All We Can Eat

How civilized does this look? (Lynn Brownlie)

In my column this week, I discuss old recipes and old tastes; in particular, the original recipe for the Aviation Cocktail as found in Hugo Ensslin's 1917 book, "Recipes for Mixed Drinks" (just reissued in a lovely facsimile edition by Mud Puddle Books).

As recently as two years ago, there were two hurdles to making a real Aviation: (1) the original recipe was not widely known, and (2) the purple-hued, floral-scented creme de violette was not available. Now you can buy Rothman & Winter brand Creme de Violette, imported by Haus Alpenz.

But another purple-hued, violet-scented liqueur also was an early-20th-century staple, and for many of us, it has become sort of the Holy Grail of lost liqueurs. 

The name is Creme Yvette. I've mentioned it before, in a column about the competitive game of Liquor Store Archaeology that my brother and I play. It's often called for in classic cocktail recipes, particularly in the Blue Moon and the Aviation (keep reading).

Well, it seems the wait is about over.

Seafood finally did in Tennille Middleton, the only Washington area cheftestant in this season of "Hell's Kitchen" on Fox TV.

She made it as far as the final four and had a great start at the beginning of Tuesday night’s show, but at the end she was the target of chef-host Gordon Ramsay’s standard kiss-off: “Take off your jacket and leave Hell’s Kitchen.”

After winning the individual competition at the show’s start, she ran into trouble at dinner, first with rubbery scallops and then with fish that seemed to have just about everything wrong with it.

“Tonight was the worst night I’ve had in Hell’s Kitchen, and I’m devastated,” she told the camera during one of the interview segments.

She rebounded impressively near the end of service, but it was too late. Middleton, 28, the executive chef at Sweetwater Tavern in Falls Church, was sent packing.

Ramsay had kind words for her as she handed over her chef's jacket.

“I am so proud of you,” he said. “You fought back like I’ve never seen anybody in Hell’s Kitchen fight back. The greatest comeback. Never forget that.”

-- Jane Touzalin

A new market is headed for the Woodrow Wilson Plaza of the Ronald Reagan Building. (James M Thresher -- The Washington Post)

When it rains, it pours. With just weeks left in many farmers markets' seasons, downtown Washington is going to get another farmers market -- this time at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

The General Services Administration is funding the new market, called Capital Harvest on the Plaza. Equinox co-owners Todd and Ellen Gray are consulting, bringing onboard a host of local producers; 18 vendors are scheduled. The market will open twice this fall: on Friday Oct. 16, and Friday, Nov. 13, from 1 to 5 p.m. (Festivities will kick off at 12:30 next Friday.) In the spring of 2010, if all goes according to plan, the market will be weekly.

A feature of this market will be prepared foods, ready for workers to take home, according to Ellen Gray.

Tennille gets yet another earful from Gordon Ramsay during an episode of "Hell's Kitchen." She is one of just four remaining cheftestants. Will she go home tonight? (Fox)

Watching a photo of your face go up in flames on nationwide TV has got to be unsettling. Whether that will happen to Tennille Middleton tonight is a secret she won’t divulge.

She can’t, of course. Cheftestants on Fox’s "Hell's Kitchen" and other such shows practically agree to be boiled in oil if they spoil the suspense. But Middleton, the executive chef at Sweetwater Tavern in Falls Church, can discuss some things about the show. And what she most wants to talk about, it seems, is her personality.

“I’m a pretty lovable person,” she insists.

That brash, foul-mouthed, f-word-slinging Tennille we see during the interviews on the show?

When you're in the market for plums -- one of the main components of tomorrow's recipe -- cookbook author Aliza Green advises buying fruit that is neither too soft nor too hard. Ripen it at room temperature till the skin loses its shine. Ripened plums can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Pork and Plums
4 servings

1 tablespoon canola oil

3 or 4 (1 1/2 pounds) boneless center-cut pork chops, trimmed of excess fat, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches thick

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

4 medium shallots

6 firm black plums (about 1 3/4 pounds)

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar or sauvignon blanc vinegar

1 or 2 tablespoons turbinado sugar (may substitute raw sugar or 1 tablespoon light brown sugar)

Leaves from 2 sprigs thyme

Leaves from 2 stems flat-leaf parsley, for garnish (optional)

Questions? Bring 'em on.

-- Bonnie Benwick

Editor in chief Ruth Reichl was "stunned" by the news about Gourmet. (Richard Drew -- Associated Press)

The online world was alternately "shocked" and "saddened" by the news that Gourmet magazine was, as several writers put it, toast.

It seemed that every writer (even ones who had never had the "honor" of writing for the august food magazine) had something to say about the 68-year-old publication. In one hour, there were 4,200 tweets on Gourmet's demise.

The debate, if there was one, seemed to center on whether Gourmet deserved its violent end. (Editor in chief Ruth Reichl was said to be "stunned" by the news.)

On the whole, the answer seemed to be no.

Fromage fort tastes great when it's broiled on baguette slices, top, or straight from the crock, above. (Domenica Marchetti)

Notes from the cheese world: A Canadian goat’s-milk cheese named Cinderella (Le Cendrillon), was named best cheese in the world at the 21st annual World Cheese Awards.

The log-shaped, ash-covered cheese from Quebec beat out 2,440 other entries from 34 countries to claim the coveted Grand Champion title in the world’s largest cheese competition. It was the first time ever that a Canadian cheese won the top spot.

Sad news for food lovers today: Conde Nast announced that after 68 years, it will close Gourmet. The decision, chief executive Chuck Townsend said in a memo, is part of an effort to "narrow our focus to titles with the greatest prospects for long-term growth." (Read the full memo here.)

The news came as a surprise to many (including me). For months, there had been speculation that the luxury publisher would shutter either Gourmet or Bon Appetit, which was redesigned in 2008. But most bets were on the latter. Ruth Reichl, Gourmet's editor in chief, is a powerful brand in the food world. Gourmet's mix of recipes plus food politics and offbeat travel stories was unique in food publishing.

Townsend said the magazine will cease monthly publication but that Conde Nast remains "committed to the brand." It will continue to back Gourmet's book publishing and television production arms. Gourmet's recipes will remain on Epicurious.com. No word on the fate of Gourmet's excellent Web site, Gourmet.com.

What do you think? Did Conde Nast make the right choice? Will you miss Gourmet?

-- Jane Black

Update: Mediaite has posted a memo from Memo from Drew Schutte, senior vice president and chief revenue officer at Conde Nast Digital, that indicates that Gourmet.com will continue to publish at least until the end of the year.

The cold frame at Green Spring Gardens. (Adrian Higgins -- The Washington Post)

The days shorten, the weather turns a little crisp and the first leaves begin to drop, but the vegetable garden at Green Spring Gardens has weeks and months of bounty ahead of it. The cold frame, fashioned from boards and black plastic tubes, is a machine that will allow vegetable harvests through the long fall and into the dead of winter. When the weather turns cold, the young cool-season vegetables within it will be protected from killing freezes by a plastic row cover that allows water and light to penetrate but raises temperatures inside by as much as 10 degrees. You could achieve the same results using clear plastic, but you would have to vent it on mild winter days to prevent overheating.

The carrots were sown about a month ago and are now robust, though not ready for harvesting. They take about 2 1/2 months in the fall (earlier for the baby stage) but can be stored in the ground through the winter and taken as needed. Cindy Brown and the crew have sown arugula and spinach, both of which can be taken at the baby stage through the fall or allowed to mature in March and April. They have also sown fava beans, which will be harvested in mid-spring.

This week's bounty from Great Country Farms. (Sarah Hamaker)

It’s bound to happen to members of community-supported agriculture programs: Sometimes you just draw a blank when it comes to a particular vegetable, and for whatever reason – maybe you’re fresh out of time or energy – you just can’t bring yourself to try to find a recipe for it.

That’s what happened this week to one of our CSA Scouts, who ended up having to waste some of her greens. I can identify, because every so often the pace gets the best of me and, as I’ve said before, my crisper becomes my rotter. That’s one of the reasons I’m so in love with cabbage and potatoes: They stick around for weeks on end without looking any worse for wear. Sometimes, I need that kind of time; how about you?

Fellow CSA-ers out there, do you ever find yourself wasting food? If not, what are your secrets?

While you think of pithy comments, here are the CSA Scout reports for the week:

Michelle Obama and White House chef Sam Kass have actively supported farmers markets such as the new Vermont Avenue market. (AP -- Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Growth in the number of U.S. farmers markets is accelerating, according to figures to be released later today by Department of Agriculture. Over the past year, the number has grown by 589 markets, or 12.6 percent, from 4,685 in 2008 to 5,274 in 2009.

The numbers are especially dramatic because they represent a single year; the last time the USDA charted farmers market growth, it was for the two-year period between 2006 and 2008, when the number grew by 6.8 percent. "The increasing growth each year really underscores the public's interest in locally grown food and connecting with their farmers," Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan said in an interview. "It's good news."

The growing interest in farmers markets is driven by consumer concerns about food safety and a renewed focus on healthful eating. Last month, the Department of Agriculture launched an initiative dubbed "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food," designed to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity for small farmers.

Michelle Obama also has drawn attention to markets and the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables. This spring, the first lady became the first since Eleanor Roosevelt to plant a garden on the White House lawn. Last month, she helped to christen the new market on Vermont Avenue, several blocks from the White House.

There were just 1,755 farmers markets when the Agriculture Department first began tracking them in 1994. USDA officials are hopeful that new initiatives, such as Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, will help increase the number of markets and access to fresh, local food.

"Maybe I need resources from USDA to aggregate products to bring to the city. Maybe I need help figuring out how to help [those on public assistance] pay at the market," Merrigan said. "We need to reorient what we do to support this burgeoning interest on the farmer and the consumer end."

Merrigan also is hopeful that the growing number of farmers markets will help entice children to eat more fruits and vegetables, though she noted that there is not enough research to make a direct link. In her own nutrition research at Tufts University, where she worked before coming to Washington, she saw that children who worked in gardens at school were more willing to try and more likely to consume fruits and vegetables.

"Farmers markets are just one small piece," she said. "But we're excited about them."

-- Jane Black

Kaffir lime leaf. (Monica Bhide)

True story: I called a certain organic grocery store to ask whether it carried kaffir lime leaves. The response: “Is that some kind of a cleaner?”

I figured the employee on the other end of the line had not understood me, so I decided to try the store in person. “Why do you want them?” asked a store clerk. “Don’t you know it’s illegal to sell them in Virginia?”

Really?

I don’t think I have ever encountered so much misinformation about an herb. Granted, for many of us kaffir lime leaves are not as commonplace as mint. But in the Eastern part of the world, they are part and parcel of everyday cooking.

Starbucks was hit hard when the Great Recession made consumers question their $4 lattes. But the Economist reports that the coffee behemoth may be making a comeback. Coffee drinkers appear to like 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, a spin-off "inspired by Starbucks." So do investors: This year, the stock is up 120 percent, compared to about 25 percent for the S&P index.

Metrocurean's Amanda McClements reports on a potential boon for DC's street cart scene: a new business, Food Chain, that cooks up a range of creative dishes such as Caribbean bean burritos, coconut rice and, soon, Thai food, and delivers it to existing carts.

Think culinary gimmicks are a modern invention? A four-month archeological dig in Rome has revealed what experts think are the remains of a rotating restaurant. Guardian blogger Felicity Cloake follows up by putting gastronomic tackiness in context.

Apparently, the high fructose corn syrup industry is mad and isn't going to take it any more. This week, the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom launched a TV ad campaign that features actors dressed as an ear of corn, a sugar cube and a honey bear standing in a police line-up. The "victim" in the commercial is unable to identify the sweetener responsible for making him "gain the weight" because, the ad says, all three sugars are nutritionally the same.

-- Jane Black

Barton Seaver is rocketing to national stardom. (Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

Congratulations to Barton Seaver. In its November issue, Esquire Magazine will name him "chef of the year" and Blue Ridge, Seaver's farm-to-table restaurant in Glover Park, one of the best new restaurants in the country.

Seaver's magnetism is strong. In May, I profiled Seaver and his quest to redefine and simplify sustainability. "I'm not trying to save the fish," the chef, formerly of sustainable seafood restaurant Hook, told me. "I'm trying to save dinner."

But is Seaver really the country's best new chef? This award puts him in the same category as Dallas's Stephan Pyles, New York's Michael Psilakis (whom we will write about later this month) and San Francisco's Dominique Crenn. Esquire critic John Mariani calls him "a voice of reason at a time when priggish, competing factions – from vegans to slow-food zealots – deal more in polemics than real solutions." Among the "masterful creations" that Mariani praises are Seaver's "aged country ham, a perfect chicken potpie with hot rosemary-flecked biscuits, and sweet-potato fritters with honey mustard."

Local critics seem to disagree.

Pumpkin Sandwich Cookies. (James M. Thresher for The Washington Post)

Pumpkin is the king of autumn. I love it almost enough to forgive Mother Nature for the change of season. It is my lone comfort when I have to pack away the sandals, T-shirts and wrap skirts. One of the few silver linings I see in fall and winter is baking with this amazing squash. My house is always inviting and cozy when the warm scent of pumpkin is wafting from the oven.

These Pumpkin Sandwich Cookies, from a Land O' Lakes recipe, are the perfect combination of caky cookie and cinnamon-cream cheese filling. Be sure to use pure canned pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling. (For other pumpkin-infused inspirations, try my family's Apple Butter Pumpkin Pie or Ev's Pumpkin Bread.)

These cookie sandwiches are a little more involved than making simple drop cookies, but not as much work as making a cake that requires more care and diligence in mixing the batter. They're especially good for packing in lunch boxes, as long as there is a chilled drink or ice pack to keep the cream cheese filling cool.

As you may know, I usually don't bake small. (Remember my Man-Catcher Brownies.) Dainty is sweet, but why bother when you're just going to eat three of the sweet wee things? You can make these bite-size, as directed in the original recipe or you can make them 2-inchers, as I did. Directions for both ways are in the following recipe.

-- Leigh Lambert

Washington's own Tennille Middleton squeaked through another round of Fox's "Hell's Kitchen" last night, acknowledging that she dodged a bullet to make it into the final four. It wasn't so much that she was great, just not as bad as the two who got nominated for expulsion. (For the record, chef-host Gordon Ramsay gave Suzanne the boot, and Ariel was allowed to stay.)

So it gets even tougher from here on in. But Tennille, as she's known on the show -- last names aren't used -- has shown a pretty tough persona during this season's run, and plenty of bloggers and chat room pundits have her making it into the final round. Of the remaining cheftestants, Ariel is inconsistent, and Dave has an injury that threatens to do him in. Kevin is quietly competent and seems a shoo-in for the finals.

Tennille, who has been the executive chef at Sweetwater Tavern in Merrifield for more than four years, landed her spot on the show after tryouts late last year. Which brings up some more breaking news: Casting for the next "Hell's Kitchen" season opened Monday. Fox says it's looking for "America's culinary elite who not only have the SKILLS, but the STAMINA to cook alongside the infamous CHEF GORDON RAMSAY." Their capital letters, not mine. There's a 10-page application form and a slew of qualifications that must be met. Then there's an audition process. From what Tennille told me, it's grueling but worth it. Care to try?

You'll hear more about Tennille on this blog next Tuesday before the next episode. Stay tuned.

-- Jane Touzalin

Did you know that just by asking a great question during the Food section's weekly Free Range chat, you can become the proud winner of a fab new cookbook? That's just one of the benefits of joining us every Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m., when we field queries, toss out information, bat around ideas and try to hit a home run. Come to think of it, our percentages may be better than the Nats'.

We also have pinch hitters. Today's guest, ready to discuss kids' lunches, will be Lisa Barnes of Petit Appetit.

Despite our best efforts, we can never manage to answer every question during the hour. Here's one we couldn't get to last week:

Cauliflower: I recently tried baking cauliflower and it was . . . not good. Should it be parboiled first or something? I used a low temp and tested it every 20 minutes or so until it was soft, but it took forever and was close to tasteless.

