After Claudine and Danny introduced us to Maldon sea salt at their last food shindig, we picked up a box at Williams Sonoma. At first I thought the flakes were a little big (compared to the fleur de sel de camargue we had been using), but once I got in the habit of grinding them between my fingers over my food, they’re actually quite nice. “Salty snowflakes” in the words of Sabine.

Capay Valley Fruits and Vegetables held a farm tour and strawberry picking on Saturday, open to all their Farm Fresh to You customers. FFTY is the program that delivers fresh fruits and vegetables to me every other week, and frequently challenges my cooking repertoire.

It was a little bit of a drive to get out there, Capay Valley is located west of Sacramento, but it was mostly on the highway, so it really only took about an hour and twenty minutes. As soon as I arrived I joined a group led by the youngest of 4 brothers whose parents originally started the organic farm back in the late 1970s.

For the next two and a half hours, Freeman talked about the history of the farm, the organic movement (as he and his parents have experienced it), and walked us around a few of the 120! different crops they grow on their 250 acres. I saw pistachio trees (for the first time in my life), fig trees, carrots, asparagus growing right out of the ground! (also for the first time), heirloom tomato plants, stone fruit and mandarin orange trees. And a bunch of other vegetables.

Along the way I got to pick as many strawberries as I could carry, free of charge! As you might imagine, children were in full effect. I felt sort of like a kid myself. And at the same time I felt really good about this intermingling of producer and consumer. My “subscription” offers them some financial stability in leaner times, which gets repaid with larger boxes during abundant times. And not only were they really nice people, but they were really smart, and really sensitive to the land, their produce, and their customers. (The next tour is on August 23 and includes a tomato harvest—so mark your calendars!)

I would have stayed longer, except I had to get back home to cook some of these great organic vegetables for Jean-Claude and Sabine who were staying the night. Some of the bruised strawberries went into a compote with rhubarb (also from the farm), and then I made a delicious quiche with a roasted asparagus tips (from the farm), caramelized onions, and prosciutto.

A few weeks ago I realized that it’s been a while since I’ve had any cajun food. I mentioned this to Stephanie who forwarded me a link to a creole restaurant, but one that’s only open for lunch. I figured there’s got to be some other cajun places in San Francisco, and then stumbled upon CoCo’s Crawfish, out at 24th and Irving.

On the surface it sounded too good to be true—a place that flies in live crawfish from New Orleans and prepares an authentic crawfish boil?! Even the sometimes-capricious Yelpers were enthusiastic. So I started dropping hints that I wanted to get some friends together to check this place out. Well, tonight Joy, Kyle, and Marcia took me up on the offer.

The menu was simple. They had crawfish, crab, and shrimp by the pound, as well as raw oysters and clams, plus corn on the cob and sausage. They boil the seafood along with the corn and sausage in their own homemade seasoning to order: mild, medium, or spicy.

We ordered three pounds of crawfish boiled mild with five corn on the cob and three sausages, plus a two pound dungeness crab. Oh man, it was so good. And so messy. And fun. Our server, Jonathan, was super cool and attentive, and CoCo happened to be eating at the table next to us and introduced herself. This could become a habit…

One of the other dishes Stephanie’s sister made for us while we were in France was lentils with sausages, or saucisses-lentilles. It’s a very simple dish, not as memorable as hachis parmentier (I mean with a name like that…), but something Stephanie thinks about every time we pass the lentils at Trader Joe’s. Given the plenitude of carrots in our veggie box lately, we finally picked up some pre-cooked black beluga lentils on our last shopping trip, along with some uncured kielbasa.

So tonight while Stephanie was at pilates, I adapted this French recipe as follows. Serves 2-3.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 small onion
• 4 slices of thick cut bacon
• 2 big carrots or 4-5 thin carrots
• 1 half kielbasa sausage
• 3/4 cup of white wine
• 3/4 cup of water
• 8oz cooked lentils
• 3 tbsp dijon mustard

Instructions

1. Cut onion in half and slice each half thinly
2. In a large saucepan, melt butter and sweat the onions over medium-low heat
3. Dice bacon and start browning in a frying pan
4. Peel carrots and cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds
5. Add the carrots to the onions when they’ve started to brown
6. Strain the diced bacon and add to the onion and carrots, discarding the leftover fat
7. Cut kielbasa sausage into diagonal slices and brown on the frying pan
8. Add the white wine and water to the onions, carrots, and bacon. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer.
9. Add the browned sausages and lentils to the saucepan and simmer covered for 10 minutes
10. Uncover and continue cooking until the excess liquid has been absorbed/evaporated
11. Stir in mustard just before serving
12. Season with salt and pepper to taste

As early as I can remember, split pea soup was just about the most revolting foodstuff imaginable. My dad loved it though, from the can, and I think my mom couldn’t stand the smell, and so we too couldn’t stand the smell. Or the olive green color. Or the chunkiness that suggested vomit. Growing up I had a long standing aversion to green foods, so this clearly fell into that category. I also didn’t like peas, thus green + mashed + peas was like a triple threat of disgustation.

Thankfully I started getting over my food phobias when I began cooking for myself and discovering what was in the foods I feared. And I started to appreciate sweet peas, english peas, petits pois, etc. when they were combined sparingly with other dishes, especially rice.

So I was actually excited when on the way down I-5 towards Death Valley, Stephanie and I randomly chose an exit for food, and we happened upon Pea Soup Andersen’s, a restaurant dedicated to the lowly split pea soup. We’d actually tried to eat there once before, on the way back from Pinnacles National Park, but they were closed. Not this time!

We both got pea soup in a bread bowl—the most impressive bread bowl I’ve ever experienced. They cut off the top, buttered both open sides and toasted them on a skillet, before scooping out the bowl and adding the soup. The soup itself was good, a completely smooth puree, not chunky like I was expecting, and it came with a myriad of toppings in little plastic containers: ham, real bacon bits, scallions, cheese, and croutons. Hopefully, I’ll have occasion to take my dad there someday. Until then: