On a patio overlooking a field of corn stubble, not far from the Topsfield Fairgrounds eight city folk and exurbanites have gathered to share a day of foraging. The last day of April has turned up sunny, warm and beautiful by any springtime standard. The group of winter-worn Bostonians relishes the new warmth and the prospects of the day.

We've come to see what can be had from land that's been left to it's own devices. We've come on the promise of a meal made largely of ingredients that have never seen the inside of a supermarket or processing plant, or any sort of truck, food that had never been touched by machine, or hand tool or even a farmer's flesh. We come to experience the nearly lost art of gathering and eating wild food.

"Good Morning everybody, I'm Russ Cohen." We are greeted by our guide, a bearded man with a warm voice. More than 30 years ago, an enthusiastic teacher at Weston High School captured Cohen's imagination with a mini course on edible botany. "For me, foraging is just a great way to enrich all the time I spend outdoors," he tells us.

Ever since then, Cohen has been "nibbling on the landscape" and teaching others how to do the same. He is the author of Wild Plants I have Known and Eaten, published by the Essex County Greenbelt Association.

"Whether I'm biking through the countryside, or hiking in the woods, or walking along the rocky coastline, there are edible wild plants all over the place. So it's great way to connect with the outdoors through your taste buds as well as all your other senses."

Contrary to stereotype, Cohen continues, wild foods are actually choice and tasty morsels. As evidence, he produces a basket of nicely browned and chunky looking muffins studded with garnet-colored cranberries.

Murmurs of pleasure follow the plate around the circle, as muffins meet one mouth after another. The flavor is nutty with acorns and hickory, tart with cooked cranberry juice, and hearty as a whole grain loaf. Cohen collected the nuts and berries last fall.

"Wonderful," declares Marsha Frankel. She is social worker from Brookline who has just begun to think seriously about food choices. "Delicious, chewy, not overly sweet. Just the right texture. They taste like they must be healthy."

The muffins make a persuasive first argument against the idea that wild foods are all bitterness and fiber, unfit to eat except in an emergency. Our curiosity is piqued along with our appetites.

By day's end, we'll taste roots and shoots, mushrooms & fruits, flowers and nuts all gathered from nature'snature's produce aisles. But first we must search and gather. Acquaint ourselves with plants and people we have never met before. Chop and shell, peel, wash, sort, grind, combine and cook. There are hours of effort ahead.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

It's early in the growing season, but Cohen assures us there are at least 10 things that can be harvested in late April. He has drawn up a tentative menu based on the date. We'll be looking for a variety of greens, onions and flowers for an entirely wild salad. If stinging nettle can be found, we'll prepare a cream soup. For the main course we hope to harvest dandelion buds and something called wintercress that can be added to a pasta primavera and a cheesy egg puff. Dessert sounds promising too. A rhubarb substitute called Japanese Knotweed is in season, and Cohen has brought along some black walnuts he gathered last fall, for a baklava.

For our group of city dwellers and suburbanites, with easy access to supermarket fare, the uncertainties of our search add an element of adventure to the day. But of course it was not always so. The capriciousness of weather or plain bad luck might have meant hunger for earlier gatherers. At stake for most American foragers today is not food, but knowledge and pleasure.

What is growing around us? About 150 edible wild plants in New England alone, says Cohen. When, and how, and under what conditions can they be harvested, cooked and eaten? Equipped with garden gloves, trowels and pockets full of plastic bags, we climb into cars and set out to learn about a few of them.

Indeed we are soft-bodied, modern foragers heading to sites beyond walking distance.
If we'd been more ambitious and more orthodox, I suppose we might have cycled or canoed. But this day is already loaded with mission.

GETTING TO KNOW THE PLANTS

At Green Meadows organic farm in Hamilton, the grower has given permission for us to wander along edges of fields and through uncultivated areas picking weeds and blossoms, and digging roots. Cohen leads us to an unremarkable grassy swath between a field and the road. We are about to meet the dandelion anew.

He begins by saying that dandelions are probably responsible for turning more people off of eating wild plants than anything else. He kneels down and quickly trowels up the so-called weed by it roots. "And it's a shame because dandelions are great if you eat the right part at the right time."

The trick, he tells us, is to harvest tiny leaves and the flower buds before they open - which means noticing the unassuming weed before its showy yellow flower stage. Once those flowers have blossomed, the leaves turn bitter. That's just when many people decide to try them.

Peggy Hogan, follows Cohen's lead, digs up a plant and turns it over as he has shown us. She is a coordinator of Slow Food Boston, a group promoting the virtues of locally grown, handcrafted cuisine. She's a gardener as well. In the last few days she has been digging dandelions out of her own yard, but she is astonished by what she now sees. "This dandelion must have 50 or 60 little buds, all tucked down in the center, that I'm pulling off. I've never looked this closely at a clump of dandelion plant before, I've only looked at the root."

It seems that when we go outdoors to eat we look at plants in a whole new way. The familiar is not as well-known as we thought. The lowly dandelion has appealing parts and peak moments.

