piepiepiepie

Not even fork-blowing winds and a sudden cloudburst could dampen the Pie Social spirit...pies were eaten and enjoyed by many. Commentary to follow, but first, a few pictures...



The pies, chocolate-coconut on the left, peach-pistachio tart on the right...

My tablemate Lisa, with her apple and mixed-berry pies (Lenny, not pictured, made the berry pie, and it rocked)


Skyler and Madeline, with one last piece of excellent peach-raspberry pie

Karen, who used to work at San Francisco's Firefly restaurant and Little Dipper Bakery, and her fabulous maple-pecan and Concord grape pies

Going Social

The coco-choco pie is ready to go! It turned out to be a bi-level pie, with chocolate-coconut custard on the bottom and coconut custard on top, drizzled in semi-sweet chcolate and topped with toasted coconut, in a graham-cracker-and-coconut crust made from the homemade graham crackers that I'd made for last year's Social and stashed in the freezer. It looks a little demented but should be very, very coconutty. The custard is a standard stovetop one, made with coconut milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and a little flour for thickening--after the birthday banana-cream-pie fiasco, I'm not making any more cornstarch fillings for the public until I can be sure it won't turn into soup. This version looks nice and sliceable.

Now, I'm debating--make a peach tart too? I'm out of butter, so I'm dawdling over going across the street to the market for a couple of sticks, then getting into the whole make-the-crust, peel the peaches deal. Do I want to be lazy Pie Queen? Hmmmm.

An hour later: No lazy PQ here! The peaches, foraged from the Carroll Gardens CSA's Saturday-morning leftovers, have been peeled, sliced, and tossed with sugar, flour, a pinch of salt and a few TB of B's magic pistachio fairy dust--ground pistachios, almonds, lemon rind, and nutmeg--and spread into a tart crust made from flour, sugar, butter, egg yolk, vanilla, and more fairy dust. And while thoroughly grubby and sticky with smeary bits of tart crust and sloshed peach juice, the kitchen smells dreamy.

On to the Social!

how to whack a coconut

The coconut has been vanquished! With a little help from Steve Raichlan's Miami Spice, a hammer, a screwdriver, a knife, and a food processor, my brown hairy-yak nut is now reduced to 3 1/2 cups of grated coconut meat, 2 cups of which are soaking in hot water to make coconut milk, and the rest sitting in the fridge, waiting to be added to the crust and filling of the upcoming choco-coconut pie.

Actually getting into a coconut is not that big a deal, as it turns out. First, poke out the "eyes" with a screwdriver. Drain the liquid inside, which tastes like salty coconut-flavored water, which is what it is. You can drink it straight, or mixed with rum and a dash of bitters, if you're feeling all Jake-Barnes-in-Cuba-ish.

Then you put your now-empty coconut on a good hard shock-absorbing surface, like a cutting board inside a baking sheet on the floor. Be sure to warn your downstairs neighbors before you start the next part, otherwise you'll be that mysteriously noisy Person Upstairs, the one seemingly running a bowling alley in her apartment.

Now whack, whack, whack with a hammer until the nut starts to crack in pieces. The heavy hairy shell should pry easily from the brown-skinned nut inside. Once you've got all the husk off, you grab a small, sturdy knife or heavy-duty vegetable peeler and scrape all the brown skin off--it's a lot like peeling a butternut squash, and just about as boring.

You're left with a pile of bright white flesh with a pleasant, apple-y crispness. (I wanted to like it, really, except for the part about it tasting like coconut. Damn.) Now, if you have a lot of time on your hands, you can rub each and every piece through the small holes on a box grater. Or you can shove them all into the tube of your food processor, tricked out with the grating attachment, and get a bowlful of grated coconut in less than a minute.

Measure out a 1 to 1 ratio of boiling water to grated coconut (that is, 1 cup water to 1 cup coconut) and let the coconut steep in the water for 15 minutes. LIne a sieve with cheesecloth, dump in the coconut mixture, and squeeze out all the liquid. Voila! Fresh coconut milk. Refrigerate like regular milk.

Ok, I'm very tired now. More later.

