But when I began raising chickens in my yard, I made a promise to never kill them. Living in close proximity made them family to me, with names and distinct personalities. I felt that killing them would cut too close to home.

Even after they stopped laying, I put the hens out to the happiest pasture I could. All they had to do was survive the coyotes, raccoons, skunks, owls, falcons, ravens, bobcats, neighbor dogs, and chick-gobbling rattlesnakes long enough to hit menopause, and this cushy retirement package would be theirs.

When I made that promise I hadn’t taken roosters into consideration. But eventually, a cock named Rusty triggered a downward spiral that brought me to break the promise I made to my flock.

I prefer my roosters foolish and aggressive enough to run at intruders like succulent kamikazes, because it’s easier to replace a rooster than a hen. But Rusty had a survival instinct, and failed to intervene as various predators pared the flock down to just himself, an old hen named Annabelle 2.0, and another rooster named Marco Pollo.

Two roosters and a post-menopausal hen is not a flock with growth potential, though you have to give Rusty credit for trying. His days revolved around humping Annabelle 2.0 as often as possible, to the point that she began spending her days hiding in the coop. This compelled Rusty to pursue prison-style intimacy with Marco Pollo, who didn’t seem to mind. Marco Pollo was a total gentleman to Annabelle 2.0, which made me resent Rusty all the more.

A new supply of chicks was clearly necessary in order to jumpstart the flock’s population, and I ordered some. And then, unwilling to let Rusty rape Annabelle 2.0 to death, I broke my promise and chopped off his head.

While my dispatching of Rusty was intended to give Annabelle 2.0 a much-deserved reprieve, Marco Pollo had plans of his own. He filled Rusty’s void and proved to the world, and especially to Annabelle 2.0, that he isn’t gay. With Annabelle 2.0 no better off than she was before, the only good that came from killing Rusty was the spectacular coq au vin I made.

Annabelle 2.0 finally died, in her sleep, just hours before the new shipment of baby chicks arrived. She was my first chicken to die of old age, marking the moment with both triumph and sadness.

As I watched Marco Pollo raise the new brood alone, the memory of that coq au vin, and the lusty red wine sauce that tamed Rusty’s sinewy flesh, kept me up at night. Breaking my no-kill promise had opened a door in me. A few weeks later I purchased 12 baby Cornish Cross meat-bird chicks.

The augmented flock, chosen and doomed alike, integrated happily, oblivious to the fact that in just six weeks the meat-birds would be ready for slaughter. After a week the meat-birds were bigger than the four week-old layer chicks. When I poured feed into the yard the meat-birds would park themselves right in the middle of the feed and clear a circular patch around themselves with a radius equal to their neck length.

Not only did the meat-birds grow fast physically, but other aspects of their development were expedited as well. At two weeks they were sheltering the older but smaller layer chicks under their wings like mama hens. At three weeks old, Marco Pollo was already giving them his chicken love, and they would shake exuberantly when he finished. It’s good that there were 12 of them among which to spread his passion.

Fear has been bred out of the Cornish Cross breed. Typically, even the chickens that know you won’t let you get too close. But the Cornish Crosses ran toward you, probably hoping for a snack.

Despite their gluttonous habits the meat birds were sweethearts, and killing them was going to be a lot harder than killing Rusty was. But there wasn’t any choice. Cornish Cross birds aren’t genetically programmed to handle old age. Their fragile bones break, their joints dislocate, and their hearts stop as they get bigger. At least their lack of fear makes it easier, when the time comes, to catch them. And at least they all look alike – bright white with big feet. Needless to say, they were not given names.

Since my farm days, I’ve referred to Gary Snyder’s poem “The Hudsonian Curlew”(from his collection Turtle Island), for butchering guidance:

“…a transverse cut just below the sternum/the forefinger and middle finger/forced in and up, following the/curve of the rib cage./then fingers arched, drawn slowly down and back,/forcing all the insides up and out,/toward the palm and heel of the hand./firm organs, well-placed, hot. save the liver; finally scouring back, toward the vent, the last of the large intestine….”

If you already know a little about what you’re doing, these stanzas could be helpful. But despite my affection for the poem, there are irreconcilable differences between wild Hudsonian Curlews and Cornish Cross chickens. These days I use Herrick Kimball’s less elegant but more detailed advice at www.butcherachicken.blogspot.com. The site contains ten illustrated chapters on slaughtering and cleaning chickens, including one on removing the uropygial oil gland at the base of the tail.

The image Kimball provides of his young son singing Bible camp songs while slitting chicken throats is a bit creepy. But in fairness, it’s rare to get through the process of “dressing out” a chicken without getting creeped out one way or another. And I think that’s OK. This business of eating dead animals is a messy affair. It should make you uncomfortable, because it’s a big deal. Which is why I believe all meat eaters should participate, at least once, in the real work of bringing it to the table.

Tags: chickens, cornish cross, cornish x, meat birds

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Today we typically eat the plant parts with the easy calories, and toss the rest. But in the days before we had legions of hardworking underpaid people to grow the nation’s vegetables so cheaply they’re practically disposable, we were more apt to use every part of the plant we could.

Many types of plant offal are tasty, nutritious, and deserving of a place alongside animal offal like sweetbreads and pig jowls. Today I’m going to give you recipes for three such underused ingredients: spinach roots, and the greens of carrots and radishes.