Like any good foraging foodie, Hogan pops one of the buds in her mouth and swiftly declares it good - mild, chewy & succulent. Cohen claims to have found as many as 200 hundred buds on a single plant. He describes the taste as a cross between corn, spinach and Brussels sprouts. "They are among my favorite vegetable of any, wild or cultivated."

The little buds will be tossed into tonight's salad, raw, he tells us. The bigger ones, we'll blanch for 60 seconds in boiling water, then fold into the egg puff, and the pasta primavera.

BURIED TREASURE

A few yards from the dandelions, we walk into to a slightly damp area where ground level subsides. Somewhere in here, Cohen tells us, are the perennial roots of the groundnut plant. "Right now it's not showing above the ground and the only reason I know that it's here is because I ran into it last summer when I ran a foraging walk here."

The vine, once it sprouts, looks like those of peas and beans. But that greenery isn't yet here to guide us. All we have to go on is Cohen's memory of the spot, and any dried out remains of last year's vines that we might find. The element of mystery in this sparks a bunch of questions about the size and shape, color and habit of this plant.

Groundnut, we learn, is related to peanuts and peas. The so-called "nuts" are actually tubers, starchy swellings just like potatoes that grow along the roots of this plant. They can be harvested any time the ground is soft enough to dig.

Cohen tells us it was groundnut, not corn that is believed to have sustained the Pilgrims in 1620. "They occupied a village where Native Americans lived at one point and they found a cache of ground nuts the Native Americans had stored, and it was a major food source for them in that first tough winter."

Cohen's favorite way to eat them is sliced and fried, like potato chips.

With those two images in mind - settlers' sustenance, and contemporary junk food- we begin to dig, eight of us on hands on hands and knees, troweling away at the dirt.

We come up empty, move over a few feet, and try again. Cohen reminds us of their habit, "they're only an inch or two below the surface, and the roots are growing horizontally."

Then, an excited chuckle escapes him. "I found a little one" he says, his voice rising. "This is what we're looking for." All of gather round to see a dirt-covered, egg-shaped tuber the size of a pearl onion. "They can get bigger than a golf ball," he promises "and you see, the swellings happen every 2 to 3 inches on the underground stem here."

He slices through this first find and shows us the cream-colored interior and milky dew on its flesh. We all gasp, "Oooh."

Cohen's discovery has strengthened our resolve. We kneel once more. The uncertain scratching turns more primal. Now we are rooting in earnest. Though snoutless, we are as determined as pigs on the scent of buried truffles. This is a treasure hunt!

Before long, Peggy Hogan shouts for joy: "Look it look it look it!! Look at this one!" She's pulled up a run of four. "Beautiful!" someone exclaims. We all admire her groundnuts.

Some of us reach for comparisons to other forms, both natural and not. "It's a strand of seaweed with those floaters on it," I say. "It's like a string of pearls, and almost as hard to find," says Marsha Frankel. Enthralled by the search, Hogan declares, "It's like panning for gold!"

Soon all of us are striking pay dirt. We load a plastic bag with the soiled swellings, toss back the little ones and tidy up the dig site to keep this stand of groundnuts growing strong. We climb to our feet, smiling. Buying a bag of potato chips was never so much fun.

SNACK TIME

All this digging and excitement has made everyone thirsty, a bit hungry too. Our trusty guide has just the thing, some Japanese knotweed, growing just a few feet from the groundnut patch. "Some call it Japanese bamboo or Mexican bamboo," he tells us. The stalks are flagpole straight and banded the way bamboo is, with a tuft of leaves at the top. But the green of the Japanese knotweed stalk is speckled red. It has no botanical relationship to bamboo. It is rhubarb's sweeter cousin.

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Cohen breaks off a piece at ground level. The strong looking stalk is hollow inside and yields easily in the spring, but the plant's roots of "many knees" persist and are difficult to eradicate. Japanese knotweed is non-native, invasive species, Cohen says, that may have been brought to this country by none other than Frederick Law Olmstead, the venerable landscape architect who build Boston's Emerald Necklace.

"He saw it growing in a botanical garden in England. And he liked the way it looked. So he brought it and got it established in the Back Bay Fens. It became exceedingly at home in that habitat and now has spread. Actually it's a problem plant throughout the world. But it's a wonderfully edible. So if you can't beat it, eat it!"

He peels away the speckled skin, which is too stringy to eat, and reveals a beautiful apple-green interior. "Whoever has cleaner hands than I do can lop off some pieces of that so people can try it." We fumble around for a moment, wiping hands and searching for a knife. Then Peggy Hogan just reaches for the stalk and takes a crunchy bite.

"Nice! Very crunchy. Full of wonderful fluid, Umm, more." We are laughing now. "It has a slight asparagus taste," she says. "I should share. It's delicious." The juicy stalk is passed around the circle.

