Wear your love like heaven...

Just the other evening after I had decided to treat myself to a leisurely drive up and down the county roads, when the air was beginning to go from summer cool to early autumn chill, I couldn’t help but begin to think about my life, my past and my consistent, recurring relationship with the upcoming season—fall.

That night I had walked out onto my front porch and looked out to my right, where I can see the curvaceous crests of deciduous tree tops which create the peaks of Southeastern Ohio’s mountains. Sparsely speckled and just barely visible to those with a keen eye are the early bloomers of those trees, the ones who find the charms of autumn before their peers, those who stand out from the crowd who were slowly beginning to turn from lush green to muted brown and longing for blazon red. That night, those trees were glowing orange in the dying ember of sun dipping into night fall and sinking quickly behind the far off hills. Keys in my hand, I walked down my front steps onto the sidewalk where I unexpectedly stepped on top of a few, lonely, fallen dry leaves and after hearing the crunch beneath the soft bottoms of my trendy slipper-like shoes, I instinctively inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with the cool night air and the smell of fall emanating up from beneath my toes. I got in my car and took off to the west, up a winding state road, up, up and over that ridge top I could see from my porch, chasing the sun in a hopelessly romantic attempt to make the perfection of that evening last as long as possible. When I got to the peak and let my car follow the peaks and valleys of the road, hugging the voluptuous natural landscape, I had succeeded and for a few moments longer I basked in the glorious hues of what was the beginning of an illustrious affair I have year, after year, after year.

When I thought back on my past, on my history of love and relationships, I noticed one commonality: Every time I’ve found myself falling in love, it has always happened in autumn. I thought of this the other night, when I was out driving, punch drunk on life itself and the beauty that surrounded me. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the notion of falling in love with fall itself. I do it every year. It’s like people who have summer flings, like teenagers who fall sweetly in love on salty boardwalks and crowded beaches. I’ve never had an experience like that, but for me, my annual renewal of spirit, love, and passion comes in late August and lasts until flakes of sweet tasting early snow fall onto trees dangling a few remnants of their dry, brown, crinkled leaves. The more I got to thinking about my deep feelings for fall, the more I began to analyze what about that particular season has so seduced and delighted me. It is more than just the physique of curled yellow and orange leaves, more than the intensity of a dying red sun, more than just the chill that permeates the air and sends prickly tingles up and down my arms. It’s the food, the food culture, and the love that radiates from the climactic end of the growing season and the triumphant release of knowing the harvest will be successful and sustaining.

I love apples. Many, many people have heard me say that Ohio produces the best apples I’ve ever eaten and they are highly underrated. I want every person in America to know what an apple, freshly pulled from a flinging branch of a gnarled tree tastes like. I want everyone to know that the juice that runs down your chin when you bite into that apple should be murky and foamy and should taste so good that you stretch your tongue down over your lip, cutting across your teeth, straining to lick up every drop that has escaped your mouth. I wish each of us could have the experience of hauling crates of heavy apples from the bed of a rusty pick-up truck to a hand crafted wooden cider press, to load them into the square, funnel shaped grinder one by one, and to feel sweat run down our temples as our arms begin to feel strained and ache as we turn the wheel of the grinder by hand, listening for the trickling sound of a tiny stream of fresh cider flowing into an antique ceramic jug. Experiences like this feed my soul, fill my senses with restless desire for more, and make autumn into a love interest which I relentlessly pursue.

Of course it isn’t just apples. Soon the smooth, rounded pear shaped butternut squash will be ready for harvest. When autumn is in the peak of its glory, when November falls and frost becomes an imminent threat, nothing warms me, or my heart, like a bowl of warm, nutmeg spiced butternut squash soup, swirled with a dollop of creamy, slowly melting goat cheese. And how could I forget about chestnuts, carefully sliced and roasted until the rustic, earthy, nutty aroma fills the house, then burning my fingertips on the front porch, cracking and pulling open the blistered shells to get at the soft, milky nut steaming inside. Sometimes I imagine what it was like for people in our not so distant past who relied on the seeds they had sewn months before, to provide them with all the food they’d need to survive on until the earth woke from sleep again in early spring. How could they not be in love with fall, when their crops were ready, their lives insured for another winter, their bellies full and happy?