Forty minutes is pretty quick for this Sirloin and Black Bean Chili, start to finish. The trick here is to cook the steak separately then add it just before serving; the meat stays tender this way.

As long as you're headed for the checkout lane, pick up some baked tortilla chips or fixings to make corn bread.

1 1/2 pounds sirloin steak (can be in 2 or 3 pieces)

4 to 6 teaspoons chili powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 medium sweet onion

1 medium green bell pepper

2 medium cloves garlic

1 small jalapeño pepper

5 or 6 ripe tomatoes (medium-size)

Two 15-ounce cans of black beans, preferably Eden brand

1 tablespoon olive oil

Leaves from 6 to 8 stems cilantro

Questions? We're here to help.

-- Bonnie Benwick

Flying Dog Brewery's Justin Livengood, Stephanie Kerchner, Josh Mishell, Rachael Tremaine and Bob Malone with their medals in Denver. (Flying Dog Brewery)

Last Saturday afternoon I was sipping on a Dogtoberfest Marzen at Das Best Oktoberfest at National Harbor. “Delicious,” I pronounced it. And it was the only beer there that made me go back for seconds. “But it’s got too a little too many hops for the style.”

Shows how much I know. About the same time, the brewers of this beer were stepping to the podium to receive a gold medal for the brew in the “German Style Märzen” category at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.

Flying Dog's Horn Dog Barley Wine, Dogtoberfest Marzen and Gonzo Imperial Porter all won gold medals. (Flying Dog Brewery)

The festival bills itself as the world’s largest commercial beer competition: This year’s tally saw 3,308 beers from 457 breweries competing for gold, silver and bronze medals in 78 categories. Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, Md., scored a grand slam: In addition to the gold medal for its Dogtoberfest, the company won top honors for its Gonzo Imperial Porter (Imperial Stout category) and Horn Dog Barley Wine (Aged Beer), plus a silver for its whiskey-barrel-aged Gonzo (Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer).

The slew of medals earned the company and brewer Bob Malone the honor Mid-Size Brewing Company of the Year.

All Saint-Marcellin really needs is a good baguette. (Domenica Marchetti)

I guess it is a good thing I am a sucker for packaging. Otherwise I might have walked right by the little round of Saint-Marcellin. But it was tucked so perfectly inside its tiny blue terra cotta pot that I couldn’t stop my hand from grabbing it and putting it in my shopping cart.

At $7.99 for 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of cheese, my impulsive purchase did not come cheap. But it was a worthwhile splurge. Saint-Marcellin is considered one of the best cheeses produced in the Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France.

Its “intensely nutty (imagine black walnuts) and rustic flavor combined with an unctuous texture represent to me the very essence of France,” writes Steven Jenkins in his "Cheese Primer" (Workman Publishing, 1996).

Indeed, Saint-Marcellin is a soft-ripened, pasteurized cow’s-milk cheese with a rind so delicate that, once you puncture it with a knife or a spoon, it practically melts into the runny interior paste. That crock, you see, serves a purpose.

The cheese is at its runniest when it is fairly young, and in fact it should be enjoyed within a month or two of production, as it loses its extravagantly silky texture and gooeyness as it ages. Its flavor is reminiscent of good brie, but with lots more character. It tastes, as Jenkins describes, of black walnuts, as well as mushrooms and earth. It is buttery, but with a slightly bitter finish.

All of these characteristics make it — to me, at least — a perfect cheese to enjoy on a crisp early-fall afternoon. The first time I bought Saint-Marcellin, I served it with ripe Black Mission figs, which I sliced in half and arranged on a plate, with the crock of cheese in the center. The second time I decided I wanted nothing more than a fresh baguette, slightly warm, to accompany the cheese. I let the cheese sit out for a couple of hours and by the time I served it, it was so runny a spoon was required to scoop it onto the bread.

(Yes, I splurged twice. But now I have two baby crocks in my pantry!)

What is your most recent cheese discovery?

-- Domenica Marchetti

Rose Levy Beranbaum, chuckling her way through a challenging demonstration. (Bonnie Benwick – The Washington Post)

Pound for pound, Saturday's 2009 National Book Festival on the Mall was mightier than Baltimore’s 14th annual book festival, which was held Friday through Sunday. For cookbook fans, though, Charm City was the place to be. (The Mall event seems to host fewer cookbook authors each year; no public sampling is allowed at food demos, so maybe that’s a factor. Boo to that.)

Baltimore’s event put on 22 food-related presentations over the course of three days, including Ingrid Hoffmann of Food Network’s “Simply Delicioso,” Tara Mataraza Desmond, author of “Almost Meatless,” and Dale DeGroff of “The Essential Cocktail.” Some lasted a full 90 minutes, not counting the book signing afterward – with lots of sampling.

At Green Spring Gardens in Northern Virginia, a cart of greenhouse goodies for fall planting. (Adrian Higgins -- The Washington Post)

Anyone who thinks the veggie garden goes away in the fall hasn't been paying attention. In Washington, a productive vegetable garden can work year-round. Garlic, onions, kale and spinach winter over quite happily, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. The autumn garden is a blend of old and new: old, in the way that long maturing vegetables such as winter squash are ripening their fruit, and new in that there is still time for putting in hardy greens. Radish seed sown now will mature by Halloween.

The cart is loaded with greenhouse-grown seedlings ready for planting, and includes kale, cabbage, lettuces and fennel. Lettuces will take a few degrees of frost, cabbages and kale will take a fair few more. Arugula can be sown directly in the garden or in pots now for a long fall harvest. It would have been smart to sow carrot seed a month ago, but you could still do that and get baby carrots for Thanksgiving as well as the prospect of carrots through the winter (with a protective straw mulch).

The heat of September is still coaxing the gorgeous creamy yellow blossoms of the okra. Cindy Brown at Green Spring Gardens thinks people should plant it ornamentally as a substitute for its relative, the hollyhock. Hollyhocks get beaten down by disease and look awful at this time of year. The okra is looking fresh and clean, and has the added benefit of producing the edible pods. We think of peppers as summer vegetables, but their true season is early fall.

CSA bounty from Good Fortune Farm, Bull Run Mountain Farm and Great Country Farms. (Betsy Bajwa, Sharyn Fitzgerald, Sarah Hamaker)

Farm subscriptions are starting to take on the taste of early fall, which is natural because, well, it’s early fall. So besides the potatoes that I continue to covet, some community-supported agriculture program members are getting apples and sweet potatoes, while corn, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers – the stars of summer – continue to appear. It’s a welcome thing, because sooner or later they’ll be gone.

I might not be getting potatoes in my Karl’s Farm delivery, but this week I did get another of my fall favorites: butternut squash. And just in time, as I’m testing recipes that use it for my next Cooking for One column.

Here's what other CSA Scouts (the three stalwarts who weren't on vacation this week) are reporting:

Aperol Spice, a cocktail made with clove syrup. (Monica Bhide)

Unfortunately, my very first memory of cloves is associated with pain. It was excruciating. I must have been about 10, with a horrid toothache. My father wrapped two cloves in some cotton and told me to bite on it with the tooth that hurt. Ouch. I did, and a few minutes later the pain subsided enough for me to feel human again.

Luckily, other people in this world have kinder, gentler memories of this lovely spice. “My mother loved any kind of spice cookie with cloves in the recipe. I think I inherited that from her,” says Karen Adler, one-half of the BBQ Queens (with Judith Fertig) whose newest cookbook is “300 Big & Bold BBQ & Grilling Recipes” (Robert Rose, 2009). “As I began to bake, I would do combinations of cinnamon and cloves for more flavor. I also like to pickle olives, and a small bunch of cloves in the pickling juice adds a wonderful earthy dimension of flavor. When I began barbecuing, I found that cloves added to barbecue rubs or sauces added a very nice depth of flavor.”

And you thought a water tasting was weird. In San Francisco, writer Anne Zimmerman reports in Culinate how she tasted, OK smelled, dirt to see if the food that came from it had similar flavors. The answer: Yes.

The AP's Ryan Foley looks at Wisconsin farmers' backlash against author Michael Pollan, who spoke in a stadium usually "reserved for presidents and rock stars."

At Atlantic Food, Eleanor Barkhorn ponders chef empires and asks: When does a chef stop being a chef? "Does a chef belong in the kitchen, and does he become something else once he expands his 'empire' elsewhere?" she writes. "Or are television shows, cookbooks, and more a beneficial part of a chef's creative development?"

In this week's New Yorker, Susan Orlean examines our obsession with backyard chickens and her own attempts to raise them in an Eglu plastic coop. (Subscription required for the article but you can always watch the video.)

-- Jane Black

Volunteers glean corn for the needy at Parker Farms. (Bread for the City)

The economic outlook may be improving, but local food pantries are still struggling. Demand is up. So is the pressure to offer more fresh fruits and vegetables that often cost more than canned varieties and processed foods.

Bread for the City is solving the problem through an innovative gleaning program. Each week, between 10 and 25 volunteers visit a local farm to gather fresh produce: cucumbers, corn, cherries, apples, broccoli, even kiwis that would otherwise be thrown away.

Since July, the non-profit has collected more than 25,000 pounds of produce and saved $20,000 it would have otherwise spent on canned fruits and vegetables. By the end of the growing season, it hopes to save $60,000.

Whole Orange-Poppy Seed Cake. (James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post)

Inspired by a recent Free Range chatter who asked about kicking a cooking rut, I thumbed through some old cookbooks of mine. My suggestion had been to take stock of recipes already on hand instead of surfing the Web or buying food magazines. Most of us have plenty of material to choose from in the cookbooks on our shelves at home; I'll admit I have some recipe collections I have NEVER cooked from (for shame!).

One baking book that falls into this category is "The Sweet Melissa Baking Book," by Melissa Murphy (Viking Studio, 2008). I had brought it home with the best of intentions. When I did at last crack it open, her Whole Orange-Poppy Seed Cake caught my attention immediately. There's something appealing about throwing a piece of fruit, peel and all, into the food processor to become part of the batter.

After weeks of trying different strategies for my experiments in the live tweeting of "Top Chef: Las Vegas," I think I found the one that works. Tonight at 10, I'll be tweeting my snarkiest best, complete with nicknames old (BroVo = the Brothers Voltaggio; Webelo = Mattin) and new (Perhaps Kevin is Scruffy, Eli is Squiggy and Jennifer is Saucy?). And I'll do it from the comfort of a new Twitter feed, @WaPoFoodLive. That way I can clog the feed and post spoilers to my heart's content, knowing that only the forewarned will be playing along.

As always, follow in the space below or catch up afterward.

-- Joe Yonan

Harvested apples, waiting to be turned into Calvados at the Roger Groult distillery. (Jean-Roger Groult)

In my column today, I once again recommend trying Calvados as a cocktail ingredient this fall, both in drinks like the Jack Rose or Apple Brandy Old-Fashioned and also as the perfect after-dinner sipper.

Calvados, for those who didn't catch my column on apple spirits last year, is a brandy produced from apples in Normandy. It is governed by an AOC, the French quality standard for agricultural products from particular geographical areas. Within the broad Calvados AOC, however, there is an appellation called Pays d'Auge that is considered to produce the very best quality. Calvados is made from predominantly bitter and bittersweet cider (not eating) apple varieties that are native to Normandy, and all of it must be aged at least two years. In Pays d'Auge, the rules are a bit stricter, and all of the spirit from there must be double distilled in an alembic pot still from cider that has fermented for at least six weeks.

Happy Wednesday, all. Get psyched for another of our great Free Range chats. Assuming Lisa Yockelson wasn't up too late baking, she'll be joining us at 1, and we're also expecting Gastronomer columnist Andreas Viestad to check in.

Remember, if you can't be with us in real time, you can ask a question in advance right on the site and then check the chat transcript later.

Chances that we'll get to it are pretty good, but there are always more questions than we can handle. Hence this weekly feature, which today answers a leftover query about milk.

(Bill O'Leary -- The Washington Post)

This recipe comes from Barbara Seelig-Brown's new "The Diabetic Seafood Cookbook" (American Diabetic Association); if you are not on a restricted diet, try this with guava or apricot nectar instead of using the cup of fish stock or bottled clam juice. You can save a few minutes' time by purchasing shrimp that is already peeled and deveined, but be sure to buy shrimp that is not cooked. The rice really takes no time; the Asian-cook technique of adding a few slices of ginger while the rice cooks lends aroma and flavor.

Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-Fry

3-inch piece ginger root

1 cup uncooked basmati rice

12 ounces jumbo (U-15) raw shell-on shrimp

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 cup dry white wine (such as sauvignon blanc that you could also serve with the meal)

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 cup fish stock or bottled clam juice (may substitute guava or apricot nectar)

2 tablespoons canola oil

2 or 3 medium cloves garlic

1 pound asparagus

Questions? We're here.

-- Bonnie Benwick

Channon Mondoux, food historian; at right, she demonstrates a recipe with an interesting past. (Bonnie Benwick -- The Washington Post)

What did you eat last night: leftover brisket? A cuisine that is Lean?
I had 16th-century Turkish.

The venue was the cooking demo room at Sur La Table in Pentagon Row, not Topkapi Palace. But chef Channon Mondoux’s dishes were transporting nonetheless. The Michigan food historian and personal chef was invited to be part of the festivities involved in Turkish Restaurant Week, leading up to Turkish Festival 2009 on Oct. 4.

The story of how Mondoux, a 45-year-old mother of three with family roots in Ontario, Canada, came to know so much about the food served to Suleyman the Magnificent says a lot about her research abilities. In the past six years, she has been able to trace documents that verify the recipes and culinary practices of the Ottoman ruler’s palace kitchens – some of which were recently discovered after hundreds of years.

Mondoux characterizes the cuisine as mostly simple and clean-tasting; her theory is that it is “of the moment” and should be eaten soon after it is made. She has produced a multi-media cookbook on DVD called “Celebration at the Sarayi: Reliving a Feast in the Palace of Suleyman the Magnificent” (TEC Publishing). Turns out, the sultan ate variations of five recipes at every evening meal: soup, meat, burek, baklava or tart and sherbet – that last one consistently pronounced “sure-BET” during her demonstration. So she shared some of those with the group of 20 or so.

I can't resist grilled baby Swiss with tomato on country white bread. (Domenica Marchetti)

There’s something about September — the cooler morning air, the back-to-school routine — that puts me in the mood for a grilled cheese sandwich. As we all know, it is the ultimate comfort food: warm and rich and oozy, and, if made correctly, it has just the right amount of crispiness to the pan-grilled bread.

But what kind of bread? And, more importantly, what kind of cheese? And no, the answer is not those plasticky individually wrapped singles on Wonder; at least not for me, and I hope not for you. Not as long as there are sweet nutty Swisses, sharp cheddars and aged Goudas to choose from, not to mention Italian country, whole-grain to Black Russian breads.

When I was a kid, the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich in our house was grilled mozzarella and prosciutto on Italian bread. Although mozzarella is mild in flavor it possesses the best stretching qualities, and when you’re a kid that counts (actually it counts when you’re a grownup, too).

Servers from Volt restaurant trek up the hill from the barn’s kitchen to the dinner tables situated above. (Nicole Wolf -- SOTA Dzine)

When the invitation to Volt chef Bryan Voltaggio’s late-summer farm dinner went out, its chunky price tag -- substantially more expensive than other farm-to-table events held around Washington -- made some folks wonder whether the food, wine and setting would measure up.

Late summer in the veggie garden at Green Spring Gardens looks a bit like a New Orleans party that's gone on too long: Everyone's having a good time and not really caring what they look like. The Swiss chard is impossibly big and a bit flaccid, the Sungold tomatoes are sprawled and fruitful, and the cowpeas are clambering over each other.

Carrots sown about a month ago are doing well, and Cindy Brown invited me to taste the tiny purple flower clusters of the malabar spinach. They call to mind the flavor of beets, and Cindy likes to use them to perk up salads.