Some B-list plant parts are so strong in flavor they’re best used to support other main ingredients-such as in my recipe for chopped carrot tops in steamed quinoa. Other pieces of plant offal are mild enough to serve as a dish’s main ingredient, like the spinach bottoms in the Turkish salad Ispanak Koku Salatasi, which spotlights spinach offal the way foie gras features liver.

Carrot greens are one of the most easily available and commonly overlooked of plant parts. You can pick them repeatedly off the carrots in your garden and they’ll sprout right back. While the underground carrot part gets more attention, the fragrant foliage upstairs can add unique flavor and important nutrients to a meal. Carrot leaves are high in chlorophyll and potassium, and used medicinally for kidney problems and other ailments. Because of their strong, fragrant taste, carrot tops are often used to add flavor, such as in summer soups, or in the following recipe with steamed quinoa.

This time of year I like to include fresh garlic flowers in this dish, since they’re in season and, like carrot greens, they add color and flavor.

Sauté a chopped onion in olive oil. Add four medium carrots sliced into

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Buck au Franz is named in homage to coq au vin, a recipe that arose in response to the problem, “how do you eat a tough old rooster?” The French answer is to cook it slowly in red wine, usually Burgundy, a method that’s also used in boeuf bourguignon.

I call my recipe buck au Franz because I often make it with a tough piece of deer, like from an old buck, and with wine from a box of Franzia cabernet – a vintage that’s usually close at hand. But any meat and any red wine-bottled or boxed, Burgundy or non-will do. While buck au Franz employs the French-discovered power of the red wine braise, it’s a much simpler recipe than its antecedents.

Every animal-cow, pig, elk, or giraffe-will have its tough parts, where the meat is inextricably bound up in connective tissue that would require a lifetime to chew. These are the pieces that most butchers put in the burger or sausage piles. But I like those stubborn chunks whole, because they have the best flavor. With enough time in hot wine, all that Kevlar-like cartilage and cables of tendon melt into a greasy goodness that tastes and feels like fat, but isn’t.

These tough cuts might be shank meat, analogous to your forearm or calf muscles. Or flank meat, the animal’s abdominal muscles. Or neck meat, perhaps the tastiest of all. Tenderer cuts can be used in buck au Franz, and the results will be just fine, but you will have wasted an opportunity to turn rock into silk.

When using frozen meat I rarely bother to thaw it. I just drop the frozen packet in hot water until it melts enough to let me unwrap it, and then put the naked meat in a baking pan three inches under the broiler.

As the meat browns, stay on top of it. Make sure that crunchy brown doesn’t turn to crispy burn. If it’s a frozen hunk of multiple chunks frozen together, like stew meat, then a few minutes under the broiler will cause the pieces to disentangle and go their separate ways. Separate them and make sure the non-browned sides are always facing the heat.

Large chunks of meat, once they’re browned on all surfaces, should be cut as soon as they thaw enough to allow out – careful, though raw in the middle they can be hot on the surface. How small you cut the meat is a matter of preference, and what you plan to do with your buck au Franz.

Will you serve it simple, perhaps with toast or potatoes or some other starchy accompaniment to sop up the jus? If so, large chunks can provide a more tactile thrill, a mighty roast caving like yogurt at the touch of your spoon.

If you plan to put your tamed meat chunks in tacos, then inch or smaller chunks will do. And don’t be afraid to fry the little chunks before putting them in the tacos, to refresh their crisp.

If Coq au vin is your model, leave the meat in large chunks and add vegetables – carrots, onions, garlic – to the braise. In boeuf bourguignon, which is often thickened with flour, chunks an inch or two to a side are typical.

Another thing to keep in mind when cutting the meat to size is that larger pieces will cook slower than smaller pieces. Of course, if you’re in a rush you shouldn’t be braising in the first place.

If you start with meat that isn’t frozen, of course, you can cut it to your preferred size before putting it in the oven. Either way, once the meat is browned on all sides, turn the heat down to 300 and add equal parts water and wine to the pan, along with five or so bay leaves, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Stock or reconstituted bullion can also be used in place of water. And some chopped fresh garlic won’t hurt either. The liquid should at least half-cover the meat, but can fully submerge it as well.

Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid and cook for at least three hours (bump the heat to 350 for faster braising). Check periodically, turning the meat and adding wine and water as needed. Keep cooking until the meat is spoon tender.

Whatever the final destination of your buck au Franz, be it crepes, posole, or breakfast hash, you should make more than you think you’ll need. As the flavors come together and the meat softens, a braising buck becomes highly susceptible to sampling. Sampling quickly turns to nibbling, which leads to snacking, and then-at least in my case-experimenting, as I explore new uses for buck au Franz. On toast with mayo and pickled pepper? Check. With cheese? Check.

However you serve what’s left of your buck au Franz, accompany it with a glass of your finest red. In a perfect world that would be the wine you braise with. And in my perfect world that wine might not be Franzia, but I’m not complaining.#

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Unfortunately, wild seafood is wrought with environmental, ethical, economic, and health implications. Many fish stocks are dwindling. And prices, not surprisingly, are climbing. Certain fishing methods are damaging underwater ecosystems and creating bycatch, whereby the wrong fish are caught, and all too often killed. Big carnivorous fish like tuna and swordfish are known to accumulate dangerous levels of heavy metals from the many fish, great and small, in their diets.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the food chain, the lowly sardine poses a solution to each of these problems. And all we have to do is eat them.

