berries now dry and sitting vacant. When spring arrives I am struck with just how lovely the small white flower buds are, peaking out of the verdant green leaves that are new and growing toward the sky. I’m always amazed at just how tall those vines then become in the span of a month or two, maturing and getting leggy like a young teenager until they reach the lower limbs of my apple tree. And then just when I’m getting ready for summer, the berries appear. It’s clandestine at first, with only a few hiding under lower leaves, their rich raspberry red peeking out. Excited and anxious to taste them, my family stands right out amidst the vines, eating as we pick, with none making their way into the house. Each day more berries ripen, until we are overwhelmed with them a week later, the vines literally drooping, laden with fruit.

It seem miraculous just how big my patch has become, and numerous the berries. After all, I planted only one lone vine in a gallon pot six years ago. Since that time, my patch has grown from a small one-foot area to 10 feet, now spanning half my side yard. Even better is that these vines are thornless, so I can let my kids romp through them on berry-picking missions without worrying about scratched arms or poked faces.

So what do we do with our haul of berries? In years past we have eaten our share of berry shortcakes and I’ve also tried my hand at making raspberry jam. This year, however, I decided to focus on making tarts. After years of purchasing expensive pastry cream and fruit tarts from La Farine, I thought it was time to get over my fear of making the perfect crust and cream filling. When all was said and done, my trusty pie crust recipe (which is really BAB blogger, Kim Laidlaw’s crust recipe) worked beautifully, and the pastry cream (a Williams-Sonoma recipe) couldn’t have been easier to whip up. My husband even said he liked the tart better than La Farine’s, although I wonder if he just liked saving the money.

So if you find yourself with some sweet ripe raspberries, try making a tart. It’s really the nicest way I can think of to bask in the season.

Recipe: Seasonal Raspberry Tart with Pastry Cream
A summer tart made with freshly prepared pastry cream, a flaky crust and just-picked raspberries.

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 50 minutes
Yield: 1 10-inch tart

Ingredients:
2 cups fresh raspberries (washed and air dried)
1 batch pastry cream (see recipe below)
1 batch of tart dough (see recipe below)

Instructions:

1. Fit tart dough into your pan and blind bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Be sure to set some foil or parchment paper on top of the dough and then weigh it down with either pie weights or dried beans (which will become inedible after baking) to keep the dough from bubbling up in the oven.

2. Remove tart dough from the oven and remove the pie weights/beans and parchment paper/foil. Bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and cool.

3. When crust is cooled, spread the pastry cream along the bottom and then nestle the raspberries on top. You can dump them all on or organize in circles for a more uniform appearance.

4. Serve as is or top with whipped cream.

Recipe: Pastry Cream
(From Williams-Sonoma Cooking at Home by Chuck Williams and Kristine Kidd, printed with permission from Weldon Owen)

Cook time: 15 minutes
Yield: 1 cup

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
4 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Instructions:
In a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat, bring the milk to a simmer. Meanwhile, in a heatproof bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, and salt until well blended. Slowly add about one-third of the hot milk to the bowl with the yolk-sugar mixture, whisking constantly. Then pour the combined mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens slightly, about 3 minutes. Continue cooking, stirring constantly, for 1 minute longer.

Remove from the heat and pour through a fine-mesh sieve placed over a heatproof bowl. Gently stir in the butter until melted, then stir in the vanilla. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly onto the surface to prevent a skin from forming. Poke a few holes in the plastic wrap to hasten cooling. Let cool, then cover tightly and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 2 hours, or up to 3 days.

Recipe: Flaky Pie or Tart Dough
(Adapted from a recipe by Kim Laidlaw)

Prep time: 10 minutes + 30 minutes refrigeration
Cook time: 30 minutes
Yield: Enough for one 10-inch tart

Ingredients:
1 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
6 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1/4 cup ice water + 1 tablespoon

Instructions:
1. To make the crust, in the bowl of a food processor, stir together the flour, and salt. Sprinkle the butter over the top and process for a few seconds, or just until the butter is slightly broken up into the flour but still in visible pieces. Sprinkle the water over the flour mixture evenly, then process until the mixture just starts to come together.

2. Dump the mixture out of the bowl onto 2 large sheets of plastic wrap. Press the dough together into a mound and then wrap with plastic and press into a flat disk. Refrigerate the dough until chilled, about 30 minutes or up to 1 day, or freeze for up to 1 month.

