First, let me tell you about the sausages that will be delivered to my door this week from Link Lab. I have been wanting to try the handiwork of this local sausage maker since I wrote about him working with a farmers market vendor to turn her organic meats into custom sausage creations. So, I was thrilled when I saw that Spud.com now carries Link Lab sausages. This week they were offering a spicy Italian, a pork and jalapeno, and a Fremont Brat. If you haven't tried Spud for local organic food delivery, you are missing out on the easiest way to get your groceries. If you want give then a look, you can use the coupon code CRSEA-ALELAR for a $25 discount over your first few orders.
The next best thing is Annette Cotrell's new book, The Urban Farm Handbook. This woman is amazing and I am so happy that she was recruited to write this book and share what she has learned. I first met Annette when I took her up on an offer she extended through her blog to give a tour of her urban "farm." She had turned the back yard, front yard, sidewalk parking strip and the side of her driveway into full scale food production operation. She had raised beds of greens, beets and tomatoes, rows of raspberries, coffee bean bags filled with potatoes, chickens pecking around the backyard patch of grass, a tree heavy with plums, even her own peppercorn bush.
She was managing to grow most of her family's meals on this average sized lot in an upscale neighborhood in North Seattle. I was impressed. She was someone that I wanted to follow and knew that she would continue to do amazing things.
And she has. Not only has she written The Urban Farm Handbook to show others how to begin to do what she has learned can be accomplished in the city, but she has since sold her home and moved herself, her chickens, her two sons and her understanding husband, to a more rural homestead 30 minutes outside of the city. She has already managed to collect a menagerie of animals, is drowning in goat milk and establishing her permaculture food forest. I am jealous.
My next happy thing this week is another book that I was sent last month and have been drooling over since. Also written by a talented Seattle woman, Good Fish is a sustainable seafood cookbook written by Becky Selengut, a Seattle private chef and cooking teacher.
I was feeling like a horrible cookbook reviewer because I kept meaning to follow a recipe from the book and then sharing the results. The problem is, that just isn't how I normally use a cookbook. Cookbooks are evening reading material for me. I read it cover to cover like a novel and then use the inspiration to cook something new. Good Fish has inspired me this month to use the salmon I caught for a salmon chowder and to cook a great shrimp and grits. The photos in the book are gorgeous, her flavor combinations are exciting, and she includes great information about how to make environmentally responsible seafood purchases.
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