This year, I am falling in love with fall all over again. It has started. The other night, while I was driving my car with the cool wind blowing stringy strands of my hair across my face was the first of many small but significant flirtations with my beloved autumn. I love autumn, and as we get deeper and deeper into the season, the more autumn loves me, sharing its hearty orange pumpkins, pink and red and yellow apples, its deep green kale, its bleeding magenta beets, and every color, shape and size of winter’s eternal squash with me. Do yourselves a favor this year. Let your guards down, let go of your anxiety about the upcoming winter months, and let yourself fall a little bit in love with fall. You’ll be happy you did.

One of my favorite fall recipes, courtesy of my Mom…

Apple Spice Cake

5 locally grown apples, peeled, cored and chopped to 1/4in pieces
6 TBS. bourbon (or apple cider if you’d prefer, but the bourbon makes is amazing)
2 cups sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. group cloves
1 cup chopped nuts
1 cup raisins

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place chopped apples in a large bowl and pour bourbon over them.
3. Mix together and beat the sugar, oil, and eggs. Add this mixture to the apple mixture.
4. Stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Add this to the apple and sugar mixture. Stir until mixed. Fold in walnuts and raisins.
5. Pour into a greased 9 x 13in pan and bake for one hour.
6. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

This cake is a guilty pleasure for me. It is something I eat maybe once a year and thoroughly enjoy. You can also make it in a bundt pan, which is beautiful but can be tricky to get out of the pan. Make sure you grease it well, perhaps even butter and flour it, or grease it with something solid like Crisco. If you make it, I know you’ll love it.

The Praises of Honey

As I sat in my office today after a morning filled with phone calls, e-mails and my giving of good service, I swiveled around in my chair to face the tall tinted window and eagerly peeled back the foil seal of my highly anticipated lunch of Greek yogurt and honey. As many of you know, honey is one of my favorite foods. No, not just one of my favorite foods, but rather one of my favorite things. I tout the good news of honey to almost anyone who will listen. I am almost as obsessed with honey as I am with Snowville Creamery Milk (of which I have been accused on more than one occasion). Thinking about honey this way then led me to another grand observation, made with spoon in hand gazing out at the bountiful hills over lunch. What exactly was I eating for lunch? Honey? Yes. Greek yogurt, which is made from milk? Yes. I was lovingly consuming two of my favorite things, and two things that have a long history together—milk and honey. Upon making this observation, I decided to delve into the world of honey and it’s more than casual association with milk. I wanted to find out exactly what the centuries old Biblical connection meant, surely there had to be more to it than just a general abundance of all things good, and more so, why do I harbor such strong feelings of love, that extend beyond taste alone, for honey?

When I think about honey beyond it’s literal function as a form of natural sugar, my mind likes to wander into the world of metaphor. It should not go unnoticed here that the word "honey" itself has innumerable uses in the world of both love and sex. If you've ever called your significant other your "honey," then you know that culturally, honey is more than just a sweet, sticky syrup. There are some foods, and some of you have heard this from me before, that to me are inherently sensual. Some foods provide a sensory experience that is so much like a sensual experience that they in fact are sensual, passionate, romantic foods. Honey is one of those foods, and I am apparently not the only one who thinks so.

As I dug into the history of milk and honey, all signs began leading to the same place—the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is a part of Judeo-Christian biblical text. In my past experience, the more one reads and learns about the Song of Songs, the more one begins to wonder why exactly it was included in the final cut of what we know today as the Bible. It is a love poem, a beautifully written work of devotion, passion and sensuality. It is the subject of a round table of discussion on it’s intended meaning, it’s possible metaphorical meaning, and it’s place in Judeo-Christian teaching. Milk and honey are referenced more than once in this book, not always together. The book details the progression of a passionate, sexual partnership between a man and woman, and honey's presence does not go unnoticed in the context of their story.

I found a very interesting article by an author named Jonathan Cohen called “Why Milk and Honey,” which connects the promise of God to God’s people “…a land flowing with milk and honey,” to the Song of Songs and in turn connects that to even older civilizations and devotees of the power of honey. While I don’t want to forge or copy any of Mr. Cohen’s words or ideas, I have provided above a link to his entire article, which I highly encourage anyone who is intrigued by this topic to consider reading. It has some wonderful ideas about honey, sensuality, sex, love, God and the divine feminine.

