Mushrooms and Moonshine

pickle heaven

We pickled 'em good then pickled some more- offering snacks, pickles and pickle making to 120 people over two gloriously sun filled days in the garden at Old Stone House. Folks coming off the Farm City tour bus (run on compressed gas) having made rounds of several Bklyn farms were greeted with chilled Brooklyn Brewery beer and a plate of goodies featuring produce from some of the farms. Calaloo Empanadas (calaloo from East NY Farms!, Schenk Ave. betw. New Lots and Lavonia, mkt. Sat. 9 - 3) Corn Pudding with Tomatillo Salsa (ingredients from BK Farmyards, Kingston @ Winthrop, mkt, Wed. 3:30 - 7) Roasted Delicata Squash with Ethiopian Berbere spice rub (Delicata from Hattie Carthan Community Garden, 645 Lafayette Ave., mkt. on Sat. am- plus drumming circle, eggs, bread baking and cooking demo's) Garlic and Herb Roasted Red Onions (the Secret Garden Farm and Bushwick Farmer's mkt., corner B'dway and Linden, Wed. 10 - 6 ) and shots of Gazpacho made with cukes from Added Value in Red Hook. Cooking demo's (eggplants and okra) and pickle tastings added to the pleasure- and folks were delighted to fill a jar of their own to take home and enjoy later in the week. These are refrigerator pickles made by marinating raw vegetables in a salty sweet brine. They're not canned or fermented so they only last a week or two in the fridge... but they're fun and easy to make and are perfect on sandwiches or with cocktails!

. We'll be serving some of these pickles on rye bread with butter at the next Farm City event on Fri. 9/24 (along with other snacks including Deena's homemade peanut butter cups!) This is a fundraiser featuring a reading by Novella Carpenter, author of "Farm City" and an alt-country hoe-down with music by JD Durante @ The Commons, 388 Atlantic Ave starting at 7pm

Other Communal Table news... our next upstate salon supper (Oct. 2-3) is selling out fast- "Mushrooms and Moonshine" a week-end extravaganza with mushroom foraging, Apple Jack, and Ghost stories round a campfire, followed by a canoe ride to a tiny island for mushroom omelets the next morning...

Upcoming in Nov.- "Don't be a Fry Baby," a salon supper in NYC that explores essential oils and oils essentialness!