We may be a nation of individualists, every man and woman a maverick in his or her own heart, but you'd never know it to read our recipes, so rigidly do we adhere to a generic, codified blandness in laying our how-tos.

By contrast, those stiff-upper-lip Brits kick over the traces when they start to mix and fry. Nigella Lawson, Sybil Kapoor, Tamsin Day-Lewis, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Dan Lepard, even éminences grises like Elizabeth David and Patience Gray: not for these writers the strict nothing-but-the-facts-ma'am method of American cookbooks. Across the pond, lively verbs and their adverbial companions shimmy freely in recipe methods. Even adjectives get their due. My favorite? Moreish, because whatever it is, you must have one more bite. Where Americans are folksy, British writers are droll.

Granted, I tend to read those written by authors with literary or journalistic backgrounds, who sift and measure their prose with as much diligence as they do their self-rising flour and diced courgettes. (Ah, those courgettes! Those aubergines! That black treacle! All almost the same as zucchini, eggplant, and molasses, but linguistically shifted just enough to nudge the reader into a right-hand driver's seat.)

And one of the best is Nigel Slater, whose latest work Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch was just released in an American edition by Berkeley's Ten Speed Press. This beautifully designed, chocolate-brown clothbound volume (complete with silvery place-keeping ribbon) is a celebration of the production of the slim but plant-packed garden of Slater's London townhouse. As dedicated an organic gardener as he may be, Slater makes no pretensions to urban self-sufficiency in his smallish backyard. As he writes,

"I have sown somewhat more than I have reaped. But as somewhere to watch things grow, a place to tend and nurture, to sit and eat, to drink and think, to taste and smell, and most importantly to understand the unity of growing, cooking, and eating, it is a monumental success. At least it is to me."

Slater, a longtime columnist for The Observer and the author of 10 cookbooks, is known in this country (if he's known at all) for his two most personal books, The Kitchen Diaries, a week-by-week seasonal calendar of what he was cooking and eating at home, and the childhood memoir Toast--The Story of a Boy's Hunger. His writing style is vivid and individual without being exactly personal. Reading this book is like wandering though an idiosyncratically decorated house: this lamp, this shell, this book reveals taste and history more succinctly than any long-winded curriculum vitae.

Slater can wax rhapsodic as Alice Waters about the dewy-fresh beauties of homegrown veg. But like his countryman Fergus Henderson, author of the excellent (and drily humorous) The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, Slater has a well-honed wit and an unshakeable set of opinions about just about everything in and out of the kitchen, and he's not shy about telling us what he really thinks.

On spinach:

"When spinach is truly fresh, it squeaks as you rummage around in the pile, like the sound of wet Wellingtons on a rubber floor."

On carrots:

"Not for me the pile of buttered carrots on the plate. Too sweet, too orange, (too bloody cheerful more like it)."

On cauliflower:

"Sometimes I think it wouldn't bother me if I never saw one again."

On the box hedges surrounding his vegetable plots:

"Hedges, however neatly they frame your peas, beans, and swaying sunflowers, are also snail hotels, providing a home for hundreds of gastropods who come out at night, drink from your beer traps, then go on a drunken rampage."

Insults may be a cheap form of wit, but Slater also takes the time to point out the virtues of even his less-favorite things.

Despite the too-many snails who "have partied on [his] carefully nurtured seedlings," he's still a sucker for aesthetics. "I sometimes think the hedges would have gone long ago if it wasn't for the achingly beautiful sight of them covered in snow," he writes, and an accompanying photograph of their tidy snow-piled geometry proves his point.

Winter can also make even cauliflower worth eating. Just after slagging off this unloved brassica, he admits,"Yet I occasionally long for a simple white bowl of cauliflower cheese on a frosty day, especially when it has been made with love, and the sauce has been improved with bay and clove and the cheese is of the robust sort that makes veins on the roof of your mouth stand out." (And thank you, Nigel, for providing a new yardstick for judging cheese. "Ah, this Montgomery cheddar. Piquant, yes, but the veins on the roof of my mouth are unmoved.")

