breakfast, the sunday before decoration day, with no graves

It looks like a holiday celebration. Of course I’m thinking of something that used to be called ‘Decoration Day‘, something beyond the morbid, more modern American celebration of soldiers fallen in the name of our national military fetish.

I would prefer to think of this late spring weekend as an occasion when people gather, put flowers on graves, enjoy the company of relatives and of others, both familiar and not. It’s an anachronism anyway, so I’ll add a picnic-like ‘dinner on the grounds’, one which would probably be enjoyed at about the same afternoon hour Barry and I enjoyed this breakfast today. If asked, we would probably both respond with mixed feelings about being far from our own family cemeteries.

  • the ingredients of the meal, which as usual served as lunch and breakfast, were almost entirely local: some very fresh eggs from pastured chickens and bacon from pastured pigs, both from Millport Dairy Farm, the fried eggs seasoned with sea salt, a freshly ground mix of black pepper and other seeds or spices that had been accidentally combined when I was preparing a dry marinade for a pork belly, then decided to hold onto for future use (black pepper, fennel seeds cumin seeds, coriander seeds, star anise, white peppercorns, and whole clove), sprinkled with a thinly sliced bulb from a bunch of ramps form Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, and finished with thinly sliced strips of the 2 ramp leaves that had been attached to the bulb, some chopped fronds of small spring fennel bulbs from Central Valley Farm that had been a part of an earlier meal, a few small cherry tomatoes from Eckerton Hill Farm that had been heated gently in a small enamel-lined cast iron porringer, then sprinkled with a dry seasoning called L’ekama from Ron & Leetal Arazi’s New York Shuk, a small mound of micro purple radish from Two Guys from Woodbridge, and thin slices, not toasted, of 2 different rich, hearty breads, ‘Seedy Grains’ from Lost Bread Company (wheat, spelt, rye, barley, organ bread buckwheat, oats, seeds {flax, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin], water, salt) and Runner & Stone’s whole wheat seeded crescent (with toasted sesame, flax, poppy, and caraway seeds)