I stand breathing, high up on a hill. The night is deep, and the huge starry sky dwarfs the tiny countryside that spreads out in all directions before me. The moon is not yet up, and the inky ridge to the east merges into the sky with a barely discernible line. From somewhere near its base, the quiet rumble of a train. Nearby, there is no sound. Not even a breeze stirs the stubble of last year's cornstalks. Tiny clusters of light mark distant villages and seem a dim reflection of the brilliant stars all around me. Traces of the men who settled this land, now nearly forgotten.

I am not of the village, though my house is there. I am not of the villagers, though I pass among them and am not a stranger to them. I am of the land, this land, and the villagers are but a part of the land.

I know the land by its rises and vales. I know it by its shape and its textures. I imagine touching these burly cornfields, my hand following down the hill and up the smooth, fallow slope of the next. I feel the lone oak at its top. Every hollow and rise is familiar to my touch. Though I've walked among the trees below, I know them better by their feel from above. I imagine, for a moment, that this is, in part, how a god might experience a world, from above, not detached, but rather as a part of the world.

Occasionally a tiny light, a car, silently moves along a distant hill as a villager travels on some mission or other. Most of the villagers rest in their homes. Great men may be among them, but for now all is tiny beneath the sky. Sadly, most of the villagers live tiny all their lives. Like ants, they rarley, if ever, take time to ponder the hills they live amonst. They don't wonder why they were born here and not elsewhere. The village seems to have been here always, and they cannot conceive it otherwise.

Though many of the villagers are relative newcomers to the area or even sons of those who came later, there are yet many names that are the same as those who cleared these fields. Many of them bear the names of the men whose homes were the first to stand there, though most of the villagers no longer know or remember the men who came first.

These men were not village folks meant to live in gatherings and maintain routine. They were men who knew feeling of freedom. Some one of them must have stood on this hill, just as I do, and felt the land below. There were no light below to mimic the the stars, but the land must have seemed nearly as deep as the sky. Like me, his day was spent in work, though his was greater than any found today, but in the eve, when work was through and he gazed out over the fields he had carved from the rough woods, he not only knew the feel of the land from below, but also from above. To know the land that closely he must have felt not as mere god, but as close to the Creator as a man can feel.

---I wrote this over twenty years ago, probably in the winter of 1987. I was commuting to and from a corporate job 60 or 70 miles away in the city, and was yearning for the connection to the land I had grown up with. It miraculously survived as a handwritten scrap amongst the detritus that follows me, and I found it while packing for my upcoming move.

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Well, in true backpack fashion, I have decided to move to new digs after all of my firewood is in for the approaching winter, and after all my preparations are complete. My cabin and my woods and my gardens are preparing for the proverbial winter's nap. My children are happily ensconced in their new schools; and in the face of the worst financial crisis in recent U.S. history my fiance and I are finally ready to make the big move. We have found a great little piece of bottom land and our financing is in place. The only holdup is the present owner's finances. He is upside down in his mortgage, which means he will owe a bit even after the sale. We await the verdict of his bank. The lovely Kelly, my beautiful fiance, is soon to be my trophy wife. She is a reward I probably do not deserve. Even as we speak, she is hard at work making things happen. It can't be too soon, as my children eagerly await, nay badger me incessantly, as to when we will all be a family together.

And I, I am preparing to leave my beloved mountain. It has been a sanctuary, a nursery, a recovery room, my shelter, my studio, my food and heat supplier, my personal energy supply, and in every deeper sense of the word, my home. I will miss it even as I embrace my new life.

I remember a bit of an ancient poem - perhaps Li Po (?):

"We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains"

I have made much of my life and much of my living by traveling and being at home wherever I find myself. But the operative word is home. I have always sought a proper home and even have believed I had found it a few times, but in every case I have been mistaken or for some reason I have had to move on. But even tumbleweeds need roots to live and to continue the cycle of life. It is time I really sink these roots deep into the earth that my family may flourish and grow. My children have begun to come into themselves as human beings, and I am afraid that much of their legacy remains to be created. This mountain I have always returned to as home, but it is time to leave this place on this mountain. I have been known as a ridge runner and as a hillbilly, and I'm too old a dog to change that. I never did before, even when I worked in cities or had to wear a tie. I will be bringing that to my new home, and it will better for it. It may not be "Galt's Gulch" just yet, but please stay tuned because it is going to be great ride.

Foodies, survivalists, campers, and just plain folks looking to eat well and healthy on an ever tightening American budget - grab your backpack and get ready to UNITE!. In just a few weeks another adventure begins with a new focus, a new purpose and new approach to old fashioned American Ideals.

Thanks for your patience while I retool.

By the way, a special thanks for kind words and encouragement to "The Elementary". Everyone should check out her blog "Crumbs From the Corner: Adventures in Woolgathering" and be prepared to get warm and cozy. Just don't forget to check back here!



