Katie Meadow

I've made Italian Wedding Soup with escarole, cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) or chard. All good, but I like escarole best.

Pumpkin Spice haters of the world unite!

I have to admit that I thought Jiffy was something from the past. I had a rude awakening the other day at a supermarket in NC. An incredible variety of Jiffy mixes take up a lot of shelf space in these parts. Just try and get artisan cornmeal or Bob's Red Mill cornmeal in the all-white moneyed town of Highlands.

Whatever Clara is eating it appears to have put her in a trance. Always a pleasure whether you are in one or watching one. Half the pix of my 2 yr old granddaughters are of them eating, since that's one of the only times they are sitting relatively still.

Pregnancy cravings are a special category. I like sour, but when I was pregnant nothing was too sour. I craved Japanese pickled vegetables above all, grapefruit as puckering as I could get it, and in the realm of the really hideous: those gummies with that weird sour powder on them.

All my cravings seem to come out of nowhere. Except for root beer floats which are always in the front of my brain.

Another no-name farmers' market melange in the NC cabin. From the market: purple cherokee tomatoes, big and juicy. Shelled purple hull peas, similar to black eyed peas but I like them better. Fresh okra, dark in color and very tender and tasty. Bacon, not local I don't think, but good. Everything sort of sautéed separately and then mixed with rice and seasoned with Cajun Blackening Spice that I brought with me from CA, believe it or not, because all the ones I've tasted so far in Atlanta are ninety percent salt. For dessert, scuppernongs and double dark chocolate Milano's. How southern can you get? Does this dish have a name? To drink we had Asheville Highlands Gaelic Ale, always available in these parts on tap or in cans. I'm not a big beer drinker, but I like this stuff. Believe it or not my daughter and her husband now have some kind of setup that keeps two kegs cold and you can have beer on tap whenever you desire.. What I love about it is that I don't need a giant glass, and can have a half glass at a time, nice foam and all. Highlands Gaelic Ale is a standard, and the other keg is on rotation, I think. The tap handle is only a few months away from being reachable by the taller of the two year-old twins. The two girls are like mountain goats; they'll figure out a way. Too bad I won't be there to see them get sozzled. Most astonishing, my husband baked bread this morning. As per usual for airbnbs the selection of pots and kitchen equipment is arbitrary as can be, but there is a bread pan! Four forks, a bizarre selection of bowls and some frighteningly ugly plates with a leapard-skin pattern that makes it just about impossible to see what you eating. There's one gigantic stainless steel skillet and two small pots. A dishwasher that's functional but obviously forks need to be washed by hand. The coffee cups are stupidly wide and unbalanced. There is no dish drain. There is no water kettle for my tea. Behold, there's a quarter sheet pan that's heavy duty and gorgeous. That means biscuits for breakfast using White Lily flour!

Susan Spungen has several books. The one I have is "Open Kitchen" and although some of the recipes don't seem easy, some are basic and very good and others can be tweaked to simplify. She also has another book called "Veg Forward" but I've never tried it. Since these are not new, they can be found on eBay for a decent price.

That sounds delicious. But the leaves of this plant were large, like regular chard. It was indeed spinach tender but didn't taste like spinach, and when cooked had a texture I prefer to spinach. If I were planning to be in Highlands on any other Saturday I would go back to see if the vendor was there again. I have a suspicion he would say it was just swiss chard.

Shame on the town of Highlands NC. Their Saturday farmers' market was mainly a collection of flowers and low rent jewelry. Except for one fellow who had a small selection of vegetables. We got a couple of large purple cherokee tomatoes (a favorite of mine), a bag of fresh shelled purple hull beans and the last bunch of super fresh swiss chard. The chard turned out to be extraordinary. It was unlike any chard I've seen. The leaves were thin and very tender, the stems were so thin they were practically non-existent. Nothing wasted. Having little to work with we sautéed some garlic in olive oil, tossed in chopped chard, and when wilted, poured in a minimal amount of water, a sprinkle of salt and covered the pan for a few minutes, then cooked uncovered until the liquid was gone. I have never tasted anything like it. Sweet, delicate and totally delicious. I use a lot of chard at home, but this was very different. I'm going to look carefully at other markets to see if the same type of chard is to be found. Does anyone have a clue as to what kind of chard this was?

In keeping with trying to find locally grown foods, and trying not to break the bank, today we scored some fresh, shelled purple hull peas and some chard. We're making do with limited supplies. Tonight we will make sautéed chard in olive oil with garlic and the previously acquired shelled black eye peas. The peas we will do simply as we did the butter beans, lacking anything hammy: just boiled and eaten with butter and salt. Apps, which we are eating right now, include goat cheese and Beemster on Panzanella crackers. Glad to find pansanella! Also some very good fresh lightly salted pistachios. A bottle Italian wine that's better than I would have expected. These kinds of makeshift meals are pretty much how justify going out on vacation. We had planned on being in Decatur with our daughter this weekend, but one of the girls is getting over a cold and the other came down with it today. So it goes. We'll go down midweek and do a lot of shopping and cooking, for which my daughter and SIL are always very grateful. At least the twins love to eat, Well, except for most green vegetables, like most two year olds I have known.

