Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
Submit your idea for BlogHer Food ’12 in Seattle
Knock knock knock. Hello? Are you out there? Yeah, you. There on the other side of the screen.
I know…it has been a long more-than-a-year of neglecting this blog, and I always swore to myself I wasn’t going to be one of those bloggers who apologized to their readers for an absence, so trust me, this won’t be an apology.
But you deserve a little information, those readers of mine who are still left out there, and some information you shall have.
Right now, I’m gardenless. I’m once again in an apartment sans balcony, so there are no plants living in my house, unless you count the green shoots coming out of the points of my onions and my garlic when I neglect them for too long. And that’s OK. Life happens, and sometimes gardening doesn’t, and one of these days I’ll have a plant again, and then maybe two, and then maybe a whole bunch.
There have been developments. Among them? I’ve taken on the role of the Food Section Editor for BlogHer Food. This isn’t a new thing—I’ve been doing this since April—and it’s what I do on the side. By day, I’m still the same intrepid Communications Director I’ve been for awhile. But by night, I get to sift through recipes and how-to posts and restaurant reviews and all manner of other food writing and photography. I get to give some of it more love than it would have otherwise gotten. I get smiles so big in return I can read them between the lines of emails. This? This is a good thing.
Related to all that, I have found myself on the Advisory Committee for BlogHer Food ‘12, a veritable extravaganza of a food-blogging conference, scheduled for June 8 and 9 in Seattle. Yes, I’ll be there. I hope some of you will, too.
If you not only want to be there, but want to contribute to the conference programming, I encourage you to submit a panel idea sometime in the next week. We’re accepting submissions through December 21, so time is of the essence, but it’s a painless process, this submitting of an idea, and I guarantee I’ll read and listen to what you have to say.Here are the conference tracks:
- Values, e.g. food politics, food policy or social change via food blogs
- Visuals, e.g. photography, video, design, multimedia, styling
- Vocation, e.g. skills development, best practices, traffic building, monetization, ethics, publishing
- Voice, e.g. writing skills, storytelling, inspiration
- Vittles, e.g. cooking skills, cooking techniques, tools, recipe development
Do you have something to say in one of those areas? If so, submit your idea now. Don’t worry if you don’t know a full panel’s worth of speakers—we can work out those details later. And if you have an idea for something you’d like to see, but you have no interest in speaking, submit that idea anyway and tell us you want to watch from the audience rather than participate from the podium. Ideas are like tomatoes, people. We want them when they’re ripe and ready. And right now is the season for ideas.
There are other developments, too, but they will have to wait for another day and another story. I’m determined that there will be said other stories, because I miss this space, and I miss all of you, and it’s time to return in a more organized fashion than I have attempted in a long time.
Green Thumb Sunday: Raindropped flower
Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
Green Thumb Sunday: Dreamy orange
Pasta a la Gus, Genie-style
Back when I lived in DC, long before I ever thought about gardening, I spent a fair amount of time running up and down I-95 in the summer to Orioles games. I have a long family history with the team, one too long to get into here, and they will, no matter how long they remain the American League underdogs, always be my very favorite.
Not far from the Orioles’ park, Camden Yards, is Baltimore’s Little Italy, a touristy-kitschy collection of Italian restaurants, bakeries, delis and other businesses that run the gamut from very good to awfully mediocre. But we used to go there sometimes when I was a kid, and between that and multiple viewings of Lady & The Tramp, I’m a sucker for an old-school Southern Italian restaurant with a booming-voiced proprietor, an accordion soundtrack, and candles flickering in bumpy, red glass candleholders. Throw a carnation in a tiny glass vase on the table for good measure, and I’m in heaven.
Either before or after an Orioles game one night, I ended up with a couple of friends at Sabatino’s, which is one of the hoary veterans of Little Italy. While dating my eventual ex-husband, I had become obsessed with Spaghetti Aglio e Olio, the very simple and traditional preparation of spaghetti tossed in heavily-garlic-infused olive oil—there was a place we used to go where I ordered it every time. On this particular night at Sabatino’s, I started looking for that on the menu, but got sidetracked by Spaghetti a la Gus.
Spaghetti a la Gus was described as being served in an olive oil and garlic sauce, but with green and black olives and chilis in the mix as well. I ordered it, fully planning to eat half and save the rest for later, and found myself empty-plated within a shockingly short number of minutes after my plate arrived, then found myself mopping the plate with the bread still on the table. I’m not proud of my total lack of restraint, but I could not help myself.
My intent was to return to Sabatino’s, and to return quickly, for another plate of Spaghetti a la Gus. But things happen, and life moves in a whole bunch of directions, and I never got back there, and then I moved away. But, even six years after I left DC for Iowa (and therefore probably 13 or 14 years after that plate of pasta at Sabatino’s), I still find myself craving it.
Here’s the version I made earlier this summer to satisfy that very craving.
Pasta a la Gus, Genie-style
1 lb. fettucine (can substitute spaghetti or any other substantial long pasta, but I find angel hair to be too delicate)
1/3 c. olive oil
Three cloves of garlic, peeled and whole
½ c. sliced green olives
½ c. sliced black ripe olives (don’t go fancy here – go for the canned kind)
1 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley
½ TBSP crushed red pepper
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
- Prepare the pasta according to instructions. Cook to al dente and drain.
- Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the garlic and let cook until light golden brown. This will only take a minute or two, and be sure to watch it so it doesn’t burn.
- Remove the garlic from the pan to a cutting board to cool. Add the olives, crushed red pepper and parsley to the oil. (Be careful at this point, because any liquid on the olives or parsley will spatter in the hot oil.) Stir and let cook for a minute or two.
- Crush the garlic with the back of a fork, then add it back to the olive oil mixture.
- Remove the oil mixture from the heat, toss it with the pasta, give each bowl a hit of salt and pepper, and serve immediately.
Green Thumb Sunday: Marin magnolia
Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
Green Thumb Sunday: Golden Gate Grasses
Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
Talking tomatoes with Kitchen Table Talks
When I started this blog, I was already pretty intolerant of the bad tomato. But since then? This intolerance has reached epic proportions. Unless it’s really tomato season where I live, that particular fruit is dead to me.
But I have a bowl of heirlooms on my kitchen counter right now, because it’s July, and even if Bay Area weather is gloomy and ever-so-non-summerlike, it’s still tomato season just on the other side of the Oakland Hills. And even when I’m not eating tomatoes, I sure do think an awful lot about them.
Though I know this information isn’t going to be helpful to those of you who don’t live within striking distance of San Francisco, I wanted to invite you to join me at an event where everyone will be thinking a lot about tomatoes: About the labor rights issues around the growing of those tasteless balls of cardboard you find in most grocery stores, about research on tomato varietals happening at the University of California, Davis, and about heirloom varieties grown in this area of the country.
It’s the July 26 edition of Kitchen Table Talks, which are held once a month to talk about issues related to our U.S. food system. Registration for the event opens this morning, and it’ll be held at Viracocha, at 998 Valencia Street at 21st Street, in San Francisco. Doors open at 6:30 pm (and there will be food! And wine!), and the discussion begins at 7 p.m.
Hope to see some familiar faces there, and if I haven’t met you but you spot me in the crowd, come say hello! I’m always excited to meet a few more of my kindred tomato spirits.
Green Thumb Sunday: Western Azalea
Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
Green Thumb Sunday: Petal blossoms
Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