Jody Clineff, a North Reading resident who wants to add wild food to her diet, says the taste reminds her of celery in its consistency. Alison Hardy, a window restoration expert, notices "an apple overtone," and recalls seeing these plants growing in her yard. Ilene Bezahler, editor and publisher of Edible Boston, calls it "citrusy" for its palate-cleansing quality.

The taste and hollow shape of the knotweed quickly inspire ideas for appetizers: "You could stuff it with cream cheese," suggests Hogan. "Raw tuna would be fabulous," says Bezahler. Cohen says he has served it stuffed with salmon mousse. "They loved it."
It's hard to believe that the same ingredient could be good in desserts too. But Cohen assures us his strawberry-knotweed pie trumps the traditional strawberry-rhubarb. "Today we're gonna make a coffeecake that features the knotweed a little bit more. So you can't say it's the strawberries that taste so good."

As we head off toward another part of the farm, we are amazed that within perhaps 10 yards of a non-descript border zone grow three edible plants if only one knows what to look for: all of them high in nutrients, two of them easy to find and good tasting, and one darn fun to dig.

People like Russ Cohen, are keepers of a remarkable body of botanic and ecological knowledge that is lost to most of us. The significance of that knowledge are multiple, some tangible, others spiritual. Cohen will certainly be eating better than the rest of us if, say, a bird flu pandemic closes down grocery stores, but not only that. His life is already richer in the pleasures of being outdoors, and tasting flavors available only where he finds them, altered by sun and soil and water alone. He's a 21st century city-dweller, but one connected to the past and to the natural world.

Also noticeable, our motley crew of social workers, book editors, foodies and curiosity-seekers no longer seem like strangers. After rooting around in the dirt and gnawing on knotweed together, the conversation and laughter have begun to flow. The group is coalescing, if only for today, into a party of hunter-gatherers building the social connections that come only from shared experience.

In fact there was still lots to learn and do. In another area of the farm we plucked a balloon-sized bunch of dooryard violets to add to the salad. We donned gloves to snip aptly named, stinging nettle greens for the evening soup. The formic acid and other skin irritants in this plant's hairy greens, go from painful to proteinaceous once cooked. We decamped to the Cox Reservation in Essex and dug up wild onions to flavor the pasta primavera and the soup. Still more for the salad, we plucked tender daisy leaves, and the plump rosettes of a succulent plant, charmingly called Live Forever. Back in Topsfield we waded into a marshy depression in search of the of the water-loving Calamus plant. Finally, we trekked across a field lumpy with tire tracks snipping a broccoli-rabe look-alike called Wintercress to enrich the pasta primavera. In short, we picked until we dropped.

PREP TIME

Back on the patio at Alison Hardy's house, glasses of wine, and crackers spread with wild mushroom duxelles, prepared earlier by Cohen restores us. Time to cook!

Cohen bustles around assigning tasks to each of us. Peggy Hogan will trim the wild onions; she will remove the roots and outer skin from the fingertip-sized bulb, then cut it from the leggy, green chive. Unfortunately for her, the recipes call mainly for the bulbs.

Just joining the party is Chef Robert Harris, owner of Season to Taste catering. Cohen asks him to peel the speckled skin from the mound of Japanese knotweed. He settles into a patio chair, a pairing knife in one hand, a glass of wine close by. Inside the kitchen Alison Hardy begins to measure dry ingredients for the knotweed coffee cake.

Ilene Bezahler washes dirt from the salad greens: Dandelion buds, daisy leaves, Calamus hearts, wintercress, violets, and Live Forever leaves. She pulls out stray twigs and grasses as she goes. Next, with the Live Forever rosettes in front of her, she sets to breaking some of them into individual leaves.

Marsha Frankel sorts a quart of cracked black walnuts into piles of shells, and nutmeats for the baklava. The pieces are small and the colors rather similar.

Cohen sets up his pasta maker and pulls out wild Jerusalem artichoke flour that he ground himself, to add to the noodles. Then he turns his attention to washing and steaming the stinging nettle. "The safe way to do this is with tongs," he remarks.

Indeed, we are going to be eating a vegetable which cannot be handled raw without gloves or tongs and which, according to Cohen's book, was used to make uniforms for the German army during World War I! There is a long history of eating this plant, which is highly nutritious and may have medicinal value too, but one really wonders about the first person to have done so.

How's everybody doing? Cohen wants to know. Our onion trimmer reports slow progress. "I'm so meticulous I've done one in about five minutes. I'll get better," Hogan promises. Knotweed preparation is also a slog, "If only I had a restaurant peeler, I could go to town," laments Harris. But the company is fine and the evening, beautiful. Everyone keeps working.

After a while Frankel, from the nut sorting detail, reports a shortage. To reach the required quantity, more Black Walnuts must be cracked. Cohen demonstrates how.

He's brought along a freestanding, metal nutcracker the size of a toaster that would look more at home in the garage, than the kitchen. Cohen positions a black walnut, between two, nut-sized bookends, then gives his weight to the large lever that ratchets pressure onto the nut. With a loud crunch the deed is done. A jumble of walnut and shell tumbles from the vice, ready for sorting. We do this two dozen more times and we have enough for baklava.