In the meantime, for my little old food blog, however, I just want to pull a quote from the Song of Songs which Mr. Cohen uses in his article. It says, “Your lips distil nectar, my bride; Honey and milk are under your tongue.” Honey can be used metaphorically to represent so many things, and many of these things relate back to sensuality and sexuality. As Mr. Cohen says, honey (ideally) is community property. There was a time when bees weren’t farmed, when we didn’t incur a cost to produce honey, and when we didn’t profit from it. We simply found it, in nature, and collected it for our own use. It is the quintessential symbol of natural abundance, and being that it is also decadent and possesses healing, nurturing properties it is also the quintessential symbol of health, wealth and all things fertile, including our own bodies. It is a metaphor for indulgence and desire, as well as vigor and strength given its medicinal qualities. It oozes, flows and drips with sweetness. A smear of honey on our fingertips will always subsequently end up on our tongues where our sense of taste sends tidings of joy to our brains—not unlike a kiss. Honey is nature’s feel good drug, in more ways than just theoretical and historical metaphors.

Honey is also an antiseptic, full of anti-oxidants, and is a source of natural sugar which can be more easily digested by our bodies. It is used to treat wounds, it is combined with milk to improve the health of our skin, and to soothe an aching throat. Now, it is produced almost everywhere in the world and buying a jar of local honey is in turn sending your hard earned dollars right back to your community, to the farmer up the road even. For my readers in Southeast Ohio, I highly recommend the Dark Honey from the Athens Bulk Food Depot. Local honey doesn’t get much better than that. For my Northeast Ohio readers, I recommend the Ohio Honey Company’s Strawberry Blossom Honey (made from the pollen of strawberry flowers), which can be found at the Geauga Fresh Farmer’s Market on Saturdays.

I am mad for honey. I am drunk on honey. I hope you’ll buy a jar and fall for it as hard as I did.

Culture

"I'm a culture vulture, and I just want to experience it all."
Debbie Harry

Culture. “I go to Athens when I need a little culture,” my supervisor said to me on the very first day I met her. We were discussing Athens and it’s close proximity to McConnelsville, the city where my potential new job would be located. As I later found out, she really wanted me to work for her and she was baiting me with promises of culture within driving distance. I bought it hook, line and sinker and yesterday I got to experience my first forty-five minute drive navigating the ridge tops and subtle valleys of the land that flows between McConnelsville and Athens for a little bit of “culture.”

When I was sharing the story about my supervisor with some of my family at home, one of my Aunts (who has been to Athens several times in recent years) immediately said to me, in a mocking and sarcastic manner, “She goes to ATHENS for culture?” as if the possibility of what she knows to be “culture” could exist in poor, rural, Appalachian, Ohio. Yesterday, I could do nothing but smirk to myself as I walked up and down the streets of uptown Athens. Yes, there is more culture in the faintly, eroded letters “Athens Block,” carved into the century old brick under my feet than my Aunt could find at any cosmopolitan, recently opened, wildly reviewed restaurant or bar or shop in the Greater Cleveland area.


My day started with a trip to the Athens Bulk Food Depot, one of my favorite spots, where the short, petite, and adorably charming Italian woman who has worked there forever pulled the lever on the spout of a five gallon bucket and filled a quart jar full of thick, sticky Athens dark honey (which didn’t make it home without being opened and invaded by my fingertips). Then my car groaned as it rumbled, tumbling over the brick laden streets that create the grid of Uptown, surrounding nineteenth century buildings like a carefully planned series of rugged, red moats. Some of these bricks are engraved Athens Blocks, some Nelsonville Blocks, and some Trimble Blocks. No matter where they came from, they came from somewhere not more than a day’s journey away when there were still furnaces and kilns firing Southeastern Ohio’s clay.


