Stories

Sorry for the bad-pun headline, but I do love fresh thyme. Right about now I’m getting to use a lot of it, for two reasons. First, I’ve got several plants flourishing, both right outside the kitchen door and also along the edge of the vegetable garden. Secondly, I keep cutting bunches to sell at the farm stand, and no one buys it. So it goes.

Herbs are not a huge seller, even in the high months, but I stubbornly put them out there, just in case. Secretly, I just like to look at the pretty little bunches arranged in cute cups. Thyme and all the rest of the herbs cut fresh from the garden last a remarkably long time compared to store-bought herbs. (And despite how pretty they look at room temperature in a little container, they will keep even longer in the fridge in a sealed zip-top bag. Dry them well before storing.)

I watched Mark Bittman’s video Pasta With Anchovies and Arugula.

He’s very simpatico and easy to follow and his recipes are usually simple and good. This one is another take on aglio-olio, the iconic Roman dish of spaghetti in garlic and oil.

You can do a lot of things with this dish, adding almost anything you feel like or have around in the fridge, but you have to be careful not to get too creative and ruin what is a classic way to sauce spaghetti. Don’t, for example, throw in that leftover lox from last Sunday’s brunch. That won’t work.

Anyway, I went to the farmer’s market on Saturday – the one across from Lincoln Center – to pick up some farmer-fresh arugula to use in the dish – and every single farmer was sold out of it.arugula It seems everyone on the Upper West Side saw the Mark Bittman video and wanted to make the dish on the same night. Such is the power of the New York Times.

On Sundays, we stroll over to the farmers’ market along Columbus Avenue. It starts around the Museum of Natural History and meanders south a few blocks. The farmers set their stalls up on the sidewalk with their trucks parked along the avenue behind them.

It’s nice. All the healthy people are out shopping. I thought I’d pick up something fresh and farmy for dinner – maybe some turkey burgers from the turkey guy, some greens from the greens guy, some mushrooms from the mushroom guy – that kind of thing. Guy, by the way, being an all-encompassing term meaning human.

There are girl guys at the market, as well. The greens person had some bins on the table filled with various micro-greens that looked, frankly, fantastic. I asked for a taste of the sunflower and he fished out a single little sprout with his tongs and dropped it in my hand – delicious, as fresh as spring, succulent and sassy. I stuffed a couple of handfuls into a bag and a couple handfuls of the micro-buckwheat into another and handed them to the guy to weigh.

“That’ll be twenty-seven dollars.”

What do you consider a good beach read? Something entertaining? Light and fluffy? What about a bedside book? I like a vacation read that I can completely lose myself in, but next to my bed I need something I can pick up and put down endlessly. Right now I have a few of those books.

The first is How to Be a Better Foodie and it's subtitled "a bulging little book for the truly epicurious." Can I just say if there is anything more irritating than someone using the word foodie, it has to be someone using the brand name epicurious as if they made it up. It's a website, ok? Despite the annoying title, the book is a lot of fun. It's filled with little tidbits of information that you will either find essential or completely trivial but either way it is equal parts entertaining and informative. Do you know how mustard got its name? What to savor in Franche-Comte? What and who inspired the famous blue Le Creuset? What season to eat fresh lotus flower root? It's all in there and then some. It's not a book to read cover to cover but it it enjoyable nonetheless.