Cohen gathered these nuts last fall, peeled away the hairy, brown husk and stored the unshelled cache on his porch. He says a more common way of cracking these extraordinarily tough nuts is to spread them on a driveway and run over them with a car.

By now, Harris has finished with the knotweed and turns his attention to the nettle soup: sautéing onions and Jerusalem artichokes, seasoning them with peppery spicebush berry - also foraged earlier by Cohen. Frankel works on the egg puff, cracking eggs, grating cheese, tossing them with dandelion buds, ostrich fiddlehead ferns, and porcini mushrooms. Cohen's pasta maker squeezes fresh fettuccini into a pan. Our hostess sets the dining room table.

After about three hours of preparations, the energy of the group is flagging. The question hangs in the air: Will we ever eat? The journey from field to table is slower than slow. It's fun for today, but thank goodness eating isn't always this laborious. The logic of a dinner consisting of frozen fish, packaged tortellini, and salad from a bag reasserts itself. Our supermarkets can be discouraging places, laden with junk calories and adulterated foods, but thank goodness for them too. Bagged bread, hulled nuts, and frozen peas sure do make life easier.

THE MEAL

Finally we sit. Wine is poured, as well as wild grape juice that Cohen squeezed and froze last fall. Both beverages are a deep purple, one of several vivid colors that distinguishes this meal. The Cream of Stinging Nettle Soup pools bright green in our bowls. The salad is stunningly accented with yellow dandelion petals, violets and red, partridge berries. It smells divine.

We eat with both pleasure and exhaustion, sharing reactions to the flavors. The soup evokes split peas for some, and for others, cream of spinach or the nuttiness of artichoke. The salad is delicate, surprising Harris who expected more peppery and bitter flavors. The wild vegetables are harder to detect in the pasta primavera and egg puff, but both dishes made hearty and delicious fare.

Japanese knotweed and black walnuts make a splash at dessert time. The fragrance of cinnamon precedes the coffee cake and the knotweed adds a "sour apple, acidy brightness" to it. It would be great for breakfast too, says Frankel.

Lastly, the baklava made with native walnuts, was judged "smoother and warmer tasting" than recipes made with commercial ones. The black walnuts lent a "slight allspice flavor" and none of the bitterness often associated with walnuts.

Conversation swirls happily around food-related topics: the challenge of developing a shared language of taste; the difference between organic and biodynamic wines; where to buy real lard.

In the end, the experience was certainly worth all the effort. Everyone enjoyed being outdoors, learning about plants, and the introduction to a craft that has faded from American culture. Beyond that, some of the group have begun to see foraging as more than a novel activity, but one of those personal food decisions with political implications, right up there with growing your own garden, shopping at the farmers' market and subscribing to a community supported farm. If incorporated into our habits, foraging can be a gesture of independence from the monocultural-industrial food complex, a stake in the local food shed.

And as Peggy Hogan remarked, "It was fun! We didn't know each other before the day began and we've had a great evening together, all around this delicious food."

When Ted arrived the next day to drop off the veal loin, flank steaks, legs and some ground veal, he explained that the windfall was from a project led by Dr. George Saperstein at Tufts Veterinary School in Grafton Massachusetts. Their project was to design a system dairy farmers could use to naturally raise their male calves for veal and to create a market for the product by creating a brand: Azuluna. Three chefs in the Boston area, myself, Ana Sortun and Michael Leviton were being asked to evaluate the results.

Using the ground veal, I made meatballs for my staff and served the rest as specials over the next several days, cooking the flanks steaks over wood, roasting the loin and leg. I asked my waitstaff to explain to customers what there were getting and to gauge their reactions.

There were three questions, really. The first concerned the quality of the meat; it's tenderness, the fat content and the flavor. The second was how customers would respond to a veal that looked and tasted different from the traditional pale, mild meat that is considered the industry standard. The third was whether; with the negative association customers have towards standard veal, would they be more likely to order a naturally and humanely raised product.

The first question was easy to answer. I thought the quality was excellent; a bit tougher that the veal I was used to eating, but with so much more flavor. It is more full-bodied than standard white veal raised in a pen, but milder than grass or grain-fed veal which is "beefier". The response to the second question seemed quite positive too based on the sales and some random customer opinions. Some customers really appreciated the quality and were happy to buy a sustainable, natural product.

When I conveyed this to Ted I asked about the name Azuluna and he told me more of the story. The veal was but one product they were trying to brand and sell. They also had an egg. A blue egg laid by hens descended from a breed called Araucana, which they were raising cage free, scratching for food during the day and feed corn without antibiotics or hormones. They were to be marketed as not only natural, but fresher too. In addition,Additional products they were working on included heirloom breeds of pork and lamb.

I found this so exciting that I arranged a visit to see first hand what they were doingup to. A few weeks later I drove out to Grafton to get a tour of the school and meet with Dr. Saperstein. What I saw was inspiring: calves roaming in the pasture, chickens being raised as they were generations ago scratching the dirt, several varieties of sheep and pigs, including a few I'd never heard of, being raised in pens. I then learned how this all came about at a veterinary school.