The vegetable of the week is the sun-loving, late-season crop we call cowpea, or black-eye pea or crowther pea. Name it what you will, it is one of the Southern legumes that needs a lot of heat and a long season to flower and fruit. If you live in New York, fuggedaboutit. It is like the asparagus or yardlong bean or the lima bean; you need to live below the Mason Dixon Line for a reliable crop in September into October.

Subscribers' bounty from Great Country Farms (top right and bottom left), Bull Run Mountain Farm (bottom right) and Good Fortune Farm (top left). (Sarah Hamaker, Betsy DeMarco, Sharyn Fitzgerald, Betsy Bajwa)

I'm starting to get a bit jealous when I read what other CSA subscribers are getting in their boxes these days. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy with the quality and, to a lesser extent, the quantity of produce I'm getting from Karl's Farm, but some of my favorite things have been missing. For the most part, I haven't gotten tomatoes, and unlike some other community-supported agriculture program subscribers, who are getting pounds upon pounds of potatoes these days, my box remains spud-free.

It's a shame, really, because I'm something of a potato freak. My love for the sweet varieties is well documented, but I don't scoff at a white potato, either, particularly one that I have time to roast until it's fluffy, then embellish with all manner of toppings.

Thankfully, I'm able to get my fix from farmers markets, and that should be the case even once my Karl's CSA ends, since I'm lucky enough to live just a few minutes' walk from the Dupont market, where potatoes overwinter.

Here's what our other CSA Scouts are reporting this week:

A collective "whew!" was expelled in the Atrium at the Old Ebbitt Grill in downtown Washington last night, as vendors, supporters and friends celebrated the brand-spanking-new farmers market that is close (in more ways than one) to the White House.

In case you didn't catch the first video with first lady Michelle Obama's opening remarks, here it is:

After the market closed at 7, FreshFarm Market co-directors Ann Yonkers and Bernardine Prince led a posse to their party, where folks clinked glasses and enjoyed some tasty hors d'oeuvres (more on that in a minute).

It looks like our colleague Dana Milbank found the prices a bit hard to take, but a steady stream of customers kept buying in waves throughout the four-hour afternoon session, making it FreshFarm's most successful market opening ever. "At some point near the end we counted 700 people who had come through" in one 30-minute period, Yonkers said. "We're ecstatic." She said several vendors sold everything they'd brought, or had come closer to it than they expected. "We even ran out of Double Dollars" -- used to match the first $25 in food stamps and other supplemental programs for families and seniors.

Around town, any market with 19 vendors qualifies as generously sized, but Yonkers was quick to point out the wide expanse of road -- "58 feet!" -- between the two rows of stands set up on opposite sides of the 800 block of Vermont Avenue. That allows everyone a bit more breathing space than, say, at FreshFarm's packed Dupont Circle market on Sundays. (We especially liked the free lavender soap hand-washing setup in front of the stand for Welsh Gardens of Warrenton.)

Mark Toigo of Toigo Orchards in Shippensburg, Pa., was pleased with the day: "We did really well. This could be cool for us." Toigo's already got a firm corner on several markets around the D.C. area, including Clarendon, Annandale, Bethesda, Reston, Lorton, Takoma Park, and Penn Quarter, just a few blocks from this new gig.

Robin Shuster, market maven of Bloomingdale and 14th and U Street, and her husband Jeff came to the new market about an hour before it opened, and stayed for the party. Casing the competition? "Of course I wish them the best!" she said, standing in the buzzy crowd of 100 or so. "I watched the waves of workers come out of those buildings about every hour. Steady foot traffic is definitely a bonus."

But enough about all that. We were happy to see that the party food was up to the occasion. The Old Ebbitt kitchen, under executive chef Robert McGowan and Clyde's executive chef John Guattery, used all local food, including apples, pears and tomatoes from Toigo and pork from Eco-Friendly Farms, which also sells at FreshFarm markets. The party-sized dishes included roast pork tenderloin with corn salsa; thin-crust veggie pizzas with roasted vegetables and goat cheese; cheesy potato-tomato tarts; practically perfect crab cakes; Honeycrisp apple jelly squares; and little plum turnovers, reminiscent of Southern fried hand pies, flaky on the outside and tart-sweet within. One of us couldn't help himself and ended up having six.

The boldface names we spotted included chefs Jose Andres, Todd Gray and Janis McLean, Rancho La Puerta founder Deborah Szekely, Ellen Haas of Foodfit.com, Edible Chesapeake's Renee Brooks Catacalos, Mel Davis of Citronelle, Annie Boutin King of the Ritz-Carlton and Susan Soorenko of Moorenko's. There was word that White House garden guru Sam Kass might just make a showing, but it didn't happen, at least not by last call.

-- Bonnie Benwick and Joe Yonan

Herbes de Provence does lovely things to roasted tomatoes. (Monica Bhide)

I don’t think I have ever actually used a specific recipe that called for herbes de Provence. I remember buying this superbly aromatic spice mix years ago when I visited the south of France. I have used it and refilled my stash many times over, but never really followed a recipe for it. I sprinkle it on breads before baking, on vegetables before roasting and even on meats. It never disappoints.

But I wondered if those were indeed the best ways to use it, so I decided to speak with a superstar chef who spent part of his childhood in Provence: Eric Ripert of the New York Times four-star Le Bernardin. “When I was a kid, I have a memory of walking the hills in Provence and harvesting the herbs with my family to make our own blend," he said. "It would usually be at the end of the summer when the herbs were already dried on the hills. The smell when you walk in the hills was really strong. I remember it to this day.”

Ripert, whose "Avec Eric" television series just debuted on PBS, loves herbes de Provence because he finds it lends a very original flavor to meat, fish and vegetables. So I asked him the million-dollar question: What’s in it? Don’t get me wrong. I know it has lavender and rosemary and many other spices, but seems like each time I ordered a dish with this ingredient in the different parts of France, the dishes tasted different to me.

Looks like medicine, works like a charm. (Bill O-Leary -- The Washington Post)

Bakers who live in the small Virginia town of Warrenton (pop. 8,877) have an especially sweet life. They can walk into Rhodes Gift and Fly Shop on Main Street and pick up a bottle of freshly made, secret-recipe vanilla extract.

The story of how this came to be starts with pharmacist J.W. Rhodes, who devised the formula and began selling his own extract in 1938, at his Rhodes Drug Store. It was only available during the late fall and winter holidays, when the need to make cakes and cookies was at its peak. It was packaged in medicinal bottles that made it seem like a tonic for whatever might ail a pudding or eggnog. Rhodes kept the recipe to himself, and started a tradition that has lasted more than 70 years.

After he died, a man named Russell Herring owned the store (from the mid-1960s to mid-’70s); he inherited the recipe and kept making the extract. Warrenton resident Duane Thompson worked at the drug store as a pharmacist for a few of those years, moved away and returned to buy it in 1976. The extract has been solely his to produce since then. One other person knows the recipe, he says, but that person's promised not to tell.

Geraldine's Chocolate-Date Cake. (Leigh Lambert -- The Washington Post)

Are you traumatized by special occasions that require a sweet ending? Do you always offer to bring a salad to potlucks? If so, Beth Lipton's "You Made That Dessert?" (Globe Pequot Publications, 2009, $15, paperback) could be your salvation.

She has excellent taste (and by that, of course, I mean she shares my taste). Nothing is too fussy, but much to her credit she doesn't succumb to pre-fab shortcuts. This is a book for anyone truly interested in gaining some baking skills and understanding what's going on without getting a degree in chemistry.

She covers a little bit of everything with chapters on cookies and bars, cakes, custards and puddings, pies and fruit desserts, candies, and sauces and frostings. She even includes a final chapter entitled "Emergency Desserts (Don't Panic!)." This is basically cheese and chocolate; a good reminder of what you can do in a pinch.

As I flipped through, I found I was marking more recipes to try than I passed over. I settled on three:

Geraldine's Chocolate-Date Cake. Its wonderful blend of flavors -- coffee, dates and chocolate -- enticed me. The dates act both as a sweetener and a moistener for the cake.

Warm Gingerbread Pudding Cake seemed right for the season, as we had that cool rain rolling in last week. It's one of those "impossible" cakes with liquid poured over the batter before it goes into the oven. This magically turns into a gooey bottom layer. Let me tell you how good this smells when it bakes and how perfect it is with a dollop of whipped cream. Bliss.

Warm Gingerbread Pudding Cake. (Leigh Lambert -- The Washington Post)

Great Big Coconut Cake. This bundt was not as successful. It looked promising with the layers of flavor provided by coconut milk and flaked coconut. But the amount of leavener killed it for me. The cake rose to a perfect height, but tasted more like a biscuit. Not a bad thing, in truth...just not what I wanted.

I plan to try several other recipes in the book, including Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pie, Molten Dark Chocolate Cakes, Silky Chocolate Nutella Mousse and Mocha Cream Pie.

Nowadays, I don't add many new cookbooks to my shelves because there are just so darn many competing for attention -- themed, specialty, holiday, allergy, you name it. Even with precioius little space, this is one I'll make room for.

-- Leigh Lambert

Another week, another episode of my favorite reality show of the moment (now that Runway is in shark-jumping territory over at Lifetime): "Top Chef: Las Vegas," where the VoBro rivalry is dominating the narrative arc to make some mighty fine television. OK, the level of talent this year is also partly responsible for keeping things pretty interesting.

What would another week be without another shift in Tweeting strategy from yours truly? Well, we old-media types can't help but play around with all the new-media possibilities before we settle on something that works. This week, I'm taking a cue from Chris Cillizza and The Hyper Fix to introduce WaPoFoodLive, the Twitter feed where I'll be conducting the Tweet-fest tonight. This way, don't you know, our followers on the good old WaPoFood feed (and my own personal feed) don't have to worry about either the clog or the spoilers. If you're into this live-Tweeting idea and enjoy the fun, sign up to follow me here.

As always, you can also follow the updates in the space below. catch up with all the updates after the jump.

-- Joe Yonan

The Pretty in Porto. (Bill O'Leary -- The Washington Post)

The venerable port house Croft has entered the cocktail market with a downscale "pink" port. I mentioned cocktail recipes using the new Croft Pink port in my column this week.

Here is a recipe called Pretty in Porto, which uses Croft Pink for reasons of color as well as taste. It was created by Jim Meehan (recently named American Bartender of the Year) from the New York speakeasy PDT (recently named World's Best Cocktail Bar). Pretty in Porto is a unique cocktail for a number of reasons, besides the pink port. Most significantly, the drink calls for kirschwasser (or kirsch), a cherry eau-de-vie, as its base spirit. Some readers — particularly those who've attempted a real Swiss fondue — may have the remainder of a bottle of kirsch somewhere deep in their cabinet. Also, this cocktail calls specifically for Peychaud's bitters, not the usual Angostura or orange bitters. Besides its different, gentian-based herb profile, Peychaud's pinkish-red color keeps with theme.

-- Jason Wilson

Pretty in Porto
1 serving

We found Croft Pink port at Paul's of Chevy Chase in Northwest Washington (202-537-1900).

Adapted from Jim Meehan, mixologist at PDT in New York.

Ice
1 1/2 ounces kirschwasser
3/4 ounce Croft Pink port
3/4 ounce freshly squeezed ruby red grapefruit juice
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
Twist of grapefruit peel, for garnish

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Add the port, grapefruit juice and bitters; shake well, then strain into a cocktail (martini) glass. Garnish with the twist of grapefruit peel.

Per serving: 144 calories, 0 g protein, 17 g carbohydrates, 0 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 2 mg sodium, 0 g dietary fiber, 16 g sugar

Happy Wednesday, all. Today's Free Range chat should be terrific, with guests Sally Sampson to talk about her homemade fast-food challenge and David Hagedorn joining us to answer questions about his elegant and inventive Rosh Hashanah dinner. As usual, there'll be prizes, so tune in at 1, when we'll will be on hand to answer your questions.

But not all of them. We always run out of time before we can dig our way to the bottom of the question box. Here's one we couldn't get to last week before the hour was up.

Catlett, Va.: My mom taught me to cook. She always said you should leave the oven door slightly ajar when broiling (electric range). Is this correct?

Well, my mother said to leave the oven door closed. And in this case, it turns out that both moms were right.

In general, you broil with the door slightly open when using an electric oven, but you close it when broiling with gas.

I've heard several theories about why it's beneficial to broil with the door ajar. The most common is that if the door is closed, the heat is trapped inside the oven and you're essentially just baking, not broiling. But really, you can't prove that by me. I haven't found that, for example, a steak broiled under an electric coil is any better than a steak broiled under a flame.

As to why you don't leave a gas oven door ajar, that's easier to explain. The control knobs are at the front of the stove, and high heat rising through an open door could damage or maybe even melt them.

Regardless of which kind of range you own, you should always, always check the owner's manual for the recommended broiling procedure. Every manual I found online states clearly what the door position should be. Not only do most electric ranges call for an open door, but their doors have a "broil stop" that allows them to stay ajar at a specific angle. So though I'm not doubting your mother, go dig out out your manual and check it out. It never hurts to be sure.

-- Jane Touzalin

Maccheroni With Sweetened Broccoli
4 servings

A green-grape puree makes all the difference.

Salt

12 ounces dried maccheroni or tubetti pasta (narrow, straight-sided)

1 cup seedless green grapes

1/2 red onion

1 medium (about 10 ounces) broccoli crown

3 tablespoons olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup golden raisins

1 cup dry white Italian wine

2 tablespoons pine nuts

3/4 cup freshly grated pecorino Romano cheese

Questions? We're here to help.

-- Bonnie Benwick

Apples Honey Cake Bread Pudding With Butterscotch Sauce. (Bill Webster -- The Washington Post)

Whether or not you choose to make honey cake -- either for Rosh Hashanah, or because, after four days, you're curious about just how good/bad the previous Cake-Off recipes could be -- you might come across 9-by-5-ish loaves of it in the bakery department of your favorite grocery store. Why, a guest at your holiday buffet may present you with just such a loaf.

In the spirit of the New Year, here's what you can do: Cut it into cubes, add a custard, some sauteed apples and bake it up like a bread pudding. Serve it warm, with a butterscotch sauce.

That's what Dallas cooking teacher Tina Wasserman suggested. She's another Friend of the Food section with a just-released cookbook, "Entree to Judaism: A Culinary Exploration of the Jewish Diaspora" (URJ Press).

Majestic and Moist New Year's Honey Cake. (Bill Webster -- The Washington Post)

A recipe from Marcy Goldman simply had to be included in this challenge. The Montreal baker just released anniversary editions of "A Treasury of Jewish Baking" and "The New Best of BetterBaking.com." Last week, her "Treasury" was included in Epicurious.com's seven favorite Jewish cookbooks, mentioning her Majestic and Moist New Year's Honey Cake as a standout.

To our tasters, this cake seemed the most traditional in flavor and texture. Rich with coffee, brown sugar and just short of the full treatment of holiday spices (cinnamon, allspice, cloves), Goldman's recipe also calls for 1/4 cup of whisky: It adds flavor, she says, akin to the old "bubbe trick" of adding schnapps for "High Holiday-ness." Those who knew from honey cake considered this a very good rendition of what they'd had in the past. Those who didn't particularly like honey cake, however, found it a bit heavy.

The recipe's unchanged in the updated cookbook, but when I contacted her, she did suggest a few worthwhile tweaks....

A deal on Romas from St. Anthony's Farm; an impressive array from Sue's Pies & More; conveniently sized delicata squash from Waterpenny Farm. (Bonnie Benwick -- The Washington Post)

The Saturday farmers market in Warrenton, in business since 1975, is downright neighborly. Located in a parking lot at the corner of South Fifth and Lee streets, it calls itself a “Virginia-grown” market; that means producers can help out small local family farms throughout the commonwealth by bringing their goods to sell as well.

The vendors vote on the length of the season (this year, through Nov. 28) and appoint a head vendor on site, for the times when the market manager can’t be there.

This weekend was one of those days, as market manager Mickey Rhoades was participating in a community yard sale in Culpeper.

