Today Bix turns two. I fed him a big breakfast and let him go back to sleep in our bed. This is not so much different than his normal routine — he’s a lazy dog, and doesn’t get out of bed until we do, and likes to return there once he’s done with breakfast. Later today I’ll bring him to the park so he can romp.

One Local Summer hasn’t officially started up yet, but here in Berkshire county, we’re eating local several days a a week thanks to the amazing, beautiful bounty of the Caretaker Farm CSA. Tonight we had a positively sublime summer salad due, in part, to a bit of a cheesemaking fluke. From failure comes total deliciousness — tonight at least.

As you might remember, Dan and I have failed before at cheesemaking. And I thought we were mostly over it, until we stopped by Neighborly Farms in Vermont last weekend, and met the baby cows and sheep, and came home with a quart of goat’s milk, convinced we were going to make some chèvre.

Needless to say, we failed once again. What we ended up with was more like goat’s milk yogurt. It was a little too runny to really be called cheese, but if I wasn’t prepared to throw it out, nor was I prepared to hunker down with a spoon and granola at breakfast time. What could I possibly do with this weird concoction? I thought back to the spectacular (one year anniversary!) dinner we had last weekend, at Hen of the Wood restaurant in Waterbury, Vermont. Dan had a really lovely salad dressed with buttermilk dressing, and my salad featured spring peas, radishes, and crème fraîche (and feta, delicious local feta). The two ideas cross-pollinated, and I had a solution for dinner tonight.

Following the skeleton of a recipe for a standard buttermilk dressing, I whipped up a salad dressing with the un-chèvre:

1/3 cup goat’s milk yogurt (or buttermilk, if you’re normal)
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. mayonnaise
2 tbs. apple cider vinegar
1 scallion, thinly sliced

And, with that, dressed a light salad of young leaf lettuces, sliced red radishes, and snap peas.

The tangy goat’s milk was the perfect accompaniment to the sweet lettuces and peas, and the radishes had just the right bite to cut through the subtle creaminess.

Atop my salad I perched a homemade portobello mushroom and quinoa veggie burger, and Dan had a local, pasture-raised burger with Shropshire blue cheese and grilled onions.

We complemented the meal with Ommegang’s bizarrely-named Ommegeddon — but any farmhouse ale would do. (My vote goes to Southampton Saison.)

Oh, hello. Is it really halfway through June already?

So, the wee garden I’d worked so hard to cultivate this spring was reduced to a withering heap of green last week when a relentless and brutal heatwave descended over the Berkshires for three days. It was the talk of the town: at the library, the sweaty, tank-topped citizenry boldly spoke volumes while fanning themselves with paperbacks. Children slid sluggishly down hot plastic sides at the playground. Recklessly, I swam in a river known to be contaminated with PCBs. (Why not, I figured, seeing as I live within a mile of several PCB cleanup sites — what do I have to lose now?) I considered buying an air conditioner while, out on my front porch, my poor, heat-sensitive lettuces either shriveled or went to seed.

Behold! The circle of life! Death, rebirth, all that. Weeding limp and discolored broccoli rabe from its container this afternoon, I thought: What can I plant next? I was further encouraged by the three tiny green tomatoes that have begun to form on my sungold cherry tomato plant, and the three basils — not to mention the rosemary, sage, and mint — are merrily soaking up sun. The only plant that’s really getting out of hand is the marjoram, which as grown beyond my wildest expectations (which were, admittedly, low) and has nearly crowded out the tarragon it shares a pot with. What was I thinking when I bought a marjoram plant? I can’t think of a single way to use it, so its hacked branches are drying in the sunroom.

In the end, I can’t feel too badly about the death of my salad garden, because just last week the CSA started up, and I can tell already that it will be the best thing about living up here. Full report of this week’s picks when I get my distribution later this week.

The Brattleboro Farmers’ Market is a little over an hour’s drive from our place in northwestern MA, but, much to my surprise, it’s only a mere 45 miles — albeit on twisting country roads and over the beautiful Green Mountains. (Why isn’t Vermont Monts Verts, I always wonder…) Well within the 100-mile diet we try to keep up for a few meals a week each summer, and so tempting — it’s the first real farmers’ market to open in our area.

After a preliminary spin through the market — I take the same tack at thrift stores, cruising through for a once-over before scouring the goods for sale — and a cheap and delicious lunch of west African vegetables and rice, Dan and I began our spring greens buying frenzy. I was already fairly bursting with wild-foods mania when I encountered a vendor selling nettles, which were, sort of incongruously, pre-washed and zipped up in a plastic bag. Well, I figured, I ought to start somewhere, and since I didn’t yet know how to find them in the wild, buying them from Fertile Fields Farm was good enough.