First you should know that the Grafton campus, about 45 minutes west of Boston, holds not only the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, but a small animal hospital, the Tufts Wildlife Clinic that has been designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the official New England treatment center for rare and endangered species. Their Hospital for Large Animals provides 24-hour care for horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and llamas. Dr. Saperstein, a livestock veterinarian, is chairperson of the Department of Environmental and Population Health, which is concerned with the preservation of the balance between animals, humans and their shared environment, as well as the well being of animals and their caregivers.

Dr. Saperstein explained that a few years ago he was at a meeting of thelocal New England dDairy fFarmers discussing their concerns about their survival in the face of dropping milk prices, increasing feed prices and competition from California where labor is cheaper and they can buy alfalfa for less that a New England farmer can grow it. He realized that the conventional wisdom that he had been touting, that to make money, the farmers needed to become more efficient, and focused on producing milk inexpensively, was not working. He decided that diversity was the key: finding resources that were undervalued and then finding a market for them. He suggested that they put their least productive cows out to pasture with male calves, which are normally sold at a few days old for pennies, and with these calves, produce high-quality natural veal. The farmers were skeptical; they couldn't afford to take those kinds of risks. Dr. Saperstein realized that he would have to build the demand for the product before he could expect them to provide the supply.

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He promised them that he would not return until he had chefs and high-end consumers clamoring for the product. He then obtained a $480,000 USDA grant to build a model on the Grafton campus that would give the dairy farmers an exact procedure for raising the veal, and would create a brand to sell it under, guaranteeing them a market. In his first trial he turned 13 calves out to pasture with four dairy cows, allowing them to nurse at any time they liked along with free access to oatsfeed on grain during their last weeks and hay. They were not given any antibiotics or growth hormones. When they reached 350 pounds they were slaughtered at Stafford Enterprises using humane methods.

The next step was creating the demand. To that end he enlisted Ted Kolota, a marketing and branding expert. They realized that there were several products that could be naturally raised and would have distinctive qualities that would set them apart from agricultural commodities. One was the blue egg that gave rise to the brand name of Azuluna. The color would be the brand icon so that the consumer would know that this egg was naturally raised and tasted the way eggs used to taste: rich, creamy and fresh.

The eggs are presently available in limited supply at Roche Brothers Supermarket in Acton, Massachusetts and Sudbury Farms in Sudbury, Massachusetts. They are wonderful. Unlike the "cage-free" eggs you find in supermarkets these days, which come from hens kept in huge, crowded rooms, these chickens are free to run around eating bugs and worms, producing an egg with a golden yolk 5% bigger that a standard egg, and a bigger flavor. They are expensive because of the space needed to raise them this way, because they lay less eggs thant a commercial hen, because they are sorted, graded and candled by hand and lastly, because they are not distributed the standard industry way. Instead they are distributed directly from the producer to nearby stores.

Six months ago, as part of Azuluna's quest for tastier pork, I got to sample naturally raised meat from breeds of pork from Berkshire pigs that are no longer in commercial productionthat spent their entire lives on their home farm with the opportunity to go out on pasture to enjoy fresh air, sunshine, and rooting whenever they pleased. Ted brought me some shanks, a gorgeous bone-in loin and some belly. The loin got slow roasted over hardwood charcoal, the shanks got smoked and the belly I braised with ginger, star anise and soy sauce. It was outstanding. Unfortunately the pork experiment is on hold. Consumer studies have shown that this is a product that customers are not willing to pay a premium for.

The Egg project is going well but there are limits as to availability because of the distribution challenge. They considered using a centrally located plant to wash, grade and distribute the eggs in New England, but decided that the energy and other costs would be too high. The plan is to find a chain willing to buy locally for each individual stores without charging shelving fees .This may make Azuluna eggs harder to come by, but it makes it easier for small farms to augment their slow season revenues by selling eggs locally without having to ship to large distribution centers.

Consumer response to the veal has great. In 2005, 13 farmers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont produced 61 Azuluna calves. Dole and Bailey, a large local distributor, is selling as much as can be produced. Demand for Azuluna veal is out stripping supply, so more farmers are being sought to increase production. Still only available in restaurants, keep your fingers crossed and perhaps soon you will see it in your market.

A crowded T car. Large office buildings. Bumper to bumper traffic on 128. The grocery store on weekend afternoons. Busy city streets. What do these places have in common? In each, we spend time in close proximity to total strangers. In each, we barely speak a word to them.

Ironic then, isn't it, that Boston is best known to out-of-towners as home to a bar "where everybody knows your name?" How many Bostonians regularly spend time in public spaces where the community not only gathers en masse, but interacts, learns each other's names and habits, even develops friendships?