The welcoming late season bounty of Green Spring's vegetable garden in Northern Virginia. (Adrian Higgins -- The Washington Post)

We focused on tomatoes a couple of weeks ago, but if Hollywood is known as Tinseltown, then Washington has to be Tomatotown. Everyone grows tomatoes, so we make no bones about returning to our favorite berry now that the season is reaching its fruitful peak.

In my own garden, I'm growing varieties that Thomas Jefferson tended. Arguably, he popularized what had been until his day a little grown and a greatly feared member of the nightshade family. When I was at Monticello in April, I picked up seed of Costoluto Genovese and other heirloom varieties. I got them in late, which seems to have been the key to a successful harvest. Folks who jumped the gun and put in tomato seedlings in late April, early May found their plants rotting or stunted due to the cold and wet spring.

Farm-subscription bounty from Great Country Farms (top left and bottom right), Bull Run Mountain Farm (top right) and Spiral Path Farm. (Betsy DeMarco, Sharyn Fitzgerald, Sarah Hamaker, Michelle Forman)

I had a slight scare reading the CSA Scout reports this week when I opened the e-mail from Rita Fox, which began, "Last week of summer share." Is the summer really over? Well, it sure feels like it outdoors, and in Fox's world, it's official.

I've been continuing to enjoy my community-supported agriculture deliveries from Karl's Farm, but frankly, I'd been taking them for granted until Rita's reminder jolted me back to reality. This is not going to last forever. Granted, Rita's summer share at Olin-Fox Farms is for just a nine-week season, while mine at Karl's is for more than twice that, but still. I'm already starting to miss it.

I did draw some comfort, however, when I read another note from Rita, with another reminder: "We've already signed up and paid for fall and winter, too."

Here's what she and other CSA Scouts are reporting this week:

Black Ankle Vineyards near Mount Airy. (Sarah O'Herron)

Fans of the Bethesda Central Farm Market will have a chance to taste some local wine with all that local produce this Sunday, Sept. 13, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., when Black Ankle Vineyards will be pouring and selling its new Leaf Stone Syrah. According to market organizer Mitch Berliner, it is the first time a winery has been allowed to participate in a farmers market in Maryland.

That may seem strange, considering a vineyard is nothing if not a farm. But of course, we’re talking alcoholic beverage here, so the laws and politics are different.

Berliner said he wanted wineries to participate in his market because wine should be part of the “eat local” movement. He picked a good winery to feature; Black Ankle just won the Maryland Governor’s Cup for the second year in a row with its 2007 Crumbling Rock, a Bordeaux-styled blend. Not bad for a winery that just opened its doors in 2007. The 2006 Crumbling Rock won the Governor’s Cup last year.

The entrance to Black Ankle. (Dave McIntyre)

The 2007 Leaf Stone Syrah is no wallflower; it took “Best of Category” as best syrah in the recent Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition, and created quite a buzz among the judges, including me. (“Leaf Stone” is another way of saying “Crumbling Rock,” and is emblematic of the soil at the Black Ankle vineyards, near Mount Airy.)

As I wrote about Black Ankle a year ago: “This is not your father’s Maryland wine.”

Don’t miss this chance to taste the wine, because you won’t see Ed Boyce and Sarah O’Herron, the husband-and-wife team behind the winery, at the farmers market on a regular basis. Maryland law allows a winery only three special permits per county per year, and this is using up one of Black Ankle’s, Boyce said.

Berliner hopes to change that when the Maryland General Assembly convenes in January. It could be an exciting year for Maryland wine lovers, with hopes high that legislators will also ease restrictions on having wine shipped directly to consumers’ homes.

For now, though, taste the Leaf Stone Syrah on Sunday. If it catches your fancy, there will also be a Farm Market dinner on Monday, Sept. 14, at Redwood restaurant in Bethesda Row, featuring Black Ankle wines. Cost is $75 per person.

-- Dave McIntyre

Nova Scotia Honey Orange Sponge Cake. (Bill Webster -- The Washington)

Hoo-boy. You may notice this slice of honey cake heaven is oddly shaped. That's because all did not go according to plan. What was described as "light" could not be contained. This could have been operator error -- When I pulled it out of the oven, in my head I sounded similar in tone to some e-mails we get at the Food section: "I followed the recipe TO THE LETTER!" Or maybe my oven doesn't do well at temps below 350 degrees. Or it could be the result of some very successfully beaten egg whites.

The recipe comes from "Cooking Jewish," a thick paperback full of family and friends' dishes, by Judy Bart Kancigor, a California author who grew up in New York. This particular honey cake was baked by her mother, Lillian Bart, who sounds like a candidate for one of those "strong Jewish women" posters found in Judaica gift shops. (She, in turn, got it from her Canadian friend Corinne, who lived in Nova Scotia; hence the name). Just last week, Kancigor posted some maternal memories on Workman's Facebook site: a four-day chicken soup her mother had adapted from a family relative, the way Bart taught her daughter to clean a kosher chicken, and the ways in which Bart "accepts with grace all of life's challenges." Lovely.

Judy, Judy, Judy.

A little bit of nutmeg in Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli goes a long way. (Monica Bhide)

Um, okay, so it is time to admit the truth: Nutmeg is not one of those spices that calls to me from the spice cabinet.

Yes, I have used it in classic Indian dishes, and in American recipes such as eggnog and butternut squash risotto. But it is not a spice easily accessible in my kitchen. I am sure it is hidden somewhere behind all the jars from when I used it last . . . perhaps well over a year ago.

But I do know folks who swear by the taste, so I decided to investigate and see what I was missing. And what better person to talk to than James Peterson, the highly prolific teacher, photographer and award-winning author of many cookbooks.

“On a recent trip to India I was lucky enough to see nutmeg, round and nutlike, being separated from its outer coating of mace," he said. "The mace forms a filigree pattern around the nutmeg that’s very reminiscent of Art Nouveau. Unfortunately, by the time the nutmeg makes it to our shores, the mace has been removed and is usually sold powdered. As far as I can tell, the flavor of mace and that of nutmeg are completely indistinguishable."

Ah, yes, of course: mace! How could I forget? In Indian cooking they are the twins; where there is one, the other is bound to show up. (Originally from the Spice Islands, nutmeg is now likely to come from the island of Grenada.)

Two of the best-known food brands in the area -- chef Jose Andres and Ridgewells -- are teaming up to bring Spanish, Mexican and Mediterranean flavors to a wider audience, both parties announced this week.

The partnership, called Jose Andres Catering with Ridgewells, takes advantage of the popularity of Andres’s menus at Jaleo, Oyamel and Zaytinya restaurants and the muscle and experience of the 82-year-old catering company, which is based in Bethesda and recently fed as many as 11,000 cocktail revelers at once.

The arrangement also solves a problem for the Spanish chef, who says he gets hundreds of requests a year to cater food from his sundry restaurants but until now lacked the proper support. “I’m not in the business of saying no,” says Andres. Beginning next month, customers will be able to choose from menus featuring the aforementioned cuisines plus the celebrity chef’s more experimental ideas from the exclusive Minibar. The last option is billed as “Jose Andres’ Way.”

Does this mean we’ll be seeing foie gras lollipops in clouds of cotton candy at future parties? Possibly. To prepare for the union, Ridgewells purchased a cotton candy machine, as well as seven-foot-wide paella pans and mini-fryers, allows the company’s principal and chief executive, Susan Lacz.

-- Tom Sietsema

Ann Cooper wants to "blow up" the current school lunch system. (Ann Cooper)

She calls herself the Renegade Lunch Lady. And this week, Ann Cooper is storming Washington.

In town to promote the Lunchbox, a Web site developed with Whole Foods Market that offers tools and recipes for school food directors, Cooper is meeting with policymakers, Department of Agriculture officials and giving a flurry of interviews. Her message: That we have to "blow up" the current school lunch program and start from scratch.

And as Cooper likes to say, "oh, by the way," that's going to take a lot more money.

Cooper started out as a chef in fine-dining restaurants. But she earned her reputation when she went to Berkeley and overhauled the school lunch program. Greasy pizza and chicken nuggets were out. Cooking from scratch was in. This year, she moved to Boulder. School has just begun, but already the new menu items, including pasta Bolognese and barbecue chicken sandwiches, have helped increase sales, she said.

This year, Congress is set to reauthorize child nutrition programs, including $12 billion for school meals. And like many, Cooper is making the case that better food for kids is part of creating a healthier society. But in an interview, Cooper also discussed more controversial issues, including how government standards actually increase calories on the lunch line, why the USDA should no longer regulate school lunch and why chefs, not dietitians, should take charge of school lunch. Excerpts follow:

Oregon's Kosher Maven's Honey Cake. (Bill Webster -- The Washington Post)

When I asked Joan Nathan to choose from among the many honey cake recipes she's included in her cookbooks over the years, this was the first one that came to mind. (Sure, her work appears in the New York Times's Dining & Wine pages around major Jewish holidays, but the hometown food luminary has been a longtime friend of the Post's Food section.)

The maven was Runi Hyman, a Portland cook who fed transients for about 50 years, including many soldiers during World War II. Nathan ran Hyman's original recipe in the 1994 "Jewish Cooking in America." It called for what seems to be a double sifting of flour, a separation of egg yolks and whites, with the whites beaten to firm peaks and folded into the cake batter. It spent an hour in the oven.

In the years before she published the 1998 expanded edition of "JCA," Nathan got feedback from her readers and amended the recipe substantially: one sift of all dry ingredients; no more separating the eggs; combining the sugar and all wet ingredients, beating them for a full 5 minutes, and a baking time reduced to 50 minutes.

How'd my go at it turn out?

Bon Appetit could not source slicing tomatoes that met its fair labor standards. (Julia Ewan -- The Washington Post)

In April, food service company Bon Appetit Management drew a line in the sand. If it could not find a tomato grower that provided good working conditions and fair wages, there would be no tomatoes at the company's more than 400 restaurants and cafes.

Good news. It's got them.

This week, Bon Appetit signed a deal with Alderman Farms, a tomato grower in Boynton Beach, Fla. As part of the deal, Alderman agreed to pay its workers a higher rate than the 45 cents per 32-pound bucket that is the industry standard. It also promised to ensure that working conditions, such as access to bathrooms and drinking water, meet a standard that workers' groups allege are absent at many large commercial farms. Meanwhile, Chipotle Mexican Grill also announced on Wednesday that it had reached a deal with one of Florida's largest tomato growers to raise the wage by a penny a pound for workers who harvest tomatoes.

Alderman Farms is a relatively small operation by modern standards. It farms about 1,000 acres, more than half of which are tomatoes. Bon Appetit buys about 5 million pounds of tomatoes annually. "There are some things here that we will fine tune so we can document what's happening," said Tom Wilson, Alderman Farms' sales manager. "But we didn't have to change much to meet their code of conduct."

There is one catch. Alderman does not grow the round slicers traditionally put on hamburgers and at the salad bar. It's too difficult to compete with imports from Mexico, said Wilson. Instead, Bon Appetit chefs will have to make do with smaller cherry and grape varieties. "Our focus is on fair labor practices and our chefs really embraced the challenge," said Maisie Greenawalt, Bon Appetit's vice president. "They said, 'Get us the grape tomatoes and we'll figure out what to do with them.' "

Olive-Rosemary Bread. (Leigh Lambert -- The Washington Post)

Gluten-free baking is big and getting bigger, with a plethora of cookbooks from which to choose. This one sounded good: Elana Amsterdam's "The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook" (Celestial Arts, 2009). As the title implies, all its recipes use almond flour in place of wheat flour.

Amsterdam is very specific about brands, adamantly steering cooks away from Bob's Red Mill almond flour, which is unfortunately the only one I could find in stores. She does list Web sites for ordering. Be warned: Almond flour is not cheap. But if you are a celiac sufferer, it might be worth the purchase.

The book is a spinoff from her blog, at www.elanaspantry.com. She studied Ayurvedic cooking for three years and applies many of the same principles to her approach. She uses whole food ingredients with a European sensibility.

I sampled three recipes: Chewy Chocolate Cookies, Chocolate Chip Scones and Olive-Rosemary Bread. The cookies were a bit flabby, the scones were dense and moist, yet not very "sconey." But the quick bread was a pleasant surprise: a nice, dense loaf perfumed with herbs that would be great for sandwiches.

I'm not sure I would make those three recipes in lieu of the "real things," but I'm always glad to have some items in my repertoire that will answer special needs with good taste. Now I'm curious to try other recipes that call for almond flour, and seeing as how I ordered a five-pound bag of it, I expect I shall.

-- Leigh Lambert

"Top Chef: Las Vegas" fans, follow us again tonight for live Tweets of the show, starting at 10 p.m. As I did last week, this will be spoiler-free for you DVR-ers (and those in other time zones), and I'll keep it down to one every few minutes so as not to hyper-clog the feed. You can follow the most recent updates below see the collected Tweets after the jump, or sign up to follow WaPoFood on Twitter.

-- Joe Yonan

A slice of Reva Pataki's "non-honey" honey cake. (Bill Webster -- The Washington Post)

Do you know from honey cake? It is customary to run across slices of it at Rosh Hashanah. Baking some sweetness into the Jewish New Year seems like good insurance, but a dessert that contains an ingredient so hygroscopic (moisture-attracting) too often turns out sticky on the outside and dry on the inside.

How honey cake came to be included in the High Holidays buffet is a matter of conjecture, depending on how far back you wish to trace the uses of honey (Biblical or Ashkenazi-Eastern European).

Truth is, I’ve never met anyone who loves it. As far as I'm concerned, honey cake has earned fruitcake status, minus the shipping and monks who bake in abbeys. The dozens of versions I’ve come across and tried over the years are testament to the fact that, unlike all those chocolate chip cookies and challah recipes, bakers continue to search for the ultimate honey cake formula. Joan Nathan doesn’t like it either; she never makes it for her holiday guests, opting for cake or tart made with in-season plums instead: "I just don't like the taste of honey," she says. (That's not to say Nathan doesn't stand behind the honey cake recipes she's published in her many cookbooks; I tested one from her updated "Jewish Cooking in America" and will report the results.)

A couple of Food section readers have sent me their favorite recipes, and that led to this challenge. For the next five or six days, I’ll post results of a batch o' honey cakes. Instead of tweaking or retesting, I gave them one shot each, as any home cook might do. Staffers here are tasting and providing feedback, and I hope blog readers will, too.

Ready, set? The first one’s from Reva Pataki, an accomplished cook who lives in Potomac.

Yes, another Wednesday is upon us, and with it another fabulous Free Range chat with the Food section staff. Join us at 1 in the usual place to ask questions, swap ideas and maybe win a free book in our weekly giveaway.

When we close up shop at 2, we’ve always got a pile of leftover questions in front of us. Here’s one we couldn’t get to last time:

I have an 11-year-old who loves to cook. Wednesdays are her cooking night, and all I do is sit in the kitchen while she works, so I’m there to answer questions and help out if she asks. I’m not even supposed to ask if she wants help! Tonight she’s making roghan josh (she even started marinating the lamb last night!); last week it was a chicken curry; the week before, stuffed pasta shells. But she has trouble pairing things. She knows that rice goes with curry but isn’t sure what vegetable she should pair with it, or if green beans work with pasta, and if so, what kinds of herbs/spices should go in the beans.
Can you think of a good cookbook to help her learn good food "matching"? She really doesn’t need a kids-version book; she's already used my "660 Curries," "Joy of Cooking" and "Bon Appetit Cookbook."

Bal Arneson's first book is a bestseller in Canada, and the source of this week's Dinner in Minutes recipe.

Everyday Stir-Fry (Sabji) is crunchy, meatless and healthful, with a touch of the Indian spice blend garam masala. It's from Bal Arneson, the cook with a top-selling cookbook in Canada. You'll want to serve it with rice or noodles, and a cold glass of Riesling.

Here are the ingredients; if you wish to make your own garam masala, the spice recipe's tacked onto the end of the recipe for the dish (follow the online link above):

2-inch piece ginger root

1 large onion

1 pound green beans

1 pound Chinese or Napa cabbage

1 medium plum tomato

1 small green chili pepper (such as Serrano)

2 tablespoons grapeseed oil

1 tablespoon garam masala

1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon flaxseed (optional)

Questions? We're here to help.