Sardine is a general term for the young individuals of dozens of species of the clupeid family of fish. Sardines from the North American East Coast are actually small herrings. The most-prized sardines are the brisling species of the North and Baltic seas. Sardina pilchardus, from the Mediterranean, are named after the island Sardinia where the small fish were once particularly abundant. The Pacific sardine fishery was the largest U.S. fishery from the 1920s to the 1940s, when it collapsed.

For most Americans, sardines are practically synonymous with “in a can,” but those oily little fish can rise to a whole new level when prepared fresh. Pacific sardine stocks are stronger than they’ve been in decades, and appear to be on the increase. (Fossil evidence indicates that sardine populations ride a regular boom-and-bust cycle, though overfishing is thought to have expedited the 1940s bust.)

Thanks to the current boom, fresh sardines can be had at two bucks a pound in many stores. But while popular in Europe, freshies remain a niche market in the U.S., and most Pacific sardines are ground into food for farmed fish. It takes 3 to 4 pounds of sardine to make a pound of farmed salmon. Those penned-up, orange-dyed hog fish eat better than we do. Sardines are one of the healthiest fish in the sea.

They feed on photosynthetic plankton, and don’t accumulate heavy metals like carnivorous fish do. That diet also helps make sardines rich in omega-3 oils, and they’re also rich in protein, good cholesterol, selenium, and-if you eat the soft bones-calcium and fluoride.

Cooking with sardines can be tricky, due to their fishy smell. A recent batch that I marinated and then pan-fried resulted in a fishy steam, which carried a very fishy aroma throughout the house. Days later, visitors were still asking if I’d just had fish for dinner.

The first step in cooking sardines is to clean them. If the scales are still present, remove them gently with a knife. Be careful when gutting sardines, as they can be extremely delicate. As with most fish, the heads are edible, but if you’re willing to forgo that delicacy you can simply pull the heads off and the guts will come out behind them. To make that job slightly easier with strong-boned sardines, cut the spine below the head. Or leave the spine attached and pull the head forward and down toward the tail, and you can get the spine to come out too, and leaving behind two beautiful flat sardine filets held together by the skin. Rinse thoroughly.

If you want to marinate sardines, simple is better, like lemon, olive oil, and parsley. And I highly recommend grilling them outdoors afterwards, rather than cooking them inside the house. Grilled sardines are magnificent, and it keeps the fishy flavors out of your curtains.

In many Mediterranean countries fresh sardines are commonly breaded and deep-fried, a technique that’s both tasty and fool-proof. Sardines cooked this way don’t even stink up the house – unless you splatter grease everywhere.

Sprinkle your cleaned sardines with salt and pepper, then roll them in flour. Heat an inch or so of olive oil on low in a pan, and when a drop of water draws a splattering response, add the fish. Three minutes per side should do it, although you can cook them longer if you want a browner crisp (at the expense of moist flesh). Fried sardines are typically served with lemon wedges and little else, but the alternatives are many.

Sardine escabeche consists of fried sardines that are then pickled in vinegar. The dishspread from Spain and Portugal to their colonies, resulting in some interesting permutations. Mexican escabeche refers to pickled jalapenos and carrots. In Brazilian peixe escabeche, fish is fried crispy and then added to a coconut soup. In many places, escabeche simply means “marinade.”

Along those lines, I’ve had good success mixing fried sardines with Thai green curry, and stuffing them between pieces of bread with pickles and other fixings for a po-boy sandwich. After gorging myself on my last batch of fried sardines, I still had a few left over. I stuck them in a jar of pickled eggs that I had going in the fridge. A few days later, the dilly vinaigrette had permeated the formerly crispy and still oily fish for a phenomenal escabeche. Although the crisp was gone, the fried flavor remained, and perfectly matched the vinegar brine from the egg jar.

The many possibilities presented by fresh sardines don’t mean you should avoid them in cans. And if you do, you might want to go for the brisling varieties from cold, northern waters, and see if you notice their supposed superiority.

But when going fresh, you can hardly get more local for seafood than California. And when you buy American sardines you can be sure efforts were made to release the bycatch alive, according to Seafood Watch, which ranks sardines a “Best Choice” among seafood options. The Pacific sardine season runs January through August. Look for bright, sturdy, clean fish with clear eyes. Then take them home and rip their heads off.

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Food swapping can add diversity to a stash that grows evermore homogenous as it dwindles. Last fall for example I made a surplus of apple sauce, but ran out of carrots halfway through winter. If I could trade with someone who has carrots and no apple sauce, we’d both diversify. This can make a big difference in the final weeks before the new growing season brings the early crops like asparagus, radishes, spinach, and garlic flowers.

The clock is especially ticking for root crops like onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, beets, and squash. (Squash, while technically not a root crop, didn’t get the memo, and stores fine alongside the true root crops.) If your root crops haven’t gone bad already, they will soon. It would be wise to trade your surplus while it still has value.

You don’t have to be root-cellar hard-core to benefit from food swaps. If you show up at a food swapping party with homemade pies, you might score some homemade beer. Depending on the crowd you run with, food swapping parties can resemble a cocktail party, a potluck, a rager, a garage sale, or some unique combination of them all.

In the wild, ungulate-laden hills of Montana, where hippies hunt and vegetarians have been known to eat venison if they know who killed it, I’ve been fortunate to attend the annual Swap Meat which takes place around this time of year.

