Two things I've recently learned about Allan Benton's pork-tastic products from Madisonville, Tennessee:

1. When a bunch of 2008 F&W Best New Chefs get together to eat Momofuku Ssam Bar's country ham tasting—various hams from different producers sliced paper thin accompanied by bread and chunky apple butter (both extraneous in my opinion)—the Allan Benton plate is the first to clear.

2. When a bunch of F&W staffers mill around plates of Benton country ham and lusciously thick-cut, fatty, smoky bacon, they find all sorts of ways to eat the pork, including with their fingers and ingeniously wrapping the bacon around chunks of peanut brittle (a crunchy, more decadent version of the bacon-wrapped prunes at the Spotted Pig in Manhattan). And yes, the plates clear up superfast, too.

Never underestimate the palettes of children. Not all rely on chicken nuggets, boxed mac and cheese and Lunchables. Meet my young friends Jack and Ian, whose mom placed the winning bid on a "Tour of the Test Kitchen and Cooking Lesson" on their behalf. They're 10 years old and eat anything not nailed down. When asked what they'd like to learn, they said,  "Something spicy, ethnic and complicated." How cool was that? With just two hours to do everything (including eat), I suggested Vietnamese food: spicy, ethnic and complicated—and quick.

"The recipes I chose were yummy fresh summer rolls with a spicy nuoc cham and a fantastic banh mi (Vietnamese hero sandwich) from Charles Phan, chef and owner of The Slanted Door in San Francisco. The summer rolls were especially fun for the guys because they could get their hands dirty and NOT have to wash them before eating. The spicy pork meatball banh mi on the other hand required hand washing before AND after cooking. Fish sauce, an otherwise adult flavor (or so I thought), was quite popular, as were the fiery hot Thai chiles for the nuoc cham.

As a mom of two kids and (just as importantly) a recipe developer, I think this encounter with my friends Jack and Ian has changed the way I'll think about children and their eating. I won't be so quick to dismiss their budding taste buds or take for granted their willingness to try something otherwise "Ew , gross." 

In honor of Earth Day earlier this week, we pulled together a snack with ingredients made all over New York City:

1. Crackly lavash, a Armenian bread that’s traditionally served soft but is equally delicious as a cracker, from Hot Bread Kitchen. Not only does this eco-conscious Long Island City organization use organic, local ingredients to bake its international breads, it hires immigrant women and funds their ESL classes.

Topped with:

2. Creamy ricotta from Salvatore Bklyn Ricotta, which has almost a mascarpone-like richness yet is still somehow fluffy and light. A female Brooklyn duo makes the fresh cheese with Hudson Valley milk, and it’s available at Saxelby Cheesemongers in Manhattan’s Essex Street Market.

Drizzled with:

3. Delicate Berkshire Berries New York City honey gathered from hives on Manhattan rooftops (as well as in the Bronx and Brooklyn) and purchased at the Union Square Greenmarket.

In a rare display of mental toughness, I was able to squirrel away enough of last year’s pickled ramps to last until this spring’s crop came in. And boy—it looks like a good year for ramps (full disclosure: I say this every spring).

Last weekend I pickled my first few bunches (though I prefer the more mature, bulbous ramps for pickling; they have better crunch) while I munched on the remnants of my last jar labeled “2007 Ramps…Do Not F&*$%ing Touch!” As usual, I ended up with a pile of ramp leaves, which I divided into two piles. One bunch I pureed with some water and stirred into pasta along with some chopped pickled ramps. The other I blanched (to cut down on the young leaves’ acute pungency) and made into pesto with Pecorino, walnuts and lots of lemon juice.

It’s almost time for my own annual ramp-picking expedition. Anyone want to share the coordinates of their secret ramp cache? I didn’t think so.

In "Why Bother?" in the New York Times Magazine yesterday, "food detective" Michael Pollan laid out a persuasive case for why we should do something about climate change, however miniscule the deed—whether it's giving up beef or going entirely local. But the point he really wanted to get across was the importance of growing your own food, citing how, as recently as World War II, Victory Gardens supplied about 40 percent of the produce Americans ate. "Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do—to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind," he writes.