-- Bonnie Benwick

(Ben Woloszyn -- Associated Press)

You feel pretty virtuous when you buy local food. It's fresher, maybe even more nutritious, proponents say. Now advocates are pushing another selling point: Local food strengthens the economy. It keeps money in local communities and helps create jobs, which in turn can help reduce crime.

Wow. And you thought all you were getting was a really good peach.

Sarah DeWeerdt rounds up the facts about local food and economic development in a new, excellent article in World Watch. The money farmers earn goes in large part to buy seeds, animal feed and fertilizers from outside the region. In southeast Minnesota, farmers spend $996 million to grow $912 million worth of crops. Similar patterns are found in Iowa, Arizona and Washington.

Producing local food could change that, DeWeerdt reports. If those people in southeastern Minnesota bought just 15 percent of their food from local sources, it would generate two-thirds as much income as all the region's farmers receive from subsidies.
If the population in and around Seattle bought 20 percent of their food dollars at local businesses, it would inject an extra billion dollars each year into the local economy.

Try these in a school-bound lunch instead: Heini's Amish butter cheese and Heini's Amish Gouda Style cheese, both available at MOM's in Del Ray; New Zealand Grass-Fed Sharp Cheddar, at Trader Joe's, and Wisconsin Mammoth Cheddar, at Balducci's. (Domenica Marchetti)

It pains me to admit this, but there was a time when my kids were younger when I actually made sandwiches for them to take to school that contained — gasp — [BIG NAME COMPANY] American singles, those inefficiently wrapped, plasticky squares of “pasteurized prepared cheese product” that taste of nothing so much as sodium.

I could blame it on my son, the more picky eater of my two, who lobbied for it after he spied the orange stuff in his friends’ sandwiches. It was hard to get him to bring anything beyond peanut butter and honey, so if I could sneak some little lean turkey or salami in with that slice, just for a change of pace, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

The vegetable garden at Green Spring Gardens. (Adrian Higgins --The Washington Post)

As you can see, the vegetable garden can look pretty as well as yummy in late summer. The cardoon's silver leaves and the white flowering garlic chives lend a cool and verdant vibe. Below them is a fabulous herb, the thyme-like winter savory. It's a great garden plant for a sunny and free draining spot, and should be used a lot more.

Cindy Brown and the gang at Green Spring Gardens are harvesting lots at the moment, including cow peas, okra, string beans, tomatoes and chili peppers. Seed of carrots and Asian greens, sown a couple of weeks ago, are now up and promising a nice fall crop. These cool-loving veggies are often stubborn to germinate in the heat of August. Cindy reports that the key to success this year was to cover the seeds with a fine layer of compost, and then another thin layer of leaf mold on top. Even moisture is critical for seed germination and these mulches do a good job of retaining the soil moisture.

The crop of the week, though, is the fig.

The fig tree, as it turns out, has been one of the winners in Washington's progressively warming climate.

Last in our series on ways in which we like to celebrate the summer’s bounty. Previously: Peaches, Tomatoes, Zucchini, Corn.

(Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)

As William Shakespeare so wisely said, “Some are born with basil, some achieve basil, and some have basil thrust upon them.”

An Italian friend of mine was born with basil. Her father grew it in their Brooklyn back yard, where somehow it thrived despite what he described as “total neglect.” I envy her good fortune, because I never tasted the fresh herb until I was in my 20s, when I had it thrust upon me. For a group dinner, I was assigned to make pesto, though I’d never heard of the stuff. It was an eye-opening exercise.

Now I achieve basil, in a small sunny spot next to my house. I plant it, water it, pinch the stems so each plant grows full and bushy. And then at some point I realize I’m going to have to stop admiring it and start using it.

Fortunately, this summer staple is at home in a variety of dishes, for any course and any meal, including breakfast. When your own plants need harvesting, or when you can’t resist carrying home a big bunch from the farmers market, there’s no shortage of things you can do with it. Here are some ideas.

Eric Ripert on the set of "Avec Eric." (Angie Mosier)

This weekend, chef Eric Ripert makes his public-television debut with “Avec Eric.” Each episode of the 10-part series, which premieres at 1 p.m. Saturday on WETA, gives a behind-the-scenes glance at his acclaimed Le Bernardin restaurant, follows him to the farms and woods and fishing operations that inspire him, and culminates in his cooking of a home-style dish in a studio kitchen.

If the rest of the series is anything like the first two episodes, “Avec Eric” is a refreshingly whimsical, sometimes even spiritual look at food through the eyes of one of the most respected, not to mention easy to watch, chefs in the world. Among other scenes, Ripert goes along for a wild boar hunt in Tuscany (getting soaked in a thunderstorm in the process), pops tomatoes like candy at a restaurant’s farm in California and interviews Le Bernadin’s saucier, a Caribbean charmer named Vinnie.

I recently spoke with the 44-year-old chef by phone from his office at Le Bernadin about the show. Excerpts of our conversation follow:

Joe Yonan: One of the promotional pieces I saw for the show says it is not about how to cook, but why. What do you mean by that?
Eric Ripert: How to cook is obviously part of the show, but that’s not the sole purpose. It’s a lifestyle. I think cooking is essential to have a good lifestyle if you have a family or even if you are single. It creates appreciation and respect for the planet -- the beautiful planet that we are [messing] up every day. It creates respect for the life of the animals that we are eating, animals that are often treated like commodities. It’s about respecting the ingredients and the people who are behind them. It’s about bringing people to the table. You share ideas and create friendship and if you have children, you communicate with your children. I think it’s a very European way of doing it. You’re cooking from your experience because you get inspired by your surroundings and then by cooking with a passion and talent you change the life of people and your own life and appreciation for what the planet is bringing to it, or the gods or whatever you believe in.

JY: Speaking of gods, the show has a very strong philosophical bent. I found myself moved by some of your descriptions of the power of food and cooking. Was that part of your goal?
ER: No. Basically the producers say, ‘Do you want to go to California?’ And I say, ‘Sure.’ They say, ‘What do you want to do there?’ I say, ‘I want to eat, I want to drink, I want to have fun.’ It’s like, let’s go, let’s have fun, and we have the luxury of documenting it. It’s a very personal approach, Joe. I’m not promoting anything, I’m just being myself, having fun. And the camera just follows me wherever I go.

JY: So it’s not scripted at all?
ER: It cannot be, because I cannot read a script. If you give me a script I will just freeze. Geoffrey Drummond, the producer, who was the producer of Julia Child and does Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich, many other shows, Geoffrey after every one of my trips would sit down and he would ask me questions just like a journalist, while sharing a bottle of wine and talking. And most of the voice-over that I do is coming from that. They had to invent a system that would work for me.

Star anise fruits hanging from a tree in a Chinese plantation; the dried spice. (photos by Peter Goodman, left, and Julia Ewan -- The Washington Post)

“Are you cooking with that thing again?” is my husband’s reaction when he smells star anise in the kitchen.

It really is that strong. I love its licorice-like aroma and sweet taste, which is very similar to anise (but the two aren’t related). If you have never seen it, the spice is a dark-brown, pretty and star-shaped -- hence the name. It is most closely associated with Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese cuisines; in fact, it is one of the key ingredients of the famous Chinese five-spice powder.

While it is also associated with Indian food, I never tasted it growing up. I encountered it first only a few years ago, when I was trying to learn to cook Malaysian food. If you enjoy your spirits, you may be familiar with the taste, as star anise is a key ingredient in sambuca, pastis and Pernod.

Corinne Trang, author of "Essentials of Asian Cuisine" (Simon & Schuster, 2003), "The Asian Grill" (Chronicle Books, 2006) and most recently "Noodles Every Day" (Chronicle Books, 2009), recalls her earliest experience using star anise: “Star anise is a spice that I first remember smelling in my mother's hand before she would add it to her braised beef. I loved it because it was pretty to look at. She would instruct me to add it to the pot to flavor to beef broth. She'd always mention how much she loved the flavor of star anise because it would round out the sharp, spicy cinnamon that was also included in the dish.”

Slow Food president Josh Viertel presides over the first eat-in in Chicago to support school lunch reform. (Slow Food)

Slow Food has long promoted the pleasures of the table. Now it's lobbying for them. On Monday, the organization will host nearly 300 "eat-ins" to support its campaign for more healthful school lunches.

"Time for Lunch" is Slow Food's first national political campaign. The eat-ins -- part potluck, part sit-in -- aim to rally awareness and action about what Slow Food sees as the sorry state of the school lunch.

With Congress set to reauthorize childhood nutrition programs, Slow Food is asking Washington to allocate $1 more per student per day for lunch. The organization also wants Congress to establish nutrition standards for all food sold in schools, fund farm-to-school programs and school gardens and offer incentives for schools to buy local.

(That's a tall order. With the deficit set to reach $1.6 trillion in 2009, sources on the Hill say it is unlikely Congress will be able to eke out anything more than a small increase to reimbursement rates. The legislation, which is set to expire Sept. 30, will also certainly be delayed for several months.)

Response to the eat-ins has far exceeded expectations. Initially, Slow Food president Josh Viertel hoped for 100 events. At last count, 294 had been scheduled, in every state. And the first eat-in already has taken place. On Aug. 26, the Chicago Slow Food chapter held its meet-up -- the only day it could reserve Daley Plaza. Several hundred people, some dressed in corn and salt and pepper shaker costumes, showed up on a rainy summer day.

Slow Food's Washington DC chapter is organizing two public eat-ins:

Elsie Stokes Whitlow Charter School
3700 Oakview Terrace NE
11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Contact: Kate Hill

City Blossoms Girard Avenue Children's Community Garden
1480 Girard St. NW
2 to 4 p.m.
Contact: Lola Bloom

-- Jane Black

Two takes on reusable and/or recyclable ways to haul things around:

The Bottle Shopper bag. (Reisenthel)

I have a weakness for bags: tote bags, purses, yoga bags, tea bags, small bags that tuck into themselves so they can conveniently fit into BIGGER bags. Each one seems to beckon with the possibility of organizing my life in new ways.

Having sworn to reform my hoarding habit, I discovered a Web site that should be blocked from my computer. Reisenthel offers a plethora of bags and toting options. They are smart and tailored (not surprisingly, it's a German company). Although I could find an excuse to buy almost any of them, the one that caught my eye for style as well as function is the Bottle Shopper. The simplicity of carrying bottles on the outside made instant sense. I also appreciate the combination of short and long handles.

One more little bag couldn't hurt, right?

-- Leigh Lambert

But wait! There's more....

CCC's mini chocolate-mint cheesecakes. (District Design Group)

Capital City Cheesecake redefines notions about "hand-made." Chef-creator Caitlin Murphy, 28, has partnered with her younger sister Meaghan, 25, to move their luscious little cakes from idea to reality.

Late one night, faced with a broken mixer and a promise to a friend, Caitlin had to make a cheesecake. She skipped the wooden spoon and dove in with both hands. Literally. As a result, every small batch she makes still receives the same hands-on attention. By working the flour, sugar, milk and eggs into the cream cheese, she found a technique that produces the creamiest-textured cheesecake her friends had ever tasted.

A little over a year ago, Caitlin began having vision problems, headaches and a shooting pain down her left leg. Her passion for painting and teaching art started to look impossible. Meaghan couldn't stand to see her older sister laying for hours in the dark in debilitating pain. After many frustrating doctors' appointments, Caitlin found relief through acupuncture treatments. Ready and able for a challenge, the sisters planned a business around Caitlin's winning cheesecake formula.

Caitlin now considers the cheesecakes as creating art that is edible. The sisters obsess over quality and flavor, and it shows. Even the "icing" used for decoration is made of cheesecake ingredients, so there is nothing to get in the way of the cakes' flavor.

"Top Chef" fans, take note: I'm taking what I learned from last week's experiment in live tweeting, and I'm trying it again for Episode 3. Tonight, expect to see fewer Tweets (I'm trying to avoid too much of a clog!), and fewer spoilers, at least explicit ones. Follow along at the WaPoFood Twitter feed, or in the space below.

-- Joe Yonan

11:08 If you tell judges your dish was good and they disagree, then they think you don't know what good is.

11:07 if judges don't like your dish, don't argue. Have you not watched this show before, cheftestant?

11:03 they call back one of the top group to come back into the bottom. Uh oh.

11:01 coincidence that Tom is wearing a bomber jacket?

11:00 Padma does her fake pout again. Then Surprise! You're the best! Fooled AGAIN.

10:51 Slab bacon = pork belly. Brilliant. Fat, fat, glorious fat.

10:50 Mark talks about boy scouts. He neglects to mention Webelos.

10:48 iPhone wants to auto correct Padma's name into Parma. Makes some sense , really.

10:45 Pork shoulder is obviously a winner. Smarter than pasta salad or, uh, chowder.

10:42 All the non product placed canned food on #topchef has label blacked out, looking like a blonde's face in black/white naughty film

10:22 mike i is a homewrecker, breaking up the brothers.

10:22 is mike i going to stop talking at some point?

10:20 elimination challenge: cook for airmen. ash gets a silly grin on his face. mind out of gutter!

10:19 @penwhen excellent question.

10:17 why does mattin insist on wearing that ridiculous red scarf? i didn't realize they had webelos in france.

10:14 ice cream turns into "chilled custard" when it doesn't freeze. smart. don't apologize -- rename!

10:11 how many chefs are doing potatoes three ways, or three kinds of potatoes, etc.?

10:08 i love sweet potatoes, LOVE THEM, but in an ice cream? skeptical.

10:02 about to start round 2 of live tweeting #topchef. will resist spoilers, and try not to clog too much.

Another Wednesday, another Free Range Chat, when Food staffers try to address your culinary conundrums. Be there at 1, when we'll be joined by Tony Rosenfeld, who writes today about grilled summer soups.

As usual, last week we ran out of time before plowing through the entire crop of questions. Here's one we couldn't squeeze in. Our guest chatter Nancy Baggett left behind the answer:

Will my mint plants survive the winter in Nothern Virginia? I just got them this year and so far they are fine, but if they are going to die, I would like to bring them inside. Any advice greatly appreciated.

Nancy Baggett: Mints tend to be very hardy. In fact, they will often overrun the garden. (So I keep most of mine in pots.) Both the mints in the ground and those in foam pots normally live; the foam pots are a good insulator from the cold.

Pineapple mint and other variegated ones are the most tender and often don’t make it. I don’t think bringing them in works well: A better idea would be to put them in a sheltered spot outside, right next to the house.

The ones left in the ground should just be mulched; they will probably do fine.

Summer produce gets another chance to shine in this Flounder With Tomato, Corn and Avocado Salsa, taken from a cookbook that focuses on ingredients easily found at farmers markets in Southern states.

Pacific flounder is preferred over Atlantic, which is being overfished, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch list. Tilapia and halibut are sustainable substitutes.

1/2 lime
1 small ripe avocado, or 1/2 medium avocado
3 scallions
Leaves from 4 or 5 sprigs basil, plus chopped basil for optional garnish
Small bunch chives
2 medium cloves garlic
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon good-quality olive oil
Dash honey, preferably local
Dash ground cumin
4 saffron threads (optional)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 ear corn
4 medium tomatoes (about 2 pounds)
6 Pacific flounder fillets (about 6 ounces each)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Questions? We're here to help.

-- Jane Touzalin

A happy sign. (La Fromagerie)

Here's a tasty morsel for those of you who love burrata, mozzarella’s dreamy cousin: The fresh, oozy cheese is available on Fridays and through the weekend at La Fromagerie in Old Town Alexandria.

Owner Sebastien Tavel says the burrata is flown in each week from Puglia, the region in southern Italy where it is made. A few weeks ago, when he put the sign (pictured above) in his shop window announcing the burrata's arrival, customers in the know began snatching up the cheese and others began inquiring about it.

