The Victory Garden is back! For all the ups and downs of Obama’s first two months–this is a happy development. They may not be planting the grand plot that Michael Pollan envisioned for the first family (enough to supply DC’s food banks), but I will take this as a good sign. Of course, it could also be a signal to the citizens that we should also start growing our own food….for the coming economic apocalypse.

In December, Spooning published Liz Crain’s story about Oregon’s Clear Creek Distillery and her experience harvesting Douglas fir branches for its unique Doug Fir Eau de Vie. Today’s “Proof” column on the New York Times‘ website has a nice piece by Steve McCarthy, Clear Creek’s proprietor and master distiller, about the painstaking, decades-long process of developing the Doug fir spirit, as well as his other concoctions, and mentions some new schmancy spirits he has in the works. Check it out!

A bloody mary for the spicily-inclined, courtesy of pickle maestro Bob McClure of McClure’s Pickles.

Ingredients

McClure’s Spicy Pickles

Tomato juice

Black pepper

Vodka

Ice Read on… »

Photo by Michael Harlan Turkell

A pickle is a metafood—itself, only more so. The stinky pickled cabbage, given anthropomorphic animation, would look down its long, wise nose at the young, odorless raw cabbage, highly suspect of its taste, digestibility, staying power, and nutritional content. The crisp, sweet cucumber is challenged to be tangy and pungent, and the pepper’s sun-baked hotness ascends to a new level of eye-watering and saliva-welling. Read on… »

As if I needed another reason to look forward to Fridays! Acme Smoked Fish makes some of the tastiest cured fishes around–and there’s lots of competition here in New York. And it’s made just a few streets away from me. After nearly seven years in my neighborhood, I finally made it to Acme’s Fish Fridays, when they open up their facility and sell their fishstuffs to the public. There are jars of various herring treatments, huge sides of bright red salmon as thick as an arm, whole smoked sturgeon…We picked up some fresh brook trout for dinner (two for $6) and a slab of honey smoked salmon for $7. My bagel breakfast (pictured) guarantees a good day and portends a tasty weekend…