I parked my car facing upward on a hill. It had started to pour rain only minutes before I’d parked, yet there was already a mighty river gaining strength and volume as it ran through the crevices between the bricks as it made it’s way to the Hocking. I tip-toed and leapt over the rushing water, dropping two quarters into what to me is a somewhat despised parking meter, and sprinted under the plum colored awning of my favorite coffee shop in the entire world. Immediately upon entering Donkey Coffee, you are comforted by the familiar darkness, dimly lit by tiny table lamps, that accompanies a great coffee shop. The hues are earthen; the wooden paneling on the walls is not outdated yet rustic and charming. Your senses are filled by the sight of a steaming espresso machine straight ahead of you, the sound as it whistles out the boiling pressure, the smell of rich, roasted fair trade coffee, the feel of soothing dampness as the steam wafts over the counter towards you, and finally of course, the taste. Donkey Coffee brews and creates my very favorite cup of coffee I’ve ever had. They are the only coffee shop to my knowledge, of anywhere I’ve ever lived, that serves Italian-style cappuccinos. Like most things that are Italian, it puts its competitors and often merely imitators to shame. An equal portion of steamed organic, locally raised milk and bitter, acidic espresso, and just a touch of Amaretto and for me there is nothing like it. I carefully carried my teetering cup and saucer, foam and coffee spilling over, staining my fingers, and sat down at a table tucked into a corner perfect for people watchers and voyeurs alike. I love the way the foam feels against my lips as I patiently tip the cup until warm, sweet, nutty coffee pours over my tongue and fills in the spaces between my teeth and my cheeks. Yes, yes this coffee really is that good.


After my little afternoon coffee break, and during a brief reprieve from the torrential downpour, I walked two doors down to a restaurant that offers a sensory experience I’ve yet to experience anywhere else in America. I was meeting a very old college friend at Salaam on West Washington Street. Just upon stepping inside and letting the door slowly close behind me, braced against my back, I was slowly taken from the humid, steamy street to a casual Parisian-style salon somewhere like Morocco or fantastically colorful places in Northern Africa. The mood inside Salaam is purple and blue. Tapestries, or modern versions thereof, line the walls and spackle the rooms with gold, green, red, orange, magenta and lavender. Decorative tiles line an opening in the wall where at eye-level; dishes of steaming curry and boldly spiced kabobs fresh from the grill await their journey from kitchen to table. Seemingly endless strands of beads drape the windows like curtains, and pieces of pottery, ceramics and works of metal art dot the tables and ledges around the restaurant’s rooms. It smells like a bustling market, between meat seared on the grill and vegetables doused in curry and coconut, and in the oven where pastry puffs between layers of spinach and feta as the chef prepares one of their Greek imports. Just when you find yourself halfway through a glass of their delightfully warming house red, awaiting a salad of grilled chicken and roasted beets with honey and goat cheese, thinking that nothing could make this experience any better, your ears perk to the sound of softly jingling metal. Suddenly, music is turned from soft to audibly noticeable, and across the room you follow the sound to a bare-bellied woman in a long, flowing skirt with thin metal medallions strung in layers around her hips. The soft jingling then turns into an energy driven percussion ensemble, and before you know it, she is belly dancing her way past your table. Our food arrived, my senses were filled, and I spent the rest of the evening contently deep in conversation and drunk on the world around me.

No, there’s no culture in Athens. Not even a little bit.

Away down the river, a hundred miles or more...

The cool breeze sweeping my cheeks was overdue and gladly welcomed as my car skirted the edge of a cornfield, where the corn was so tall it cast a shadow over the dusty lane on which I was sailing southbound. It was the first relief from the baking sun and steaming dampness of a long summer's day. To my right, the dying orange sun was sinking below the deep green of a shadow cast mountain, and soon a chilly August night would be falling and settling like dew over the corn, the hills, and my contented self.

The beauty that can be found in the living breathing things of Morgan County, Ohio would surely surprise even the most skeptical traveler. While hundreds of thousands of people who live East of the Mississippi in this country flock to America's most popular National Park, just a few hours away, I'd gladly stay here, soaking in small town America crowned by small Appalachian mountains and severed by a small but mighty river. The corners of this part of the country are not dotted by Starbucks, but rather anchored in the centuries old foundations of churches. The hours are not marked by electronic flashing numbers on the signs of banks, but rather the numbered ringing of bells that hang in skyward stretching steeples. Wal-Mart is at least thirty miles away in any direction, but they have almost anything you'd ever need at Miller's Hardware, where the hammered tin ceiling echoes the very beginnings of the Main Street store in 1845. You simply cannot buy or create the charm and character that defines McConnelsville, Ohio.

