Labor Day lunch.

The September date on which the U.S. and Canada celebrate Labour day (Labour Day) was chosen to avoid the putatively un-American leftist, socialist, communist (and, not incidentally, Haymarket massacre*) associations of May 1, the day on which the rest of the world still honors labor, laborers, “..the class demands of the proletariat, and..universal peace”, as International Workers’ Day.

Americans prefer picnics.

To balance things off, today Barry and I mostly enjoyed a good [rainy day, indoor] lunch and listened throughout the afternoon, and continuing through this evening, to American music, some of it associated with the best leftist American values.

Breakfast room activists.

The meal itself included 6 fresh eggs from pastured chickens and 4 slices of bacon from pastured pigs, all from John Stoltzfoos’ Pennsylvania Millport Dairy Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket, one small ripe red/green heirloom tomato from Norwich Meadows Farm, sliced, and 3 golden grape tomatoes from Alex’s Tomato Farm in the Saturday 23rd Street farmers market, all seasoned with local sea salt from P.E. & D.D. Seafood and freshly ground black pepper, then heated in a bit of olive oil, sprinkled with chopped fresh za’atar before being arranged on the plates on top of the leaves of one small head of purple romaine, both herb and lettuce from TransGenerational Farm, and the eggs fried inside the same very large well-seasoned cast iron pan in which the bacon had been slowly cooked (but only after a little rich Vermont Creamery butter had first been added), seasoned with sea salt and black pepper, sprinkled with a pinch of the now powdered remains of some light-colored home-dried habanada pepper purchased fresh from Norwich Meadows Farm in 2017, scattered with chopped leaves of some flowering pericón (‘Mexican tarragon’) from Norwich Meadows Farm; there were 2 breads: toasted slices from the heal of a loaf of Pain d’Avignon seven grain bread (rustic, whole wheat, honey, sesame- sunflower-flax seed, oats) from Chelsea Foragers Market and untoasted slices of a much fresher loaf of ‘Whole wheat Redeemer Bread’ (wheat, water, salt) from Lost Bread Co.

the music was by Roy Harris, his Symphony 1933 (Symphony No. 1), the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Jorge Mester (a little more on Harris here)

 

• on that subject, I wrote eleven years ago,

“I haven’t been able to find a really good compact summary of the strike anywhere on line, although there is this setting of the broader context in a discussion from Howard Zinn. I would definitely welcome any other suggestions. I can however offer information on some of the numbers involved in the physical conflict itself, quoted here from the Kansas Heritage Group:

“The total forces of the strikebreakers both government and private were [against 100,000 strikers]: 1,936 federal troops, 4,000 national guardsmen, about 5,000 extra deputy marshals, 250 extra deputy sheriffs, and the 3,000 policemen in Chicago for a total of 14,186 strikebreakers. In addition to these figures there were also twelve people shot and killed, and 71 people who were arrested and sentenced on the federal indictment.

“No picnic.”

 

 

[the Haymarket massacre drawing published by ‘Harpers Weekly’ is of National Guardsmen firing into demonstrators during the 1894 Chicago Pullman strike contemporary, from Wikimedia Commons]

Winter picnic.

Fried duck breast part 2.

I had bought more of Dolores Kalin’s wonderful smoked fish salad at the Greenmarket the day before, with no particular meal in mind at the time. Then, the next day, when I was looking around for something to fill out a menu in which slices of cold cooked duck breast would be featured, I drafted it into that meal almost immediately.

• a composed smoked fish salad from P.E. & D.D.Seafood, made by Dolores Karlin using various local white fish caught by Karl, her husband, spread very thickly on soft lightly-toasted slices of 12 grain bread from Bread Alone, purchased a few days earlier, but also in the Union Square Greenmarket
• sprays of an upland cress from Two Guys from Woodbridge, dressed with Frankies 47 olive oil, Maldon salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and a squeeze of organic Chelsea Whole Foods Market lemon
• the wine was a Spanish (Rioja) white, Real Rubio Blanco, Rioja 2017, from Astor Wines

The small meat course was even more special than the fish, since we’ve never had ‘leftover’ duck breast before, and its presentation could be almost intensely minimal.

• one half of a cooked duck breast from Hudson River Duck Farm, that remained from the meal we had enjoyed the night before, brought to room temperature, sliced very thinly and arranged on the plates without any sauce or seasonings
• dollops of a house apricot mustard from Dixon Farmstand
• some absolutely delicious (January!) arugula from Philips Farms, dressed with salt, black pepper, olive oil, and drops of a good Spanish Rioja wine vinegar
• slices of a She Wolf Bakery miche
• the wine was a Spanish (Navarre) red, Verasol, Navarra Tinto Tempranillo-Garnacha 2014, from Flatiron Wines in Manhattan

I was prepared to set out a small third course, local cheese and fruit, but at this point or appetites had been sated.