Walking around the packed Union Square Greenmarket Saturday afternoon, I like to think that New Yorkers were heeding Pollan's plea. It's too early in the season for loads of produce—I eyed heaps of root vegetables and some ramps—but it seemed like every other stall was selling herb starter containers. And people were snapping them up—whether for the fresh, full flavor only just-picked herbs can provide or for the economic efficiency of snipping just the leaves you need instead of paying $3 for a batch from the grocery store, or whether it's all in the virtuous name of climate change. (Note: I like to think all three are intertwined.)

Whatever the reason, I was astounded by the variety of herb and plant starters available, especially from Hunterdon County, New Jersey's Oak Grove Plantation, whose stall is on the west side of the market. I spotted about a dozen varieties of basil, including the spicy, anise-scented Thai Siam Queen. What's new for Oak Grove this season: Broadleaf thyme (typically found in Jamaican cuisine), Mexican cilantro, and Chinese Toon, whose young shoots and leaves supposedly give off an onion-y flavor when stir-fried. But I didn't get a chance to pick up any Toon—my hands were full of all the other herb starters I'd grabbed.

    I just talked to chef Jason Wilson of Crush restaurant in Seattle, and at least once a year, he tries to go fishing in Alaska. On his trip last summer, the fisherman who owned the boat recognized Jason from the cover of Food & Wine when Jason was a 2006 Best New Chef. He told Jason that he visited Seattle often and would come by the restaurant sometime to show him a new food product he had been working on.
    “Great, I thought to myself. Another smoked salmon,” Jason said. Several months later, the fisherman stopped by for dinner. Afterward, the two talked for a while, and the fisherman pulled out a metal tin filled with flaky salt crystals.
    “This is the product I told you about,” the fisherman said.
    Apparently, the fisherman has been collecting salt near Sitka, Alaska, and processing it like Maldon salt so it’s extra-flaky. Jason said that since the Alaskan waters are so pure, the salt varies naturally with the seasons. The winter salt is clean and minerally, but in the spring, the salt picks up flavor from herring, which lay their eggs in Sitka then. And thanks to all the kelp and seaweed that grow during the summer, the resulting summer salt has a slightly grassy note.
    Jason buys the salt directly from the fisherman and uses it constantly at Crush, including on the table with bread. He has also been sharing it with his Seattle chef friends, and when he comes to New York for the James Beard Awards, he plans to show it to some East Coast chefs, hoping they’ll try it out, too. Seasonal sea salts from Alaska? Somehow, I don’t think he’ll have a problem finding any takers.

My old Brazilian nanny, feeling displaced and perpetually homesick (Brazilians call it saudade), would only crack a smile when I made Brazil's national dish feijoada, which, for the sake of my family's happiness, turned out to be a weekly occurrence. It's a hearty stew made with black beans, pork shoulder, carne seca (dried beef like beef jerky), linguiça calabresa (a pork sausage like kielbasa) and hunks of slab bacon. It's quite a project—one that I reserve for the weekend. But saudade doesn't differentiate between weekday and weekend, so I found myself making a fast version using canned beans, kielbasa and roasted pork from my local Dominican restaurant. It was good enough to stanch my nanny's longing, but I began to get saudade for the real thing, so here it is:
FEIJOADA

Traditional feijoada calls for carne seca—dried beef-which is hard to find outside of Brazilian neighborhoods. I like to use serrano ham, prosciutto or bresaola (Italian air-dried beef) because it most closely approximates carne seca's slightly gamey, meaty flavor.