I think it's pretty common to throw fresh arugula on a pizza after it comes out of the oven. Ideally, at least from my perspective the pizza should be really hot so the arugula wilts a bit on top.

KMN. That sounds amazing. It's possible the collars could handle cooking on both sides. It's pretty hard to overcook black cod.

I never post in the Lunch topic, mainly because I don't really eat lunch. We typically eat a late breakfast and an early dinner and a late snack. But on vacation we must adjust. Yesterday was a rehab day of sorts, so we stuck close to home in Highlands NC. We had some hardware store shopping to do and maintenance tasks. The hardware store in Highlands is so huge it made me dizzy. We needed brighter lightbulbs and a flashlight; the shelf space devoted to both was amazing. Since by the time we managed to get ourselves into town it was already after 2:00 pm we decided to try lunch outside at the place that had the fabulous grouper, so I had fish and chips, which I rarely eat, partly because I don't really deep fry anything and, and mostly because places that make it in the Bay Area rely on Tilapia, which I hate. This fish was cod, thick and very fresh. The batter was light and crisp, really delicious. I can't say the same for the fries, which I believe were battered instead of double-fried. They were tasteless and boring. Why is it so hard to get good restaurant fries? Really, I may have to learn how to deep fry in my dotage. Yes, I always wear shoes in the kitchen. One thing I've learned about the mountains in September is that it's too chilly to eat dinner outside, especially for a wuss like me; these folks don't believe in outdoor heaters until winter. So lunch outside is a great luxury. It's so dark in the cabin that by the time we get out of bed it's practically lunch time anyway. Of course we are staying up late, because we have a big TV here and we are re-watching all of Breaking Bad for the first time. But now thYat we have better lightbulbs and have rearranged some of the furniture I now have a cozy spot I can read in. In Highlands we have nothing but time and have limited ourselves to one waterfall a day.

This or something like it will go into heavy rotation once we get back home. I've added a veg stock to my freezer arsenal recently and that's been really useful for a variety of things. I cooked RG beans in it and that was excellent. A change from my usual ham broth beans.

Well, yes, but this cabin in the woods is deep enough in that it doesn't see sunlight. So it's problematic sitting out on the deck as September is chillier than I expected. Next time I do a mountain vacation it will be in high summer. I'm more of a seaside or desert person, so this is novel for me. The darkness in the cabin isn't a problem for my husband, but I have a particular retinal condition that demands a lot of light. Every Friday thru Sunday will be spent at my daughter's place in Decatur, GA, where it is currently 80 degrees. The rest of the week will be spent looking at waterfalls and checking out small towns. This is Cherokee country. There must have been a lot of Scots settled here, because the Tartan Museum is in nearby Franklin. Besides the museum, for which they charge, there's more merch than you can shake a stick at, especially if you need to wear a tie showing your clan pattern. If you love plaid, this is your happy place.

Here I am in apple country in September. I'm in the mountains in North Carolina. One of my absolute all time favorite apples is the Arkansas Black, which we have always referred to as a Black Ark. And here they are! Part of a farmers' market haul. I haven't even tasted them yet, I'm just living in anticipation. They used to appear for a very brief time in our Bay Area market but we haven't seen them in years. Another favorite apple is the Black Twig from Tennessee, even more elusive. Maybe we will go into Asheville for the day soon and check out their huge farmers' market and see if they can be found. In mid October we will be in western MA and I'm hoping for a hot fresh apple cider doughnut. And speaking of doughnuts, which is clearly off-topic, I'm also looking forward to my favorite doughnuts in the world: Hole Doughnuts, in Asheville.

Being on vacation means eating out a lot, which we don't do often at home. We are in Highlands NC. Our first splurge dinner was a popular place called "Wild Thyme." They had a special of pan-fried grouper. I'm a grouper groupie, so that was a no-brainer choice. It was the best piece of fish I've eaten in ages. It came with a humble sauce that was a little lemony with capers that was really good. I ordered the sauce on the side because I like my fish fairly plain and usually find sauces too heavy handed. We are trying to eat half our meals in our airbnb, so two days later we ate at "Gracious Plates," a restaurant in nearby Franklin that bills itself as "farm to fork." The star of the meal was the fried green tomatoes. They had a light crispy tempura batter. The tomatoes were sweet-tart and the slices substantial. I was in heaven! Whenever I'm in the south in the early fall I order fried green tomatoes, but typically they are battered with a thick cornmeal crust that dwarfs the tomatoes and taste like cardboard. These were ethereal. The rest of the meal was just okay, although the wine was a major good deal: apparently every Wednesday is half-price wine night. A glass of delicious minerally rose was like five or six dollars. We did have an appetizer earlier in the afternoon. A roadside stand was advertising hot boiled peanuts, which I can never resist. These were cooked perfectly. It's the next morning and I'm already craving more. This is a "cabin in the woods" kind of vacation. We are at 4000 feet elevation and surrounded by dense trees. It's so dark as a result we are sleeping in late every day. The residents of these mountain towns are hearty folk. At "Wild Thyme" we opted to eat dinner indoors. They told us they don't drag out the patio heaters until November, when there's a chance of snow.