In 2000, sociologist Robert D. Putnam identified and spread awareness of this phenomenon in his book Bowling Alone (Simon & Schuster). For the last 3 decades of the 20th century, Putnam observes, attendance declined at most of the institutions that keep Americans connected to each other: institutions like bowling leagues, club meetings, religious services, even family dinners. In his book, Putnam warns of the dangers of such a decline in community. He identifies the numerous and specific benefits of extensive and healthy social networks, and asks Americans to re-invent their tattered civic traditions with an eye towards growing, rather than decreasing, the value of our social networks - what Putnam and others call "social capital."

What does this phenomenon have to do with food, and specifically the ways that Bostonians interact with food? Think about the last time you ate or shopped alone - was it last night as you commuted home from work, or at lunch today, in front of your computer? Then think about the last time you ate or shopped in a social setting - if you're like most of us, that memory is a bit more distant. And there you have your answer. Many of us eat and shop for our food alone much of the time.

There is, however, another way, right under our noses on city streets and in suburban parking lots from May until November. Last week I heard city-dwellers literally cheer at its return, as I hung signs for the Davis Square Farmers' Market on Somerville street signs. And though these Somervillians were cheering for the return of tasty produce, they were also cheering the return of a beloved seasonal ritual as much about relationships as about their shopping lists.

"Hey sweetie, how are you?" says Dartmouth, Mass. farmer Andy Pollock to a regular customer on opening day at Boston's City Hall Farmers' Market. The scene here on this breezy, sunny, late May Monday resembles nothing less than a family reunion, as market vendors and customers catch up after months apart. "Welcome back!" call frequent patrons to their favorite farmers. As the day wanes, Pollock shares tips on pumpkin planting with Breadsong Bakery proprietor Martha Sweet, whose young son is set on planting them in his family's garden in Auburndale (which he calls "his" farmers' market). Sweet shares, "Customers say to me all the time, 'How are your sons? How's your daughter?" because they've known me since I was pregnant with them, and I can do the same for them."

Greater Boston residents who shop at farmers' markets enter a different world when they walk into that parking lot piled high with fruits and veggies or are lured from the sidewalk's bustle to a display of freshly baked bread tucked under a striped awning. In this world, eye contact and friendly greetings are the norm. Vendors are genuinely glad to see you, and eager to tell you more about their product.

Sure, you might say - that's because they want to make a sale. Well, yes, they do. But vendors at farmers' markets are also involved in growing or making what they sell. This means it's about much more than a sale to them - it's about pride in work done well. They want to be sure you know that the eggplant you're taking home should be salted or boiled to take out the bitterness, because they are proud of the work that went into growing it and they want you to taste it at its best. And when you chat with them about their favorite recipe for marinara sauce, you see the evidence of that work in the dark circles under their eyes that prove they are keeping a farmer's schedule.

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Odds are your cash will cross work-roughened hands - can you say that about your transactions with your local supermarket cashier? Your favorite baker will know that the amazing goat cheese and herb medley at the stall next door tastes best with their cornmeal rye bread - because they shared the combo with the goat cheese vendor at lunch. As City Hall market vendor Dave Gilson of The Herb Lyceum in Groton recently pointed out, no grocery store employee will ever know as much about the product they are selling as he will. And as he describes waking at 4am to work in his greenhouse and load his truck for market, you can't deny that he is right.

Most of the people who will pick up this inaugural issue of Edible Boston know that farmers' markets are one of the best sources for the freshest, most flavorful, food around. But they may not know that when theyyou buy that dozen ears of corn and that pint of raspberries, theyyou're getting an intangible benefit that is as good for youtheir soul as the food you'll they'll be consuming. You can find genuine community at your local farmers' market, of the sort many of us are lacking in our daily lives. Boston City Hall vendor Connie Collupy of Five Loaves Bakery in Spencer points out, "You build a rapport with … people, and they truly want to know how you are." Adds Dave Gilson, "When the same person is here every year, a really strong relationship is formed." Collupy continues, "I am as excited to see the customers as they are to see me."

The community-building potential of farmers' markets has positive outcomes on levels from the individual to the societal. And people -- from the office workers making a beeline for the Copley market at 5pm on a summer Tuesday to community development organizations to nationally recognized foundations - are taking notice.

When the Urban Land Institute recommended that the City of Somerville convert a brownfield into a farmers' market, the city, in partnership with a local non-profit, decided to go one better - they would establish a farmers' market in the heart of Union Square in order to accelerate the neighborhood's economic and social revitalization. In the words of Mimi Graney, Executive Director of Union Square Main Streets, the partners established the market "hoping to enliven the neighborhood, especially on summer weekends when people so often head out of town." Union Square Main Streets, along with the City of Somerville and The Federation of Massachusetts Farmers' Markets, was incredibly successful in accomplishing this goal in the first year of the market's operations in 2005. As Graney points out, the market is a place where Union Square residents make connections "with people they don't normally connect with."

"The Union Square Farmers Market gives residents and visitors access to the diverse array of fresh produce grown right here in Massachusetts," says Graney. "But the market is much more than this. It's become a weekly neighborhood gathering place, like a low-key brunch party every Saturday morning."