Back at home on Sunday night, I decided a simple soup was in order for these little leaves. I donned a pair of yellow kitchen gloves and swished the nettles through cold water to wash them of any lingering residue. Stinging nettles, as they are known, get their name from a foreboding cocktail of poisons that reside in their tiny hairs — these hairs get embedded in your skin if you touch them, and it’s painful. Boil ‘em up, though, and they’re perfectly touchable — and edible. Plus, they’re high in calcium and iron, and I’d heard they were good for allergies, something I’ve been suffering with since the beginning of spring. I’m still sniffling, but the soup was delicious.

Nettle Soup
I used a quarter-pound of nettle leaves because that’s what I had; simply adjust the recipe if you have more.

1 tbs. butter
1/2 onion, chopped
1 potato, scrubbed and diced (I rarely peel my potatoes)
1/4 lb. nettle leaves
8 c. water or broth
nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
crème fraîche
2 boiled eggs
a good handful of fresh dill and fresh chives

Wearing protective gloves, strip the nettle leaves from their stems, wash, and spin dry in a salad spinner. Place a cup or two of water in a large pot and add the nettle leaves. Cook the nettle leaves for about 5 minutes, drain, reserving the cooking liquid.

Set the large pot over medium-low heat and sautee the onion in butter until very soft and aromatic. Meanwhile, roughly chop the cooked nettle leaves. Add the potato to the onion and cook for a few minutes. Add the nettles and reserved nettle cooking water and broth or water, plus a teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook, uncovered, for 15 to 20 minutes.

While the soup is cooking, set a small pot of water over high heat and add the two eggs. Boil the eggs to your desired level of firmness — we left ours in for about 7 minutes. Once done, place the eggs in a cool water bath; once cool, peel and halve them.

Puree the soup using an immersion blender (or very carefully in a countertop blender); taste for salt and add lots of freshly ground pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. Ladle the soup into a bowl and top it with half a boiled egg, a dollop of crème fraîche, and a generous sprinkling of dill and chives.

Serves four

This morning, over pain a la ancienne and strong coffee with cream, I read a striking passage in a book of essays by Wendell Berry. I turned it over in my head a few times — it seemed right, and timely, working as I am right now full-time on launching a new project. Here it is:

I used to think of meaning as something that one had recourse to — a touchstone or a base. Now it seems to me that unless an act or an occupation is suffused with meaning, constantly and indivisibly meaningful, it is meaningless. It is not possible to work at meaningless work, and then go home or to church or to a museum and experience meaning, as one would recharge a battery. The model would be the life of the primitive hunter or farmer, whose work was never divided from ceremony.

On Saturday morning I went out for my usual early-morning walk with Bix, down by the riverside. It was just after eight, but instead of feeling bleary-eyed, I was alert, almost tingling. I watched the river rush past the sandy shore and saw, right in front of me, the unfurling fronds of ferns. Just weeks ago they would have been fiddleheads — and edible. Excited, I jogged down the path a little further, to a quieter, cooler, out-of-the-way spot. Sure enough, there they were. Fiddleheads. Right there on the site of so many morning walks.

I came back on Sunday morning convinced that where fiddleheads grew, ramps would too. I studied pictures of ramps online, and scoured foraging message boards. I hadn’t had a fresh ramp in three years, and needed some brushing up. Dan and I headed out Sunday morning armed with optimism and a New York City Greenmarket tote bag.

We combed through the forest, carefully. So much green! So many ferns! Bix swam in the river and chased the ball when we threw it, when we were able to tear our eyes away from the soil. Dan wandered off the path into a small grove and I lingered near the base of a old oak tree at the edge of a marshy wetland. And then I saw those broad, pink-stemmed leaves. I called Dan over. He’d dug wild leeks in the woods behind his childhood home in upstate New York. That was it; I’d found it — a tiny stand of ramps in the woods.

Dan dug into the soil with his fingers and pulled a few ramps. We loaded up our Greenmarket bag, thinking about the last time we’d held ramps in our city-white hands: on the asphalt, on 17th St., next to a big, white tent. We dug them up ourselves and left plenty to germinate for next year.

And tonight, we made risotto.

Spring Ramp Risotto
Dan and I first made this dish from a recipe in New York magazine, in April of 2005. We served it with spring asparagus baked en papillote with saffron and shallots. It would be just as great, we decided, with a rare lamb chop. This recipe departs from the original in its hearty use of ramps — while the New York recipe calls for four, I used at least ten. If you got ‘em, flaunt ‘em, and, if you can, accompany them with a juicy red wine and an herby salad with toasted walnuts — bad breath be damned!

2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
10 ramps
pinch red pepper flakes
1 1/2 c. arborio rice
1/2 c. white wine
4 c. vegetable or chicken stock
parmesan cheese, grated
salt and pepper to taste

In a wide saucepan, heat the butter and olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the chopped onion and sautee for 8 - 10 minutes (be patient!) or until golden brown and smelling quite good. Meanwhile, put the stock into a small pot and bring it to a simmer.