Swap Meaters are not limited to trading meat. Pickles, jam, honey, frozen veggies, and aging root crops are all fair game.

Just be prepared to explain the pedigree of your goods. I remember one guy describing the meat he’d brought as “found in the freezer after my roommate moved out.” He also mentioned something about it possibly being roadkill. He had brought nothing else to trade, and got zero action.

Another time, someone brought girlfriend-made pickles.

“These green tomato pickles are actually [girlfriend's],” he said, “but they…”

“Oh no! Those are bad,” objected someone with intimate knowledge of [girlfriend's] pickles, from across the room.

Murmurs swept the Swap Meat circle.

“No, these aren’t the bad ones,” the pickle purveyor protested.

“[Girlfriend] put ginger in her pickles so they’d be good in martinis,” the protester continued. “But we tried them and my God, they were eff-ed.”

“This is a different batch,” the pickle man softly protested.

A cloud of suspicion had fallen upon that jar, and rightly so. The first rule of Swap Meat is that you trade only your own goods. That way you know exactly what it is and where it’s been.

You can be sure that more than just goods will change hands at a food swap. Tips on gardening, preservation, and cooking will be traded as well, plus phone numbers, gossip, and hunting stories. When swappers run into each other months later at the farmers market, you can expect updates on swapped goods. Thus, community bonds are strengthened.

I just attended a swap of a different sort: a seed exchange in Espanola, New Mexico. Spring is the obvious season for seed trading, because it’s the time to plant them.

The event started out ceremonially, with Native American song and blessings. Dirt from around the southwest was mixed with water from distant parts, along with seeds brought from all corners. Everyone took home a handful of the mix to plant. Then, guitar and accordion players played upbeat riffs while participants wandered among the seed tables. There were envelopes for putting seeds in, and pens for jotting pertinent details on the envelopes. Behind the tables, seed growers watched their seeds disappear, talking shop with their seeds’ new and prospective parents.

Most of these seeds were homegrown and home-saved, but many farmers also brought seed they’d purchased years ago from seed catalogs. Rather than letting this old seed go bad in the barn, these exchangers hoped to send their seeds to new gardens while they still had life to germinate.

The seed exchange opened first to those who actually brought seeds — thus the “exchange.” After the exchangers had taken care of their business, the action was opened to the public. I showed up with nothing but open hands, and when I left my jacket pockets looked like squirrel cheeks. Corn, beans, squash, and chile pepper were the most common seeds offered, this being New Mexico, but there were plenty of others too. My loot included Tarahumara sunflower, Hopi blue corn, Inca rainbow sweet corn, red beans, parsley, borage, chimayo chile, yin-yang beans, and seeds for what a little girl promised are the juiciest carrots ever.

Amid the festive atmosphere were serious conversations about topics from tomato blight to water rights, while seed industry consolidation was the elephant in the room. The largest GM corporation in the world, Monsanto, is also the world’s largest organic seed company — and largest seed company period — thanks to recent strategic acquisitions. Because of consolidation like this in the seed industry, thousands of seed varieties are being dropped from circulation. Seed savers maintain an important reservoir of special seed varieties that would be invaluable if disaster were to strike, and will improve your quality of life in the meantime.

Exchanging seeds is the antithesis of seed industry consolidation, and trading food is a thrilling ride beyond the bounds of the currency system. You can’t eat money, and it won’t grow if you stick it in the ground. So as you prepare to grow and eat real food this summer, don’t forget to swap around your leftovers from last year.

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Mulch comes in many forms, including “living mulches,” which are sown among crops to provide mulch-like action. Clover planted in corn rows is one example of a living mulch, and with that image in mind my thoughts turned to sowing a mulch between my garlic plants. But I wanted more than just a living mulch. I wanted my mulch to be edible, too.

Searching for the best mulch crops to plant in my garlic patch, I developed a technique called “tossing seeds randomly.” I put all the seeds I didn’t get around to planting last year into a jar, shook it up, and tossed them by handfuls into the garlic patch.

Last summer’s research identified two general categories of plants good for growing in the garlic patch-what I call “garlic patch friends.” The first includes fast-growing, quick-to-bolt greens and herbs like spinach, lettuce, endive, cilantro, and escarole. As soon as summer heats up, these plants will go to seed, or “bolt.” The plant will divert all its energy into reproduction, and will often grow surprisingly tall, while the leaves stop growing and turn bitter. You want to harvest and eat these plants before they bolt, when they’re sweet and tender. They can grow fast in the spring when the garlic is small, and their bolting is delayed when the garlic grows big and shades them. You get to gorge on these intra-garlic leafy greens in spring and early summer, and by the time they start to bolt, the second category of garlic patch friends will kick in.

Category Two includes crops that will bide their time in the partial shade of the garlic plants early in the season, and will take off in full sun after the garlic has been harvested.

So far, carrots are this category’s champion. Their lush foliage functions awesomely as mulch, while below ground the roots mind their own business, growing straight down and keeping out of the garlic’s way.

I tossed a smorgasbord of carrot seeds in the garlic patch and the variety called Hercules performed best, growing as big as beer bottles. Another good late season living mulch crop is amaranth, a long-cultivated Mesoamerican grain with brilliant red flowers.

