Down On The Farm

One interesting twist in local/slow food is the concept of Community Supported Agriculture. There are several CSA farms on the East End, and one that was of interest to me was the Golden Earthworm in Jamesport. So I loaded up the Jeep for an Outing and went on a little ramble last weekend.

Now, I'd love to be writing right now about the wonders of CSA and how I went to the Golden Earthworm and was so impressed that I bought a share and all my produce next summer would be coming from the East End, and how proud I am to be able to reduce my carbon footprint by eating local produce, and how great it is to get more connected with your food sources. Alas, it was not to be. Because despite what it said on their Web site - and even on the roadside sign - the farm stand was closed on Sunday. Naturally, finding this out required me to get pretty seriously lost on the back roads of the East End, as I discovered too late that my poor little GPS didn't have maps of Jamesport. It would admit that the town existed - barely - but that was all. Score one for Big Oil.

Nonetheless, I rarely if ever drive all the way to Riverhead with only one goal, so we were off to my next stop at Adam and Eve Organic Farmstand. This one was kind of cute - lots of pumpkins out in the fields, and some Nigerian Dwarf goats penned outside. Apparently I arrived one weekend too early for the Garlic Festival, which might well be worth going back for. Unfortunately, lateish on a Sunday afternoon, the selection was fairly limited and I was about to return to the Jeep emptyhanded when I noticed a "Roasted Corn" stand across the parking lot. I was getting pretty hungry by then.

Well, the corn wasn't roasted, it was boiled and soggy and gummy. I'm not convinced that the corn was local to start with, and it clearly had been cooked yesterday if I was lucky. Thoroughly disgusted with the whole local produce plan by then, I headed off to locate Briermere Farm. I had learned about these guys from the Golden Earthworm site. At this point in my travels, that was not much of a recommendation, but I figured it was still worth checking out.

Briermere is a fruit farm and while not certified organic, bill themselves as committed to responsible and sustainable farming. They have strict guidelines about the amount of pesticides used - just enough to deal with the somewhat unfavorable conditions for certain of their crops. Limited pesticides and really fresh nectarines... now, this seemed like something I could get on board with.

I was simultaneously encouraged and dismayed by the state of the parking lot. It was jammed with BMWs and SUVs and the like. The popularity looked good - and at least it was open - but it wasn't necessarily frequented by locals, which can be cause for some trepidation. Also a lot of these vehicles weren't exactly parked straight, which led me to reflect on the idea of the beginning being at the end. In this case, that means that Riverhead is on the NYC-facing side of the Long Island North Fork Wine Trail - and at 4pm on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, a bottleneck of westbound (and, on average, slightly tipsy) traffic.

There is a long counter on the porch in the front of the building that is heaped with vegetables at one end, and fruit at the other. Inside the building, there is an impressive array of freshly baked pies for sale - this is where many of the shoppers were headed. On the veggie side, there were Brussels sprouts on the stalk, local spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, and other farm stand staples, and I stocked up. Then I found the fruit. Glorious fresh-picked apples, nectarines, pears and teensy little plums were available by the quart ($5). I liked the quart-bucket system that speeded up the selection, but unfortunately that's usually a little more fruit than I buy at one time. I got nectarines and honeycrisp apples and shared them with my landlords.

All I can say is that shopping for produce at an outside farm stand with a bunch of fairly affluent New Yorkers who have been drinking wine all day is a unique experience. I had to pull out some long-neglected NYC survival skills to deal with the woman who kept thwacking me in the back with her plastic shopping basket as she turned to speak to her companion. Suffice it to say that I suspect she'll be more aware of her surroundings in the future.

I'll definitely go back - ideally, in the morning. There are perks to being a Local.

Hamptons To-Do List

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Horseback riding in Montauk (tentatively scheduled with G-Mac for 9/23)
Parrish Museum in Southampton Village
Hallockville Museum Farm in Riverhead
Pick-your-own apples (10/14)
Corn maze
Atlantic Marine World Aquarium in Riverhead
North fork winery outing
Red Bar restaurant in Southampton Village

Post Traumatic Stress

Yeah, I get it. Really bad day, 6 years ago today. You know how I know? 'Cause I was THERE.

I was in the basement after the first one, I was all of a 3 blocks away for the second one. I smelled the smoke. I got jet fuel and asbestos in my hair. I saw the buildings come down first-hand. I walked from the World Trade Center to the Staten Island Ferry to 14th Street to the ferry pier at 34th St in high heels and I had the blisters to show for it. I stopped in a bar I knew to wash my hands and face and they gave me a beer, said I looked like I needed it. I stood in line for hours, covered with dirt and ash, to get on a boat to get me off of Manhattan. I saw 7 World Trade come down seemingly spontaneously as the ferry was pulling into Hoboken Terminal. Once I got there I was sent to "decontamination" where the Fire Department sprayed me off, head to toe, high heels and bag and all, with water.