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As I sit here in the dark, with just a faint glow lightening the east through the rain, I try to reflect. It is 6am, and I have one kid gone on the school bus and another to get moving shortly. We have a good hot breakfast each day and now I have to cook twice. I still have dishes to do before I leave for work. I can't believe it has been so long since I have posted. I can't believe I have strayed so far from my original mission in writing this blog, which was to share my experiences with the great food available locally and in season, hence less expensive and healthier for my, and hopefully your, family.

I am still passionate about that. So passionate that cooking for my family has been taking precedence over writing. Writing is a joy and a release, but with the frenetic activity of getting kids back to school, a new town job, and looking for new digs, I haven't been able to allow myself that pleasure. We have had some exceptionally wonderful meals lately as the produce right now is killer, and the new ideas and experiences I am getting with Chef Dato continue to inspire.

I have lately been remembering what I love about the restaurant business. Even when I had left the business for a few years and worked in the corporate world, I found myself in the kitchen whenever a client lunch had us in some fine dining place. I was fortunate that my business partner and friend Tony was also a foodie, though he never understood how I could end up in the kitchen and leave him to entertain the clients.

A restaurant kitchen is a war zone, a dinner rush is a battle, the ultimate adrenaline burst. Pure testosterone. The pecking order essential to operations and etiquette be damned. The customer in front are almost superfluous as their orders and the perfection and timing of each dish a foe to be dispatched. I imagine the great medieval battle, with men rushing at each other in awful waves of humanity. Dealing with the immediate foe, the one in front of you, while simultaneously preparing for the ones in your peripheral vision. Your station, your duty reigns supreme. There are no friends during battle. A friend who impedes your progress or timing is the same as an enemy. Often I have seen hot pans deliberately thrust across the forearms of cooks who impeded another's progress, razor sharp knives dangerously close to another's fingers, airborne stockpots the size of cannonballs. A kitchen is full of hot objects, sharp objects, heavy object that can be thrown. More to the point, it is full of people that are serious about their mission and woe to anyone, even a friend who gets in the way. After the battle and after the cleanup and aftermath, when the dead have been buried and the weapons readied for another day, then is the time for camaraderie.

After closing many cooks gather in bars to decompress and to share war stories, to plan strategies for upcoming battles. Besides, who can sleep when the adrenaline is still coursing through your exhausted, aching body? With the long workdays, with hours that necessarily coincide with the rest of the world's leisure time, cooks have no time for a "normal" social life. They generally associate with other cooks. Or not at all. I myself have always preferred more quiet reflection. I like to sit in the dark, alone, and lick my wounds. I swallow a couple of aspirins for my aches, then fall into bed, dead weight until morning, my last thoughts the promise of coffee.

I am drinking that coffee now, as I prepare to awaken my son for school. As I head out for another battle, thinking about my mise en place, my place in the world, I know it is a young man's game and I am not young anymore.






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Its Saturday, a workday like any other, and yet the kids and I still have to eat even when we are busy. We also have to feed our souls. Here is the ultimate solution to the busy summer lunch - a tomato sandwich.

Now it is not even worth beginning without fresh tomatoes straight from the garden, so warm and full of sunlight that they are about to burst. Choose one that is almost too ripe, so soft that it start to split just from the pressure of picking it. Be careful it doesn't fall off the vine as you reach for it. At this point of the season, the variety of the tomato hardly matters - Brandywine, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, a Lemonboy or Cherokee Purple, even those unidentified generic 'tomato' plants you picked up down at the local WallyWorld and planted amongst the weeds off the back deck. What matters here is the ripeness and your awareness and appreciation of the imminent end of summer.

Pick your bread. It should be soft and absorbent to pick up all the juices that are welling out of that perfect tomato. A good choice is my Daily Bread, or even some of that store bought white stuff. This might be the only real use for that stuff. Don't try to get all fancy and use a crusty artisan bread here, don't even toast it. It has just got to be soft.

Butter just one slice, preferably with Homemade Butter, but again, since the tomato is the star, you might cheat a little and still get a good result, but only if you have to. This is to be the top of your sandwich. You may add a bit of mayo here too if you like, and sometimes I do, especially if I have recent made it and have a little left, but its not absolutely necessary.

Now lay your bottom slice of bread on a plate close to your cutting board and prepare to slice that beautiful fruit. Use the sharpest knife you have, with smooth serrations if necessary, and try to preserve that precious juice. Try not to smash your tomato as most of the flavor is in the juice not the flesh as some folks may seem to think. Let them think it and keep the juice for yourself, summer is too short to argue. If you lose precious juices onto your cutting board carefully pour them onto you bread before arranging you slices of tomato. Afix the top slice and enjoy. Savor. Mop up any excess juice with more bread, and wash the works down with cold milk, Fresh Farm Milk.

Repeat.




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