January 2011
1 post
new ihoc
the new site is up and running at www.imhighoncooking.com!!! going forward THIS site should only be used as an archive.
if that’s what you typed, and you reached this—-empty your cache, and try again.
-ihoc admin
December 2010
14 posts
that's a wrap
so that’s it. a whole ‘nother year.
i’m sitting here, scratching for what to say—what could possibly sum up what has happened this year?—and i decided to check the im high on cooking archives for some inspiration.
this time last year, i wrote: my last day of work is in two days. two more wake ups. two more taxis and two more subways. ten or twenty more metal detectors, bag checks and id...
11 tags
pig in a truck
one of the berkshire/tamworth piglet runts didn’t make it through last night. He was acting a little weak the last few days, and was dead in their hay nest this morning. in an effort to isolate our fragile newborns from the sick piglet who has been hiding in their nest (see yesterday), we plucked him out of general population, and inserted him into our sow pen. hopefully the individual...
12 tags
piggus pileus
you’ve never really seen a pig pile like this. they scatter when i approach, so the photo isn’t representative, but believe me, fifty pigs of a rainbow variety of sizes and colors and personalities, lying one on top of another and trying to keep warm, is a memorable site to walk on in the woods. it’s a good ol’ fashion pig pile.
they have really been utilizing the hay we put out,...
1 tag
cow butts
9 tags
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a channukah miracle
completely out of the blue, and with no signs of being pregnant, one of our lady hogs due for slaughter next week just gave birth to four piglets! they are healthy looking, although i’m concerned that the mother’s teats aren’t as swollen as the last few mothers i’ve witnessed. the piglets, however, look nothing like oprah’s milk-less and dying piglets i saw this past summer, so i will assume for...
8 tags
private yoga instruction in athens!
brand new holiday gift certificates for private yoga instruction catered completely to your body and ability in the athens area.
discounted rates for small groups!
contact imhighoncooking@gmail.com for cost and information. cost negotiable on a need basis, barters welcome case-by-case.
seventh grade math
a lot of times on the farm little projects are constantly getting put off. it’s a good idea, of course, and the intention is in the right place, but right at the last second something more pressing will appear and reprioritize it. building this fence. cleaning that shelf. but then, you know, i’ll end up having to sprint through a suburban neighborhood after a five hundred pound calf...
as the winter air turns georgia cold, and the thermometer cracks forty, people aren’t the only thing that act cold. the pasture slows too—billions of living things beneath the surface of the grass decrescendo to a crawl. the grass seems to grow ever more green by the day, but can’t muster the energy to grow upwards—sort of like, ok boys, hold your ground now—we’ll get through...
association
farm to table. that’s what they say. but not like this guy, they don’t. these pictures are obviously related, but not in the “we just ground this pig up for sausage” sort of way. in fact, he’s just a wee little guy. that’s our buddy brutus, the swollen bellied offspring of our late sow oprah. we bottle fed him once his mother died.
the association—not brutus—has to do with...
3 tags
November 2010
14 posts
the cows suspiciously circled as he shoveled their poo into the wheelbarrow. why now, they moo’ed? after all this time. but the man was dertermined, and not even an encoraching herd could stop him from shoveling poo.
soon, though, like all people, he left. minutes later, and the cows returned to the poo man’s freshly shoveled pasture and shat all over his work.
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this morning i castrated my first piglet ever. grab the testicles, slice the skin with a scalpel, slice the testicle’s membrane, pop out the testicle, and slice off the connecting tissue. which brings me to my next topic, of spending the afternoon with twenty high school students. what a silky transition.
file under: wish they had this in my day. check that. file under: psyched to have...
back at home now—the daily pasta, the gelato breaks, and wine are slowly digesting into my subconscious. as my thoughts ground back into the reality of a grey, rainy, georgia with work to be done, i enoyed myself a couple days of those jet-lagged, couch-sitting, vacation blues to refocus my energy, and let my body catch up. asleep at seven, asleep at eight—up at four, four thirty. a year ago,...
“when going back makes sense, you are going ahead.”
– wendell berry. the gift of good land.
feels great to be back home. just settling back into the groove. talk soon.
10 tags
carrello d'carne
look. i’m from jersey, and i know diners.
as i’ve traveled most of the good ol’ usa in my time, and a healthy amount of foreign soils, i have always been convinced that jersey was the one and only true home of the diner. in fact, the jersey diner, should be referred to as such—the jersey diner—so as to differentiate it from all the other greasy spoons, box cars, and drive-ins guy fieri might...
an afternoon in certaldo
all pics taken on a stroll around certaldo—a righteous hill town with scene upon scene upon scene of lush tuscan views around each corner. this last shot is from down our driveway at agriturismo barbialla nuova as we pulled back home.