Worst of all was the moment when the explosion of the second plane. A noise loud enough to knock all thought out of your head, except "This is it, isn't it. This is how it ends." Except it wasn't, it was only smoke and stench and panicked people running. The rest of the day was spent choosing the next place to go... if I can make it to 14th St, it'll be okay - no, the subways aren't running. Um, if Flannery's is open, maybe I can sit down for a minute - well, at least I can drink a pint (they were right, I needed it). If I can only get to the PATH at 34th St, I can get home - um, no PATH service. Isn't there a boat terminal around here somewhere? Well, yes there is - and there's a line literally a mile long. 9 hours later, I limped in my front door wearing bedroom slippers I bought somewhere along the way in a Rite Aid.

A lot of people have a lot to remember today. There's a palpable grief in the air as thousands of people remember that 6 years ago today they lost so many loved ones, so suddenly, so shockingly. I don't know how those people feel today - does the incessant reminders, rememberances and memorials feel like a fitting tribute? Maybe so, and if that's the case I don't begrudge it. But it isn't news - the news happened six years ago. Today's media coverage is a rerun.

But for me, it was something completely different, something unforgettable that doesn't need a TV special. I'd like to say that on every September 11th, I recommit to the decision I made then: to go on with my life and work without submitting to fear. But there's no bravery in it, just momentum that keeps me doing what has to be done - the same momentum that eventually got me home that day. Six years later, there is only resignation and a bone-deep weariness of the hatred and violence of man.

French Food Rocks

I had the most wonderful dinner this weekend. Once we made it though the perilous Labor Day Weekend, looking forward to Tumbleweed Tuesday when all the City people finally GO HOME, we celebrated with a lovely meal at great French restaurant here in the Village. I've heard about this place before and I had been quite curious. It lived up to its PR.

I had spent the late afternoon driving back from NYC after watching the Yankees get their collective butts kicked by the Seattle Mariners, and laughing cruelly at the long, long, LONG line of cars headed west. I suppose it's not really nice to be amused by 90 miles of bumper to bumper traffic, but when it's going the other direction, it's really quite funny. Especially since most of those bumpers spent a great deal of time this summer in between me and the grocery store.

Le Chef was nearly empty when we arrived, but that's to be expected on Labor Day after 5pm. The waiter was pleasant and friendly - particularly towards my friend Chef #2, which made him blush. Trapped in my earlier slightly sadistic mindset, this was somehow wonderfully entertaining.

There was an extremely tempting dinner special that night, one involving lobster. And if you know me, you know that no shellfish stands a chance, especially when I'm in that kind of a mood. This unlucky crustacean was a 1.25-lb lobster removed from his shell and swimming in an absolutely delicious, delicate tomato sauce, along some scallops (to keep him company?). This was in a bit of puff pastry and served with some yummy roasted veggies. I had a glass of a wonderful white Burgandy, something that I didn't even know existed, to go with it.

So it wasn't exactly the traditional end-of-summer BBQ, but somehow it was an even more fitting end to my official Hamptons summer. Now that the tourists are out of the way, we can work on seeing some of the sights!

Goodbye Summer (Part II)

Saturday of Labor Day Weekend started with a home-cooked breakfast for Teababe as we tried to recover from the previous day's culinary excesses. Lemme tell you, one healthy breakfast cannot compensate for what we did to ourselves the rest of the day...

First, we were off to Sag Harbor to explore and to get sandwiches. Sag Harbor is ridiculously cute and quaint, even for the Hamptons. Located on a harbor on the Peconic Bay side of the South Fork, Sag Harbor today boasts an active public marina. The town, once the main harbor for nearby Sagaponack (eventually yielding the name of the new settlement) is mentioned in Southampton Town records as early as 1709, though it was not permantly settled by Europeans until the 1730s. The previous residents were Algonquins.

Sag Harbor loves its history, and a stroll through town yields many points of interest for future visits - you can barely turn around without running into a historical marker or a museum. The extremely walkable downtown shopping district is a fascinating blend of antique and variety stores, high-end retail, and restaurants from a walk-up pizza counter to upper-end sushi. All is not calm at the moment though: there is a serious battle brewing to "Save Sag Harbor" from a planned large CVS drugstore and other development that has the potential to seriously change the character of this small town. This will bear watching over time... who wins here, the developers who finally got the Town to broaden the main road in to 2 lanes and look to profit from the influx of wealth, or the residents who want to maintain the feel of these small villages?

