I’m back in the States just in time for the most American holiday of them all: Thanksgiving! Where’d I go? Please forgive the week-long break from blogging — I took off in a rush for Australia, to attend a very important friend (VIF) Jordan’s wedding in Melbourne. It was a blast. But now I’m ready to cook a grand Thanksgiving feast… another one, that is. Shortly beforehand, I got together with Rebecca and Max from Working Class Foodies for a great round of recipes all made from typical Thanksgiving spread leftovers. Here’s what they shot! And below, more on what we made.
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Okay, it’s not summer anymore, and Indian summer has not yet arrived. Instead, this is about the time of year people start taking flu shots, and sweaters and scarfs out from hibernation boxes and changing their sheets to flannel. I do all these things minus the flu shots. But I do have a good way to boost the immune — fresh veggies and bloody, bloody, antioxidant-rich beets. To keep that blood pumping.
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It’s been a tough year for everyone, and small businesses — farms, especially — are no exception. That’s why it’s so exciting to see more consumers and the media rallying behind them. Today, Serious Eats posted a wonderful video about farmers at NYC’s Greenmarkets, and how they’ve contributed to our food system. It’s centered around a trip the Serious Eats team took to Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, and followed them as they packed up their harvest and trucked it into Union Square one Saturday. It was a long day for the Serious Eaters, who drove up to Roscoe, NY that morning to begin shooting. But perhaps a shade emblematic of the everyday toil these farmers go through. As Ed Levine exclaimed in the video, “The risks that they take every day!”
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What’s going on here?? Let me back up a bit. Last year, I contributed a recipe for a project by the non-profit organization the Neighbors Project, called Bodega Party in a Box. The idea behind the ‘box was to promote shopping within one’s community, and to put more fresh produce and healthier foods on the shelves of local corner shops by increasing demand for it. There’s a lot more to the project on the organization’s website. But from a local perspective, big supermarkets are dropping like fleas throughout Brooklyn and Queens, and in low-income neighborhoods especially, quickie convenience stores (aka bodegas) are the only places to buy food for several blocks. The need for better food in them is urgent; and the Neighbors Project’s incentive more timely than ever.
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If you’ve been watching the Food Network lately, you may have seen a teaser for a new series called Ask Aida. Its premise is that home cooks pose a question to culinary expert Aida Mollenkamp — how do you make a roux? Quick weeknight supper? That sort of thing. Then Aida goes on to reveal her secrets to making the dish/technique a success. Word on the street has it that my likeness appears briefly in a commercial for the show preview of upcoming episodes (thanks, Yvo, for the tip!). Let me tell you why.
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It’s another video! Just when you thought I couldn’t get any worse on camera, here’s the latest installment of my ongoing battle with awkwardness. Um, um… yeah.

Greenmarkets are particularly exciting at this time of the year, because, like the public parks they often border, they’re budding with fresh, botanical diversity. Grand Army Plaza’s market is Brooklyn’s largest, with regularly a dozen or more vendors at any given Saturday throughout the year (it’s the second largest one in NYC, after Union Square). If this guided tour isn’t cheesy enough to turn you away from it, I hope you get to enjoy the scene soon, and cheer on your evidently very hard-working tri-state area farmers. (Video/genius credit: Matt Bagdanoff.)

Even if it isn’t quite corn on the cob season in the Northeast, here’s some great fodder for your upcoming barbecues. Something to add to your global grilled corn cooking expertise (which might include the popular, lime and chile-spiked Mexican grilled corn), this recipe is god-awfully delicious. And now I’m providing you with documented evidence of its simplicity.
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