A Wine Party and Big Plans for My Summer
Wine festivities and fine food, what more could you ask for? The other evening, the celebrated chef Leah Branch and the Virginia Wine Collective, in collaboration with Monticello’s Getting Word project, threw a bash called a Feast of Reason. What an evening. Held in a space edged with huge stacks of wine barrels, it was an amazing menu, great local wines, and hugs from a whole bunch of folks I hadn’t seen in a long time. The guest of honor was Deb Freeman, the host of the Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary Finding Edna Lewis.
Here I am with Deb and Tonya Holland, a noted television food host who has just finished leading a month-long seminar at UVA titled “From Hemings to Holland: Black French-Trained Virginia Chefs.” A week ago, I shared with her students my talk “The Little Plots Allowed Them: Gardens of the Enslaved at Monticello.” These were some sharp, attentive folks who asked great questions and made sharp observations.
I got to put on my glad-rags and party.
On the home front, for me, there are projects and plans in the works for the next several months; there will be the release of two video interviews I did, one with a JMU documentarian and one with student interns of a local food-collective. I look forward to seeing the resulting videos, and I’ll share the dates when I know them. I’ve been scheming on some kind of 250th big dinner event, but maybe that will have to be pushed back to Aug. I’ll let you know how the plans come together.
Heads up, for you in the Richmond, Virginia area on Aug 8th, I will be part of a day of talks on the Revolutionary War Era, at the Library of Virginia, where, of course, I’ll be talking on food.
In my kitchen, I’m cooking all the time. I love canning classes because they attract such a range of interesting people, from UVA students to Moms and their daughters, with more new faces to come over the summer. In between writing and gardening, it’s been a regular schedule of history dinners and teaching classes. Those are all listed on my website for the rest of the summer and into the fall! You can make reservations there. For my own personal pantry, I recently put up 13 pints of chicken stock and several pounds of meat for freezer meals using $14.95 of Costco rotisserie chicken.
Topped with my wide-brimmed straw hat and veil to keep away the gnats, every day there are jobs to do in the garden. I am delighted to say that this season’s garden is so much better than last year’s. To tell the truth, last year I was so discouraged I didn’t even take one picture of the straggly tomato plants or the vole-nibbled potatoes! I sowed basil seed four times, ending up with six stunted plants hardly worthy of the name. Usually, I have an overabundance of basil, so vigorous it has to be pruned two or three times to keep it under control. Sigh. I got maybe two meals of bush beans.
BUT the rains have been better this spring, and despite the ups and downs of temperature (48 degrees one day followed by 85 degrees the next!), most of what I’ve planted has begun to grow. I’m already eating little new potatoes, protected this year by a barrier called vole wire. The sugar peas will soon be replanted for a fall crop. There are green beans and cucumbers on their way. Even a bit of basil is ready to pinch for a fresh sauce.
The okra and Anaheim peppers still have weeks to go before they produce. I did have to resow chard in a tall tub to protect the young seedlings from the rabbits. When the chard was sown directly in the ground, the damned bunnies nibbled those little sweet seedlings as quickly as they emerged.
With the help of my friends Tye and Reg, energetic folks willing to trundle wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of wood chips all day, I now have deep mulch where it is most needed to get ahead of the weeds. Our local VDOT road crew dumped a magnificent chip drop, easily 5 feet high by 15 feet long and 10 feet wide!! Chips forever.
My main focus is fulfilling my book contract for Knopf. That means writing, more writing, editing, and revising. Whew, I’ve written a Master’s thesis and a PhD Dissertation, but neither of them was as hard as this project!! Think good thoughts for me as I sit at my computer.
And please take some relaxing time to watch the wonderful documentary “Finding Edna Lewis”, a PBS production. Deb Freeman and her crew won a well-deserved Emmy for their work. The special part, for me, is that the last section takes place at my table. An evening to remember!
Have a wonderful summer,
Leni
www.indigohouse.us
