A while back, my friend Sue started wearing peasant blouses and long gauzy skirts. "I'm hoping if I start dressing like a hippie chick, I'll start feeling more like a hippie chick," she told me, eager to jettison what she thought of as a provincial, suburban Milwaukee value system. Eventually she quit her job teaching English and became a full-time potter. So I guess it worked.
That theory of transformation popped into my mind as I eagerly flipped through the latest installment of Some recipes have an old-fashioned return-to-Grandma's-garden quality, like tomato-cucumber water, which can also be made into an aspic. Others have a more modern twist, like panko fried chicken. I liked the straightforward berry cobbler recipe and the granita formula. While the New York Times was telling me how to make shaved ice with a $50 machine that Amazon was already sold out of, Canal House suggested essentially the same cold treat made by stirring a pan of freezing juice with a fork. I'm also working my way through a list of suggestions for "simple summer vegetables" from beets to zucchini and waiting eagerly for the tomatoes in the garden to ripen so I can give the section "The Big Reds" a whirl. Negatives? Well, for a midwesterner, some of the seafood suggestions are impractical (e.g. oysters). And a recipe index would be nice -- even magazines usually have one. However, I liked issue No. 4 so much I sent away for back issues of 2 (fall and the holidays) and 3 (more of an early spring focus, with recipes for roasted root veggies, spring onions and sorrel sauce). The debut issue is sold out. The series is a from-scratch publishing venture from Hamilton and Hirsheimer, who had the conviction to start an lavish upscale mag when conventional wisdom would have suggested perhaps a blog.
