Lalli Carole - Sylvias table: fresh, seasonal recipes from our farm to your family

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2013 by Liz Neumark

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Neumark, Liz.
Sylvias table : fresh, seasonal recipes from our farm to your family / Liz Neumark with Carole Lalli. First edition.
pages cm
This is a Borzoi bookTitle page verso.
Includes index.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-96238-6
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-307-59513-3
1. Cooking, American. 2. Natural foods. 3. Farm produce.
I. Lalli, Carole, 1942 II. Title.
TX715.N5095 2013
641.5973dc23
2013004555

Illustrations copyright Jason Snyder
Cover photographs courtesy of the author; (checkered fabric) by Maria Toutoudaki/Getty Images
Cover design by Kelly Blair

v3.1

I learned several years ago that tragedy is not something that happens to someone else. Life is both wonderful and terrifying, and it is how we blend the two that defines who we are.

In the summer of 2004 my youngest child died suddenly at the age of six. Learning how to live on after losing Sylvia was a mystery. Creating a living legacy so that we could say her name every day and keep her spirit alive, and to honor her by doing the good she dreamed of, was the anchor for me. My very special husband, Chaim, agreed that we would buy a farm and create the Sylvia Center. I am grateful for that every day. Our children, Nell, Katie, and Sam, embraced these two projects from the start. Without their encouragement and support, I dont think we would have been successful. They are the inspiration in my life and for this book, written to bring families together around the table, in conversation or celebration, making meals and moments count.

This book is also dedicated to the many dear friends and pioneering colleagues who gave their support, involvement, creativity, hard work, and passion for helping others to the Sylvia Center; they are making a difference in many young lives.

Over the years, I have met more bereaved parents than I dreamed possible. Sharing our stories and talking about our children (all of them) gave me strength and hope. This book and its stories are for the friends who have traveled this road and understand the balance of what is important in life.

To my precious family and my dearest friends, I dedicate Sylvias Table. Let us sit around it, in peace and health, and enjoy life.

I left New York at five thirty on a fall morning in 2006, a city girl heading north to meet a farmer. Just four months had passed since we closed on sixty acres in Kinderhook, a small town in the Hudson Valley; settled in 1640, Kinderhook is deep in the American arcadia, legendary for its gentle hills, rich farmland, and abundant streams. Given their location, it was surprising that our sixty acres had never been farmedthat would be for me to do, so I needed a farmer. By seven thirty Bob Walker and I were chatting over breakfast at the West Taghkanic Diner on Route 82, a rural road that links Hudson Valley towns and villages. I knew Bob was the one, even before Id finished my oatmealreally, from the moment I first saw him.

Yes, he looked like a farmertall, browned from long days outdoors, and with large hands that looked like they were connected to the earth. But beyond that, Bob was an experienced organic farmer, already contentedly at home in the Hudson Valley. We were determined to plant in the spring, which meant that Bob had to hit the ground fast, and he did, studying and planning nearly obsessively through the few short months we had before planting would begin. The exciting things, like choosing crops, were offset by mundaneand expensivematters, like laying in twenty thousand feet of drainage pipes (to be followed, two years later, by twenty thousand more). Bob had had experience with start-up farm situations, which our Katchkie would be, and he had worked on farms with the kind of dual mission we were planningfarming with a social cause. In our case, the cause was the Sylvia Center. We made our goal, and, because Katchkie had never before been farmed, we qualified for our organic certification with our 2007 harvestthe most delicious crops from what, a year before, had been a field covered with wild brambles.

Accomplishing all this meant far more to me than simply realizing my dream of having a farm; Id wanted that for a long time, but that longing had taken on new urgency. I was eager to establish the Sylvia Center, a place to inspire children to eat well and to learn where good food comes from. The center had to be on a farm.

Who is Sylvia? Sylvia was the youngest of our four children, a pixie of a girl who wanted to grow up and become a helpful human. Two months shy of her seventh birthday she died of a sudden brain aneurysm. In picking up the piecesand in finding a way to create a legacy for Sylviaseveral threads of our lives came together.

Our family already had a place in nearby Putnam County, where we have spent summers and weekends for many years, falling in love with the outdoors and surrounding farms. We have shared memories of hours spent as a family picking and eating our way through the seasons, from strawberries and blueberries to apples and pumpkins.

Looking back, it makes sense that in the early phases of mourning, I discovered that the only places where I felt alive were in one of New Yorks Greenmarkets, or at the farm where I picked up my CSA (community-supported agriculture) share. There was something healing about being surrounded by the earth and its abundance. This land in KinderhookDutch for childrens cornerwas the perfect place for the Sylvia Center, the place to honor her. It would be the legacy she would have created herself. It seemed a minor miracle to find property close to a place we already considered a second home.

We named the farm for our son, Sam, choosing a nickname I had given him as a baby. Katchkie is Yiddish for duck and, oddly, a term of endearment. (Although when I want to tease people, I tell them it is an old Indian tribal name, like our other local ones, Taconic or Mohegan!) And the timing could not have been better, just before the locavore and sustainable farming movements were gaining momentum around New York City. I had a desire to connect to food fresh from the field; that concept is at the core of the Sylvia Center.