Posted By bbinns on April 9, 2010
I’m back in the Hudson Valley, after six months on the left coast, and the first thing I do is buy a freezer-full of meat from Turkana Farms in Germantown. It’s an antidote to the gray, cold days, a carnivore’s snuggle-blanket to protect me against the vicissitudes of a Northeast winter that doesn’t know when […]
Posted By bbinns on September 9, 2009
In less than two weeks, I will hop in my trusty Toyota, trundle down the rutted driveway of my Hudson Valley (New York) home, and drive to California. Driving three thousand miles across the country is fairly common for me, as long-time Roadfoodie readers know—this will be my tenth drive in five years. Driving solo—with […]
Posted By bbinns on July 10, 2009
(Please see Part One, below). C and I have been taking bets about the apartment. He’s sure it’ll be an over-the-top penthouse. There’s only one oven, and the hostess did mention keeping the food costs reasonable, so I’m banking on a smaller, but still plenty gorgeous, abode (or maybe a Madoff victim). I win. The […]
Posted By bbinns on July 10, 2009
Since, as I’ve mentioned, we live in a country where the arts can be seen as optional (ditto health insurance), individuals must shoulder the responsibility for funding them. In England, they have an excellent, well-funded National Theatre; Here, I join the now-shrinking generous multitudes and regularly auction myself off for the benefit of various non-profit […]
Posted By bbinns on July 3, 2009
Here in the Hudson Valley, we are having the sort of deluge that will only be amusing—and even then, only slightly—après. That it should be the first year of the huge, Four-Family Garden is inconvenient, if not heartbreaking. The other day, C took 14 slugs off of one cilantro plant. Long ago, I gave up […]
Posted By bbinns on June 20, 2009
When I met my actor husband in 2001, the only tools he owned were nestled in a small leather kit inside a medicine chest. Imagine my alarm, then, when he climbs up a ladder with a screaming chainsaw under his arm. You see, last winter in the upstate garden of a friend, a hundred-year-old apple […]
Posted By bbinns on May 28, 2009
After the irreverent early-May event that was the Duckathlon ’09, I thought it might be nice to visit Ariane and Lily in their own lair, so last week I made my way to the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark (clearly, worth its own, separate visit). Half a block from the gates of D’Artagnan’s home base, as […]
Posted By bbinns on May 19, 2009
This post’s title should be an oxymoron. The lover of green things, the woman who yearns to bite into a fig from her own tree, courts heartbreak if she moves from place to place, never stopping long enough to allow the growth of deep and clinging roots. Gardening is by definition a pursuit for those […]
Posted By bbinns on May 11, 2009
Today, I hand Roadfoodie over to New American farmer (and Turkish kilim expert) Peter Davies. For the last nine years, he and his partner Mark Scherzer, an attorney specializing in health advocacy, have farmed 39 acres in Germantown, New York with the aid of one part-time employee. Both still have active non-farm careers; neither had […]
Posted By bbinns on May 7, 2009
I apologize for the break in this instructional series—it was crucially important that I go and get crazy with a bunch of duck-quoting, foie-eating chefs in a cavernous room behind Chelsea Market. It’s a tough job. But now, it’s back to fat-world: Once my lard has been strained and clarified, by removing the juices from […]