L'Shanah Tovah

L'Shanah Tovah, and happy new year! Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the year 5767 on the Jewish calendar, and a happy, healthy and sweet one to all of you. Being a baking Jew, I am, of course, making a round extra-honeyed challah this afternoon, using my own recipe from the Honey book. Rosh Hashanah challahs are sweeter and richer, being celebratory, and are usually filled with golden raisins or other dried fruits, all which makes for the best french toast ever a couple days later. This loaf is sweetened with some of the mountain Ozark honey brought back from Eureka Springs. Honey also makes a lovely glaze on the finished loaf, particularly nice if you're bringing some to a friend's house as a New Year's gift. Some fresh apples, a little jar of honey, and a fresh challah roll makes a perfect little housewarming gift at this time of year.

There aren't a lot of Jews on the base where K. is, but nonetheless the Army got a rabbi in from Atlanta to hold services this weekend, and K., thoughtful and interested in religion as she is, went to the shabbat/erev Rosh Hashanah service on Friday night. The rabbi wore a camoflage-print yarmulke and brought dried apples, honey, and Manischevitz wine with him. Ramadan, the month-long Muslim holiday that calls for daily sunrise-to-sundown fasting, is starting soon too. Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement which follows a week after Rosh Hashanah, is also marked by a day of fasting, from sundown to sundown.

Until then, though, sweet things are encouraged, to represent wishes for a sweet year. Nothing sour, nothing bitter, just ripe, golden, and sweet, warm and welcoming as a loaf of new bread.

pie socialists stage coup

It's a clear, nippy, really autumn-feeling day out there, which makes me think of....apple pie! I'd sure love to make a fabulous apple pie for the PIE SOCIAL this Sunday, but 2 years' of Social experience has taught me that the public is not big on beige. Shiny and fabulous goes, beige just kind of sits there like a sale rack at the Gap,even though my apple pie is, if I may say so, award-winning and really great. So I'm thinking the always-popular French plum tart, and then perhaps the as-yet-uncreated chocolate-coconut cream pie, which K. is gunning for. Shopping for coconut milk and shredded coconut, I was put off by the additives in the packages--propylene glycol and other creepy things, to "preserve freshness and whiteness." Why buy cans and bags when fresh coconuts were skulking, hard and hairy like yaks in the far corner of the produce section? So instead, I've got a real coconut, and will make my own milk and shreds.

I've heard rumours of crawfish pie (mmmm) and I'm certainly hoping last year's lobster pot pie lady comes back. But please, no repeat performance from the cricket-pie dude!

Bring your pies or just your appetites, but certainly bring your friends. See you there!

WHERE: MAIN STREET & PLYMOUTH STREET, DUMBO (across from Bubby's)
WHEN :SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2006 12PM-4PM

california here I come

One more week, and I'll be back in California! Wheee! I just can't wait. In fact, I wish I could move on back there, if only for the next few months until K. gets back to the States. This time, I'm going out there to check out this fine program at UC Santa Cruz, a six-month apprenticeship on their organic farm combined with education on sustainable agriculture and organic farming & marketing. It could make the goat farm a reality, or at least my longings to work organizing farmers' markets or CSAs, plus teaching cooking classes and such.

There's a great article in the Bay Guardian about local restauranteur Larry Bain's Nextcourse program, which teaches cooking and nutrition to women in the SF county jail. Says one woman, "When I was in jail, I was thinking this was all bullshit. I can't do that. It's going to be too expensive. It's just you white people blowing smoke up our ass. But I got out and now I'm going to the market every week and my kids love it."

Bain points out that his teachers shop at the Alemany and Heart of the City markets, and that the produce they buy is almost always cheaper, and better, than similar items bought from Safeway or FoodCo. There are other limitations, too--no knives in the jail--and the menu of a main, a salad, and an vegetable has to be produced in 25 minutes or less, for under $5 a person. It can be done, and by now over 750 women have gone through the program.

The current bagged-spinach scare is yet another example of the danger of big agribusiness, organic or not. A recent article in the Times pointed out how the sealed environment of the bag offers a excellent haven for bacteria growth if the bag gets too warm. I know I've eaten spinach from the bag--hey, it says it's triple-washed, right?-- but those dirty, sandy bunches of locally-grown greens are looking a lot cleaner now.

DId You Eat It at the Antic?

So, Brooklynites, whadja eat at the Antic? This is, to you out-of-towners, perhaps the only NYC street fest worth attending. Unlike the other interchangeable greasy affairs selling tube socks and fried stuff, the annual Atlantic Antic is an almost entirely local affair, with the many restaurants--and churches and other organizations--providing the chow. The menu and vibe changes block by block--from Hicks to clinton it's hipsterville, with beer gardens, rock and alt-country stages (here are The Dansettes, swinging their blue-eyed soul), and sangria Spanish paella, chorizo and grilled fresh sardines from La Mancha.

