Moving & Eating....Literally

I arrived in NYC last week and would love to report that I'm being a fabulous international playgirl....hitting all the hippest summer spots, eating exotic street food everyday, uncovering the fabulous underbelly of the city and bringing it to you in this blog as a witty gift.  But I'm tired and there's work to be done, so I've done none of that.  What I have been doing is helping my sister and Jess move into their lovely new apartment in Brooklyn and sending off tons of job applications.  And I've been able to fit in a little bit of cheap and fabulous food here and there.

I never thought I'd say this, but the day we went to IKEA was fabulous.  Not because IKEA is so special, but because it is in Red Hook.  This little neighborhood is right across from Governors Island in Brooklyn and formerly was an industrial and pretty underdeveloped place.  These days it's pretty hopping.  One of the highlights for me was the Red Hook Community Farm.  It sits on 2.5 acre concrete lot in the middle of an industrial/residential neighborhood.  They just put about a foot of dirt right on top of the concrete and started farming.  It really doesn't look like much, but they have a CSA program for the neighborhood, weekly farmers' markets and youth education programs.  They make quite a bit impact on their community with only two and a half acres of fenced concrete.

Another great part about the neighborhood is the fabulous street food by the ballpark.  Every kind of Central and South American food you could want awaits you here: elote, papusas, sopas, horchata....it was a dream come true after having (mostly happily) eaten bread and cheese for almost three months.

Some other quick food highlights include:

The great street food at the Brooklyn Flea.  Manchego fritters and kim chee hot dogs are a wonderful breakfast.

BLT Burger in the West Village.  Any time you can have Maker's Mark in your chocolate milk shake is a good one.

Jacques Torres wicked frozen hot chocolate.  I have one every day that I'm in NYC without fail.  Don't ask how it's possible to have something cold and hot at the same time.  Just drink it...you'll become obsessed.

The street hustlers on Kate's block who were trying to sell me a watermelon every time I walked out their front door.  I don't know how they wound up with a truckload of fruit, but clearly they weren't very successful at getting rid of it all.  A real shame.

I'm off to Ohio this afternoon for a quick visit and then back to California...sigh.

Photos from Le Bouquet

I have now officially added the term "goat herder" to my resume

The only escargot I'm likely to get here...

Daily cheese making.

Fresh milk each morning and evening

The little molds for fresh chevre

The Cat Ate My Quiche

I arrived last week at a new farm in a little town called La Caunette. Our new home, Le Bouquet, sits at the foot of the Pyranees, just a short drive from Narbonne and the beautiful beaches of Southern France. We had finally arrived at our destination for the trip: a goat dairy. Our host, Melissa, came to get us at the train station, greeting us with a kiss on both cheeks. I kid you not, her Bob Dylan fro actually had a caterpillar crawling in it; this woman was a true farmer.

Le Bouquet has a small herd of goats (about 30) that are milked twice per day and this is the mainstay of the business. Melissa inherited the farm from her parents and, amazingly, runs the whole operation by herself. She's a tough broad, and I gotta give her props for the huge amount of work that she manages all by her lonesome. It takes a lot of commitment to work a 12 hour day, 7 days a week and live by yourself with a herd of smelly goats. She really seems to enjoy it, and has managed to make a vital business from cheese-making.

My respect for her is the upside. The downside is that our relationship is characterized by mutual bafflement. I have never thought of myself as a particularly high-maintenance person, and since I started traveling and staying on farms, my expectations for daily comfort have drastically reduced. But somehow, I still seem to come across to this kind farmer as hopelessly posh. My daily shower was interpreted as extravagant. Heating milk for coffee in the morning is greeted with a raised eyebrow and a quick glance at the propane tank. I have never felt so bougeois in my entire life.

The entire WWOOF program is predicated on a basic agreement of three things:
1. You come and work
2. You are fed
3. You receive a place to sleep and bathe.
I have had no trouble with adapting to the lifestyle of my hosts...until now. We arrived on Monday and by Wednesday had eaten, literally, the same thing for every meal: the same loaf of bread, the same block of cheese, the same pot of plain, cold pasta, the same bowl of salad. Not that there's anything wrong with that...I just was in the mood for something, say, warm or perhaps, not pasta. Melissa went to the farmers' market on Wednesday morning to sell her cheese and left Elly and I in charge of making our own lunch. I got super resourceful and made a lovely quiche with whatever I could find; a bit of flour we found in the pantry, some leftover cheese from the evening before, a few eggs we had collected from the hen-house, a bit of mushroom and onion we scrounged from a bin and voila! delicious quiche.

Melissa came home and looked a little skeptical. I could see that she thought this was a bit of a production for an afternoon meal, but I was really ready to have something tasty and sat down to munch. I thought myself very clever to have made two so that we could have a bit for dinner as well and was congratulating myself for being so thrifty. It felt like a small victory. But I really had only won the battle not the war. This quickly became evident when I went into the kitchen post-lunch to clean up. On the counter was the bloody cat, hovering over my perfect, tasty, live-affirming quiche. She had eaten big bites out of the whole thing and I thought I might break into tears on the spot. Here's the thing about staying on farms: your whole world is reduced down into the most basic elements. You do not have movies or parties or social circles or any of the other things that make life so full and busy and rich from day to day. All you have is a full day of hard work and the promise of a bit of relaxing and eating in the evening. These basic elements take on a new meaning since they are literally ALL that you have to look forward to each day. So when that damned cat ate my quiche, I felt like someone had sucker-punched my new puppy.

And here's the real kicker: Bob Dylan served it for dinner anyway.