Fresh

Well, it’s been a beautiful week in St. Paul.  The garden plants and flowers have really shot up excitedly.  My heirloom tomatoes are beginning to perk up, small and green, but nonetheless.  The nasturiums are expanding and just about strangling everything else in the garden and my pole beans are climbing up quickly my vertical twine.  This is all very encouraging. 

I wanted to report back on my visit to the new Global Market on Lake St. in Mpls.  My friend Kristi and I nosed about on Saturday admiring the place.  I noticed that there is still quite a lot of space to fill in the market and that it may take time to really become warm and fluid and jam-packed and full of character, quite like an indoor market should be.  We both ate torso-sized falafel sandwiches from Holy Land, which were delicious of course and quite messy, but I was disappointed that I still couldn’t find any fresh or dried curry leaves anywhere.  Maybe I’ve given up on that. 

I want to continually offer book suggestions here.  I’ve a list of cookbooks to not be without and will include those soon.  Let me start with a few that have recently caught my attention.  This week I’ve been salivating over a few Donna Hay cookbooks.  She’s the australian food stylist and chef who puts together really gorgeous, sexy cookbooks.  She tends to take recognizable recipes and then modernizes them or pares them down, such as an easy summer squash lasagna and cleverly revised coleslaw salad.  Give a browse at her books on the Powells site. 

Also I recently plucked from the shelf at Micawber’s Books in St. Anthony Park a book called simply Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.  A shocking book that reveals what a week’s worth of food for a few dozen families from round the world literally looks like.  Each family is pictured in their kitchen or eating space with an entire week’s worth of ingredients before them and included in each section is a breakdown of how much has been spent on that food, the nutritional content, and many other statistics related to the food consumption of that culture.  Fascinating, sometimes disturbing.

And of course, as if you haven’t heard enough about Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.  I’m still in line for this one at the library, but I can’t wait to read this book that seems so fitting for our times.  If you haven’t heard of this one, smart fellow Pollan explores deeply the why and how of our current and past eating habits and shines a harsh light on standards of eating in America.  Prepare to be incredibly bewildered and enlightened. If you’ve already devoured this book, let me know your take.