I was tempted by many, many things, but the standout this year was the lamb sharwerma sandwich from the table outside the Oriental Grocery, on the South side between Clinton and Court.

I think I'd heard tell of their legendary sharwerma here, and the beautiful old copper machine they grill the meat on, taken out and used only for the Antic. Juicy, very well-seasoned meat, chunks of tomato, dollops of tahini and yogurt sauces, cucumber and tomato salad, and a big sploosh of fabulous hot sauce. wildly messy but worth the stack of napkins.

Earlier in the day I'd seen a makeshift bbq pit on the street--a rectangle of concrete blocks topped with a sheet of corrugated metal, with hooves sticking out from either end. A return visit a few hours later revealed an entire butterflied pig laid on a metal grid and smoking away over a bed of coals laid down right on the asphalt.

It was the work of PJ Handley's, the bar and grill down on Court, who were serving up chopped pork sandwiches and plates of ribs. As I was admiring the pig's head, one of the pig choppers snagged a particularly tender morsel from somewhere down around the pig's neck and handed it over. Mmmm, tender porky goodness.

Eatin' it at the Antic

It's time for the Antic! The street fair was just getting going as I did a quick stroll from Hicks to Smith. A whole pig was roasting in an impromptu bbq pit made of a sheet of corrugated iron propped up on a low rectangle of concrete blocks, a pair of hooves sticking out at either end. La Mancha was handing out $3 links of blackened fat chorizo, $8 plates of paella and my fave, grilled sardinas! Waterfalls had a beautiful spread of Middle Eastern salads, and many shawerma grills will be spinning soon.

And what it is with Brooklyn and t-shirts? Seems like everyone's got a brooklyn-pride-t-shirt company going, and they're all selling their wares today. Good sales to be had at Cook's Companion--some nice Kitchenaid and cuisinart saute pans, dishtowels, and other accessories, for way cheap.

But really, it's all about the chow.

cookies

Train arrive,
16 coaches long
Well, that long black train,
Coming right round the bend,
Well, it took my baby, but it never will again


Sunny day, clean laundry, homemade chocolate-mint cookies, the brooklyn book festival or the next-to-last day of the Joseph Cornell show at the Katonah Art Museum?

Muffin blues

I woke up this morning,
looked out the door
I can tell my milk cow
I can tell by the way she lows
if you see my milk cow please drive her on home
I ain't had no milk and butter since my cow's been gone

You got to treat me right, day by day
Get out your little prayerbook,
get down on your knees and pray...

It's a rainy day, a day for the blues, a day to make carrot muffins from a recipe from Bainbridge Island's Streamliner Diner. Not exactly, of course, because I can never bring myself to use as much honey and butter as the book calls for. And because I had some extra canned pumpkin lying around, and some raisins, and some canned crushed pineapple, I decided to make pumpkin-carrot-raisin muffins, with more spices and some molasses, too. And weren't they just tasty this morning. I think they'd be especially good with cream cheese or apple butter. They're similar to a morning-glory muffin, minus the coconut, which you could, of course, throw in, if you didn't recoil from coconut as if from a snake, like I do.

Milk Cow Ate the Morning Glory Muffins

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp powdered cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 eggs
1/2 cup (or so) pureed pumpkin
2 or 3 carrots, peeled and grated
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup crushed canned pineapple
1/4 cup melted butter and/or oil, or more if you like a richer muffin
1/2 cup honey
2 TB molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla

Grease a 12-cup muffin pan. Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, beat wet ingredients together. Dump wet into dry, stirring until just mixed and no more streaks of flour are visible. Don't beat! Scoop into muffin cups and bake until lightly browned and gently springy when pressed with a fingertip.

Best served warm or reheated before serving.

If you can bear to put on your wellies and leave the house, good things going on this weekend--on Saturday at Borough Hall the Brooklyn Book Festival will be in full swing, followed by Sunday's always-fab Atlantic Antic. See you there, and don't miss the Baptist church ladies' sweet-potato pies.

just like buttah

Have you seen the new online Chow magazine? It's snappy and fun, and yes, I'm writing for them. See what's keeping me in butter money, here, on the Grinder, and DO NOT miss the video link (or the outtakes). Everything you ever wanted to see on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair. Plus, butter sculpting! (As for Chow, I believe you have to register on Chowhound.com--just a sign-in name and password--in order to access Chow, for now.)