Living in this place where all things are local, where your hard earned dollar usually stays here in the community, it truly shocked me that many of the people I've met here do not take advantage of one of this region's greatest resources-its abundant produce and locally produced food. In places like Morgan County where the summer is annually marked by long, hot days and a humid and lengthy growing season, produce is not only abundant and fresh, but sitting right on the back porch, just steps away from the kitchen. On Friday I walked past the ten or so booths at the local Farmer's Market, surprised by the noticeable lack of customers. I know from personal experience that you don't have to go to Georgia to find the best peach you'll ever eat in your life. In fact, I ate the best peach I've ever tasted in my entire life on Friday afternoon, on a sticky, sweet drive home from an orchard in Washington County. The tomatoes here are the deepest red I've ever seen, the corn pops white and yellow, and the fact that this is a region where lima beans actually grow is in itself a virtue.

In case anyone needs more convincing evidence as to why they ought to buy fresh, local produce and other local food products, other than supporting local farms and keeping your money where your mouth is, here are a few more fun facts for you...

The longer the trip from the farm to your table, the more nutrition your produce loses. You could buy peaches grown in California at the IGA, or you could go to the Farmer's Market and buy a peach that was grown less than ten miles away. Its going to taste better, and its better for you.

The variety of foods you can find at the Farmer's Market will always out number what is sold in the grocery store. At the McConnelsville farmer's market there are at least five different varieties of tomato sold, six varieties of squash, three varieties of watermelon, and fresh vegetables like okra and lima beans which you wouldn't ever spot on the shelf at Kroger.

As far as meat products go, one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan says, "Eat animals that have themselves eaten well." At the McConnelsville Farmer's Market, Witten Farms was selling all natural, locally raised grass-fed rib eye steaks for $6.50/lb. If you have ever lived in the big city, your jaw just hit the floor at how cheap that really is. Buying local, natural, grass-fed meat ensures that you're getting the best nutrients from the meat, without the anti-biotics and chemical food additives that you yourself end up ingesting.

The last thing I want to add, and this is important for so many people, you CAN use your food stamps at the farmer's market. Look for the tent at the end of the market where you can exchange them for a certificate you can use like cash.

It is early August, and that means it is probably the most plentiful part of the growing season in that there is so much variety in what is available now. For my Morgan County folks, and my dears in Cleveland, here's a recipe for you from your Italian-American, city-fied import. You can buy every vegetable you need for this recipe at the Farmer's Market, and I have to tell you that if you make this and shop at the grocery store, my heart will probably be broken. Please seek out and take advantage of local foods: they're not expensive, they're abundant, and they're not only good for your body, but good for your community. Enjoy.

Eggplant Caponata
Serve warm or cold, with toasted bread slices (whole grain, of course)

2 medium eggplants, cut lengthwise into 1/2 inch slices
1 TBSP olive oil, plus extra for brushing
1 small onion, chopped
1 medium red, yellow or orange bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
5 roma tomatoes, peeled and seeded
1/4 cup green olives, chopped
1 TBSP drained capers (optional)
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves

1. Preheat the broiler to high heat. Brush the eggplant slices with the extra olive oil. On a large baking sheet, broil the eggplant slices until they are tender and slightly charred, about 5 minutes per side. Set aside to cool.

2. In a large skillet, heat 1 TBSP olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 7 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for thirty seconds. Add the tomatoes, olives and capers. Cook, stirring occasionally and breaking up the tomatoes with a spoon until everything is tender and warmed, about 5 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, roughly chop the eggplant. Add the eggplant to the tomato mixture and cook, stirring occasionally to heat through, about 1 minute. Stir in the vinegar and sugar and cook, stirring occasionally until the liquid has evaporated and the mixture is thick. Remove from the heat and stir in the red pepper flakes and basil.

Serve warm or chill.