At farmers' markets, life is lived publicly, much as it was in small towns 100-plus years ago. Recipes and stories are swapped, children are raised, and relationships are formed. Much more than commerce happens when food producers interact directly with food consumers - this direct connection knits a stronger social fabric made up of individual relationships. When the corn and tomatoes on your August dinner plate have a story behind them, when you can trace them right back to the field where they grew, the food you eat can nourish not just your hunger for calories, but your hunger for community.

A friend who lived for a long time in rural southern Virginia often speaks fondly of the favorite activity there - which she calls "porchin' it." When I asked her what exactly "porchin' it" entailed, she explained that technically it meant sitting on the front porch - but that sitting on the porch was so much more than that - it was catching up with friends, neighbors, and newcomers, and generally keeping tabs on community life. In the same way, doing one's shopping at the farmers' market - my friend might call it "marketin'" - is much more that that. In an age and a culture where most city-dwellers rarely take (or have) time to "porch it," farmers' markets just might be the new front porch we all need. So get out and "porch it:" make a commitment to get the ingredients for your next meal at the farmers' market nearest you. You'll pick up much more than a bagful of fruits and vegetables, and we'll be very glad to meet you.

For dates, times, and location of a farmers' market near you, visit www.massfarmersmarkets.org, the website of the Federation of Massachusetts Farmers' Markets.

COOKING FRESH

By Irene Costello and Joan MacIsaac

We wait patiently for this moment. On land and at sea, summer has arrived with all of its bounty. From pick-your-own berries to native corn and heirloom tomatoes our gardens and fields explode with color, taste and texture. On the water fishermen and women of all ages take to boats, line up on piers, and stand on shore with rods and reels, bait and lures to welcome our summer visitors. Year-round fisheries deliver a steady flow of our local specialties from cod to farmed salmon, shellfish to lobster. However, the annual visitation of migrating fish to New England waters excites recreational and commercial anglers alike.

They start to arrive in late spring - the magnificent swordfish and tunas, bluefish, summer flounder and even the squid that moves inshore. Perhaps the most anticipated and avidly pursued of all the species that enter our waters is the morone saxatilis, affectionately called the "Striper." Striped bass has been prized in Massachusetts since colonial times. Early settlers in Massachusetts obtained charters to establish fisheries in the New World. Along with cod they caught and dried the striped bass in abundance. Continuous harvesting occurred into the 20th century with periods of decline followed by conservation measures to protect the supply. Then in the 1970's pollution and over-fishing took their toll and caused a severe decline that endangered the whole species.

An act of Congress in 1984 resulted in a highly regulated fishery management plan (FMP) from New England down to the spawning grounds of the Chesapeake. Thanks to a strict conservation plan striped bass remains a popular species fished both commercially and recreationally, but preservation and protection remain high priorities in the management of this fishery. We start to see it on menus and at the markets around July. However, tight quotas from the FMP make for a very short commercial season that disappears as soon as it reaches quota. Recreationally striped bass may be caught throughout the year with a limit of 2 possessions per person per day.
The striper brings the art of fishing to life with all of its camaraderie, lore and mystique. Anglers recall their prize catch, their secret spots, and their special technique. Stripers fight hard and are a great battler. An adult weighs on average 8 to 15 lbs, but some exceeding 50 lbs are caught every year. The length varies from 18 to 55 inches with 28 inches the current minimum allowable keeper. The seven to eight continuous horizontal stripes on each side of the body from gills to tail give striped bass its distinguishing characteristics. Its coloring can be light green, olive, steel blue, black or brown, with a white or silver iridescent underside. Striped bass are fun to catch and great to eat with their rich, sweet flavor and firm texture. They are delicious pan seared, baked, broiled or grilled with fresh ingredients from the garden or farm stands - onions, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and even apples.

Bluefish follow the stripers. The bluefish is also a trophy species hotly pursued by anglers due to its reputation as a champion battler and voracious predator. The adult bluefish generally weighs 10-15 lbs. Its stout body has a sea-green color fading into a silvery shade on its lower sides and belly. It has a large mouth and a set of jaws fully armed with large, sharp teeth. When catching a bluefish, never put your hands near the mouth, or you surely risk losing some fingers. Bluefish generally feed in schools, actively pursuing prey in tidal rips or inshore shallows where food is easier to catch. A local expression, "the blues are boiling" refers to their churning up whitewater rapids as they dash about wildly in pursuit of prey and is usually a telltale of a good fishing spot.

Bluefish has dark fleshy meat and a high oil content that can create a strong flavor disliked by many people. The trick is to eat the fish as soon as possible after it is caught, filleted and put on ice. Marinating bluefish in acidic foods will lighten the flavor. Try soaking filets in white wine or lemon juice, baking it with fresh vegetables such as tomatoes and onions.