When I worked at Chronicle Books, we put out a lot of goofy single-subject books. But the all-time favorite was Butter Magic. Butter Magic, covering the fabulous trend-of-the-moment of butter sculpting (we had, after all, just put out Snowman and Sand Castle) was an in-house spoof that probably could have become a real book if anyone had really wanted to get behind it. I still remember the picture in Saveur of the life-sized cow carved in butter and kept in a refrigerated glass display room at the Wisconsin State Fair. Writes my now-Minnesota-dwelling sister, "Butter sculpting is HUGE out here!" It is so huge, in fact, that the busts of Princess Kay of the Milky Way, the beauty queen of all things dairy (not to be confused with Alice in Dairyland, who fufills the same role in Wisconsin, according to B.), and her court are carved lifesize out of butter and put on display throughout the 12 days of the fair. Don't believe me? It's on Flickr, honey. See the future of the medium.

Pie Social!

Pie Socialists, your time has come! Yes, Bubby's is putting on its 3rd Annual Pie Social on Sunday, September 24th, and the Pie Queen will be there, tiara, apron, and pies at the ready. And so can you, whether you're a pie baker or a pie eater. All the info's on the Bubby's website; click up top to get the baker's application. You'll pay less to enter if you get your application in before Sept. 10th, so click now...Make your check out to Bubby's, and mail it to the Tribeca location, with "Attn: Pie Social/Dani" on the envelope.

I'm thinking of plum tart (a hit at both previous socials) and then, perhaps the chocolate-coconut idea that sprang to mind during a conversation with K., as she was rhapsodizing about the coconut chocolate milk that's served (in UHT boxes, of course) at the dining hall run by the United Arab Emirates. A chocolate cream pie, made with a coconut-milk custard, over a crust of chocolate wafers and toasted coconut. Whipped cream, shaved chocolate, and more toasted coconut on top; maybe a little coconut rum in the filling...Of course, I hate coconut, so I won't be tasting this, but I'd bet that for people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they will like.

A pie for a poem

Sometimes friends know exactly what you need to hear.

The Poet's Occasional Alternative - by Grace Paley

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadness I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

(from Begin Again: Collected Poems, 2000)

And many thanks to Jen from Manic D Press, for taking me to the ocean and the many farmstands of Springs, and for knowing all the best poetry at just the right moment.

apricadabra!

Woke up to the sound of rain splashing down through the fire escape--the morning glories are finally blooming their hot-magenta blooms and the basil, gnawed to near-death by pigeons, are slowly, cautiously, putting out tiny new green leaves. Went down to Added Value Farm yesterday to shovel wet compost into wheelbarrows for a few hours, coming home with eggplants, kale, and tomatoes, all grown there in long rows of lovely dirt mounded up over the asphalt in Coffey Park. And 2 pounds of apricots from Red Jacket Orchards, which means...apricot jam! But not just any apricot jam. Today is the day to wonder, "Can I successfully reproduce Sarabeth Kitchen's fabulous Apricadabra preserves in my very own kitchen?" I'm thinking some combo of fresh and dried apricots will be required, along with dried currants and crushed pineapple. Some experimentation will be in order. Stay tuned!

Can Can!

I didn't do much to celebrate the blogosphere's Sugar High Friday--unless you count that big chunk of watermelon and half of Bakerina's chocolate-Kahlua flan, but in honor of the fine lady hosting this month's SHF deal at pretty German site Delicious Days, I'll be givin' y'all a little sugar from my bowl this weekend. Something sweet in a jar, for sure, and you should too, since this month's theme is CANNING. Plum jam? Red currant jelly? More apricot jam? Blackberry? Peach chutney? Sticky spoons all around...

Elsewhere in the news, the revived, all-online CHOW magazine is up now, with the PQ's snappy commentary on what's up in food posted in the "Grinder" section (under my actual byline instead of this nom de pie). You'll have to do their quick n' easy free registration before you can access it, though, because it's still in soft-opening beta mode.

Brooklyn Girls!