Bread and Butters

Nothing says mid-summer in Ohio like the smell of boiling vinegar and the pop of jar lids sealing on the counter after a bubbling water bath. Well maybe not for everyone. It is late July and the cucumbers are coming in by the bucket load. This year my father and I planted a garden in a community garden plot, where I believe we were both sure nothing would grow. We've been faithful waterers and tenders and weeders for the past two months, and wouldn't you know it, our garden is the biggest, bushiest, greenest garden of all the gardens planted there! I have to admit that we're both beaming from ear to ear about this, and in just a couple of weeks my Dad is going to be harvesting his little butt off-tomatoes, green beans, bell peppers, corn and eggplant (of which he will eat none and will surely deliver them to me for the making of delightful baba ghanoush).

I ventured up to our garden on Thursday of last week, after having neglected it for a couple of days due to the chaos that ensues when one gets a new job three hours away from where one lives. I was overwhelmed at the sight of our cucumber plants. They were bushy, bright green with dainty yellow flowers, and growing healthily up the chicken wire cages I built them to keep our cukes out of the dirt. The truly exciting thing about cucumbers (I know you didn't think cucumbers were exciting, but let me tell you how they are...) is that when you first look at the plants and prepare yourself for disappointment because you see no harvestable cukes...look again. Lift up those big, fuzzy leaves and I promise you, even when you least expect it, a big, refreshing shiny cucumber will be waiting for you, camoflauged within the strains of the plant. This is something my father is going to have to learn, because while he brought home one cucumber on Wednesday, I came home the very next day with six pounds of them. Most had blown up like balloons, as he had neglected to harvest them at their prime. Well, so what do you do with six pounds of cucumbers? You make pickles...lots of pickles.


Cucumber bushes.

That is precisely what I spent my Sunday doing. Like my grandparents before me, I stirred a boiling pot of sweet and sour goodness, sweating and my back aching, until the giant brew of cucumbers was ready to be magically transformed into my favorite bread and butter pickles. If you find yourself in a situation where you have a few pounds of cucumbers to knock off, I highly suggest making these. Just wait until you have a cook out and you pop open a jar of these, and say to your guests, "Why yes, I did make these...from scratch." They're instantly going to taste better than any store bought bread and butter pickle you might pick up off the shelf. Enjoy dear readers.



Betsy's Bread and Butter Pickles

6 lbs cucumbers, washed and sliced to 1/8 inch thick
8 cups finely sliced yellow onions
1/4 cup kosher or canning salt (no iodine)
2 heads of garlic, separated into cloves, peeled and smashed
2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 cups distilled white vinegar
4 1/2 cups sugar
2 TBS celery seed
2 TBS mustard seed
1 TBS ground turmeric

4 quart size, wide mouth jars with bands and lids, sterilized and hot

1. In a large bowl, combine cucumber and onion slices. Sprinkle with salt, toss to coat, and cover with 2 inches of crushed ice. Let stand in refrigerator for 4 hours.

2. In a large stock pot, combine vinegars, sugar, celery seed, mustartd seed and turmeric. Bring to a boil and simmer for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. After 4 hours, drain and rinse cucumber and onion slices. Add to the prepared syrup in the stock pot along with smashed garlic cloves. Slowly return to a boil and boil for one minute. Remove from heat.

4. Laddle immediately into hot, sterilized jars. Fit with lids and bands and process for 10 minutes. Let jars sit for at least 6 weeks before serving.

Makes 4 quarts of pickles.


Pickles brewing...

Home Away From Home

On a steamy overcast morning in Southeastern Ohio when it seems the hazy, cloud studded gray skies could open up at any moment, a farm stand is a welcome sight. Thunder was looming in the distance, striking other country roads and soaking the peaks of hills we could see from miles and miles away. A morning storm is not a rarity in a place where hot describes the moonlight hours and sweltering is more appropriate for brunch, and finally unbearable by the time supper is ready. From the ridge top road we found ourselves traveling along we could see many other ridge tops, gentle peaks and sloping valleys all careening their way through the landscape of Washington County, each bending gently leading the trickling rain waters to the Muskingum, and finally the mighty Ohio just up over that highest crest. Green is the color of the season in the Ohio River Valley. The trees are bursting with it in summer’s climactic glory, and the rows and rows of corn are lined with shades of fuzzy yellow and hearty amber. On the other side of the road perhaps you’ll find a soy field, with petite emerald leaves that shine as the wind blows them over and back and back and over. It is a place of beauty, not just in the landscape, but in the people, and experiences you’ll surely enjoy there.