I'm in the southern Appalachian mountain town of Highlands, NC. To stock up our airbnb we drove a few miles north to the town of Cashiers. They have a small farmers' market that's open every day. The selection was limited, but very interesting. There were a few things I've heard about but never until yesterday ever laid eyes on. There were muscadine grapes and also scuppernongs! Both were larger than any grape I've ever seen. I was surprised how thick the skins were; I ended up sucking out all the fruit and tossing the skins. Of the two I preferred the green scuppernongs. There was pristine fresh white corn, which was good. There were greenbeans that were the best in memory. They were clearly very fresh and actually tasted like....GREEN BEANS. Better than any beans I've bought at farmers' markets home in the Bay Area. We splurged on a quart box of blackberries, also delicious. The rest of the haul hasn't been tasted yet: baby crookneck summer squash (so Barbie fucking cute!), a mix of tiny baby fingerlings that were various different unlabeled shapes and colors. Pale yellow onions that are the exact whole size of when I really want a half an onion. A pint each of fresh shelled Black Eye Peas and the same for Butter Beans. A customer in the market swooned when she heard me talking about them and said she liked them just boiled for twenty minutes or so and eaten with just gobs of butter and salt. Sold! We're going to eat the peas or beans tomorrow night for dinner and take the remaining pint down to my daughter's in Decatur. I'm told my twin granddaughters who recently turned two, adore all beans. I hope they never decide to do what my husband did when was two, which was put dried beans so far up his nose that he had to be taken to the hospital. We then proceeded to an Ingles supermarket the size of a soccer field. Just a rough guess, of course. I admit I don't do much of the shopping any more, but I never imagined the way the cereal aisle has evolved. Some of them were higher than any child's eye level. In fact they were MY eye level. OMG. There was a box of KitKat cereal; mesmerizing chunks of KitKats floating in a bright blue sky. My husband saw my trance and said, uh, no. I hardly ever even eat cold cereal. If I'm still thinking about it the next time we hit up Ingles I may have to make the leap. After all I'm on vacation!

Using up my miles, American first class to Atlanta. The last time it was inedible, this was a little better. The choice was lasagne (vegetarian) or beef. I've never had lasagne on a plane that was edible, so I ordered the beef, even tho I rarely eat beaf. It was supposed to be short ribs, but was more like a brisket. Not as terrible as it could have been and I left half of it uneaten. Came with what I think was some overly rich mashed potato type dish. Also edible but weird. Salad was dark leafy greens, so at least I got some percentage of my daily requirement. .Dessert was a choice of "cheese plate" or mango sorbet. I got the sorbet. Also edible, although it needed ten minutes to defrost from a sold block. The best part of the meal was the flatware and tray tables. Real flatware and magnetic tray table, so fun to play with. You can get a spoon to stand up at very strange angles.

Not to mention the shrimp being overcooked.

I don't think of tinned fish as a low-end product, but I do think of it as pantry food. I can open a can as well as a restaurant kitchen. And I can serve my tinned sardines and open a jar of pickled piparra peppers at home, when I don't feel like cooking or eating out. Here's my favorite sardine meal these days: Japanese rice made in the Zoji. Nuri spicy sardines plus the oil served on the rice. And for color I add some jarred Matiz piquilllo peppers. On the side I have some thin slices of cucumber with a little salt, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar and a sprinkle of black and white sesame seeds. All good, especially when there's little in the fridge.

Does clumpy granola always depend on more more sweet syrup? I make granola that is not clumpy and it is not very sweet.

I make two tomato soups. The one I make in the winter uses canned Italian plum tomatoes that get roasted before blending. For this soup cream is optional and gets added at the end to taste. I prefer it without the cream. Come summer I make a fresh tomato soup with dry-farmed early girls. I suppose it could be made with heirlooms, and I also assume, since there's not much to this soup except for peak-season fruit, the flavor of the soup would change depending on the variety of tomato. To make my summer tomato soup I find this to be a most effective way to seed and peel: CucinaPro Tomato Strainer- Easily Juices w No Peeling Deseeding or Coring Necessary- Suction Cup Base, Food Press (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) It is by no means perfect, but it is extremely good looking: a red plastic tomato press. It is a design which probably could have been improved, but it gets the job done. And it makes you feel very happy when you first take it down from the shelf after many months of not looking at it. The happiness is somewhat tempered by frustration when the suction bottom fails, but now that's just part of the experience.

Tomorrow night my plan is to make malfatti with brown butter sauce; you know, it's those little logs composed mainly of spinach or chard and ricotta cheese. The ones at my Italian restaurant down the street are so rich I can barely eat them, but they are delicious. I've never made them before, so if anyone has tips or a recipe they love, by all means send them. Thanks!