All my pals on both coasts know they can count on getting some jam from the Pie Queen's kitchen when birthdays and holidays roll around. And that's still true...unless they'd rather have an I HEART BROOKLYN GIRLS calendar this year. Besides being true to my borough, these lovely b'klyn ladies are HOT. And having been a bit of a pin-up myself (all you Croatians who got here for the saucy ice-cream picture, you know who you are), I've got to give a shout-out to my glamour sisters--and these girls have it! 12 months, 12 real femmes, 12 re-creations of pinups from years past. You've got the cigar-smoking 30s moll, the cupcake-baking 50's gal, the Camarro-washing 80's babe, the naughty 20s flapper, even the tattooed 90s Billyburg grrl. Produced completely by women, and a percentage of the profits goes to the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. Get 'em while they're hot!

light in August

Ooofff! It's a scorcher out there.

Just back from watering the garden--my own, finally tomato-producing plot, the community veggie box, and all the ugly shrubs in the communal planters. As I hauled the huge snaky hose around and watered my flip-flops, I got upclose views of the bees slurping on the magenta coxcombs while a big orange butterfly swooped and flitted and circled all around the garden, as happy as a clam. For supper, definitely something involving basil and tomatoes. At the Grand Army Plaza farmers market yesterday, everything was ripe--okra, eggplant, corn, tomatoes in every color, peaches, plums, even the new crop Gingergold apples and red Clapp pears. I would have pictures of all this, if only the crucial camera-to-computer usb cord hadn't gone AWOL this evening.

Otherwise, coffee and the crossword at Hill Diner, unavoidable lemon ice from Court St Pastry (now also serving good, if very sweet, coffee Italian ice), a cool shower, sitting naked by the AC reading about twilight picnics and bat-watching in Prospect Park, and thinking of last summer, when K. and I were tripping around the farms and waterfalls of upstate NY, putting our money in roadside coffee cans for bags of tomatoes and eating blueberry pancakes in Watkins Glen.

Cheese, books, and apricot jam

Today's three good things:

--Daniel (aka Lemony Snickett) Handler's new novel Adverbs, definitely worth getting out of your fine local public library for a fast, fun read,

--Ten-year-old Wisconsin cheddar, sold at Smith Street's new Stinky Bklyn cheese store (and nowhere else in the metropolitan area), especially paired with Mazzola's killer garlic loaf and some of Chestnut's homemade pickles, all waiting to drop into your hot little hands chez Stinky,

--Homemade apricot jam! You can make this, yes you can.

Here's the short version: pit and quarter some apricots, mix them with sugar, let sit for a few hours. Pour fruit into a pot, add lemon juice, bring to a boil and simmer 5 minutes. Pour back in the bowl, let stand again. Boil up a second time, simmer a few minutes until thickened. Pour into clean jars. Let cool, then eat. Simple as that!

What you need: 1 quart box of little ripe fresh apricots (alas, I didn't have a scale to weigh them, and the farm stand was selling them by the quart, not by the pound. But enough to fill two strawberry pint boxes, if you can visualize that); 3/4 to 1 cup sugar, juice of 1 lemon.

If anyone at your local farmers' market is selling Royal Blenheim apricots, you MUST thank them profusely for growing these, buy a lot and make jam. Royal Blenheims (aka Royals or Blenheims) are small, freckly, greenish-orangey-red apricots that ripen from the inside out, so that the outside may not look quite ripe while the inside is pure jammy goodness. Hard to find, since they've mostly been shouldered out by the big, bland, standardized Pattersons (your typical solid-orange supermarket apricot), but they have a fantastically pure, deep apricot taste when cooked and make the best jam by far.

Wash, pit, and quarter the apricots. Put them in a ceramic or glass bowl and stir in the sugar. Put a plate on top and let sit at room temp for several hours, or overnight in the fridge. (Room temp is better, because the sugar dissolves faster.) When the sugar has dissolved and formed a bunch of syrup around the fruit, add the lemon juice and dump the whole thing into a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Turn down the heat when it starts to froth up and make a fuss. Let simmer, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes. Pour back into bowl, cover and let sit for another few hours. Wander off, go to the library, eat some cheese.

When you are ready to finish the jam, make sure you have 3 clean empty jars available (old jam, honey, or mayo jars work well). My batch made about 2 1/2 cups of jam, so pick your jars accordingly. To make sure the jars are super-clean, run them through the dishwasher or submerge them completely in a deep pot filled with water and boil them for 10 minutes.