This particular morning we managed to outrun the beating rain and rumbling thunder to the shelter of an old wooden farm stand perched on a ridge top amid the hilly terrain of peach trees, blueberry bushes, and centuries old apple orchards. In Layman, Ohio, hospitality is ever present. Our car grumbled over the rocky driveway and up in front of Wagner’s Fruit Farm, where on a wooden bench, a tiny white and gray cat lay flipping its tail about at the sight of visitors. It got up and nuzzled our ankles, desperate for a chin scratch, and greeted us with a few tiny meows. As the storms approached, we pushed open the creaky door, swollen with the humidity, to a cool storage room chock full of basket after basket of rotund early peaches. Inside, loading a palette with the fruit farm’s signature rectangular wooden baskets was a familiar face I was so happy to see. I met him several years ago when I was a student at Ohio University and made regular trips to the farmer’s market, where he and the other farm workers could never keep their tables full of fruit as people quickly snatched up what is surely the best produce in Washington County. He was glad to see me too, and soon we were swapping brief stories to catch each other up on the months of time between our fleeting market meetings.

Only seconds after we began debating which peaches we should buy to bring home for the rest of the family did my friend hurry back in the store room and reappear with an old worn pocket knife, which he assured us only ever cut peaches. He walked over to the bushels of peaches that had been picked that morning, reached his hand in, and eventually came out with what he believed to be the best specimen to share with us. First a white peach that was free stone and hefty, bright fuchsia near the skin and pale antique white near the stone was held out in the palm of his hand and sliced so that a delightful chunk of fuzzy peach skin landed in my fingertips. The juice was beading up and running off the knife onto the old patterned vinyl table cloth that surely made other similar spilling of fruit juice more manageable. The peach exploded with juice when I sunk my teeth into it, and tasted like what I always imagine the perfectly manicured piles of peach slices on the cover of Martha Stewart Living ought to taste like, only better because I was really eating them and the consumer-driven world of Martha Stewart’s minions who will only ever longingly adore those photos can eat their hearts out. There is nothing in the world like the sensory experience of going to a farm stand.

We left with almost thirty dollars worth of fruit, white peaches, early red havens, donut peaches and some cherry plums which I could eat like candy. I wish everyone could have an experience like this one, or perhaps more appropriately, I wish everyone could appreciate an experience like this one. The pride that exudes from people who put their hearts, souls, hands, backs, and brows into planting and reaping food for us cannot be measured. Before I carried the last load of the Wagner’s mid-summer offerings to the car, I told my friend that if things went well for me that day, I’d be seeing him more often. He told me to come anytime, and that I ought to pick some blackberries because they’re exceptionally good this year. Well, as it turns out, I’ll be going back for another round of his incredible peaches sooner than later. My trip to Southeast Ohio was fruitful, if you will, in more ways than one. About a month ago I applied for three positions with Americorps, a domestic version of the Peace Corps. One position was in Zanesville, one in Marietta and one was in McConnelsville. After what I thought was a fantastic interview, I was offered and accepted the position in McConnelsville. I’m going to be helping people apply to college, and anyone who knows me knows how I feel about access to knowledge. I can’t wait to start, and I won’t have to because my first day is August 2nd. I’m going back to Southeast Ohio, to the hills, the people, the food and the music. I love it there, and I know if you took the time to visit and explore it, you would too. Don’t look for touristy hot spots, there aren’t any. Look for Ohio’s rich history, its charming back roads, its bustling farm stands, and its multitude of sensory, spiritual experiences. Just make sure that when you go, you stop at Wagner’s Fruit Farm at 2505 Brownrigg Rd, Waterford, OH 45786, just West of Marietta, I hear the blackberries are great this year.

