 August comes to a close, but has brought with it the long awaited Good Eats: The Return. To honor this auspicious event here at Eating Normal, September’s cookbook of the month is Good Eats 3: The Later Years. When I ordered this 2011 cookbook from Amazon, I didn’t know what to expect. Good Eats was formative for my early cooking experiences, but its been so long. Let me tell you, this cookbook is a tome of knowledge.
Most of the books we have covered this year are equally as thick as Good Eats 3, but what matters is the condensed information. Each short section is broken down by season and further to episode. You get the recipes, but you also get all of the science-y goodness that Alton Brown brought to us during the Golden Age of Food Network. It’s packed tight with information that very well may make this one worth reading cover-to-cover in order to extract every bit of food science.
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 It’s a new weekend, which means its time for our Milford Farmer’s Market vendor highlight. This time, we’re checking out another new addition for this year, Fortunata’s Bakery. They were not here for the 2018 season, but I understand from the farmer’s market facebook page that they were previous vendors. I’ll tell you, though, I’m so glad they came back. Fresh bread has always been one of my favorite things about farmer’s markets.
Like all good bakery stands, you have to get to Fortunata’s well within the first half an hour of the market if you want to have your pick of their offerings. Even if we show up an hour after open, we sometimes struggle to get ahold of the flavor of focaccia we’re looking for or a good size white loaf. If you plan your morning accordingly, you have a lot of choices. Today is the day: It’s Saturday. Morning has come. I disappear out the door with only one thing on my mind. Duck eggs, and there is only one place in possibly the entire state of Delaware that I can get duck eggs with any amount of ease and regularity  Milford is home to the Fat Cat Farms stand every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.. 2019 is there first year at the market, and when I first saw them there with their duck eggs, cookies, and homemade english muffins, I knew immediately that they deserved my support.
One of the strongest memories I have of farmer’s markets comes from the namesake of this blog, Bloomington-Normal in Illinois, where I first bought a carton of duck eggs. I no longer lived there, but the eggs traveled well after a visit to my husband’s grandparents to our home back in Iowa. We ate them with delight, and every time I crack the shell of an egg from Fat Cat Farms, I am briefly transported to better times.  Three years ago, I stumbled onto the show Mind of a Chef, a PBS show that found its way onto Netflix after several seasons. David Chang opened it up in season one, and I was in love. I was introduced to many inspirational chefs through the seasons including Sean Brock, April Bloomfield, Magnus Nilsson, Gabrielle Hamilton and David Kinch. Not to be forgotten is the author of the August Cookbook of the month, Edward Lee. This month, we explore Smoke and Pickles.
For years, I have walked past this book on the shelf of every bookstore I have ever been in. The fact that it’s been everywhere tells me that I ought to remember it, and now, during a lull in new cookbooks that catch my eye, I’ve finally made the time for it with good memories of this chef at the front of my mind. His passion for his roots was so evident in Mind of a Chef, and as a midwestern woman who has sat through years of disparaging comments on steak and potatoes, I love that shit. |
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