The book is part gardener's handbook, with growing tips and lists of his favorite, often heirloom, varieties to grow. There are useful lists of seasonings, accompaniments, and companions for each vegetable (cauliflower loves cream, caraway, juniper, anchovies, and gin), tips on harvesting, choosing, and storing, and lastly, delicious recipes for lovely-sounding things, like A Soup the Color of Marigolds (made from carrots and yellow tomatoes); An Extremely Moist Chocolate-Beet Cake with Creme Fraiche and Poppy Seeds; and Spinach, Melted Cheese, and Lightly Burned Toast. This is a vegetable cookbook, but not a vegetarian one; while many of the recipes are purely plant-based, there are plenty of dishes made to feature or accompany a whole steamed fish or a hunk of grilled lamb. The recipes are bold-flavored and straightforward, with a Middle Eastern touch there, a hit of Thai or Indian here, and some unmistakablly British comfort food (like that aforementioned cauliflower in cheese sauce, an English school-lunch dish if every there was one). It's a lot of how we eat now: lots of plants, geared towards the seasons, not too fussy, globally inspired. Moreish, I'd say.

Eggs from Tara Firma Farms

Happy Easter! And where better to spend this egg-centric holiday than Petaluma, land of butter & eggs? This pretty Sonoma town is worth a drive anytime, especially now while the surrounding hills are green and the cows contented.

Start your Sunday with brunch at Della Fattoria Bakery and Cafe. If you shop at the Ferry Plaza or Marin County farmers' markets, you've probably ogled Della Fattoria's big brown loaves many a time as you try to choose that week's purchase: pumpkin-seed or polenta? Meyer lemon-rosemary (my favorite) or olive? A square Pullman loaf for slicing and toasting, or a crunchy-crusted epi to rip and dunk?

At the heart of Della Fattoria's operation is a farm and bakery, where their breads are baked in wood-fired ovens. The farm doubles as a site for outdoor, communal "ranch dinners"; there's also a small cottage available for rent by the week or by the night.

Easter brunch menu at Della Fattoria

In downtown Petaluma, Della Fattoria runs a bakery-cafe that serves breakfast and lunch 7 days a week, plus dinner on Fridays. The menu shifts a little with inspiration and the seasons, but farm eggs, local meats, and bakery products are always front and center.

Polenta, asparagus, and egg at Della Fattoria Bakery & Cafe

This Sunday, you'll find eggs bennie (eggs Benedict), of course, made with poached ranch eggs, ham, and spring asparagus under a cloak of hollandaise sauce over husky whole-grain toast. Creamy polenta comes topped 3 ways: with braised artichokes, with Italian-style meatballs, or with asparagus, a poached ranch egg, and some rosettes of proscuitto, a lovely, luxurious way to start the day. Bigger appetites might start with fruit salad bathed in brown sugar and champagne, followed by scalloped potatoes with eggs and black-pig bacon, biscuits in gravy with maple-pecan sausage and poached eggs, or a hot pressed ham-and-Gruyere sandwich.

The room is high-ceilinged with walls the color of terra cotta and two long communal tables in the center, plus five smaller tables against the walls. Bouquets of sweet peas and ranunculus add a bright splash of color to each table, where diners share newspapers while kids gnaw on house-baked bagels. At the back is a pastry counter filled with croissants, bear claws, cookies, and tarts, plus a wall of tempting breads.

Enjoy yourself, sip that perfect cappuccino, but don't linger too long; it's time to take a scenic five-mile drive out of town, along meandering, bumpy but beautiful I Street, past horses, cows, and California poppy-studded green hills to Tara Firma Farms. If you're a farmers'-market shopper, you've probably been handed a flyer advertising their pasture-raised meat CSA program and weekend farm tours. Every weekend, from 10am-3pm, owners Craig and Tara Smith do on-the-hour walks around their property, where they're raising pigs, beef cattle, and chickens for both meat and eggs. (There's also a small market garden, three very friendly pet goats, and Roland, the farm dog.)

Craig and Tara started the farm in 2009, raising about 40 head of pasture-raised cattle who move around the farm daily, grazing on three to five acres a day. (Craig still has his day job as the owner of a large long-term-care insurance company; Tara left her job at the same company and now does much of the day-to-day farm management.) They gather about 500 eggs a day from some 700 hens, all of whom spend their days out in the fields, scratching, grazing, pecking, and laying fertile eggs of all sizes and colors. Staunch proponents of the Joel Salatin method, they practice rotational grazing for all their animals. "Everything is always on the move," said Craig, noting that adopting this system made "a huge difference" in revitalizing what had been worn-out, heavily overgrazed land.