4 tags
superlatives
before beginning ihoc i had never read a blog in my life. and even after i began chronicling my story, i still avoided reading other blogs for fear that being influenced by others’ ideas would somehow make mine less original or unique. but now, a year and a half after sharing my days with you, i have certainly read my fair share of others’ blogs, mostly food related, and have developed...
1 tag
arnolfo ristorante--colle di val d'elsa - siena -...
arnolfo ristorante 1. welcome bites 2. broccoli mousse 3. chianini beef tartare with caviar 4. biodynamic chianti 5. prawns with lentils and beetroot 6. white truffles on prawns 7. cinta senese suckling pig with apples and hazelnut 8. too full for dessert, so have this tray 9. ok, fine 10. walk home
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October 2010
20 posts
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siena
8 tags
terra madre wrap up
today, all i can do is laugh as i realize how impossible it is for me to share my terra madre experience with you in any sort of coherent or informative manner. it has altered my life, my point of view, and my future course as a farmer, entrepreneur, and activist in deeply personal ways—in ways that shall not be understood in a blog post anytime soon. this first attempt at wrapping up last...
1 tag
ciao
with just one day left before we leave for italy, all hosts of different things, to-do’s, and tasks are simply falling out the back end of my head. plop. if it’s not a thought about italy, it’s not a thought i can hold.
for me—and i’m sure many—vacations are always unique. i become filled with an energy so refreshing and powerful—simply strolling arm in arm down a random back street feels like...
5 tags
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terra madre & italia
like a magnetic beacon at the end of an impossibly long tunnel, terra madre is actually approaching. thoughts, which have remained in the stratosphere for the last four months—as animals died, as the summer never stopped, and the piglets were born—thoughts which seemed surreal are now here. we leave for italy in five days.
let me back up.
slow food international: a...
6 tags
pick a size, any size
what began as an unintentional experiment-piglets being birthed in general population—has turned out to be a great success. the tamworth/berkshire crosses which were born a couple weeks back are not only healthy and happy, but are completely socialized into the herd after just two weeks standing up.
although they still spend much of their time milking and napping with their mother, they...
hug me
with the temperature hovering near the fifty yard line most evenings, and the mornings holding their chill, berkeley’s new piglets are resorting to increasingly desperate tactics to hold the heat. pictured here is a technique common in underground japanese grapple wrestling, and is one known to maximize internal power and heat.
7 tags
kitchen staff, farm staff
after several weeks without taking a day off, i found myself a bit burnt, and extremely tired. rookie mistake, i know. scheduling days off, after years of strictly knowing five on-two off, is a skill yet to be breached, but newly on my radar. with no fuel in the tank, and a short, but important list of tasks, i looked elsewhere to find my motivation.
luckily, it was everywhere.
with...
eat my words
her skills as an internet marketing analyst are coming in handy…check out this sick word cloud of the most common things ever said on im high on cooking.
you may have to zoom in on the screen to catch the smaller ones.
9 tags
two litters of piglets battle for top spot
in an attempt to out class each other, our two litters of piglets—the dark ones, purebred berkshires, and the spotted ones, tamworth/berkshire crosses—have been going head-to-head in non stop competition to determine which litter is the king of pork chop hill.
below is a pair of photos from the sleeping competition, which came just after nipple sucking and right before nipple...
4 tags
l'chaim!
light a cigar, and pop a cork, cause dr. richard kimble has a new brother! i went to the sale barn yesterday, and bought my second cow—my second cow, ever—at the northeast georgia livestock auction. if you missed my video last week, you have to see what this place is like. my mind done gone blown.
the bidding started in the mid eighties, there was a lack of interest, and it...
10 tags
article on civil eats
follow the link to read an article i wrote for civil eats. for those who don’t know, it’s a website which promotes “critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems as part of building economically and socially just communities.”
my article is an answer to the question: why do i think so many young people such as myself are...
7 tags
what do ya know
ever since i left brooklyn, and my life got flipped, turned upside down, my sense of awareness has changed in previously unthinkable ways. farming, which relies heavily on a sense of perception, has given me an appreciation for the tiniest minutiae of every day life. small, in between moments. blink moments. background sounds. and breaths. in fact, in this way farming is similar to stock...
13 tags
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“all right everybody—look cute—the guy said he’s gonna put this one on the internet for sure.” —bottom piglet
8 tags
gorgeous fall day
today i went to work in this monet painting above. finally, a month after it was expected, fall has arrived. the pastures out on fowler farms made it through the long hot summer, and with the recent showers they are ready to POP.
three steers came home from the sale barn today, and made a smooth transition onto the property. they gathered in the corner of their gorgeous grassy pad (with a...
September 2010
30 posts
7 tags
cnn delves deeper into farm burger--and me
cnn just released a full story to accompany the tv clip they released earlier this week, and the article is featured on eatocracy.cnn right now.
it includes a pretty thorough description of my apprenticeship, and the circumstances of our move from ny to ga, as well as all the details of the ins-n-outs involved between getting animals from the farm to the bun.
story, photos, and video here, on...