Stati Uniti

On June 29, 1920, the course of my family’s history changed forever. On what I imagine to be a sun baked, sweltering port dropped right in the middle of the hazy blue Mediterranean in Genoa, Italy, my Great-grandfather and Great-uncle boarded a steamship headed for New York City, U.S.A. I can only imagine their thoughts, their anticipation as the ship pulled away from a country that was quickly changing from a place they called home to a place they found hard to recognize. They had seen the first “world war,” and at that time never knew they were sailing far away from what would be another one nineteen years later. They spent sixteen days on that ship, sailing across miles and miles of open water, expecting the ends of the Earth to appear on the horizon, upon which the bow of the Giuseppe Verdi would teeter and then fall into the black endless night sky. There had to moments they thought they’d never make it. There had to be times they’d questioned their decision to leave a place our family had known for centuries to come to a place only seen drawn out in books. U.S.A.. It was a place whose very existence had to have seemed surreal in a time when a peasant crossing an ocean was a new phenomenon. They made it. As I scrolled down the pages of the manifest of the ship, scanned onto a computer and available at my fingertips, I saw paper and ink proof that on July 14, 1920 my Great-grandfather and my Great-uncle had seen the blazing beacon of the lady on the sea, and had passed through Ellis Island with flying colors…red, white and blue.

Two years later my grandfather, seventeen at the time, would join them in what we’ve come to know as the land of promise. My grandfather did not want to become a blackshirt. He did not want to fight for Benito Mussolini or anyone else for that matter and in 1922, the same year the fascists overthrew the Italian Prime Minister and placed il Duce on the throne, my grandfather hitched a two week voyage and never looked back. He had dodged a thousand bullets, so to speak, and luckily joined his father and brother working as a laborer in a factory in a place he’d never been called Willoughby, Ohio. In 1929 he met and married my grandmother, who wanted to go to college to become a teacher but in 1929 educating a woman was worthless, and her only worth lied in landing her a husband to bear the burden of feeding, clothing, and sheltering her. I have always hoped that my grandmother felt some sort of overdue satisfaction after all six of the children she and my grandfather raised graduated from college. That is a testament to what this country did for my grandfather. Had he never left Italy, not one of his children and most certainly not one of his four daughters would have seen the inside of a brick laden college lecture hall. Not one of them would have earned a master’s degree, and most certainly his youngest son wouldn’t have been able to earn a Ph.D. Those would’ve been the dreams he wished upon falling, tumbling, crumbling stars stricken by war and poverty. To him, this was absolutely the land of promise and his patriotism was endless. The irony of this story of the American Dream is that at the heart of fascism lived nationalism, national unity, and national pride. Why then, if you page through the archived manifests of ships arriving from places like Genoa, Rome, or Naples in the early 1920s, do you see thousands of Italians pouring out of Italy and flooding Ellis Island like the blight of a plague? And isn’t it funny how my grandfather’s patriotism and loyalty to the United States of America were fierce and unwavering, his national pride booming, and all it took was having the freedom to feel that way?

On Friday, July 2nd, my grandfather would’ve been 105 years old. He loved the red, white and blue, but also made sure we never lost our identity, our roots in the red, white and green. This year for the Fourth of July, my mother and I threw a small dinner party for a couple of friends. When we do Italian, we do Italian. We are Italian, and somewhere inside of us there are living, breathing cells that remember the rolling foothills of the Veneto province, or the mountains of Molise where our ancestors reaped and sowed their lives. That never comes out more than when we make Italian food. This year, in honor of my grandfather’s birthday, and the commemoration of a journey made 81 years ago, I decided that here in this place where I am free to celebrate Independence Day any way I want, I would share this culinary celebration of my heritage. Only in the Stati Uniti, could anyone celebrate a day of national pride with the flavors, memories and culture they left behind to pursue happiness here. That is the quintessential America for which I thank God I have the privilege of calling home. Happy Fourth everyone.


For Starters...


Toothpicks dressed with roasted red peppers, pearl mozzerella, and basil, then wrapped in a slice of proscuitto and dipped in homemade pesto. A seriously easy appetizer that looks and tastes gourmet.

For our dinner my mother made a pot of Bolognese Sauce, which she and I have perfected over the past couple of years, collaborating on how much wine to add or how many crushed tomatoes to add. We've finally got it to just about perfection and to serve it over, I made homemade linguine.


To top off our Fourth of July celebration, we decided to end with something more American, something we all love. Tart cherries are just starting to come in here in Cleveland and I highly recommend taking advantage of them while they're here. They have a very short season, and if you've never eaten a cherry pie made with fresh tart cherries, you're missing out. It's a little bit of work, stemming and pitting them, but in the end the biting tartness and plump pop of the cherries are worth it and it's the perfect July pie.


Have a safe, fun, memorable and proud holiday everyone!