ACTIVE: 20 MIN TOTAL: 2 HR 20 MIN
8 SERVINGS

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 pounds slab bacon, cut into 3 pieces
1 large white onion, coarsely chopped
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 jalapeños or serrano chiles, whole
1 pound dried black beans, sorted and rinsed
1/2 pound serrano ham, in one piece, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 bay leaf
2 thyme sprigs
1 pound andouille sausage or kielbasa, cut into 2-inch pieces
Steamed rice for serving

In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil. Add the bacon and cook over high heat, turning once or twice, until browned and crusty, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Add the onion, garlic and chiles to the pot and cook over low heat until barely softened, 5 minutes. Add the beans and 8 cups of water. Return the bacon to the pot along with the serrano ham, nestling them into the beans. Add the bay leaf and thyme sprigs and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the beans are nearly tender, 1 hour and 15 minutes. Add the sausage and cook uncovered, until the meat and beans are tender and the liquid is slightly thickened, 30 minutes. Discard the chiles, bay leaf and thyme sprig and serve with rice.

make ahead The feijoada can be refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for 1 month.

Recently our excellent intern, Nick Pandolfi, came back from a lunch that almost miraculously transformed him into an organic proselytizer. Here he tells what happened:

    I admit it: I’ve been a slow adopter of the organic/green movement compared to everyone else at the Food & Wine office. Even though I kept hearing about the benefits of buying organic produce I couldn't get past the cost: it’s just more expensive. The price of food has always factored into what I walk out with at the grocery store.
     But thanks to last Monday’s Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) luncheon, I think I am a 100% organic convert.  On top of the delicious all-vegetable, all-organic lunch prepared by chef John Stevenson (I had the best tasting parsnip puree and Swiss chard I’ve tasted in my life), there was an incredible panel of experts who went over the benefits of organic farming, including chef Peter Hoffman of Manhattan’s Savoy and the new Back Forty.

    Besides some distressing facts (the most commonly consumed fruits and vegetables in the U.S. are ketchup and French fries), moderator Kathy Lawrence, founder of the sustainable food organization Just Food, mentioned something else that took me by surprise: Corn-based ethanol production in the United States, which is getting a huge amount of money in government subsidies, is an “environmental disaster.” I realize that my “green” knowledge is limited, but I certainly thought ethanol was a better alternative to the fuels the U.S. is currently using. I caught up with Kathy after the panel to learn more. As she put it, the corn used for ethanol production is a “heavy feeder.”  In other words, all the fertilizer and pesticides that are used for growing the crops end up using fossil fuels, and the whole process ends up wasting more than is saved. Also, growing only corn on the same patch of land year after year depletes the soil’s natural nutrients and microorganisms that are so useful in reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

    Her solution: First, use less fuel, but more importantly, get rid of the huge corn farms, and substitute them with organic vegetables ones. Not only will the environment be better off, but our food will also taste better and we’ll be healthier. I now realize it's worth the extra money, and it might not be that much extra for long, just as long as people catch on, and more and more land is used for organic farming.  
    Peter Hoffman had one final suggestion: Put a basket on your bike and ride it to the greenmarket. It will reduce your carbon footprint and you’ll save a few dollars on gas.

I've only ever come across one person who doesn't like cupcakes, not entirely unexpected since that person also doesn't much care for sweets, kids or parties (all of a piece). I, on the other hand, am obsessed with the little darlings (cupcakes, that is). I search them (as well as products, tools and storage related to them) out in print, in bakeries, online, on TV...you name it. Which is why May's Tasting & Testing was so much fun for me to work on. I created two cake batters, a yellow and a chocolate—both using butter and vegetable oil to keep them ultra-moist—and three frostings—marshmallow, chocolate, and vanilla buttercream. Plus, there are a host of toppings and add-ins to create dozens and dozens of mix-and-match variations. I can't wait for the next birthday!

Exciting news for tea geeks—er, all the cool people: First Flush Darjeeling season has started! It doesn't feel very springlike in frigid New York today, but in Darjeeling, in the northeastern part of India, the temperature's rising, and tea plants are pushing out their first spring leaves, packed with delicious nutrients the plants have stored to weather the winter. There's been a lot less rain in Darjeeling this winter than last, so the crop is expected to be small. As in every year, the very first leaves, being plucked now, are still thin on flavor; the first flush won't peak yet for another week or so. Ask your favorite tea supplier to recommend the best: They should have the first tins of the new crop by May.