Food Beautiful Food

I spent my first three weeks back in Nashville with an unexpected bout of unemployment. True to my New England roots I carry the double-recessive gene for "Protestant Work Ethic"; without work my days become undefined and I transform into a shiftless and miserable creature. Fortunately this was only a short-term situation, and I was able to mediate the damage by taking up a new and unexpected hobby: bread-making.

I always wanted to try my hand at it, but early experiments lead to gooey crusts and bagels you could slide under a door. However, I was emboldened by Sandor Katz's free-wheeling and experimental take on traditional sourdoughs in Wild Fermentation. I cultivated a sourdough starter and within a week baked two lovely loaves of Danish-style onion-caraway rye. A few days ago I pulled out my burbling starter and baked two more loaves of whole-wheat. Look how beautiful!



In addition to bread I have been up to my old culinary tricks. I have a batch of saurkraut with beets just about ready to eat and I've been spending an unexpected amount of time making hummus, seitan cutlets and other yummy bits from scratch.

I visited the gigantic Nashville farmer's market today. Below is my bounty:


Not pictured: three pounds of unphotogenic turnip greens

PS: Check out the mega-cute Fairytale eggplants! They are the size of my thumb!



They were too cute to keep sitting around so I roasted them and ate them for dinner with some mustard greens. The leftovers will be made into Russian eggplant caviar... and spread on homemade bread.

On second thought, do I really have to start work next week?