Chicken at Tara Firma Farms

After meeting Olivia the sow and her 12 adorable, two-week-old pink-and-black piglets, we walked up to one of the chicken tractors, a shed on wheels kitted out with nesting boxes and secure predator-proof roosts for nighttime. The chickens are busy earning their keep: every straw-lined nesting box we peered into held a clutch of three or four still-warm eggs. It's prime egg-laying time right now, said Craig, as the days get longer and warmer after winter's molting season.

Olivia the sow and her piglets

Pointing out the pond stocked with fish (catfish and large-mouthed bass, for catch-and-release fishing) and encouraging everyone to come back for a hike, Craig said, "We want all our members to feel like this is their farm. We really want to help people understand where their food comes from."

About 80% of the farm's production is sold through its CSA program, which offers both meat and veggie shares; members can pick up boxes at the farm or through one of its 12 drop points between Santa Rosa and San Francisco. After the tour, visitors can browse through the small farm store, where fresh eggs and a small area of produce is on display, featuring a mixture of farm vegetables and produce from County Line, a nearby organic farm. But those in the know head straight for the freezer, where the farm's beef, chicken, and pork are packaged for sale.

As for me, I'm happy to go home with a box of souffle-ready eggs, perfect alongside some Della Fattoria toast.

Della Fattoria (The Cafe)
Address: Map
141 Petaluma Boulevard North
Petaluma, CA
Phone: (707) 763-0161
Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat: 6am-3pm, Fri: 6am-9pm, Sun: 9am-3pm
Twitter: @DellaFattoria
Facebook: Della Fattoria

Tara Firma Farms
Address: Map
3796 I Street, Ext
Petaluma, CA 94952
Phone: (707) 765-1202
Twitter: @TaraFirmaFarms
Facebook: Tara Firma Farms

Chloe and me, we were pretty much a 21st-century urban couple of a certain type. We met at a mock Iron Chef party that some friends of friends of mine put on—I think the theme was “Battle Matzoh,” with a team of out-of-work chefs throwing down the Streit's against a crew of laid-off CNET coders. The coders were winning when I spotted Chloe in a nurse’s outfit one size too small, drinking Manischewitz shots out of a tiki mug. Well, that was it for me. I’ve always had a soft spot for women in uniform who can hold their liquor.

It didn’t take long to convince her to leave the house she was sharing with 3 roommates on Cesar Chavez and move into my place in Oakland. I had a backyard, a Vitamix, a 3-year-old Saab, room for her cat and I always put the seat down, even when she was gone for the whole day at a yoga-and-goat-cheese-making retreat.

And we were pretty much in sync around most things. We’d recently switched our coffee from Ritual Roasters to Four Barrel to Sightglass. With their roastery in Williamsburg and their farmers' market lockdown in Temescal, Blue Bottle was over, Chloe insisted, pulling her curly hair into two Dr. Seussy-looking pigtails on the top of her head, and I had to agree, although secretly, I’d been kind of looking forward to being able to get one of their insane New Orleans iced coffees to wake me up for the drive home after a Sunday of Frisbee and Tecates in Dolores Park, even when it became obvious that their generator-driven coup wasn’t going to happen.

Since we both worked in Emeryville, we got together to eat lunch together almost every other day, sharing leftover jicama-kale salad or hitting up Primos Parrilla if our supply ran low. Sometimes when she was feeling cranky I’d walk over to her office and leave a couple of cupcakes from the Cupkates truck—one for her and one that she maybe didn’t have to know about for the cute maybe-lesbian-but-maybe-not receptionist with the mermaid tattoo and the skateboard kicked up at the back of her desk.

Chloe used to be vegan in college, but like most girls, she was just waiting for someone to feed her a really good pork chop wrapped in bacon and convince her that we could be ethical omnivores together. She’s still pretty skinny though; I’d like to go in on getting a whole pig with the neighbors down the street but I don’t know what our actual capacity for jowl and trotter might be. It’s not like I’m Chris Cosentino or anything, who could probably propose to a woman with a fried calf brain and a lamb tongue and still get lucky.

So we’d had our first anniversary last month at a Stag Dinner in her friend Chicken John’s art space, down the street from the Victorian where she used to live. Pretty cool, and Chloe didn’t flinch at the oyster starter or the second course of squid stuffed with blood sausage. But now her birthday was coming up, on April 1st, and I had to come up with something to top that, without tapping into what we’re saving for going to Bali in December.

