The Cellar and the Pantry Blog

For anyone else in the Philadelphia area, the Kennett Square Farmers Market will be hosting a "fermentation festival" this October 9, featuring tastings and demonstrations of local and homemade beer, wine, cheese, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt, and more.  I'd be there in a heartbeat if it wasn't on a Friday afternoon -- if you go, be sure to comment here or in the forums!

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Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to 'Zuiki' Taro, a Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles

by Eric Toensmeier; published in 2007 by Chelsea Green Publishing Company

Anyone who thinks that perennial vegetables begin and end with asparagus will welcome the arrival of a well-written, comprehensive survey of perennial vegetables for the home garden.  Eric Toensmeier clearly knows and loves his subject.  While his survey of perennial vegetables could have been better organized, its thoroughness and its unusual subject matter make it useful and fascinating.

The book is divided into two parts; an extended introduction discussing general gardening issues as they apply to edible perennial vegetables, and an extensive listing and description of some of the plants themselves.

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Is this a trend?  Village Whiskey, Jose Garces' newest restaurant, is the second place I've been to in the last month or so that featured house-made pickles.  Village Whiskey offers a choice of five different pickle plates as an appetizer: tomatoes, beets, carrots, artichokes, or onions.  I got the pickled cherry tomatoes, which were delicious, as was everything else I tried.  It was served the way many restaurants serve cheese samples, with two sides (whipped mascarpone and a tapenade).

If you're curious, the other place was the Varga Bar, which offers a very tasty "pot o' pickles" appetizer.  Could small-scale, traditional food preservation be the next culinary trend?

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When I think of urban gardening, I remember the hand-pollinated heirloom tomatoes I grew on my windowsill when I lived in Manhattan, or the herb garden on my Brooklyn fire escape, or the container garden my friend kept next to her stoop.  I think of the fight to keep community gardens in empty lots, and guerrilla gardeners lobbing "seed grenades" into fenced-off abandoned plots.

Luckily for their circulation, Urban Farm, the new title launching this month from the publishers of Hobby Farms magazine, has a broader definition of "urban."  The subtitle is "Sustainable City Living," but this new magazine, published out of Lexington, Kentucky, mostly caters to the suburban demographic--basically, anyone with a small enough garden that they don't feel comfortable buying Hobby Farms.  Read on for the full review of the first issue.

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