While the onion is cooking, chop the ramp bulbs, thick stems, and about three-quarters of the greens. Chiffonade the remaining greens. Add the chopped ramps and half of the ramp greens, along with the red pepper flakes, to the onion and stir. Reserve the chiffonade.

Add rice to the pan and stir to coat, cooking for a minute or two. Add the white wine and stir constantly until the wine has mostly evaporated.

Add the simmering stock, 1/4 to 1/2 of a cup at a time, stirring constantly. Wait until the stock is absorbed before adding more. As you near the end of the stock reserve, reduce the heat to low. Cook for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is plump but al dente, and the risotto has a creamy, porridge-like consistency. Add the remaining chopped ramp greens (they’ll wilt and provide a shot of bright green flavor). Season with salt and fresh-cracked pepper to taste — at least a teaspoon or two of salt.

Stir in a good handful of grated parmesan, and serve, topped with more parmesan, a drizzling of olive oil, and the chiffonade of fresh ramp leaves.

Serves four.

A sure sign of spring in New York City is the arrival of fiddlehead ferns and ramps in the Union Square Greenmarket. Through the wet, gray winter I’d pined for those first green leaves’ arrival, and nearly leaped for joy when I finally spotted them some late April morning on the way to my old corporate job.

Alas, I’m not in New York City anymore, but out in the Berkshires, where spindly trees are exploding with green buds all around me, and where you’d think finding something like fiddlehead ferns and ramps would be as easy as sauntering into the nearest forest and plucking them right up out of the ground.

And it just may be that easy — if I knew where they grew. But if there’s one thing I learned from living out here, it’s that that kind of local knowledge takes time. Unlike the city, out here there are no faded flyers posted to neighborhood telephone poles announcing a meeting of the forager’s society. There’s no word on the street that ramps have started poking up in wherever-it-is-that-ramps-grow. (If there is word on the street about such things, I’m not privy to it.)

So I was delighted when I spotted some local fiddleheads in a basket at the co-op, and greedily gathered fistfuls of them while pestering the produce manager about a source for local ramps. The fiddleheads languished in the refrigerator for a day while I schemed about what to do with them, but ultimately it seems that simple is best when it comes to fresh spring greens, so I tossed them together with some of my garden herbs and pasta. (I’m still working on the ramps.)

Herby Fiddlehead Ferns & Orechiette

1 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. butter
1 shallot, minced
1 tbs. each tarragon and thyme, chopped (I used half lemon thyme, half regular thyme; you can use whatever fresh herbs you have on hand, really)
1/4 c. parsley, chopped
2 c. fiddlehead ferns
1/2 lb. orechiette pasta
shaved parmesan cheese (the best you can get)
1 tsp. lemon juice (the juice from about a half-moon quarter slice)
salt and pepper to taste

Set a large pot of salted water to boil. In the meantime, rinse the fiddleheads, making sure to remove any brown bits. Trim the brown edge from their tails. When the water comes to a boil, toss the fiddleheads in and boil for 2 -3 minutes, until bright green. Using a slotted spoon, scoop out the fiddlheads, drain, and set aside. Add the pasta to the water and cook until just al dente, or according to package directions.

While the pasta is cooking, place the butter and olive oil in a large sautee pan over medium-low heat. When the butter is melted and beginning to foam, add the shallots and cook for a few minutes, or until the shallots begin releasing a really great aroma. Throw in the herbs and cook for a few minutes more, stirring occasionally to be sure nothing sticks or burns. Just before the pasta is ready, add the parboiled ferns to the sautee pan and stir. Drain the pasta and add to the sautee pan, stirring to coat everything. Toss with lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle each serving into a large bowl and top with freshly shaved parmesan cheese and cracked pepper.

Makes 4 small servings, or two big ones, if you have appetites like us.

Today we received our first spring greens from semi-local Sidehill Farm. We carpool with friends to pick up veggies from their greenhouse. This week: teenaged chard (above — I’m calling it that, since it’s not baby, but not big), bok choi, white radishes, pea shoots (LOVE), salad mix, and spinach. Spring is here!

Tonight we sauteed the chard with olive oil and thinly-sliced local garlic, and ate it along with a rustic homemade pizza topped with Twig Farm Fuzzy Wheel cheese, home-grown marjoram and rosemary (seedlings from Putney, VT!), olive oil, garlic, and grilled onions.

Oh my goodness, I love spring vegetables!

And now, on a completely different note, I’m going to go watch an episode of 30 Rock!

I’m taking a break from having just spent a lot of money on plane tickets to Portland, OR for a wedding this summer. It’s going to be a spendy trip, but it’s my favorite U.S. city (besides New York, of course) and I already see my life heading in a direction that incorporates way less plane travel and more making do with local adventures, so I’m chalking this one up to a last-hurrah sort of thing. Even as I write this I have to sort of sadly admit that west coast living might never be a reality for me. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe I’ve just romanticized it in a way that would be disappointing had I ended up living there. I probably will never know.

Portland, OR photo by sdbrown on Flickr