• the music throughout the meal was Rossini’s 1820 romantic opera, ‘Maometto Secondo’, Claudio Scimone conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Ambrosian Singers, with soloists Margarita Zimmermann, June Anderson, Ernesto Palacio, Samuel Ramey, and Laurence Dale

We haven’t had what we call a home picnic in a long time. in fact, as I look at the search box on this site, unless I haven’t always been posting these simple meals, it appears it’s been a very long time.

These dinners can normally be assembled without any planning, since we usually have on hand most of what might be needed to set out such a meal.

• on Tuesday what we had on hand included 4 ounces of Applegate Naturals prosciutto from Whole Foods Market, some leftover sweet soppressata from Buon Italia, Orwasher’s ‘Ultimate Whole Wheat’ bread from Chelsea’s Down to Earth Farmers Market, some water buffalo brie from Riverine Ranch, Consider Bardwell Danby cheese, some purple leaf lettuce from Tamarack Hollow Farm with some previously-toasted pine nuts from Buon Italia, golden tomatoes from Alex’s Tomato Farm with Berried Treasures Farm spring garlic and Two Guys from Woodbridge lovage and micro red basil
• the wine was an Italian/Austrian (Alto Adige/Südtirol) white, Alois Lageder Pinot Bianco 2016 from Garnet Wines
• the music was an album of partitas, sonatas and sinfonias composed by Franz Ignaz Anton Tuma (1704-1774)

We decided to have a picnic [Ger. ‘Picknick‘], a very simple picnic, for several reasons: 1. It wasn’t a Union Square Greenmarket day, so it couldn’t be seafood; 2. It was going to be very warm in the evening and we didn’t want to challenge the air conditioner; 3. We had originally thought we’d be busy much of the evening, which meant there wouldn’t be a lot of time to cook a real meal.

• there was a delicious ‘Pâté with Goose’ from Schaller & Weber, and a little German mustard [Semf] on the side, which really wasn’t needed at all; a ‘Strauß‘ of upland cress from Two Guys from Woodbridge, dressed with a good Campania olive oil (Lamparelli O.R.O.) and a squeeze of an orange-colored sweet local lemon from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, Maldon salt and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper; 4 halved Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods Market, dressed with more good olive oil, salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of chopped garlic mustard from Windfall Farms; 3 cheeses: a raw cow’s milk cheese, from Isny, in the south German Allgäu, ‘Adel Egger’; a ewe’s milk cheese, ‘Gutshöfer Ziegenkäse’, from Twenteland, a green region of in the eastern Netherlands closely bordering Germany’s Münsterland; and a Harvati, a semisoft Danish washed-curd cow’s milk cheese; all of them from Schaller & Weber; slices of Tribeca Oven ‘Seeded Jewish Rye’ from Whole Foods Market [there were second servings of pâte and cheese]
• the wine was a German (Mosel) white, Weingut Axel Pauly Riesling Trinkfluss Trocken Mosel 2014, from Chelsea Wine Vault
• the music was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s 1693 opera, ‘Médée’, with a libretto by Thomas Corneille, William Christie directing Les Arts Florissants

We occasionally enjoy what we call ‘picnics’ at home (a table laden with assembled foods, not cooked, or at least not cooked by me that evening), on particularly warm evenings or on any other occasion when it makes sense and the concept feels particularly enticing.  I can normally assemble this sort of thing without planning ahead, since we always have on hand most of what I would want to include in such a meal; it’s just normally just a matter of deciding to put it together, and that adds to the appeal of the arrangement.

 

 

• this picnic spread included 3 ounces of Principe Prosciutto di San Daniele from Whole Foods; mixed olives from Buon Italia (in a small black bowl almost out of the picture above); parti-colored radishes (‘easter radishes’) which I had picked up from Willow Wisp Organic Farm on their first day at the Union Square Greenmarket; a few Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods sprinkled with calamint, aka nepitella; 4 cheeses (Consider Bardwell Farm‘s goat cheese, ‘Manchester’, their cow pasteurized cow cheese, ‘Experience’, and their raw milk cow cheese, ‘Dorset’, as well as a somewhat funky ‘Jean-Louis’ semisoft cow milk cheese from Bobolink Dairy); some ‘Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter‘, a salad composed of arugula from John D. Madura Farms, radicchio from Hawthorne Valley Farm, sliced spring shallots from Lani’s Farm, wild mint from Berried Treasures Farm, parsley from Stokes Farm; and slices of a very rich, moist, and very sturdy rustic bread, the fantastic 7-grain ‘Sette Grani‘ of Grandaisy
• the wine was a French (Provence) rosé, Famille Sumeire Château Coussin Le Rosé de S. Méditerranée 2015, from Chelsea Wine Vault
• the music was from Counterstream radio, streaming