Pour the jam mixture back into the saucepan and bring to a gentle boil again. Let simmer for a few minutes, stirring often. When the syrup is still liquid but thicker than it was and the fruit pieces look translucent, start picking up a spoonful of syrup and letting it run off the long side of the spoon. When the drops of syrup run together into one or two sticky-looking drops, it's done (it will thicken up further as it cools). This isn't a hard-gelling jam; it's more like a soft, chunky preserve. Turn off the heat and scoop the hot jam into the jars. Put on the lids and let cool at room temp. When the jars are cold, store in the fridge and eat within a month.

Actual work time on this jam is less than 30 minutes overall, with only one bowl and one pot to rinse out. And it's heaven on toast or stirred into yogurt.

You can, of course, "can" this jam for longer storage, using proper canning (aka Mason or ball) jars, the ones with the two-part lids-- a flat metal circle with a ring of rubbery sealing compound inside the rim and a wide screw-on band. Follow the same instructions for sterilizing the jars, rinsing the lids with boiling water as well just before use. Fill jars with hot jam to within 1/4" of the top. Wipe top rim of jar with a paper towel dipped in boiling water. Drop on lid and tighten band until it is just finger-tight. Return filled jars to pot of boiling water and boil for 10 minutes (this is to ensure a tight seal). Remove jars from water and let cool without disturbing the jars until they are stone cold. Press down in the middle of each lid to make sure it has sealed properly--if the lid pops up and down under your finger, it didn't seal and should be stored in the fridge. Otherwise, sealed jars can be stored in a cool, dry place for several months. Once open, store in the fridge and eat within a month.

Canning jars are sold in most hardware stores and many supermarkets. Half-pint (8 oz/1 cup) jars are the most useful for jam. Remember, you can re-use the jars and the metal screw-on bands, but you must use a brand-new flat lid for each batch. The flat lids can be purchased separately in small packs of a dozen each.

U-PiK

The Pie Queen has been a travellin' country girl this summer, and what a happy thing that's been. Alas, due to family issues, I had to fly home from Portland last Friday rather than continuing on to Vermont to see Joyce Carrol Goats and friends, but the up side was spending several days out in the lovely rural environs of Orange County, NY, a couple hours west of NYC, where the Pie Queen Mother resides. As anyone who's read the sides of the trucks at the Union Square Greenmarket knows, Warwick, Pine Island and the surrounding towns are home to many of the area's best farms, thanks to the region's unique "black dirt"--a loam so rich and productive that it really is chocolatey-black--perfect for onions, carrots and other root vegetables in particular, but good for lettuce and basil and flowers too. Orchards dot the area, as do dairies. Up the road from the PQM's house is Nettie Ochs, an apple orchard with acres of trees and swell cider and cider doughnuts, along with the most jigsaw-puzzle-perfect view of American farmland that's you'd ever want to see. In the summer, they offer pick your own peaches, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and tomatoes--a siren call to the fruit-hunter's heart that beats dark and fierce in the breast of PQ.

So on a recent hot afternoon, I greased up with SPF30 and went out to pick, hunting down each perfect raspberry and squatting down to separate the powdery dark-blue ripe berries from their purply sour cousins on the little blueberry shrubs. I came home with a bag of peaches, a bag of sweet orange tomatoes, a quart of raspberries, and a handful of blues. Everything will be riper in a week or two, but the pickings were still there for the taking, if you didn't mind a search. I'd hoped to come back with enough raspberries for a few jars of jam, but they were so sweet and delicious, we simply ate them out of hand.

I heart Jane

Two things you need to know about dining in Halifax: lunch at Jane's, and dinner at Jane's. That's Jane's on the Common, on Robie St bordering yes, the Commons, a big swathe of green used for multiple sports-playing. We stumbled upon Jane's in a morning coffee search, and then realized it had won numerous awards for brunch and customer loyalty in the 2006 Best Of Halifax put out by the weekly alternative newspaper, The Coast. We peered in at the chalkboard menu and saw pomegranate martinis, lemon-curd pavlova with blueberries, and more...and we liked it so much for lunch, we came back for dinner. More to follow, but if you're up here in the Maritimes, don't miss it--or Bud the Spud, one of the city's many roving chip wagons, or the amazing selection of British products--including mango-papaya Wensleydale cheese--at Pete's Frootique, which sounds like a smoothie joint but is actually a fabulous supermarket, the Canadian love child of Whole Foods and Berkeley Bowl.