"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."

Orson Welles (1915 - 1985)

Dappled green-gold with a ruby blush and a flavor that's luscious, slightly spicy and dripping with honeyed sweetness... If you're not eating local seckle pears right now, I implore you to jog to your local farmer's market and find yourself some this instant. These things are tiny packages of harvest love.

Mine are from the friendly folks at Red Jacket Orchards. Check out the ugly but useful Pick Your Own website for information on plucking excursions in your area.

-Jean François Millet 1814-1875


In my youth, I was a drainpipe spelunker, a dumpster diver and a wild berry forager. "DISCARDED" loomed large in my early memories, stamped across the worn covers of my storybooks in a black serifed font. I turned over piles of rotting leaves looking for morels, climbed trees to cut down the oyster mushrooms, sorted out asparagus stalks from the field grasses, plucked prairie turnips from the soil. I bought my housecat gently used, found my job on Craig's List and furnished my Brooklyn apartment with castoffs and curb produce.

Maybe that's why gleaning holds such appeal for me. Having recently watched the French film Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), an exploration of those who live off the discard pile, I discovered I'm not alone in loving the leftovers. Not only is there a rich cultural history woven into the forgotten harvest, there's legal and biblical justification as well.

As Leviticus 19:9-10 instructs its devotees,

"When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all
the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your
harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen
fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the
stranger."

Allowing a harvest of castoffs makes sense morally and logically, but as Agnès Varda reveals in her film, many of the stoppages in modern gleaning come down to a lack of information and distribution. Taking advantage of their established connections, the folks at America's Second Harvest and New York's CityHarvest effectively work as modern gleaners. Their gleaning armies organize daily gathering expeditions and distribution runs in an attempt to fill up America's empty bellies with the mountains of food that would otherwise rot in dumpsters.

For those of us hungrier in spirit than body, there's something primally satisfying in doing one's own hunting and gleaning. Out on the Left Bank, similar ideas brew: fallenfruit.org is an organization founded by three CalArts professors after they discovered a forgotten Los Angeles city law that designates as public property any fruit that hangs over sidewalks. Their website promotes access to the city's free produce via Fruit Alerts and Fruit Maps. New Yorkers can check the Department of Sanitation's collection schedules for nights to rummage in the dark or the free section on Craig's List for an array of pickings.

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973)

Ketchup? Check. A peck of mustards? Yep. Hot sauce? Sure. Cumin-pineapple relish? Well, why not?

Still, of all the tempting condiments on offer at Broome Street's spanking new Broome Doggs, the most exciting was undoubtably the currywurst sauce. Tomato-y, zippy, earthy. Like ketchup after a trek down the spice trail.

"They're all over the place in Germany. They're crazy for them there," attending dog slinger Todd told us, slopping a generous portion of spicy red glaze across a steaming dog. "Really. Look it up on the web. Just type in 'currywurst' and you'll find all kinds of stuff."

Todd did not lead us astray. Said to be one of VW's biggest products (at least in Wolfsburg), the saucy, spicy currywurst is apparently the most popular fast food dish in Germany. Berlin even goes so far as to host a Currywurst Museum, and a documentary homage exists within "The Best of the Wurst."

My favorite of the Currywurst worship pages might be this one, in which we discover that, "First you learn german (sic), then you may have a Currywurst." Brilliant incentive program.

Folks with DIY impulses should investigate one of the many recipes out on the interwebs.

Broome Doggs
250 Broome St.
(Btwn Orchard & Ludlow)
917.453.6013

"There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry."

-Mark Twain

Farther down the road, folks might go in for the steak rolls or the hero buns, but in Susquehanna, PA, there's only one bread to use for spiedies.

"You got the Felix Roma?" The round-faced butcher gestures to a sliced white loaf that — to my eye — is virtually indistinguishable from every other sliced white loaf of other every other packaged brand. "You gotta have the Felix Roma if you're making spiedies."

Best known in the area around Binghamton, NY, and the far northeast corner of Pennsylvania (Binghamton even hosts an annual Spiedie Fest and Balloon Rally!), the spiedie is regional identity. The spiedie is folk art. The spiedie is culinary history.

Composed of lemony marinated, grilled meat chunks (most often chicken or pork these days, but historically the meat of choice was lamb) mounted inside a buttered bun or two slices of sandwich bread (with or without hot sauce... your choice), the spiedie is said to have traveled with Italian immigrants.

Curiously, the sandwich seems to have migrated all the way from Italy to Broome County... and stopped. Web searches indicate that the most passionate spiedie fans now exist within the spiedie's petite home turf and in pockets of those warm-climate areas (Florida, Texas, Arizona) to which native spiediphiles relocate. From all reports, it would seem as though these transplants order spiedie marinade by the case and convert neighbors with missionary zeal. (Makes me wonder why they don't save some time and money by printing out a recipe from here or here.)

Does the sandwich live up to the hype? Check the Roadfood Forum on spiedies for everything from frothing fanatical praise to lukewarm "eh, they're okay" reviews.

Personally, I don't think they really approach food ecstasy, so I'd probably fall in with the latter camp. Maybe enthusiasm would run hotter if I had something closer to the lamb-based Italian originals... or if I'd gone with the Binghamton-style steak roll over the Susquehanna-mandated Felix Roma.

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

-Virgina Woolf

Aw! A cupcake mosaic on the front stoop of that spanking-new Lower East Side bakery! Adorable.

Oh! The pretty shopgirls all wear obscenely cute candy-striped pink pinafores. Sweet!

Whoah! Vegan? Really? No, wait... Not just vegan but sugar-free, gluten-free and all-natural? Daaaamn!

Yes, my LES operative reports that the mint-lemonade is refreshing, the lemon cake is tasty and the menu is... well, confusing.

Imagine! A whole shop filled with baked goods whipped up with no cream, no refined sugar, no eggs, no white flour and no butter. In short, a traditionally-trained pastry chef's worst nightmare.

And yet... they have muffins. They have poundcakes. They presumably have cupcakes. So what do they use to construct their sweet treats?

J. reports it's spelt and garbanzo flour sweetened with things like fresh, farmers' market fruits (local peaches, for example). He's sworn to eat his way through their menu for the sake of science (and friendly gals in candy-striped aprons). Brave man. We await his report.

Babycakes
248 Broome St.
(btwn Ludlow and Orchard)

It's been said that the phrase "cellar door" is perhaps the most beautiful in the English language. More lovely than, say, "beautiful," or "sky," or "check enclosed."

Cellar door. Easy on the ears. Still... I can't help but wonder whether Tolkien really gave due consideration to "bakery door."

For the few New Yorkers not heading out of the city for the weekend, the City conspires to treat you to its richest display of hospitality. Stinky piles of garbage? Gone. Stuffy, crowded subways? Fuggetaboutit. Stifling heat and humidity wafting up from the asphalt? A fuzzy memory.

The weather promises unparalleled beauty, the streets will be uncharacteristically quiet, parks and restaurants will be joyfully unpopulated and Czech beer will flow in a big backyard in Queens.

Sit under the trees, observe the rich cross-section of humanity at nearby tables, eat a juicy sausage, drink a cold beer and offer up a toast to yourself. You've had the foresight to realize that zipping around on the subway is superior to sitting in a hot metal box on the L.I.E.

Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden
29-19 24th Ave
Astoria, Queens
718-274-4925
bohemianhall.com