Once you pull your garlic plants from the ground, the craters left behind invite air and water into the soil. This helps your late season garlic patch friends in their pursuit of greatness, and also helps stimulate the microbial environment on the soil surface, which strengthens the garden’s ecosystem.

I was very happy with my garlic harvest last year, and suffered no decrease in production due to intra-garlic crowding. I didn’t run out of carrots until halfway through winter, the chickens got some amaranth, and when you count those early-season salads, I grew a pretty good bonus out of my garlic patch. This year I’m taking it a step further: In addition to my custom mix of tossed leafy green seeds, I also transplanted some escarole, radicchio, and endive that I’d started indoors. I’m expecting these to get the early jump and grow huge while the garlic plants are still on the small side.

To some extent I’ve been reinventing the wheel here. Garlic has long been known as a good companion to other crops. Garlic contains compounds that repel aphids, so many gardeners intersperse it with their lettuce and other aphid-fearing plants. Garlic also plays well with roses and strawberries. While garlic’s pungent mix of aromatic compounds keeps some pest insects away, it attracts the white cabbage moth away from brassica plants like cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts, and remains unharmed itself by the moths. But be warned: The brassicas I planted in my garlic patch didn’t do so well last summer. It’s possible that while a few garlics in the brassica patch are good, brassicas in the garlic patch may not do much.

Diversified agricultural environments are sometimes called polycultures. The more widely accepted name for the practice is “agroecology,” which describes the ecological theory behind agricultural systems that are both productive and resource-conserving. Practitioners consider plant and insect interactions, mineral cycles, and the farm’s own socioeconomic relationships with its community, since the people who work the farm and eat from its produce are considered part of the larger ecosystem.

While poo-pooed as non-scientific by many of those in favor of industrial-style farming, the discipline of agroecology is being taught at many universities-around 15 currently, including UC-Santa Cruz, Iowa State, and Penn State. A December, 2010 report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council examined hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers and concluded that agroecology has the potential to double food production in marginally productive areas. In the arid interior of Bahia, Brazil, Marsha Hanzi has been using agroecology (she calls it polyculture) to reclaim land that has been turned into desert by years of chemical-intensive monoculture. I’ve seen with my own eyes how Hanzi’s discoveries have helped people rebuild the soil and turn the landscape from red-brown to green with edible plants. The impact polyculture has had on the local communities is striking.

My garlic and carrot garden might not work in the Brazilian drylands, or a lot of other places either. But the take-home lesson, wherever you live, is to experiment with your home ground, and mix up your garden just to see what happens. Whether you approach it through book learning or the trial-and-error of randomly hurled seeds, you might be pleasantly surprised by the extra yield.

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Pumpkin pie is misunderstood in many ways. To name a few: it doesn’t need to be sweet, it isn’t only for the holidays, and as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t even have to exist.

As much as I love pumpkin pie, I’ve been making pumpkin pudding more often. I say this carefully, knowing full well that in some circles an argument against pie is an argument against America. But there’s no denying pumpkin pudding makes more sense, much of the time.

When most people hear “pumpkin pie” they understandably think “pumpkin.” But pumpkin is only one of many similar-tasting types of winter squash that all make great pies. Anything you could say about pumpkin pie you could also say about pies made from buttercup, hubbard, acorn, butternut, red kuri, delicata, sunshine, and any other squashes that may still be kicking around the root cellar this deep into winter. And almost anything you could say about pumpkin pie you could also say about pumpkin pudding.

The difference between pie and pudding is crust, the very presence of which changes its contents from pudding to pie filling. Crust is a container in which to present, portion, and serve individual allotments of pie filling, allowing you to avoid the messy job of scooping dollops of pudding into amorphous piles.

If you can make a good crust, good for you; I hope somebody notices. But in my experience, crust is more liability than asset. The greatest crust won’t rescue a bad pie, but a failed crust can embarrass an otherwise respectable one. On more than one occasion the thankless and messy task of crustmaking has dissuaded me from making pie altogether. It’s one thing to mix some stuff in a bowl, and viola, there’s your pudding or pie filling. But if I attempt to make a crust, it means flour and dough are going to coat the kitchen. And the pie will probably break apart as I try to serve it, which is less impressive than just serving pudding.

The only reason I had pie last night was because I found some organic frozen crusts, 2 for $3, at Whore Foods. Barring those pre-made crusts, and special occasions when I pull out the stops, I’ve been following the path of pumpkin pudding with no regrets.

Making pumpkin pie in early springtime is a great example of how you don’t need to have a stocked root cellar in order to cash in on being in tune with the growing season. Somewhere at a store near you, a produce manager is trying to get rid of some aging squash.

Tapioca, chocolate, and coconut milk may not be typical ingredients in pumpkin pie and pudding, but they’ve been working great for me. I got the tapioca idea from Shorty’s mom, who puts it in her apple pie. The idea to put chocolate in pumpkin pie came from a New Orleans cooking class I took long ago. And since coconut goes well with chocolate, tapioca, and squash, it was a no-brainer as a substitute for cow milk.

I start by cutting open a squash, using a spoon to scrape out the seeds, which I clean and bake separately. I bake the squash in large pieces on a baking pan at 350 until it’s totally soft-about an hour, and then let the squash cool, and scoop out the soft flesh. Two cups of squash will make a good-sized tapioca pumpkin pie. Blend the squash with two eggs, a half-cup of coconut milk, and sweetener to taste.