The Village Cheese Shop is another food stop that is worth the drive (and, I note as I write this, another small independent vendor). Walking into this place almost makes up for missing Artisanal, the French restaurant with the glorious cheese counter, back in NYC. I'm prone to stopping just inside the door to inhale that overwhelmingly delicious smell of dozens of gourment cheeses. The Cheese Shop also carries Vosges chocolate bars - this helps cut down the number of trips I have to make to Soho for truffles.

While the Cheese Shop's speciality is, predictably enough, amazing cheeses from all over the world, they offer a limited selection of sandwiches as well. We obtained a goat cheese and sweet pepper as well as a turkey sandwich To Go, for a picnic at our next stop - Channing Daughters. I've written about Channing Daughters at length in the past, but this time there were several tasty new wines including my new favorite, the Cuvee Tropical.

So that seems like enough to fill a day, right? Nope, not in the Hectic Hampty-Hamps! Teababe is a singer as well and so accompanied me to the next stop, our first gig at the Beach Hut at Meschutt Beach in Hampton Bays. We followed that with a second gig at our old standby, Indian Cove. The Beach Hut was a real pleasure with perfect weather, a large crowd that sang along and thoroughly enjoyed the music, and a backdrop of the water and beach behind us. That is, it was a pleasure until the sun went down and the wind picked up, covering our instruments and ourselves with sand. Never before at a gig have I gone from needing sunscreen and bug spray to a sweater!

Goodbye Summer

Lesson learned from this weekend: planning is a waste of time. Okay, not really, but that idea I had about heading to the Shinnecock Pow Wow this weekend was a total bust.

Teababe came out from NYC to visit me this weekend, which is always a treat. First, there's the company, which is awesome, but then we get to run around and do all kinds of things I don't usually think to do. We started out with a driving adventure to Montauk. Now, this is Friday of a big holiday weekend - it's a basic Hamptons survival skill to stay off Route 27 East, the main road, to get anywhere.

So, trusting the GPS, we took off on a set of twisty back roads. I suspect that my portable navigator has developed something of an electronic sense of humor, though, as it apparently spontaneously decided at some point that where we really wanted to go was in a little cul de sac somewhere in the wilds of North Sea. Fortunately for me, Teababe is a patient kind of girl.

So the reason we drove 1 hour for dinner: The Inlet. This was a recommendation from a friend way back in the spring, and I've been thinking about that dinner ever since. The return trip was just as good, which is saying something. The Inlet is cool for many reasons: it's super cute, it has a great view of the water, the service is consistiently friendly and excellent, there's a good sushi bar as well as an extensive (non-Japanese) cooked menu - and the fish is incredibly fresh. According to the review I read, the restaurant is a venture by a cooperative of 6 fishing boat captains. You can see the boat dock from the bar. Did I mention the fish is fresh?

A diner at the next table leaned over as she prepared to leave and said "Order the tuna tartare. It's amazing, it has the most amazing dressing and pieces of mango in it. I've been to some good restaurants but that's the best thing I've ever had." We believed her, and she was possibly right. There was also a lovely day-boat scallop ceviche with lots of cilantro that all but took my breath away.

The only disappointment was a roasted monkfish that was a little overdone that we shared for an entree, but fortunately, we also ordered more sushi, so on the whole the dinner came out pretty much wonderful. We had a spicy tuna roll that was wrapped in slices of astonishingly buttery avacado (a food I usually don't like, but if it's paired with delicious raw tuna I'll risk it) that was especially memorable. Finish it off with a lovely bottle of a local Pinot Grigio and serve at sunset... hard to beat.

Once we finished up and waddled back to the car, dessert seemed all but impossible. By the time we got back to Bridgehampton a half hour later, though, I decided we needed one last culinary treat. And to run the entire spectrum of the Hamptons in one evening, the only possible answer was a stop at Tugboat's for a Guinness float. We picked up a pint of chocolate ice cream at King Kullen and made for Southampton.

Now, the first time someone suggested that I let him drop a scoop of chocolate ice cream in my Guinness, I told him he was out of his mind. But as Tugboat rightly told me then, he's never steered me wrong. The chocolate sweetness against the stout beer is wonderfully rich and unexpected. Ice cream goes in first, BTW, and drink it with a straw. You want to finish it just about the time the last of the ice cream melts.

After all that, all we could possibly do was go home, set up the air mattress, and try to recover in time for the next day's culinary adventures...

P.S., I've just read two awful reviews of the place on TripAdvisor when I went looking for a photo to share. They are wrong, wrong, wrong.