Here in New York, it isn't. Nor does it seem to be blogging weather. Victoria's been busy doing blogworthy things (like this) but too busy to post them at A Long Hot Simmer. (Many of you are familiar with that dilemma, no doubt.) But she'll be back soon.

Till then, here's a little something to sate yourself with: a yummy story called "Picnic Society," from the ReadyMade archives. It was written by Katherine Sharpe. Victoria did the food styling, and Rachel Haas was the prop stylist. The photos are by Marcus Nilsson.

"Outdoor meals can veer into culinary clichés (cold cuts and macaroni salad, anyone?). ReadyMade challenged designers Victoria Granof and Rachel Haas to concoct a plein air meal for our postboom times. In their picnic spread, vivid flavors and colors make for a feast that’s both cheerful and sophisticated."

On Sunday, I handed Theo off to Nanny Katie so I could enjoy a meaty Day of Rest. I'd ordered two legs of beef from Marlowe and Daughters for a shoot yesterday with Marcus Nilsson and also wanted to buy some supplies for my cheese-making project and champagne yeast for the mead I plan to brew up, thus requiring a detour to the Brooklyn Kitchen Lab. 

What a place. I came away with a fresh rabbit (they threw in a container of mirepoix for free), a toy anatomical cow, a pint of raw milk, locally grown and milled whole-wheat bread flour, a liter of French cider vinegar from the tap (decanted into reused wine bottles or bring your own as long as the capacity is printed on the label), four Macintosh apples with worm holes (they must be organic), the yeast, an Italian ricotta mold, a bar of homemade tallow soap, and a quart of duck fat for future confit and also for making a batch of Grandmere Yvonne's duck fat soap. AND I got to taste the inaugural batch of mortadella they made in-house. (A bit spongy, but excellent flavor.)  

I felt like I had just witnessed the birth of a baby.

Next stop: Marlowe and Daughters for the cow's legs and one of these pig's trotters for a crack at menudo.  

Sunday dinner: braised rabbit in mustard with Ben's double-smoked lardons; and homemade applesauce.

Dinner last night: string beans.

And here's the photo we made with the cow's leg.

Photo by Marcus Nilsson.

I was in Putney, Vermont, a couple of weeks ago working on a book for Stewart, Tabori & Chang. The author, Deborah Krasner, trumps me in the best-job category—she raises sheep, chicken, and guinea fowl on a fully sustainable family farm, where they host weeklong culinary vacations. The people in Putney look like they're always thinking good thoughts. Maybe it's the bacon.

Here's our crew, led by Marcus Nilsson, shooting a dinner scene in Deborah's pasture at dusk. You can't see it, but there's a roast on the table that came from "Shank the Sheep," a former resident of the Krasner farm. Shank's pelt was salted, left in the sun for 10 days, then sent to a tanner in Pennsylvania. It now adorns a vintage Danish side chair in their living room.

I'm tempted to move here so I can join Lizzie Krasner (Deborah's daughter) in the Naked Table Project. Open only to Vermont residents, each participant spends the weekend making a dining room table from Vermont sugar-maple timber. At the end, they plant a tree in honor of the timber they used, carve the coordinates of exactly where the tree that gave up the timber for the table stands, and then prepare a meal together, which gets served on their newly made tables, all pushed together. How perfectly Vermont.

On my last night in Putney, they had their first frost, which threatened Lizzie's tomato plants. With her permission, I harvested the last of the tomatoes. She has a plan for the ripe ones but graciously let me keep the others, with which I'll make my Green Tomato Ketchup. It'll be good with that Vermont Co-op bacon, and a slice off the five-pound loaf of Very Healthy Bread I bought at the Brattleboro Farmer's Market. And I won't even have to put on makeup or blow dry my hair to be seen eating it.