If I plan on adding chocolate chips, I usually don’t sweeten the pie with anything else. If I’m not using chocolate, then maple syrup goes well with squash. Otherwise I use sugar. Vanilla is worth adding, sparingly. So are traditional pumpkin pie spices, if you care to. I’m most partial to nutmeg and mace. Taste. Adjust. Repeat. And remember, if it tastes good in the mixing bowl it will taste good when it comes out of the oven. But make sure to use good eggs if you plan on tasting the mix, since they will still be raw.

For the tapioca, boil a cup of water per pie, and add three tablespoons of granulated tapioca to the water, stirring vigorously until it all breaks up. Kill the heat and wait about five minutes for it to cool. You don’t want to do this step too far ahead of time because the tapioca might glob up. Stir the tapioca into the squash filling. If you’re using chocolate chips, stir them in last – half a cup, or to taste.

You can also go in a savory direction with your pudding. A tablespoon or two of red chile powder — from the mild, paprika end of the heat spectrum to the burning flames of cayenne powder, depending on your needs — will go well with crushed garlic and freshly fried bacon bits. The possibilities of savory puddings are many.

Add your pudding to an oiled dish, and bake at 300 for about an hour and a quarter per two inches of thickness. If using chocolate chips, I give the pudding or pie a swirl with a spoon after about 15 minutes, to smear the chips around. You can also cook your pudding faster at 350, keeping a close eye on it. When it’s done the top will be dry, and a knife stuck in the center will come out dry as well.

Whether you go sweet or savory, and whether or not you mess with crust, any of these variations on pumpkin pie will help you take advantage of the end of squash season. It doesn’t matter if you’re a pragmatist shopping seasonally for the best deals on vegetables, a locavore with a name for every squash in your root cellar, or just some guy who likes pudding. Or pie. Whatever you call it, it’s worth a try.

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Roasted roots are to winter what salad is to summer: an edible reflection of the season. It’s a dish that’s about as easy to make as boxed macaroni and cheese, and puts you in touch with your hunter-gatherer roots.

Our ancestors devised special tools to dig for edible roots. New World root vegetables filled the holds of ships returning to Europe in the 16th century. Until the industrial revolution, roots were a necessary key to survival, storing the calories people needed to make it through the darkest days of winter with enough strength to plant new crops come spring. Roots practically store themselves, waiting patiently as long as they have a cool, dark place to hang out, and in winter, such places are easy to come by. They can also be left in the ground to be dug up as needed, assuming the ground hasn’t frozen around them.

Root vegetables come in many categories. Botanists divide them into taproots, storage roots, corms (modified stem roots), tubers, bulbs, and rhizomes. But most people have a simpler definition: if it grows underground, it’s a root.

I also include winter squash among the roots, even though it doesn’t grow underground, because squash behaves like a root in almost every other significant way. Squash can be stored, unprocessed, all winter alongside the true roots. And when you add chunks of squash to a pan full of roasting roots, they fit right in.

Squash is technically a fruit, but I won’t be adding any to my fruit salad. In my book it’s an honorary root, a root in fruit’s clothing — a “froot,” as it were.

When I put together a pan of roasted roots, I’m creating a meal, not a Noah’s Ark of root representation. Ginger may be a root, but I don’t want it in my roasting pan because it will make the whole business taste like ginger. Beets are roots too, but they’ll turn the whole thing red. The roots I want in my pan are the roots that keep to themselves. A roasted potato doesn’t take on the taste of the carrot next door, and that’s the way I like it.

I’ve dabbled in turnips and experimented with rutabagas, both of which are too spicy for my mellow taste. Ditto for radishes, though that point is academic, since radishes aren’t around in winter. Yams and sweet potatoes are a little too sweet for my root roast – the squash adds enough sweetness. Onions turn out either too dry or too moist, depending on how they’re cut. I’m on the fence about garlic. Roasted cloves taste good, but given a limited supply I’d rather use garlic as spice than vegetable. If anything, I mince or press fresh garlic and toss it with the finished product, straight out of the oven.

My current favorite line-up for rocking the roasted roots is carrot, potato, parsnip, and squash. If I had some, I’d also include celeriac (celery root) in the mix. All these roots (and froot) can be stored in a root cellar through winter, and carrots and parsnips can also be stored in the ground where they grew — just make sure to cover that ground so it doesn’t freeze, otherwise you won’t be able to dig them out.

I like to cut my roots crudely and intuitively, kind of like how I imagine Jackson Pollock painted. There’s an argument to be made that cutting everything to uniform size ensures uniform cooking, and while that is true, my roasted roots are about contrast, not homogeneity. If the little pieces of carrot are a bit soft and the big pieces are still a bit crunchy, that’s OK with me. But roasted roots are a personal thing, and my feelings on what’s included, how they should be cut, and how well-cooked the carrots should be may not reflect your own. Fortunately, winter is long enough to experiment and figure out what you like best.

I leave the skin on the winter squash (ditto for the other roots) and scoop out the seeds to roast alongside the roots. With the oven at 350 I pile everything but the parsnip chunks into the pan, toss them in safflower oil and then salt, pepper, rosemary, and bake. The roots will let off steam for a while, as they begin to shrivel and shrink from water loss. Meanwhile, the starches start breaking down into sugars. I stir occasionally, prodding the chunks with a finger or fork, and when they start to soften I add the parsnips — withheld so far because they cook so much faster than the rest of the gang.