That’s when I saw it on my Twitter feed: another underground restaurant, this one by Guerrilla Greens. I hadn’t heard of them, but I figured they were probably part of the East Bay's roving, ever-shifting band of backyard-chickening, rooftop-beekeeping, front-yard-chard-growers. They made me feel old, they were so earnest and gluten-free in their muddy Carharts, foraged lemons rolling around the back of their pickup trucks. But at least a couple of these types could usually be counted on to have worked the line at Ubuntu or done a stage at Saison. I signed us up.

Ok, so maybe I should have seen something weird right then. See, they didn’t ask for an email address or a Paypal account, just my address. In fact, there wasn’t any mention of money at all, which was definitely strange, since usually these dinners are, you know, pretty expensive, especially given that the bathroom's usually down 2 flights of stairs and the main course takes three hours to come out and then it's something like three little pieces of raw goat meat in argan oil covered in flowers.

But I wanted to convince myself that maybe this was something really new. Maybe they were trying some kind of different slow-money business model with kale donated by Novella Carpenter. Not that I wanted us digging into platefuls of cougar-chomped lamb, but why couldn’t there be a new post-capitalism paradigm at work? Underground restaurant, underground biz model, right?

Until I woke up on Monday. Shower, shave, go into the kitchen to steam up an almond-milk double latte for Chloe. Except that the stove’s not there. The refrigerator is gone, too, which is okay because we stopped keeping our coffee beans in the freezer after the guy at Sightglass told us how that shocks the beans. And I usually make the almond milk myself in the Vitamix, so I still should be able to make Chloe her coffee. Except these Guerrilla Greens—and really, who else could it be?—have taken everything with a plug. The espresso machine, the juicer, the toaster, even the crockpot given to us not-really-ironically from Chloe’s mom.

There was firewood piled where the television, stereo, and Netflix envelopes had been. They’d left the iPad, which was nice, but after all, they'd need the Twitter feed to explain themselves. Even without the carefully calibrated fair-trade, shade-grown buzz I’d become so used to every morning, I was beginning to understand.

We weren’t going to their restaurant. Their restaurant was coming to us. We were becoming their restaurant. Their restaurant was inside us.

I picked up the iPad. There, on their Twitter feed, was their paradigm: THE NEW URBAN HOMESTEADING. BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

My hands were shaking. I did my yoga breathing. If only they'd left us some matches, we could still make pour-over coffee.

While I crumpled up old copies of the East Bay Express to get the fire going, Chloe came in from the backyard, a baby goat in her arms and a chard leaf caught in her pigtails.

“This..is...the…cutest…thing…I’ve..ever…seen,” she breathed, snuggling her chin between the kid’s floppy little ears. “I’m going back outside to get us some milk for breakfast.”

“But, Chloe,” I whined. “What about your lactose intolerance?” But she didn’t answer; looking out, I could see her head already tucked tightly against the furry brown side of one of the four dwarf goats wandering through the backyard, nibbling the oak branches and trimming down the blackberry brambles. "Aren't you going to be late for Hot Zumba?"

“It’s like squeezing a hairy water balloon!” she called back, as a family of quails skittered over to the compost pile, followed by three seagulls and five high-stepping pigeons. A snake lolled on one of the three discarded, empty computer monitors which were now filled with honeycomb and a swarm of slightly angry-sounding bees. A bag of clay kitty litter and a bale of straw sat in a back corner. I knew, without looking, that the next tweet would be cryptic instructions for building a cob oven.

I still need my coffee every morning, but besides that, it’s not so bad. I know what to do now. Chloe freecycled a hand-cranked coffee grinder, and we filter it through one of her old American Apparel tank tops. We’re naked now, most of the time; it just feels better, especially after a whole bunch of snails moved into the shower. We sleep on the moss under the oak tree; our futon's under the porch, growing our first crop of enoki mushrooms. Chloe says we should have our friends over for escargots in goat butter next week.

Did you know that snake makes an awesome curry? You should try it, you know. Just get on our Twitter feed. We'll tell you how.

Happy spring! The vernal equinox, daylight savings time, and the Jewish holiday of Purim may all be upon us, but brrrr! With umbrella-destroying winds, tornado watches along the coast, and socks-drenching rain, it's feeling much more like winter than balmy spring. Oh well--remember all those sunbathing days we got back in January?