Another visitor, the Summer Flounder or Fluke start to move inshore in July and stay active until September when the water begins cooling. These are left-eyed flat fish; the side with the eyes is brown in color, with darker spots that adapts to the color of the ocean bottom for camouflage. The reverse side is white or translucent. Historically, fluke has been important both commercially and recreationally on the East Coast. However intense offshore otter trawling resulted in a consistent decline and prompted the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to create a management plan specifically for fluke. Coastal fisheries from Maine to South Carolina now protect the fish.

Summer Flounder has lean, firm flesh that is pearly or pinkish-white with a sweet, mild flavor. It is often marketed as sole, a practice that the FDA allows. Filets are very thin and delicate requiring extra care when handling. This versatile fish provides multiple options for preparation - steamed, poached, baked, broiled, sautéed, or fried. Try a quick and simple meuniere recipe: Season the filets with salt and pepper and dredge with flour; sauté in melted butter until golden on each side (about 10 minutes) and garnish with lemon and parsley.

Better known as calamari, two types of mollusks come inshore during the summer - the Long-fin or Boston Squid and the Northern Short-fin Squid. Both have grown into an important commercial fishery due to foreign demand, especially from Japan. Once in danger from over fishing, they are now protected by a fishery management plan.

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Squid spawn year-round, grow rapidly, and live for less than one year. The squid is ordinarily a milky, translucent color, but when aroused it turns rapidly to red, pink, brown, blue, and yellow. It has four pairs of arms and one long pair of tentacles with suckers on them to grab their prey. Squid swim backwards by squirting water out of their bodies through a tube near the base of their head. They expel a cloud of black ink when disturbed.

Squid has a bland flavor that takes on the flavor of the ingredients with which it is cooked. However, it has a unique texture -- not chewy, but snappy. The key to preparing squid is to avoid a rubbery texture. Cook it for a short time at high temperatures no longer than three minutes until it turns snowy white. Using this method you can stir-fry, deep-fry, or grill it. Another method is to slow cook it at a low temperature until it turns golden. Simmering in a sauce or stew allows the squid to pass through the "rubber band" stage and become tender.

Probably the most beleaguered of our summer visitors is the Swordfish which has been the subject of numerous controversies. In the 1970's several food agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued warnings of high mercury levels that almost decimated the fishery. The industry rebounded after an adjustment by the FDA to acceptable levels for human consumption. Not long after, dire warnings that over fishing had endangered the species prompted a widespread consumer boycott. A 10 year rebuilding program was imposed on local fisheries but not enforced in international waters due to the travel patterns of this highly migratory species. Today the general consensus is that swordfish remains in danger of being over fished in the North Atlantic, but stronger catch limits have shown signs of recovery. Ongoing concerns center on the high bycatch of marine mammals, sea turtles, and sharks.

Swordfish is one of the largest and fastest predators in the Atlantic Ocean. Distinguished by a large, flat, smooth bill that extends from their upper jaw, they use their "sword" to kill their prey. Swordfish migrate up from the Gulf seeking the colder waters in the North Atlantic and feeding all the way on a variety of fish. Our season begins in June but peaks late August into September as their fat content doubles. Whether in steaks or fillets, the meat should be a nice white or pink, not a dark gray-brown. Swordfish is great grilled, baked or broiled .

Finally, summer would not be complete without tuna fishing. This magnificent species embarks on a feeding migration up the Gulf Stream and enters New England waters around June. Renowned for their size, speed and beauty, tunas offer one of the greatest challenges to anglers. Two types have become especially lucrative in the past 40 years - the bluefin and yellowfin tunas. Highly prized in the Asian markets for its raw meat, the giant bluefin tuna is the largest, averaging 1,000 lbs. You see it used extensively in the Japanese national dish, sashimi. However, the preponderance of high-seas fleets using technologically advanced fishing methods in the 1960's resulted in a severe stock depletion and prompted extensive international management measures.

Also valued for its deep red flesh, the yellowfin or ahi tuna is what we see in the markets and on menus. This smaller cousin to the bluefin tuna grows rapidly to nearly 9 feet and up to 400 lbs. In our waters the 2 to 3 year old tunas weigh from 40 to 80 lbs. Today's fishery managers consider populations of yellowfin tuna to be relatively healthy. However, some harvesting that uses the same methods as bluefin tuna continues to cause concern not only for the supply but also for the bycatch of other species including dolphins and sharks. In the market and in restaurants look for tuna that has been caught by the pole or troll methods as they cause little damage to habitat and wildlife.

Yellowfin tuna is best eaten rare. Its deep red flesh is excellent on the grill or broiled. As it cooks it turns gray and becomes firm. Take care not to let it get overdone as it will dry out the flesh. Try a marinade or brush it with seasoned oil during cooking. As with swordfish health agencies have issued advisories to limit consumption. Enjoy it in moderation.

To learn more about the fish that migrate into our waters we suggest the following websites:

Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries
www.mass.gov/dfwele/dmf

Northeast Fisheries Science Center
www.nefsc.noaa.gov

Blue Ocean Institute
www.blueocean.org

Ocean Trust, US Fisheries Highlights
www.oceantrust.org