There’s leeway in how long you cook the parsnips and carrots, because both can be eaten raw without difficulty. Potatoes and squash: not so much. When the biggest piece of potato or squash in the pan is done, it’s time for dinner.

The same selection of roots can be placed around a bird in the oven, where they’ll absorb the yummy juices. Alternatively, roasted roots can be put in a blender with raw garlic and enough olive oil to allow it to blend evenly. The resulting cream, which I call roasted root mayo, works just like real mayo — a dandy spread that doubles as delectable dollops atop whatever else you’re eating. One change in the recipe if you’re going for roasted root mayo: Use oregano instead of rosemary.

Roasted roots can also be added to soups, wherein they maintain their identities better than they would have unroasted because of the skin that roasting produces. And yet another application for roasted roots can be employed the following morning, when the leftovers can be fried in the breakfast grease of your choice and served with eggs.

The options are plentiful enough that you can probably mess around with roasted roots every winter’s day without getting sick of them. And even if you do, by the time autumn shuts down the next growing season, you’ll be pining for them again. Eating roots in winter is rooted in our DNA, and won’t soon be forgotten.

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July is the best time to kill a grass-fed beef cow, if you ask me. The animal has been fattened on months of neon-green spring forage. Such a cow won’t be as big in July as it would have been in October, but spring grass-finished meat has a cleaner, sweeter taste, and is dripping with yummy fat.

March, on the other hand, is probably the worst time to slaughter a grass-fed beef cow. At the end of a long winter spent chewing nothing but hay, the animal’s fat content, body weight, and spirits are down. The meat is no longer what it was last July, or what it will be again next July.

This seasonal variation makes life hard for ranchers attempting to make a living off grass-fed beef, because most Americans are stuck in the habit of buying fresh meat rather than frozen. To supply that fresh meat year-round, animals must be slaughtered year-round. In winter, this gives feedlot operations a serious advantage over grass-fed operations, because the feedlots can keep the animals big and fat by controlling diet. The grass-fed cattle, meanwhile, start to waste away in winter. It sounds unpleasant, but it’s natural, and this lifestyle is responsible for grass-fed beef’s superior nutritional profile.

If buying frozen meat were more widely accepted, ranchers could run their operations more efficiently and more comfortably. Rather than trying to squeeze a steer through a second winter in order to slaughter it for the fresh market in March, the rancher could have slaughtered and frozen that same animal the previous July. That would have resulted in tastier, healthier flesh from an animal that required eight fewer months of tending. This is an example of a better product that’s cheaper and easier to produce.

Keeping meat fresh is more labor- and energy-intensive, and presents more opportunities for errors that could compromise food safety or quality. Nonetheless, consumers readily pay more for fresh meat against their own best interest.

Grass-fed beef is an entirely different animal than grain-fed, in terms of nutritional value, environmental footprint, and the animal’s quality of life. Consumers want to eat grass-fed beef, and ranchers want to raise it. But until American shopping habits change and consumers are ready to accept frozen meat, grass-fed beef will probably remain a niche market.

A change in American shopping habits would have to parallel changes at home. Most families don’t have big chest freezers, and aren’t used to transferring hunks of frozen meat to the fridge, earmarked for tomorrow’s supper.

But frozen meat is usually cheaper, and buying in bulk can drop the price even more. Paying hundreds in a single purchase takes a little getting used to, but in the long run getting into the bulk, frozen meat rhythm is a smart financial decision that will pay dividends for years after the freezer is paid for. If you play your cards right you can end up eating amazing meat for a reasonable price.

Researching a bulk purchase can be fun, be it at your local farmers’ market, at a store with connections to local ranchers, or online. Buy samples of meat from various vendors, decide which you like, compare prices, and negotiate a bulk order for the meat you like best. Make sure the price includes cutting and wrapping, and make sure it’s done right. Many horror stories of poorly wrapped, freezer-burned meat have been told, and such examples might be partly responsible for American skepticism toward frozen meat. But if meat is packaged correctly there will be no loss of quality.

Most American butchers will grind about half the animal into burger unless you request otherwise. I prefer to grind very little, because I’m a fan of the tough chunks as they are, with gristle, cartilage, and other connective tissues embedded in the meat. These pieces have the most flavor, if you know how to cook them.

like to put a two-pound hunk of shank, flank, neck, or some other tough piece in a cast-iron pan under the broiler, turning it often until it develops a nice brown crust. I often do this with a packet of frozen-solid meat, run under hot water just long enough to unstick it from the bag.

After browning the meat all around, I fill the space around it with a 50/50 mix of water and red wine, five to 10 bay leaves, a few whole peeled garlic cloves, and some salt and pepper. I braise it, with a lid on, for about four hours at 300 F, adding water and wine as necessary to keep the meat half-covered.

Four hours sounds like an awfully long time to wait, certainly longer than for a hamburger, but the prep time is probably less. Most of those four hours roll by effortlessly, interrupted only by the occasional fluid replenishment and sample taking.

The soft, moist, creamy meat that emerges from the oven is a mere starting point for many other dishes, but it can also be a finished product. Once it’s fully soft I like to cook it with green chile and garlic. Osso buco is made in similar fashion. You can go the traditional stew route with the above recipe by, in the final hour of the braise, adding veggies like carrots, onions, and celery.