Like most of us, bees prefer to stay inside where it's warm and dry on days like this, snuggling together in a big bee-ball to keep themselves, and especially their queen, nice and toasty. But for humans, the show must go on, and so CUESA's honey celebration at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market on Saturday, March 19th went on even in the teeth of blowing rain. Once a month from February through November, CUESA will be hosting a celebration for a different fruit, vegetable, or product, featuring tastings, ask the farmer (or producer) sessions, and a variety of cooking demonstrations by local chefs and cookbook authors. Last month was citrus; this month, for the first time, was honey.

First up behind the counter was Margo True, food editor of Sunset magazine and the author (along with her staff) of Sunset's latest book, The One-Block Feast. The book, which comes out next week, came out of a series of homesteading projects undertaken by Sunset over the last couple of years. "We wanted to get back to the Lane brothers' original vision for Sunset, which was as a laboratory for Western living," said True. With a spacious garden, room for bees and chickens, the ability to get a "milk share" from a cow living at a nearby farm, and lots of kitchen room for testing, True and her team set out to see if they could make or source everything--even flour and sea salt--from as close to the magazine's Menlo Park campus as possible. The results were sometimes spectacular, sometimes frustrating, but all of it got incorporated into the book. True tried to be as honest as possible, promising that they "definitely wrote about what bombed," too.

However, on this gray morning, True was here to show off two recipes that promise big payback for not too much effort. A custard-based honey ice cream, made with honey from the magazine's own hives, had a suave, salted-caramel edge, thanks to a drizzle of honey on top and a sprinkle of sea salt. It's more lusciously creamy than sweet, but the honey flavor still comes through. Even though it was hardly ice cream weather, the crowd snapped up every sample and scraped the cups clean.

Next came strawberry jam, made of nothing more than ripe early-season berries, honey, and a dash of lemon juice. Rather than cook it on the stovetop, where the direct heat could scorch the mixture, True spread out her chunky berry puree in a thin layer on a baking sheet, then revealed her secret: a long, gentle bake in a slow oven, which would gently condense it down while preserving the berries' ripe flavor. Spread on slices of Acme bread, the finished jam did taste remarkably fresh, with a soft consistency somewhere between jam and compote, perfect for a yogurt parfait topped with granola and a handful of fresh berries.

When I was researching my own book about honey a decade ago, Helene Marshall and her husband, beekeeper Spencer Marshall of Marshall's Farm Honey, took me around their bee house, let me scoop a fingerful of eucalyptus honey straight out of the comb, and even let their bees model for photographs. Now, ten years later, Helene is still talking up the beauty of bees and the importance of local honey (and local pollinators), and finally, people are ready to hear what she has to say. Speaking about the recent resurgence of interest in backyard beekeeping, she said, "The biggest, best, and most important thing to come out of this is that people have respect for bees and beekeepers now, and a real appreciation of honey. People realize that we need those bees!"

Helene Marshall of Marshall's Farm Honey, offering samples of Fairmont Hotel

In front of the audience with J.W. Foster, executive chef of San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, Helene talked about their latest project, putting hives on the Fairmont's roof. "I'm San Francisco born and raised, went to my junior and senior proms at the Fairmont, so it feels like our bees are going home. They can hitch a ride on a cable car...it's so San Francisco, I love it!" On warm days, the bees like to nip up to the penthouse level to sip from the fountains, getting a free look at that $15,000-a-night view.

So far, the Fairmont is hosting four hives, all very healthy. Last week's harvest yielded 60 pounds of honey, with a light, floral-herbal taste and an early-spring hint of eucalyptus. "This honey was harvested last week, extracted a couple of days ago and bottled this morning," said Helene.

Marshall's Farm Fairmont Hotel honey

With a lot of fresh honey at his disposal, Foster and his kitchen staff are experimenting to see what they can use it for. Their latest creation is an unctuous duck-egg aioli with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and a touch of honey, used to dress chopped raw beef tartare with stovetop-smoked onions and cress salad on walnut crostini.

Ice cream, beef tartare...finally, the last chef, Brandon Jew of Bar Agricole, promised something hot, a hot toddy made with brandy, chartreuse, honey from Alan Hawkins' apiaries, bitters, and lemon peel. He made some mostarda, too, his spin on Bologna's favorite tart-sweet relish, a late-winter version made from brandied, spiced raisins mixed with a honey-based Seville orange marmalade, and served over a slice of pork pate. A few sips, and hey, was that a ray of sunshine coming down?