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Last night we cooked local winter bounty with chef Peter Berley at Brooklyn Kitchen. Robert and I made the carrot and celeriac slaw with a spicy mustard and toasted fennel seed dressing. Also to be had were heaping helpings of braised purple cabbage with apples, spicy cayenne mashed rutabaga, pickled herring potato salad, local pork sausages and honey poached pears with shortbread cookies.

Peter is opening a place out in Long Island in April that will have a big kitchen for classes and a wood-fire oven for making bread. He’s also starting a 4-season garden. We’ll definitely be spending a weekend or 2 out there this summer. Love this man!

Hi Tumblr friends!

We want to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day and invite you to FFFLOURISH! We would love for you to try out our little site that we’ve been working on and tell us what you think.

Go to www.ffflourish.com, and answer the question “What are you doing right now that’s healthy for you?” to sign up. Or, click “Show me an example!” to see what’s happening in the community.

FFFLOURISH is the simplest way to share all the little things you’re doing to stay healthy, naturally, right now. It’s also a great place to support friends or be supported while working towards a resolution or health goal. There are so many social networks out there and many places to share information on the internet, but we wanted a place to talk positively about personal health. 

Thanks for checking it out! We would really appreciate your feedback as well!

Laura and Robert 

P.S. (Using FFFLOURISH is already keeping us honest in terms of sticking to eating more healthily and keeping a positive outlook! Yay! If you want to connect with us to see what we’re up to, our ffflourishy URLS are ffflourish.com/laura and ffflourish.com/robert)

I studied architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Before attending Cornell, though, I grew up in various small towns peppered across Texas and Oklahoma. I had seen snow and had built a snowman or two, whenever Colorado decided to shed some of its overload onto the Texas panhandle. But, it was never such a big deal. Mom would make a stew or a chili, some hot cocoa perhaps, and burn a log in the fireplace. We pretended we were living in a colder climate for a couple weeks every year.

Ithaca was really my first introduction to cold weather- to snows that wouldn’t quit and clouds that wouldn’t go away while working in a less-than-airtight studio. There was one cafe at Cornell that had fairly ‘real’ food for the offering, and nice people making it, too. Temple of Zeus made 2 homemade soups everyday, but you pretty much had to get there at 11am to ensure you would get fed and avoid a massive line. I lived off of their soup (and I think their friendly demeanor had something to do with my unwavering patronage, as well). It nourished me and warmed my insides against what sometimes felt like what I imagine the arctic tundra to feel like.

If you’ve noticed, there are a lot of soups on this here blog. I’m beginning to realize that the soup ritual never ended.  Even now, living in Brooklyn, I persist in having bowl after bowl of warm comforting soup in the face of blustery weather. Only, now I’m responsible for the love and flavor.

This week I couldn’t get my mind off of Zeus’ ‘thai carrot’ soup that they used to serve regularly on Tuesdays. I now see that they’ve actually published their recipes online, but not having known that, I tried to re-create it myself. Surprisingly the recipe I came up with is pretty close to theirs, and pretty delicious in its own right.


Thai Carrot Soup Recipe

1 T. coconut oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
4 inches or so of a ginger knob, peeled and minced
1 jalapeno, de-seeded, de-stemmed and diced
4 inches or so of a lemongrass stalk, towards the base, sliced
4 cups really good tasting vegetable broth (If you wouldn’t eat it by itself, use salt and filtered water instead.)
8 medium carrots, sliced
1 can coconut milk (I made mine with ¼ cup coconut solids and ½ cup or so of water, alternatively)
1 T. ground cumin
¼ tsp. ground cardamom
¼ tsp. turmeric
1 lime, juiced
fresh cilantro for garnish

In a large pot or stock pot, heat the coconut oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, ginger, jalapeno and lemongrass. Sizzle until fragrant, about 1-5 minutes. Add broth or water and bring to a boil. Add carrots and spices, turn down the heat, and simmer for about 15 minutes until the carrots are cooked through. Add the coconut milk. Puree the soup. Return to pot and add lime juice and salt to taste. Garnish with cilantro.

A long overdue post highlighting one of the many ways to take advantage of the local mushroom harvest from Mycomedicinals Madura Farms.  

We set up the dehydrator, broke up these crazy frilly maitake (hen of the woods) mushrooms, dried them for 6 hours, and finally blasted them into dust with the handy Vit-a-mix.

Now this powder can easily add a stunning flavor to soups and sauces, or just make an extremely relaxing mushroom tea that I find perfect for meditating.

Once more before their epic transformation into an immune boosting, calmness inducing, super powder.

(btw, these are the same mushrooms (same type / same grower) that chef Tom Colicchio uses for his roasted Hen of the Woods at Craft.)

Laying them out on the dehydrator sheet, check out that spacing!!!

The maitake, broken down for optimal drying airflow.

Whole maitake mushrooms (aka hen of the woods) from Mycomedicinals Madura Farms in Goshen, NY.  These must be of the speckled hen variety.

A ‘posole rojo’ is pretty awesome on a cold day. Mine is made with: hominy slow-simmered with dried poblanos and a dried chipotle, homemade red chili sauce, garlic, onion, pink potatoes, carrots, cilantro, lime, tortilla strips and crumbled, raw 3-corner field farm feta. Basically, everything I had in my fridge. Leftovers are great with some shredded cabbage or even spinach thrown in. (There are probably infinite delicious variations on this Mexican stew.)

Also, of interest, check out the ritual significance.