Anyone can thaw and cook a steak. But only when you can cook a foreshank until the connective tissue melts into non-fat butter will you be ready to make the switch from fresh to frozen. At that point you’ll be able to handle anything your freezer has to offer. And as you eat well, you can feel happy that you’ve helped improve the quality of life of some good rancher near you.

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It’s funny that Genoa is most famous, gastronomically, for salami—one that bears little resemblance to the lard-speckled salame Genovese di Sant’Olcese that some historians believe is the progenitor of the Genoa salami. The Americanized version—named after the port from which many Italian goods were historically shipped—is a generic Italian salami, heavy on the garlic and pork. It says nothing about the cuisine of Genoa, most of which comes from the ocean that laps at the city’s feet.

Like many of the cities and villages in the Italian coastal state of Liguria, Genoa practically hangs over the water, clinging to steep hillsides that drop precipitously into the sea. Some of the streets are as narrow as slot canyons, revealing only a sliver of sky overhead. Prostitutes beckon sailors in the narrowest passages. The seafood of Liguria, plentiful in Genoa, is not so easily ignored.

On a stormy night at the restaurant La Casa dei Capitani, waves crashed onto the rocks below the window as I ate an antipasti of raw seafood that contained, among other uncooked treats, two large prawns. Their inclusion surprised me. I’ve always assumed there must be a reason why I’ve never seen a raw shrimp at a sushi restaurant. When I asked the waitress about it, she sweetly offered to have the prawns cooked for me. I gesticulated “hell no” and pulled the head off one of the gray prawns. Pink juice leaked from the head onto the prawn’s body. I wiped it off and started chewing. The taste was so subtle it was almost flavorless, but with a faint, sweet creaminess.

Its firm white flesh, slightly marbled with ribbons of dark meat, reminds me of a cross between cod and bluefish.

At that restaurant, as well as many others, I ordered the pesce alla Ligure, or Ligurian-style fish. It comes dressed in a tomato-based sauce that includes olives, capers, pine nuts, lemon juice and white wine—some of the finest ingredients to be found in Liguria.

Each time I ordered pesce alla Ligure it was different. Though each version was inevitably delicious, I had a recurring complaint: The sauce was always laid down a little too thinly, as if the chefs were hesitant to adulterate the clean flavors of the fresh fish.

My posse and I were hunkered down in a rented stone cottage amid the terraced vineyards above the town of Riomaggiore. One morning I went to the local market in La Spezia, where for about half the price of a restaurant meal I bought enough produce and fish to feed four people for three days. Restaurant research had prepared me for this shopping trip, giving me ideas on how I like my Ligurian sauce and which of the local fishes I prefer. My favorite is a type of sea bass called branzino. Its firm white flesh, slightly marbled with ribbons of dark meat, reminds me of a cross between cod and bluefish.

Our landlords left us six unlabeled bottles of white wine, made of local grapes and processed at a community winery. I’m not usually a white wine fan, but I’ve never tasted white like this: uncomplicated and clear, with a hint of fruit, just enough sweetness and a faint dry edge. The cottage came equipped with an outdoor grill and a stack of dry olive branches. I built a fire and let the olive wood burn down to coals as the branzino marinated in coarse sea salt, black pepper and lemon juice.

The wood was thin but took a while to burn to coals, which gave me time to prepare my sauce. I started with 1/4 cup of pine nuts in a dry pan over heat, shaking and heating until they browned. Then I removed the pine nuts and added olive oil and minced garlic, followed closely by a chopped onion. When the onion turned translucent, I added a pound of plump cherry tomatoes, halved (cut larger tomatoes into 1-inch cubes). Then I added the toasted pine nuts, a tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes, chopped fresh sage and parsley, a lemon’s worth of juice, 1/4 cup of capers and 1/2 a cup of olives, all from the farmers market. The olives were small and brown, Niçoise-style, with pits. When the sauce cooked down, I added a cup of that local white wine, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and then let it slowly reduce to the consistency of a watery ratatouille, stirring occasionally.

I went out to the terrace, where I sipped on homegrown white. Nibbling on freshly oiled anchovies, kumquats from the tree and slices from a hunk of salame Genovese di Sant’Olcese, I watched the stars and the dark hills and the moonlit sea.

When all the wood had burned into bright coals, I raked them into an even pile about 3 inches below the grill. Then I brushed the grill with olive oil and laid on the fish. Inside, my companions prepared a leafy salad of endive, escarole, radicchio and a variety of soft lettuces. Fresh gnocchi, boiled until it floated, was tossed with minced garlic and pesto. Mussels were simmered in a broth of wine, tomatoes, lemon, garlic and parsley.

Outside, the smell of cooking fish mingling with the smell of olive smoke had become irresistible. I had to taste the bits of skin and flesh that stuck to the grill after turning the fish. It was so perfect I didn’t want to adulterate it with my Ligurian sauce—an ironic impulse, given my earlier criticism of Ligurian chefs for doing just that. In the end, I held firm to my vision of the dish, as Odysseus was held firm to the mast of his ship, somewhere in those moonlit waters below, when he sailed past the island of sirens. When the fish were done I arranged them on a platter and drenched them in sauce.

The branzino effortlessly held onto its identity beneath the Ligurian sauce. Together, they were a distillation of that corner of the Mediterranean basin, both land and sea. They complemented each other beautifully, like a sip of wine and a bite of fish—and there was plenty of that going on as well.

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