photo by Alexandra Lauber

 A warm Spring like this one gets everyone excited about the summer. I can’t wait to get back on the water this summer.  Some clamming on Hallock’s Bay and later a little fishing for striped bass or fluke, if we are lucky.  I was recently inspired by Martin Garrell’s piece in the Suffolk Times about a cod trip he took to Block Island. I have been dreaming about cod fishing ever since I read Cod: The History of the Fish that changed the world by Mark Kurlansky. Until I can someday find a cod excursion, I am happy to “settle” for the delicate white flesh of the striped bass or fluke right in our back yard.   

  The great thing about the North Fork is that you don’t even need to have a boat to harvest the waters. You can dig for clams at low tide with your feet or with a rake. And there are several beaches where you can see the striped bass jumping out of the water waiting for you to cast your line. Or you can go on an expedition with any number of charters like Libby Koch’s H2O Hospitality. She’ll take you out on her boat, Category One, for a three hour excursion and show you her secret spots that hold the North Fork’s finest mollucks and bivalves.

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Memory, Dirt and Reflection

Just the idea of spring teases up desire in the gardener (and the would-be gardener). The onset of local flower shows, the arrival of glossy seed catalogues in the mail, even the sinking of shoes in the sucking mud under a stubble of leftover grass are enough to waken desperate longing to dig, turn earth over, plant things way before the last danger of frost because you can’t wait. Let’s start things growing again, for the love of God!

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A b-Oysterous Bible of Bivalves

Reading a Mark Kurlansky book is like going out for a couple of beers with your favorite professor. You settle in to a comfortable booth with a frothy pint of anticipation. You tingle with the excitement of entering a more intimate relationship with someone you admire. You enjoy the delicious feeling of being an insider, drinking from the font of specialized knowledge in the very subject that entrances you. And you catch a good buzz. If only you could remember it all….

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By Ruth Reichl

I read Ruth Reichl’s first memoir, Tender at the Bone, many years ago and it never left me.  Her writing is so vulnerable, so raw, I cried and I cringed through the details of her childhood that in some ways were extremely foreign yet in other ways very familiar.  So when I saw that she had published For You Mom, Finally, I picked it up in the airport book store.

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A Chocolate Extravaganza – no calories, no kidding!

Everything I know about chocolate, I learned from Maricel Presilla. Truly. Food writers like me don’t necessarily know everything about the food they are asked to write about, so we rely on the smarts, wisdom, knowledge and research of others. Sometimes — like when I was asked to write a piece for a national magazine on selected indigenous American foods a few years ago – the writer is lucky enough to know where to turn. For my section on chocolate, I knew that Maricel, a cultural anthropologist, a Ph.D. in medieval history, writer, educator, formally trained chef and co-owner of her own award-winning, pan-Latin restaurants, Zafra and Cucharamama in Hoboken, would be the go-to girl. I called her up and sure enough, she had the goods on chocolate. What I didn’t know until we spoke, was that her passion for Theobroma cacao – the tree that is the source of chocolate — is not only intellectual and sensory, but part of her genetic history. As it turns out, Maricel Presilla is the daughter of a cacao producing family in Cuba with chocolate running through her very veins; encountering her is hitting the mother lode of chocolate information. In a conversation – okay, lecture, she is an educator after all – of an hour and a half, which could have gone well into the following year, she took me on a whirlwind tour of cacao history and meaning. Fortunately for every other chocolate lover on earth who can’t just call her up for a chat with the excuse of writing an article, Maricel has also produced an exhaustive and gorgeous book on the topic.

The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural History of Cacao with Recipes (10 Speed Press 2001) is as sensuous, subtle and intriguing as its subject. In this lushly illustrated, designed and produced volume, she covers it all, from its origins in Latin America, to its discovery and transformation by Europeans, from its social, economic and spiritual significance to her own personal relationship with the magic bean. It is loaded with information, but written and packaged for easy and unhurried enjoyment. You will also learn how to interpret chocolate labels and which form of cacao to buy for which purpose; it has changed the way I look at (and purchase) the chocolate bar. Love chocolate? Love food history? You need this book.

-Natalia de Cuba Romero

The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural & Natural History of Cacao with Recipes by Maricel E. Presilla. Ten Speed Press, 2001