Burrata is yet another example of Italian culinary resourcefulness. The cheese was invented in the 1920s as a way to use up scraps of mozzarella. Cheesemakers fill pouches of still-hot buffalo mozzarella with the scraps and with cream. The bundles are tied and moistened with whey. A ball of burrata looks very much like a ball of mozzarella, but when you cut into it, the rich filling oozes out. In texture the interior is a little bit like fresh ricotta, as a friend of mine observed the other evening.

I served the burrata as an antipasto, with an accompaniment of finely diced tomatoes marinated in olive oil and balsamic and red wine vinegars spooned around it. Needless to say, it was a hit.

As if the news of burrata weren’t good enough, Tavel is also selling my other favorite summer cheese: sheep’s-milk ricotta (which I have written about previously in this blog). Best to catch both now, if you can; Tavel plans to carry the burrata ($8.99 for one 6- to 8-ounce ball) for another couple of months, for as long as fresh tomatoes are available to pair with the cheese.

The sheep's-milk ricotta costs $17.50 per pound, though he is looking at another supplier that may allow him to bring the price down to around $12 per pound. Tavel says he will continue to stock that for as long as he can get it, maybe even year-round.

And now, on to the final results of my fresh goat cheese challenge:

As the first day of school for many students in the Washington area wound down, the White House released a more than seven minute-long Web video about the development of the White House kitchen garden and the role of students from Bancroft Elementary School in farming it.

"Part of the message is that if the president of the United States can sit down with his family and have dinner, hopefully more families will find time to do the same thing," said first lady Michelle Obama in the video, which she narrated with White House chef Sam Kass.

"The garden is really an important introduction to what I hope will be a new way that our country thinks about food," said Obama, who called the garden "quite an amazing success, if I do say so myself."

Continue reading at 44:The Obama Presidency»

-- Garance Franke-Ruta

Last week's CSA boxes from Good Fortune Farm, Bull Run Mountain Farm, Olin-Fox Farms and Spiral Path Farm. (Betsy Bajwa, Sharyn Fitgerald, Rita Fox, Michelle Forman)

It took a while, but tomatoes have started showing up in our CSA Scouts' boxes, and none too soon. Many exclamation points accompany descriptions of them, and for good reason: Nothing says summer the way a tomato does.

Just in case all our recent ideas about what to do with them, including our Top Tomato recipe contest finalists and Bonnie Benwick's great Bumper Crop post, haven't been enough, I'll throw another one out there. This is the time of year when I can't stop buying tomatoes at the farmers markets, when my own community-supported agriculture box from Karl's Farm includes at least four or five, and when my own tomatoes are finally starting to ripen in my community garden plot. When I begin to tire of using them in salsas and pasta sauces, I think about how soon it will be before I won't have any good ones at all. Then I slow-roast some more.

So far, I've got two half-pint jars of these oven-concentrated tomato halves covered with olive oil in my refrigerator. I'll use them for bruschetta and for pasta dishes, but I have one rule: I won't touch them until I can't get any more fresh, local tomatoes. That's what "putting up" is all about, isn't it?

Here's what our CSA Scouts have to say about last week's bounty:

Roasted Tomato Bruschetta, ideal for using up small and cherry tomatoes; see the recipe below. (Cindy Brown)

Adrian Higgins is away. Cindy Brown of Fairfax County's Green Spring Gardens takes the helm in his absence.

In polite society, one does not discuss religion or politics. I will add one more topic: tomatoes. People are passionate about their favorite varieties, methods of cultivating and training and, of course, recipes. Growing tomatoes brings out the latent scientist and engineer in the normally grounded gardener. I eagerly address many vegetable-related topics, but I hesitate before accepting a chance to speak about tomatoes. It is an intense subject.

I am a purist. I order seed from a reliable source, don’t start my seeds before mid-March and never plant them in the garden before soil temperatures reach 60 degrees. I plant them deep, leaving only three to four inches above ground, and I mulch immediately. Most tomato diseases are soil-borne; the mulch helps prevent the soil from splashing on lower leaves. The mulch also keeps the plants evenly moist; blossom end rot is caused by uneven moisture levels.

I believe true tomato growers should never bother with the flimsy tomato cages sold in big-box stores. Go for the gusto; create your own from rolls of concrete-reinforcing wire. Then pound in stakes beside the cages to keep everything erect.

Fertilize the tomato plants a couple of weeks after planting them (I’ll let you decide what to use, but I prefer organic choices), when they start to blossom and once more when production starts to lag, usually mid-August.

I won’t even touch the heirloom-versus-hybrid debate. I choose varieties that are disease resistant, indeterminate and delicious. We usually have one surprise favorite at Green Spring; this year it is Hong Yeun. Each tomato measures only two to three inches, but the plants are prolific. They are bearing dozens of sweet tomatoes every week.

No matter what variety of tomatoes you grow, rotate the place you grow them every year. Diseases build in the soil if you plant tomatoes in the same space year after year. I live in a townhouse, and space is limited. So this year my tomatoes are in the front yard. You should see the double-takes they get from the neighbors; they are probably waiting for me to go on vacation!

I can never have too many large tomatoes, but I always seem to be overwhelmed with small patio and tiny cherry varieties. You can’t stuff them with chicken or tuna salad, and they always slide off my tomato, peanut butter and mayo sandwiches (don’t grimace until you try one – on white bread, of course.)

-- Cindy Brown

The fourth in a series on ways in which we like to celebrate summer's bounty.

Chowing down on corn at the Loudoun County Fair this summer. (Toni L. Sandys -- The Washington Post)

Corn reminds me of tomatoes, and not just because both are so much better fresh and local and in season, and not just because that season is now. Corn and tomatoes are also alike because many of their most ardent fans would say that the best way to eat them is just the way you see above: To do very little to them and just chomp away.

That's all well and good, except for one thing: Cooking with corn can be so much fun, and the results really speak for themselves. Because of its high sugar content, corn takes well to a wide variety of treatments. And this time of year, when it's overflowing in the farmers markets, farm stands and supermarkets, even the biggest corn lovers among us (and I include myself in that group) appreciate a little variety.

Grilled Leeks With Dijon Cream, whose sauce can do double duty; see the recipe below. (Monica Bhide)

A couple of months ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting Trish Magwood, a James Beard Award winner and host of Food Network Canada’s “Party Dish,” at a cooking school in the District. Trish was in town promoting Stouffer’s Anytime Gourmet. We got to talking about her love of cooking with herbs and spices. It turns out she's a big fan of tarragon.

Me, too. This strong-tasting herb with slim, dark-green leaves reminds me of anise (which, by the way, I'll feature next week). Though it has roots in Greek and Arabic cuisine, it's probably most commonly associated with French food.

Tarragon comes in two different varieties: one is French and the other Russian (not as flavorful as the French version, but more widely available). True tarragon lovers prefer the French herb, but it is hard to propagate: It grows only from plant cuttings and not from seeds.

Trish suggests buying the herbs fresh, loosely wrapping them in a towel and storing them in a crisper in the fridge, away from the fan. Freshness is key; tarragon loses its flavor as it dries out.

Trish describes tarragon as “intense, powerful, unique. It's kind of a dress-up herb for special occasions and not everyday, like, say, basil or parsley.” I found a great example of that in this week's Food section, in this unusual recipe for Dark Chocolate Sorbet With Tarragon and Grapefruit.

Tarragon is found in traditional French sauces, such as bearnaise (a variation of hollandaise sauce), to accompany steak. It's also popular as a flavoring in vinegars. Trish told me she likes to use it in vinaigrettes and creamy salad dressings. Toward the end of cooking, she’ll add some to a cream sauce to serve with seafood or shellfish; or she'll match it with mustard in a cream sauce for vegetables such as leeks or green beans.

I cook with tarragon occasionally; I'm more likely to use it to flavor vinegars and cooking oils. Making tarragon vinegar is a snap: Rinse and dry some fresh tarragon sprigs and place them in a jar with white wine vinegar. Cover the mouth of the jar and store it in a cool, dark place. I like to let it sit for a week, but you can give it more or less time, depending on how strong you want the flavor to be.

Tarragon works well in chicken, egg and fish dishes, and in cream or mustard sauces. I've even used it in soups with some success (it does tend to be a bit strong for very delicate soups). While the weather is still hot, try it in this cold Creamy Spinach and Tarragon Soup. Adventurous cooks should try it in a sorbet, like the one I mentioned above, or in this lovely, refreshing Tarragon-Spiked Lady Grey Iced Tea from Gourmet magazine.

Here's one of Trish's favorites.
-- Monica Bhide

Kathleen Merrigan wants to steer local food entrepreneurs to more than $1 billion in federal money. (U.S. Department of Agriculture)

"Imagine a business is formed, using USDA loan money, to aggregate local farm products so that the volume is sufficient to serve a large school system…"

It's not hard to imagine a business like that. That's exactly what the new Local Food Hub in Charlottesville that I wrote about in yesterday's Food section is trying to do. But Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan wants more people to dream big – and to use USDA money to achieve their goals.

"I suspect that many USDA program are underutilized by those seeking to build local and regional food systems," Merrigan wrote in an Aug. 26 memo (PDF). "I would like to play the role of matchmaker during this administration."

In the seven-page letter, Merrigan highlighted three existing USDA programs that could aid those trying to build local food systems: the Community Facilities Program, the Business and Industry Guarantee Loan Program and the Value-Added Producer Grant Program.

If your eyes glazed over reading that, let me put it another way: That's $1.24 billion in funds that could be used for guarantee loans and to support new farmers markets, community kitchens and local food businesses. Merrigan imagines money going to finance mobile slaughterhouses, to create cooking classes and to market premium, local ice cream or pasture-raised lamb.

None of the money in these programs is new, per se. But the memo is more evidence that the USDA is actively supporting local and regional food systems. More programs are in the works. In the coming weeks, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Merrigan plan to announce a new effort, dubbed "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food," which aims to expand markets for locally grown food.

-- Jane Black

Corn Cake With Fruit Salsa. (Bill Webster, The Washington Post)

Avocados and tomatoes in cupcakes! Has the world gone mad? What next? Well, I'm glad you asked. Corn, of course.

The August-September issue of Fine Cooking has a sweet corn cake that's served with a lavender syrup and blueberry-corn "compote" (though I'm unsure why it's called that when it is fresh, not cooked). I know lavender is all the rage, but I associate it with bathroom sachets. I'm not a fan of it in my food. In place of the intended accompaniment I mixed together corn, fresh strawberries and some mint. You could, of course, add whatever fruit you have on hand; the version below uses peaches. The cake has a sweet earthiness that pairs with any number of flavors.

-- Leigh Lambert

I don't know about you, but I was completely caught off-guard by the debut of "Top Chef" last week. There I was, all set to watch the finale of "Masters," when I realized -- a half-hour too late -- that the new season had begun.

Shameful, for such a fan, don't you think? Anyway, I caught up with it later, thankfully, and now am in full obsessive mode. All the more appropriate since we have such a strong mid-Atlantic showing this year, including the brothers Voltaggio (Bryan of Volt in Frederick and Michael of Jose Andres's Bazaar in LA), Mike Isabella of Zaytinya and Baltimore's Jesse Sandlin of Abacrombie Fine Foods.

I'll be diving in with a vengeance tonight. As a colleague put it, why blog when you can micro-blog? I'll live-Tweet episode two, offering up my pithiest 130-character (gotta allow space for re-Tweeting!) posts throughout the broadcast: Follow me at the Food sections's Twitter feed, or catch up in this space as the night progresses. The show airs at 10 ET on Bravo.

Which chef are you rooting for, by the way?

-- Joe Yonan

Whitcraft Winery's Melville Vineyard pinot noir is young but beguiling. (Bob Dickey)

A plea to retailers and distributors in the Washington area: If Alyssa Whitcraft phones, take the call.

Whitcraft is a graduate researcher and lecturer at the University of Maryland in College Park, specializing in satellite imagery and geography. In what little spare time she has, she is trying to find representation in the area’s wine stores for her family’s wines.

If you’ve never heard of Whitcraft Winery, that may be because it produces only about 2,000 cases a year, mostly pinot noir, but also some chardonnay, grenache and syrah. They sell most of it to a mailing list through their wine club. Right now, it’s not available in the Washington area (except by online delivery). But it can be, and it should be.

Alyssa’s father, Chris, started the winery in Santa Barbara County in 1985, a year before she was born. He’s now in semi-retirement, leaving the winery operations to his son, Drake. Although Alyssa isn’t joining the family business, she wears it on her sleeve. Well, under her sleeve, actually – in the form of a tattoo of the winery crest and the words, “In Vino Veritas” on her arm.

She describes her father as an unrepentant hippie in the mold of Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat winery fame and says the Whitcraft wines are “romantically rustic.” That’s because the reds are trod by foot to avoid squeezing harsh tannins from the seeds and stems. Indeed, the pinots I tried are seductive in texture and alluring in fruit, with an appealing citrus note. They are not shy in alcohol, yet aside from an initial sensation of heat, the fruit quickly gains balance. Tasting these, it’s easy to see why people get so excited about pinot noir.

The Whitcrafts own no vineyards and source fruit from throughout California, often with long-time contracts with growers. (Though Alyssa mentioned they will be losing access to fruit from Bien Nacido Vineyards.) Here are my notes on five of the Whitcraft pinots. Prices are approximate.

It's that time again, for another Food section and another Food section chat. Join us at 1 today in the usual place. You can ask questions, swap ideas and talk herbs with guest Nancy Baggett.

But first, time to clear up some unfinished business from last week's chat, when, as usual, we left a slew of questions unanswered. Here's one of them.

Arlington: My problem is one of inspiration. I love to cook, but I often find myself reading recipes and not feeling inspired by them. Maybe I don’t have all the ingredients, or it takes five hours and it’s 6 p.m. on a Tuesday.
I try to plan ahead on menus, and I want to try new recipes, but when I go through cookbooks I end up feeling sort of overwhelmed and retreat back to my familiar dishes. Any ideas for getting out of a cooking rut?

Absolutely! I have two ideas for you. One’s perfect for right now, the other is good anytime.

Make this Pork With Chili, Thai Sweet Basil and Toasted Coconut; it's a fast and delicious way to use pork tenderloin. (From "Chop, Sizzle, & Stir: Easy Recipes for Fabulous Stir-Fries," Ryland Peters & Small)

Though this week's Dinner in Minutes recipe calls for Asian flavors, you can usually find all of the ingredients in the average urban or suburban supermarket, with the possible exception of the Thai basil. For that, you can substitute the more common Genovese basil or cilantro, or (better) you can visit one of the many Asian markets in our area that sell fresh produce.

1 pound 4 ounces pork tenderloin, trimmed of excess fat and silver skin

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

4 to 5 tablespoons grated or shredded unsweetened coconut

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1-inch piece ginger root

3 cloves garlic

1 stalk lemon grass

4 whole red Thai chilies

1 tablespoon fish sauce

2 tablespoons chili sauce

1 large handful Thai basil (about 1 cup loosely packed leaves); may substitute Italian basil or cilantro

Questions? We're here to help.

-- Jane Touzalin

FreshFarm co-founders Ann Yonkers, left, and Bernadine Price may be considering a new market near the White House. (Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)

Last week, President Obama floated the idea of getting a "little farmers market set up outside the White House." But there were no specifics about where it might be or when it might open.

Turns out there might be an actual plan in the works. Sharp-eyed blogger Amanda McClements of Metrocurean tipped off AWCE to an item on the August agenda of the Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC): "Proposal from Freshfarm Market to establish a farmers market on the 800 block of 16th St., NW."

Guess where that is? About a block from the White House.

ANC Commissioner Victor Wexler, who represents the district near the White House, confirmed that FreshFarm had requested a meeting. He said an email from the group asking to be put on the agenda laid out a few details: that the market would be on 16th Street, north of the Hay Adams hotel between H and I streets, and would be held on Thursdays from 3 to 7 p.m. from Sept. 17 to Oct. 29.

FreshFarm did not attend the Aug. 12 ANC meeting, however. Wexler said the organization has not indicated whether representatives will attend the next meeting on Sept. 9.

