Brandon Eats

Apologies

I was cleaning up my blog in anticipation of my forthcoming trip to France, when inexplicably, this old, oft-read post popped up below. I've put it back where it belongs, but it doesn't seem to go away. My apologies!

Anyhoo--

OH MY GOD, I'M GOING TO GO TO FRANCE FOR THREE WEEKS! A few days in Paris and then off to the south of France for a houseboat trip along the Canal du Midi. More time in Paris, and then home. I am the luckiest woman in the world.

I plan to blog all about it, as I did from Spain , but you know, there was a real learning curve to that little enterprise, so we'll see. This time around, I'll be with fluent, native friends and that fact, I'm hoping, will streamline the process.

So, I'm off to buy a new battery for my laptop at the Apple store, re-purchase all of the summer clothes my children have mysteriously vaporized over the last two months, clean the entire house, and probably procrastinate about all of this until the very last minute. Like right now.

Child of the Sixties

Rabid foodies, beware: what you're about to read will revolt you and utterly destroy any shred of respect you might have had for my culinary acumen.  You're better off clicking over to Chocolate & Zucchini and seeing what Clotilde is up to these days.  This post is an exercise in pure, unapologetic nostalgia for a time before a lot of my readers were even born.

But don't you wish you were born in the sixties, you youngsters?  I know you do; you yearn for the days when a four-year-old and her mother could sing "Feelin' Groovy" without irony, and when "Leavin' on a Jet Plane (Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again)" sounded like the height of sophistication (I want to ride on a jet plane!). You'd beg your mom for candy cigarettes and drive home from the grocery store without a seat belt pretending to flick your imaginary ash out of the front-seat window just like your mom was doing that very minute. Kellog's Frosted Flakes with an additional spoonful of white sugar on top were part of a balanced breakfast, and later on, if your mom would let you back in the house (come back when it gets dark!), you'd guzzle Kool-Aid by the pitcherful.  And that same beautiful mom would talk to guys at parties with enormous mustaches and a compulsion to clash patterns and stripes in the most annoying way possible while your dad snapped photos with his Instamatic.

It was fun and kind of dangerous to be a kid in the sixties.  Our parents were way too young to have children and, looking back, we're all lucky to have survived to adulthood.  Although my mother experimented with Julia Child and went through a long, long love affair with a box of curry powder she found god knows where, she also served a lot of beeforoni casserole (don't ask) and my all-time favorite, Swedish meatballs.

I think my mom first started making Swedish meatballs as party food but it quickly became a staple at our house.  It was a big Sunday night dish, and she inexplicably served it with mashed potatoes instead of noodles, which just ramped up the richness factor.  Only three or four of these meatballs each, swimming in their thick, creamy, salty gravy and topping a mound of fluffy mashed potatoes, would send the entire family reeling to the living room, where we children would collapse, stomachs distended, full-length on the floor to wait for The Wonderful World of Disney to come on at 7:00.

It's still a sure-fire recipe for kids.  I've lightened it a bit and injected a modicum of healthiness into my mom's recipe by replacing the evaporated milk with fat-free evaporated milk (you can't tell the difference), reducing the amount of sodium-laced beef bouillon, and sneaking in 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of shredded zucchini (children will think the green flecks are parsley--especially if you tell them that's what they are). And although I love the mountain of mashed potatoes with a crater of pooled sauce and meatballs, whole wheat egg noodles (tossed with a little butter and fresh Parmesan) are a healthier choice (I hope).  My 21st century Swedish meatballs still retain their sixties' glamor, however, and they put me right on a jet plane back to childhood with the first bite.

Recipe after the jump.

Green Tonic!

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden's Green Tonic symposium is on August 4th & 5th. Learn all about " Urban Gardening for Health and Wholeness."

It's an event for neighborhood organizers and community leaders, urban planners, architects and designers, public officials, health advocates, local food activists, students, master gardeners, and more.

In other words, everyone will love this event.

I'm looking forward to the "Gem on the James" guided bus tour of green spaces in Richmond, as well as the Food Security, Access, Nutrition, and Health workshop.

Space is limited, so hurry up and register already!

Ukrop's for Sale

Ukrop's is up for sale: Food World, a Maryland-based grocery-industry publication, reports that Ukrop’s has issued a prospectus, opening itself up to potential buyers. Click on this link to Richmond Magazine for more information.

It looks like we're about to see the transformation of a Richmond institution.

Belle Oysters

Originally published in Belle:

Out of Their Shells

Oysters are the hot babes of the seafood world.  With a rock-solid reputation as a guaranteed aphrodisiac, science can’t seem to dislodge the popular notion that if you could just convince your sweetheart to eat a few, sexual nirvana will follow.

I’m not going to take sides. Half of sex (or is it three-quarters?) is all in our heads anyway, and if you believe that one little oyster might help the process, who am I to argue? Plus, I’m a true believer that the sensuality of great food leads us all down the path to a deeper appreciation of sensuality in general.

At the very least, good food puts me into a good mood.

Unfortunately, oysters have had a hard time for the last hundred years or so. In the Chesapeake Bay, a trifecta of pollution, over-harvesting, and disease has wiped out the wild oyster population. Most of the tall reefs where oysters like to live have been destroyed, and now, farming is the last gasp of hope for Virginia oysters.

Small aquaculture farmers like the Croxtons of Rappahannock River Oysters might be the solution. Recipient of the 2005 Food & Wine Magazine’s Tastemaker’s Award, the company supplies restaurants like Le Bernadin in New York, Vidalia in DC, and locally, Six Burner, 1 North Belmont, and Comfort, among other high-end restaurants here and throughout the country.   

Years ago, Ryan Croxton’s grandfather warned Ryan’s father not to become a waterman.  The work was just too hard and the oyster population was dwindling as the bay was decimated by disease and unchecked pollution.  But Ryan and his cousin Travis weren’t worried about that.  They both had jobs in Richmond and reviving the oyster company their family started in 1899 was going to be a winter weekend hobby.

Instead of dredging the bay for oysters like the their great-grandfather did, which destroys the bay’s fragile ecosystem, today the younger Croxtons string together a series of elevated cages where native oysters can be monitored for shape, size, and health.

Just across the river from the Croxton’s oyster beds, William and Mary’s Institute of Marine Science incubates genetically sturdier rootstock and seed oysters in long, bubbling tanks inside the Kauffman Aquaculture Center.  If other watermen can be redirected into the oyster farming business, depleted populations like the blue crab will have a chance to increase their numbers, while the added oysters, like little aquatic vacuum cleaners, can sieve out the algae and sediment clogging the waterways.

Squashed Egg

Squashed egg
Originally uploaded by fotofrog

How this day seems to be going for me.

See more amazing high speed photos by fotofrog at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotofrog/sets/1681080/with/78903589/.

Food, Inc. Give-Away Contest CLOSED

We have a lucky winner! Thank you to everyone who entered! I hope Gregory enjoys his books, and the rest of us will have to try not to be too, too envious. Seeing the movie will help, don't you think?