"My first reaction was: Who doesn't like a farmers market?" said Wexler. But he noted that construction on K Street near the proposed location could cause logistical problems for market-goers and traffic flow.

Even if the ANC supports a new market, FreshFarm must still apply for city permits to establish one.

Reached by phone, FreshFarm co-founder Ann Yonkers was cagey about the possibility of a new market and would not say whether the White House would be involved. FreshFarm had asked to be on the agenda but had decided it was not ready to make a formal proposal to the ANC, she said. "We think there is some potential. But there is a lot of work to do, and a lot of it is sensitive," she said. "Right now, it's premature to talk about it."

-- Jane Black

Marinated goat cheese medallions make for an easy appetizer. (Domenica Marchetti)

The results of my chevre challenge are in, and they are delicious.

A few weeks ago, having written about the delights of fresh goat cheese and the many ways to use it in summer, I decided to bring some friends into the mix. I gave an 8-ounce log of chevre (fresh, unripened goat cheese) to each of four friends and asked them to come up with a recipe featuring the cheese as the star ingredient. They did not disappoint. I even got a bonus recipe out of the deal when a friend of a friend contributed one, too.

You'll have to wait until next week for two of the recipes (ain't anticipation grand?), but I’m sharing three of them here. Any would make a great late-summer appetizer: a leek and goat cheese tart, submitted by my friend Carolyn; prosciutto-wrapped goat cheese-stuffed fig purses, submitted by Carolyn’s friend Erika; and marinated goat cheese medallions, submitted by my friend Anne.

Carolyn happened to be organizing a goat cheese and wine tasting party when I approached her with my chevre challenge. She ended up with so many contenders (among them goat cheese croquettes and chocolate-goat cheese truffles) that it took a while for her to decide which recipe to submit. She settled on the tart (her recipe) and the stuffed figs (Erika's). I’ve tried them, and both are terrific: easy to execute but rich and delicious, making them perfect party fare.

My friend and next-door-neighbor Anne came through with her tried-and-true appetizer of marinated goat cheese medallions garnished with fresh herbs, thinly sliced garlic and lots of freshly ground black pepper, a recipe beautiful in its simplicity and in its presentation. Anne, a film buff, noted the importance of slicing the garlic paper-thin. She mentioned a memorable scene from the movie "Goodfellas," in which Paul Sorvino’s character, Paul Cicero, clad in his bathrobe and cooking in his jail cell, uses a razor blade to slice a clove of garlic into transparent slivers. A sharp paring knife will do just as well, Anne says; the bathrobe is optional.

-- Domenica Marchetti

The third in a series on ways we like to celebrate the summer's bounty.

Zucchini casserole. (Leigh Lambert -- The Washington Post)

When we divvied up who would write about which produce for our Bumper Crop posts, I was asleep at the wheel, didn't speak up soon enough, and ended up with the ugly stepchild: zucchini. OK, I'm not entirely serious, but zucchini does seem to have a bad reputation when it comes to surplus garden crops. There are even stories of people leaving bags of them on neighbors' porches in the dark of night. "Gifting" someone with zucchini is a bit of a euphemism.

Nonetheless, there are some wonderful ways to use zucchini. In fact, if you were so inclined, you could feature it in every course of your menu.

First course: You might start with a salad tossed with Greek Goddess Dressing. The squash will be whirled into anonymous oblivion, leaving only a pleasant body and trace of green.

Ligurian San Damiano is one of Olio2go's small producers. (Olio2go)

When I buy good olive oil, I’m not only searching for taste but a story. At Olio2go, a Fairfax-based online retailer, there are a lot of good yarns behind the Italian oils.

There's the San Damiano, a Ligurian extra virgin oil imported by Elisabetta Grow, an Italian who married an American and relocated to Kansas. There's the Marfuga L’affiorante, an oil pressed from the first harvest of the season at a famous Umbria estate. Just 1500 liters are produced. And while you can find some Marfuga oils at stores such as Williams-Sonoma, only Olio2go gets the L'affiorante.

Olio2go opened in 2000 but has remained remarkably under the radar, serving a loyal group of food-loving and health-obsessed customers. (The store was featured in Dr. Barry Sears' book, "The Anti-Inflammation Zone," which recommends olive oils with high levels of antioxidants and polyphenols.)

But browsing the Web site is a treat for any serious cook. You can search by name or by region. In Tuscany, you'll find more peppery oils; Sicilian bottles offer a grassy, floral flavor. The most popular, says manager Luanne Savino O'Loughlin, are the Olio Beato, an unfiltered, very reasonably priced organic oil from Puglia ($23.95 for 750 ml) and the Olio Verde, a Sicilian extra virgin that comes in a distinctive square bottle ($34.95 for 500 ml).

Olio2go has also recently expanded its offering to include what O'Loughlin calls Italian pantry items. The decision was timed to the owners' opening of Piazza Italian Market in Easton. (Has anyone been? Would love to hear about it if you have.) There are pastas, mostardas, sauces and olive oil-focused cookbooks. I'm yearning for the pear mostarda from Mantua and Puglian estate Villa Cappelli's sugar "crack" almonds (their name, not mine.)

-- Jane Black

Perennial sunflower in bloom at Green Spring Gardens in Northern Virginia. (Adrian Higgins -- The Washington Post)

Fresh garden raspberries are one of the easy rewards of growing your own food. It's hard to find raspberry plants now at the garden center -- they're usually sold dormant in late winter -- but you can plan a site for your bramble patch this fall and set about clearing it of existing vegetation and enriching the soil. Don't place the raspberry plot next to other beds; the brambles will encroach in time and cause a maintenance nightmare. Give the raspberries their own bed, and put in edging to keep them contained. A row 12 feet long and two feet wide would accommodate 6 or 7 plants and keep a family of four in abundant stock for weeks.

As every good cook knows, there are many varieties of raspberries, and red is just one possible color. At Green Spring Gardens, Cindy Brown and the crew have a whole row devoted to golden raspberries, which are notoriously fragile and rarely seen at the supermarket. You can find yellow and golden varieties, and purple kinds that vary from deep crimson to purple-black.

Red varieties are easier to grow than the others, and they pack luscious tart-sweet flavor. Color, though, is secondary to the primary decision: Do you want June-bearing or fall-bearing plants? The answer is: both.

Two different subscribers’ boxes from Great Country Farms. (Betsy DeMarco and Sarah Hamaker)

I have two points about minimalism this week. The first: I must admit I was somewhat relieved when I got an e-mail from Karl's Farm telling me that my CSA (community-supported agriculture) delivery wouldn't be happening this week.

"We've been harvesting the plants pretty hard and they, like us, could do with a short period of R&R," the e-mail said.

I agree: As I said last week, between my own vacations and long workdays and other recipe projects and obsession with weekend farmers markets, I've been getting behind on my CSA cooking, and a few things have even gone to waste. With a week to catch up, I'll be ready next Tuesday when, according to the farmers, Karl's might even have arugula, okra and chard coming.

That's the first point. The second is this: Other CSA subscribers are reporting a beautiful thing about their boxes here in the full flush of summer bounty. When the produce is good, the cooking is easy, because they don't have to do that much to make things taste great. Isn't that glorious?

Here's what they're saying:

A representative from Paleewong Trading Co. pours Beerlao from Laos at last night’s Brew at the Zoo. (Mehgan Murphy/Smithsonian’s National Zoo)

The last time I visited the National Zoo, one of the tigers was using an empty beer keg as a cat toy, batting it down the steps of its compound and into the moat, to the delight of the crowd. I suspect that keg was a leftover from Brew at the Zoo, an annual fundraiser now in its fifth year.

Last night's beer festival on Lion-Tiger Hill was not officially part of DC Beer Week, which I've been following, and at any rate sold out a week-and-a-half ago. But its continued success inspired him to schedule something “when nobody else was doing anything,” admits DC Beer Week co-organizer Jeff Wells.

“My glass is empty. Can anybody recommend a good beer?” yelled a member of Gonzo’s Nose, one of two bands entertaining the throng. "Starr Hill!" came the reply. Starr Hill Brewing Co. in Crozet, Va., one of about 35 breweries represented, was pouring Northern Lights, a hoppy India pale ale, and The Love, a German hefeweizen.

“That doesn’t have any strawberries in it?” asked the man ahead of me in line as he held out his souvenir mug for a pour of The Love. No strawberries ... but it did have a healthy dose of banana from the peculiar German yeast used to ferment it.

The second in our end-of-summer blog series on ways we like to celebrate the summer's bounty.

Pulp happens each year during the Tomatina festival in Buñol, Spain, on the third Wednesday in August. (Andrea Comas – Reuters)

While the scene above does not look like something I’d want to partake in (so don’t get any big ideas, editor Joe), it did give me pause: Would getting caught in a barrage of red, ripe projectiles lessen my enthusiasm for tomatoes great and small?

I doubt it.

To date, just about any recipe I run across that calls for tomatoes (fresh, mostly) still rates at least a thorough perusal. It’s been that way for 30-plus years. No single moment in my food history comes to mind, but instead I recall a juicy jumble of BLTs and cascades of chunky sauces, each made to slightly different specifications. Tomatoes are the Freddy Astaire of summer cuisine, you see, and when I find a treatment that’s of Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse quality, it goes into my tomato folder; dance steps to follow on the warmest days.

Thanks to some fine cooks and chefs, bits and pieces of tomato craft have sifted into my kitchen routines that do not need clipping or saving to a file folder. From Mitchell Davis, author of “Kitchen Sense” (Clarkson Potter, 2006), I learned that brown butter (richness) with a tablespoon of capers (saltiness) is a pretty nice way to dress thick slices of ripe beefsteak tomatoes (acidity). A sprinkling of flaked sea salt, cracked black pepper and chopped flat-leaf parsley completes the 10-minute prep for a lovely salad course. I follow Marcella Hazan’s advice (from “Marcella Says…,” Harper Collins, 2004) and use one of my newfangled, swivelly vegetable peelers to remove the skins from fresh tomatoes for salads. She finds the fruit tastes riper that way; I think she’s onto something. Same goes for when she has to saute Roma tomatoes.

President Obama spoke at the DNC about health care and healthful eating. (Alex Wong -- Bloomberg)

Michelle Obama may have planted a garden on the White House lawn. But she isn't the only one in her family pushing the benefits of fresh, local produce. At the Organizing for America National Health Care Forum on Thursday, President Obama said that improving access to fresh fruits and vegetables is a key part of reforming health care. He also floated another idea.

"One of the things we're trying to figure out is, can we get a little farmers market set up outside the White House," the president said in answer to a question about combatting obesity. "That is a win-win situation. It gives suddenly D.C. more access to good, fresh food, but it also is this enormous potential revenue maker for local farmers in the area."

Obama didn't say anything about how such a market would work, but Ann Yonkers, co-founder of FreshFarm Markets, welcomed the initial idea: "There's a lot of emphasis in the White House on health. So it's pretty consistent with that. It would be great if it happened."

Obama also stressed the importance of creating distribution systems that could link small, local farmers to public schools who want more fresh fruits and vegetables on their menus. (Look for my story on how this is already happening in Charlottesville, Va., in next week's Food section.)

Schools serve French fries, tater tots and hot dogs, Obama said, "because let's face it, that's what kids want to eat anyway." But he noted that the problem is exacerbated because "that food is a lot cheaper because of the distribution we've set up. … Getting local farmers connected to school districts: That would benefit the farmers delivering fresh produce. Right now they don’t have the distribution mechanism set up."

-- Jane Black

DC Beer Week doesn't mess around. Since my last report, duty called another two times, and I had to answer.

First, there was the Rogue Ale and Oyster Fest at The Reef in Adams Morgan on Tuesday night. The event was conceived as a celebration of all things Oregonian, but no one told the oysters. The waters off the Pacific Northwest have been too warm this summer to guarantee a safe catch, I was told, but there were plenty of Blue Point bivalves, shucked in front of an appreciative crowd, to accompany five beers from Rogue Ales in Newport, Ore.

Rogue Somer Orange Honey Ale is a light golden refresher with a sour fruit tang, “the closest thing we have to a beach beer,” said Rogue regional sales manager Chris Lacey. The 22-ounce bottle features Somer Gorder, whom the label identifies as “a life-long Rogue with a non-conformist attitude and an insatiable appetite for adventure and risk." (More informally, she was described to me as “the wife of one of the marketing guys”).

Rogue head brewer John Maier is prolific enough that I suspect we’ll all be portrayed on one of his beer bottles eventually. I tried three other Rogue releases for the first time: Maierfest Lager, a malty, almost bready Oktoberfest-style beer featuring Maier’s bearded visage; Captain Sig’s Northwestern Ale, an “India red ale” with a ruddy copper color and a resiny, almost spruce-like hop flavor; and Rogue Imperial Red, a strong (9 percent alcohol by volume), fruity ale with a mahogany color and an immense malt backbone.

When tasting wine "blind," make sure to obscure not just their labels but any other identifying information, such as the foil cork covering. (Dayna Smith for The Washington Post)

A blind tasting such as we conducted for our Judgment of Washington is a great way to learn about various wines. Set a category for your friends – Merlot between $10 and $30, say – and ask each to bring a bottle. Then put the bottles in brown lunch bags or wrap them in aluminum foil. (The bottles are blind, not the tasters...) Be sure to remove the foil coverings over the corks and any other markings that might help identify the wines. Have one person bag the wines and another number them, and then have fun. You can get all formal about it, asking people to assign scores and/or write comments, or you can just taste and talk.

There are many variations you can play on this theme. My favorite is to slip in an unexpected wine, like I did with local wines for our tasting at the Post. If your category is Burgundy, for example, include an Oregon pinot noir that seems “Burgundian” to see if your tasters can identify it as an outlier. Or slip your favorite $10 cabernet into a lineup of $40 cabs to see if anyone notices.

One drawback to this type of wine tasting: You really should try to focus on the wine. As counterintuitive as it may seem (especially if you're tasting something really good), provide spit buckets, and use them. But once you've tallied the scores and declared a winner, you can relax and have fun drinking the rest of the wines, no spitting required. Keep an eye out for which bottles are emptied first – no matter what the scores say, those are your friends' favorites.

For some of you, this is old hat: You've held wine tastings at home. If you're in that camp, how did you set it up, and how did it go?

-- Dave McIntyre

Lemon Sugar Cookies, before and after. (Leigh Lambert -- The Washington Post)

People have different tastes. Some folks like their Snickers frozen; others prefer them meltingly gooey. Some like a crisp cookie that snaps cleanly when you bite it; others would rather sink their teeth into something chewy.

One very dedicated reader has repeatedly asked (dare I say begged?) if we knew of a good recipe for a soft lemon sugar cookie. The reader's lament: Everyone thinks sugar cookies should be the crisp, cut-out kind. What about something yielding, rolled in sugar? The kind of cookie you imagine waiting for you in Grandma's cookie jar?

I started with a recipe for holiday cookies that I'd clipped from the 2000 November-December issue of Cuisine magazine. I added lemon zest and extract, and voila! The resulting cookie is just what the reader yearned for, and so easy it can join anyone's regular baking rotation. No sense in waiting for the holidays.

-- Leigh Lambert

Kevin Mueller's "Dora" tomato is a cross of the Brandywine and the Purple Cherokee. (Keith Mueller)

My article on heirloom tomato snobbery created quite a stir. My electronic in-box was flooded by heirlooms' angry defenders. And by snail mail, I received letters with photos of their successful backyard beauties. It was even worse on Facebook, where one farm-to-school advocate commented that I'd entirely missed the point: They are "grown for flavor, not shelf-life," she said. Writing them off is "like giving up on marriage because you had one bad date."

Along with the critics, though, were many kind supporters. One e-mail, from Keith Mueller, particularly caught my attention. A plant breeder in Kansas City, Mueller has developed several heirloom crosses, including the Dora, pictured above, and one named for his grandmothers, the Gary'o Sena. His lines, I should note, allow seeds to be saved. You do not have to purchase new seeds each year.

Mueller thought his tomatoes tasted pretty good. But he wanted to get consumer feedback. In 2005, he set up shop at the Brookside Farmers Market near his home. He cut up his heirloom varietals as well as a few "turkeys," hard, half-ripe tomatoes from the local supermarket, and asked customers which they liked best. It turns out that the sign, not the flavor, made up most people's minds.

"I lied and told samplers that the bad [one] was an heirloom and the good one was store-bought. Guess which one they told me was better?" Mueller said. When "I switched again people thought the [real] heirlooms were better. People hear 'heirloom' and think it must taste better. I call it the lemming effect."

Okay, it was not a controlled psychological study. But it makes a good point: Some heirloom tomato lovers love heirlooms unconditionally. (For further proof, check out the rabid comments on this Scientific American article that dared to challenge heirlooms' superiority.)

For the record, I never suggested writing off heirlooms. I like them -- when they're good. And that's the point. Just because it's an heirloom tomato doesn't mean it will taste good. A good heirloom can be ethereal. But so can a really good hybrid. And a really good hybrid is better than a mediocre heirloom.

Is that really so controversial?

-- Jane Black

Wines from Michael Shaps, Linden and Barboursville did well in our Judgment of Washington tasting. (Dayna Smith for The Washington Post)

Hopefully, by now you've read about our Judgment of Washington tasting, in which we imitated the 1976 Judgment of Paris, but with a twist: We slipped in local wines to see how they would compete.

But you might be wondering: How did I choose the contenders? Well, first of all I wanted to pick wines that would represent California and France well across a range of prices. I did not want to stack the deck in favor of local wines – I wanted them to compete fairly against highly rated wines in their price range and above. My target price range was $30 to $70; I figured this range would show quality, while allowing the tasting to highlight value as well.

I drew on several sources for the wines. Jon Genderson, co-proprietor of Schneider's of Capitol Hill, a leading District retailer, was generous with advice and samples. The leading French finisher, Chateau Larrivet Haut-Brion, is a Schneider's direct import. At $40, it shows impeccable Bordeaux characteristics and impressed the judges with its depth and balance.

Steven Schattman of Monsieur Touton Selections, a leading French importer, was kind enough to contribute some other French contenders. When he gave me the Louis Latour Chateau Blagny Meursault-Blagny, Schattman said, “This wine is killer.” And it was – leaving one of our judges tongue-tied in his praise. There is so much going on in this wine that it justifies the $50 price tag, even though some people may prefer a calmer wine.

Yes, there's kale in here, and it doesn't seem so threatening when it's surrounded by cheese, eggs and crust. (Dayna Smith for The Washington Post)

As always, Wednesday means another Food section chat. Join us at 1 today, and bring your appetite for asking questions that are so fabulous, they’ll win you a prize.

Our special guest chatters: Dave McIntyre, who honchoed the wine tasting, and David Hagedorn, whose Real Entertaining column today is about putting on a farmers market dinner party.

Though we give it our all, we always have leftover questions we couldn’t get to. Here’s one from last week.

Washington, D.C.: I’m in a community-supported agriculture program (CSA) and keep getting kale in my bag. No one in my family — which includes my husband, two sons (ages 4 and 7) and an 18-month-old girl — is convinced that it is actually edible. I really like veggies and will eat pretty much anything. Can you offer up a foolproof, kid-friendly, delicious kale recipe?

With children, and I guess with some adults, the easiest trick to getting them to accept kale is . . . to hide it.

Yes, hide it. As in, chop it up and mix it into meatloaf, meatballs or burgers. That advice comes from Nourish columnist Stephanie Witt Sedgwick, who’s also a mom who likes to feed her children plenty of healthful vegetables.

A slightly less sneaky approach would be to slice it into thin strips to be stirred into soups, or sauteed and added to pasta sauces. In other words, use it as you’d use spinach, but in smaller quantities, to allow for its more assertive flavor.

True, that’s not going to use up a lot of your CSA bounty, but it’s a start, and you might be able to convince your kids that the kale won’t bite them.

You might also try the following recipe from Sedgwick. It’s a lot like a quiche, and kids do like crust. Tell them you’re having pie for dinner, and see what happens.

— Jane Touzalin

Nothing quite like beer to liven up the normally languid Washington August. A few movers and shakers (including Jeff Wells of DOPS distributors and Teddy Folkman, executive chef at Granville Moore’s and the Capitol Lounge) have organized the first-ever DC Beer Week: six days of beer dinners, tastings and brewer meet-and-greets celebrating extreme beer, extreme beer cuisine, even extreme beer containers.

It’s going all week, but here’s a snapshot of yesterday, Day Two (I sat out the opening ceremonies on Sunday):

The evening began at 5 p.m. at Birreria Paradiso in Georgetown, as James Williams, regional sales manager for Manneken-Brussel Imports Inc., uncorked a “Methuselah” (six-liter bottle) of the celebrated Trappist ale Chimay Grande Reserve (also called Chimay Blue after the color of the label).

The immense bottle was as heavy as an anvil. There are only 25 in existence, to be decanted on special occasions, said Williams, and this was the first to be opened in the United States. Chimay Blue, the brewery’s strongest offering at 9 percent alcohol by volume, is a deep copper with a great depth of fruity (apple, plum, raisin) flavors and a peppery spiciness. The monks at the Abbey of Scourmont in Chimay, Belgium, also oversee a cheese-making operation.

What did we wash down with the ale? As a one-day-only special, the restaurant offered pizza Belgian-style made from the sharp, tangy Chimay cheese, topped with salty prosciutto, caramelized onions and endive.

Next, I was off to Brasserie Beck on K Street for Dogfish Head Happy Hour, featuring $5 drafts from the Milton, Del., craft brewery. Dogfish Head’s local rep, Devin Arloski, awaited with a 25- ounce bottle of Theobroma. Inspired by the libations of the ancient Aztecs, the tawny brew has a rounded sweetness from a dollop of honey, and a subtle bittersweet chocolate flavor from the addition of cocoa nibs and powder. Ten seconds after you swallow, the ancho chilis kick in with a prickly sensation in the back of your throat.

For dessert, the Black Squirrel on 18th Street was serving a hop ice cream as part of its “Hop Times in the City” tasting. Chef Gene Sohn took what he described as a creme brulee and drizzled it with a blackberry sauce and a reduction of the hoppy Dale’s Pale Ale. Hops, the bittering element in beer, can clash severely with sweet foods, but Sohn managed to bring out the citrusy elements of the brew without concentrating the bitterness.

Not bad for one night, but there's much more of DC Beer Week to be savored. Fritz Hahn over at the GOG blog gave a nice rundown of the rest of the schedule.

-- Greg Kitsock

Make this Shrimp With Gazpacho Vinaigrette; it's an easy weeknight meal that uses farmers market produce. (James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post)

Really big shrimp, really big flavor, 25 minutes start to finish: These are key attributes of this week's Dinner in Minutes recipe.

1 pound (U-15) raw, shell-on jumbo shrimp

Olive oil (at least 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons)

3/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper (available at La Cuisine in Alexandria or stores that carry Vanns Spices; may substitute crushed red pepper flakes)

1/4 small onion

1 large (3/4 pound) tomato, preferably beefsteak

1 small red bell pepper

1/2 medium cucumber

1/2 large clove garlic

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar (may substitute sauvignon blanc vinegar)

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Couscous (as a side dish)

Questions? We're here to help.

-- Bonnie Benwick

A selection of cheeses from Marcelli Formaggi: Ricotta Scorza Nera, aged ricotta with a black rind; Pecorino Muffato di Anversa, a blue-style sheep's milk cheese aged 3 to 4 months; and Pecorino del Parco, a classic Pecorino of the region, aged 3 to 4 months. Chestnut honey is an ideal accompaniment, especially to aged Pecorino. (Domenica Marchetti)

A few weeks ago I posted an entry about some of the wonderful cheeses I had on my trip to the Abruzzo region of Italy. Among my favorites were the cheeses made by Gregorio Rotolo at Valle Scannese, his organic cheese farm outside the mountain town of Scanno. My favorite was his ricotta scorza nera, an aged sheep’s milk ricotta with a natural black skin and a creamy interior. I lamented the fact that it could not be had this side of the Atlantic.

Later that day I received an email from one Bob Marcelli with these words: “Do I have good news for you!” He did: Marcelli told me that Rotolo is part of a cooperative of cheesemakers that includes Marcelli’s cousin Nunzio Marcelli. Like Rotolo, Nunzio Marcelli runs an organic agriturismo farm, La Porta dei Parchi, in Anversa degli Abruzzi, just down the mountain road from Scanno, where he, too, makes award-winning sheep’s milk cheeses. In July their cheeses were featured at the G8 summit, held near earthquake-ravaged L’Aquila, Abruzzo’s capital.

About a year ago Bob Marcelli began importing some of his cousin’s cheeses, as well as Rotolo’s (including the beguiling ricotta scorza nera), and now Marcelli Formaggi counts among its clients the New York restaurants Babbo, Bar Boulud, Del Posto and Per Se. Among the other cheeses Marcelli offers is an aged Pecorino del Parco, which is dry and crumbly and savory, and Ricotta Ginepro, ricotta that is cold-smoked with juniper wood, which was awarded 1st place in the 2005 Slow Food BioCaseus Organic Cheese competition.

Summer's bounty: local peaches. (Adrian Higgins -- The Washington Post)

The summer I turned 23, I was living in San Francisco. It was years before I became a full-time food writer. But even then, cooking and eating were my main extracurricular activities. In July, a few friends and I set out to go peach picking in the Berkeley hills.

It was as much a social outing as an exercise in foraging. We chatted as we walked down lane after lane of trees, mindlessly choosing softball-size, fuzzy fruits for our baskets. Within an hour, we had 98 pounds of peaches. Very ripe peaches that needed to be eaten within about a week.

Until that summer, the words "too many peaches" had seemed like a contradiction in terms. My roommate and I ate one with every meal. We made peach salsa, peach chutney and peach upside down cake. Then we ran out of ideas.

The summer's bounty can be a blessing and a curse. You wait all year for tomatoes, peaches, berries, corn and basil. Then, you don't know quite what to do with them all. And so we launch our new end-of-summer blog series: Bumper Crop. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll point you to inspired recipes from our archives and beyond. Enjoy.

Several dozen writers, bloggers, wine lovers and winemakers descended on Dallas this past weekend for the first-ever DrinkLocalWine.com conference. Thoughtful and spirited discussions of ways to spread the message about “wine from around here” -- wherever “here” may be -- were followed by a thoroughly enjoyable and oh-so-social-media-trendy “Texas Twitter Tasteoff” of about 45 wines from the Lone Star State.

Some people outside Texas apparently don't realize the state even produces wine. In fact, there are now 177 Texas wineries, compared to about 140 in Virginia, and Texas vies with Virginia for status as the fifth-largest wine producing state. Like other regional wine industries, however, most Texas wineries are quite small and their wines rarely travel across state lines.

While the conference had a decided Texas twang, it was really about the growing popularity of local wines across the country and how to expand on that. The audience at Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Dallas included bloggers from as far afield as Colorado, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and even California, many of whom tapped away at their laptops during the presentations and the tasting. Bloggers were a key audience for the conference – after all, DrinkLocalWine.com was created last year (by Dallas writer Jeff Siegel, aka The Wine Curmudgeon, and myself) as a portal site to link to bloggers covering regional wines from around North America.

And bloggers are an idea channel to reach regional wine’s key market – millennials. Richard Leahy, East Coast editor of Vineyard &Winery Management and also a blogger, made a persuasive argument that millennials are more open-minded about regional wines than older drinkers because they don’t care about which wines are endorsed by Robert Parker or the Wine Spectator. They would rather taste the wine for themselves than rely on others to tell them what to drink.

At the Texas Twitter Tasteoff (which you can follow by searching for #dlw09 on Twitter), the winning red was a tempranillo-cabernet blend from Inwood Estates in northern Texas. Deep colored, spicy and bold, the wine reminded me of a modern-style Spanish red from Ribeira del Duero.

The other winners included a racy and vibrant pinot blanc from Flat Creek Estate, a “port” styled sweet red from Sandstone Cellars, and a nearly unanimous crowd favorite, a “Madeira” from Haak Vineyards & Winery made from an exotic hybrid grape called blanc de bois. I had never heard of this grape before this weekend. Texas sure can keep a secret.

-- Dave McIntyre

Zucchini Fritters are one way to use the garden's bounty. (Cynthia A. Brown)

Zucchini is Italian for "little squash." We don't know the Italian for, "Are you kidding me?"

Zucchini hides beneath its clump of broad leaves and has the capacity to grow with frightening speed. Neglected in August for a few days, it is anything but little. Allowed to grow longer than 12 inches, it could double as a truncheon.

The second dilemma for the gardener is the sheer bounty of zucchini. Four plants is all an average family would need -- something to remember when you tear open that seed packet in May and see 35 of them inside. Still, it is churlish to complain about fruit that is so generous. The key to zucchini cultivation is to check the plants every other day once harvest begins, and to take the fruit before it gets much beyond eight inches.

There are other ways to reduce the zucchini deluge. One is to take the fruits when they are just past baby stage. The other is to pick the flowers for the table. Zucchini and other summer squashes set both male and female flowers on the same plant. Both make tasty blossom fritters but, naturally, only taking the female flowers will reduce the fruit set. Our colleague Barbara Damrosch wrote about cooking blossoms last year.

This week's box from Olin-Fox Farms. (Rita Fox)

Now is the time when many CSA (community-supported agriculture) subscribers, if they're not on vacation, either get all giddy with joy at the prospect of more and more and more fabulous produce (enjoy it while it's here!) or start to feel overwhelmed (we didn't even finish last week's yet!).

For me, I'm falling somewhat into the latter camp. That's not necessarily because my deliveries from Karl's Farm are so crazy-abundant. I'm enjoying them, but my half-share is enough for just a couple of meals, really. The problem is, I also want to shop at the farmers markets: my favorite 14th and U on Saturdays, and Bloomingdale and Dupont on Sundays. By Tuesdays, of course, I still have so much produce left from the weekend marketing that I'm hardly ready for more.

I'm keeping up, for the most part, roasting small eggplants for simple purees that I mash into potatoes, making tomato-cucumber-basil salads just about every night and using yellow squash in stir-fries, risottos and ratatouilles. How are you handling yours?

Here's what a few other CSA Scouts are reporting this week:

Fresh Hatch chili peppers will be at Wegmans, starting Wednesday. (Bill Webster -- The Washington Post)

For folks in the Southwest, Hatch chili pepper season is six weeks of special culinary heat. Experts consider them about the best peppers grown in the United States. They’re named for Hatch, N.M., where they were first cultivated in this country. As production expanded, growers moved to the section of the Mesilla Valley that is near Las Cruces, N.M.

Harvested during late July and August, Hatch chili peppers are said to account for that “certain something” in Southwestern dishes. The fruit may look long and curvy like Anaheim chili peppers, but they are firmer and have a greater range of flavor (good for stuffing a la chili relleno; from mild to medium). They smell great raw and deeply wonderful when roasted. Hundreds of thousands of pepperheads have attended the Hatch Chile Festival, held during Labor Day weekends for the past 36 years, where the freshly roasted peppers are peeled and eaten out of hand. (Hatch brand green or red enchilada sauces are my go-to when I need the canned versions; I find them at Whole Foods Market and they're also available through Amazon.com.)

The big news is that fresh Hatch peppers have come to East coast retailers. In our area, you’ll be able to find them at Wegmans stores in the Washington area starting Wednesday for the next two weeks, at $1.99 per pound. The chain partnered with Melissa’s Produce to make it happen. With the peppers' relatively short window of availability, the stock sent here is expected to go fast.

Mini Hatch chili pepper festivals will be held at two Wegmans: in Fredericksburg (2281 Carl D. Silver Pkwy.) next Thursday through Sunday, and in Woodbridge (14801 Dining Way Rd.) from Aug. 27-30. Each one will have about 300 to 400 cases to sell, says Wegmans regional produce specialist Steve Thiergart, and will fire up two huge roasters outside for seven hours pe