Market Faces

This is our second in a series of occaisional visits with familiar faces from the Market... Many of you know volunteer Cathy Wintermyer (seen here, left, with another Market staple, Cynthia Robinson). She can usually be found at the Market offering samples of delicious cheese, discussing the best ways to use our herb mixes or giving information and tips to visitors. Cathy is also a member of the Market Steering Committee and plans fundraising and social events for us. I posed our ten questions to Cathy, and she was good enough to send a speedy response!

Ten Questions for Cathy Wintermyer

1. What is your favorite food memory? My favorite food memory is a recent one, a trip to New Orleans with my husband and 8 of our closest friends. We nabbed reservations at Chef Donald Link's Cochon restaurant for lunch and proceeded to eat small plates of exotic pork cheek and pickle combinations, alligator fritters, oyster-absinthe remoulades for three straight hours. It was heaven!! Then we got right up and drove until we found Donalisa's for roast beef po'boys, which is roast beef like none you've ever tasted. My favorite childhood memory involving food is of all the summer meals we enjoyed on our screened porch with simple food straight from our one-acre garden and off the end of our dock. Crab cakes, rockfish, refrigerator pickles, lima beans, okra, peaches from our own trees and corn we had just picked. Very few people grow up that way, and even then I knew how lucky I was. Growing food, preparing it and eating it just seemed to be part of the same process.

2. What is your favorite food smell? My favorite food smell is a stuffed turkey roasting. I think that stuffing cooked outside the bird is pretty much a waste of time.

3. Do you have a favorite "foodie" movie? My favorite "foodie" movie has got to be Annie Hall, when Diane Keaton is attempting to involve Woody Allen in the process of murdering a lobster. And he keeps picturing his family sitting around the Thanksgiving table kvetching and gesturing while in conservative Jewish garb, while hers is sitting in prim Presbyterian silence.

4. What are five ingredients you always have in your kitchen? I always manage to have on hand extra virgin olive oil, onions, soy sauce, lemons and, lately, goat cheese!

5. What five cooking utensils/gadgets do you rely on the most? The utensils I use the most are my grater, my nifty slotted all-purpose knife, my whisk, my food processor and my wine opener.

6. When did you start cooking? I started "cooking" when I was about three in my mother's pantry. She would let me shake all her dried herbs vigorously into my pot of water stew. I used to make spaghetti dinners for high school friends who dropped by. We had a cellar full of canned tomatoes, which made it easy.

7. What's the most challenging recipe you've ever made? The most challenging recipe I ever made was a Buche de Noel ( a rolled layer cake decorated to look like a log on the forest floor) with my sister for her son's wedding reception. We combined 2 recipes and it involved so much calculating (and praying) that it was hilarious.

8. What do you typically have/make for weekend breakfasts? We really enjoy sleeping in on the weekends, so we usually eat simply. Maybe good toast with a bit of chevre and some of Martha's jam smeared on it. On high days and holidays I'll make cheese grits and tomato gravy with bacon and green peppers.

9. What is your family's favorite dish that you cook? They wish I would be more consistent, but they like my potato salad because that recipe never changes.

10. Does anyone else in your family cook? My mother was always my inspiration--despite professing she hated to cook, she turned out three marvelous, complete meals a day. Her specialty was English breakfasts and a dessert called Persian Cream, which was divine. And Art's business is food--he does the world's best omelettes and we wait all year for his Christmas Eve shrimp scampi. But my sister Deborah has never met anything that walks, grows, swims or flies that she has not made into a good meal. She is absolutely fearless in her experimentation and makes full use of all the ethnic markets and farmer's markets near her home.

Make sure to say hello -- and thanks -- to Cathy the next time you see her at the Market... and buy some of that delicious goat cheese and spice mix ... the proceeds benefit the Market!

Ten Questions for Crystal Lal

You've seen Market Manager Crystal Lal at every Market rallying vendors and volunteers, lending a hand here and there, meeting new people and greeting familiar faces... She is the driving force behind the Market and a great inspiration to many of us who want to make Cheverly an even better place by volunteering in the community and being brave enough to create new things. This year, Crystal received the Jack Wheat Award (given to a Cheverly resident whose accomplishments unite the community) in recognition of her efforts to make the Cheverly Community Market a reality.

I thought it would be interesting to ask Crystal a few questions that she doesn't get every day. I was in luck -- her husband, Arvind, and son, Nick, are off scouting and her daughter, Abby, is at a meeting so she had a few extra moments for me and my questions...

Ten Questions for Crystal

1. What is your favorite food memory? Oh there are so many. Growing up, making rye bread and homemade noodles with my Grandma Massengale and having my Grandma Hamann’s homemade peach ice cream and carrot cake on summer nights. As an adult, eating “real” pizza" in Florence was an epiphany. Also I’ll never forget meeting my husband Arvind’s Grandmother Shanti for the first time. She didn’t speak much English but she knew how to communicate with food. She made the most amazing chai and aloo parathas, which is an Indian potato-filled flat bread. As soon as you finished one, she would have another hot one waiting. I lost track of how many I ate. 2. What is your favorite food smell? Vanilla and fried onions -- That's separate, not together. 3. Do you have a favorite "foodie" movie? For the longest time it was Babette’s Feast, but then, of course, what sane woman wouldn’t put Chocolat at the top of her list? As for favorite “foodie” moment in a movie, hands down it has to be Tom Hanks in Big when he eats baby corn and caviar. 4. What are five ingredients you always have in your kitchen? I am the queen of condiments. I have this giant jar of capers that’s a permanent fixture in my fridge. I can’t go a day without King Arthur unbleached flour on hand. I use fresh garlic every chance I get. My kids still drink lots of milk (the pediatrician is always impressed when he grabs their ankles during checkups. And for Arvind, there is always a box of Bocca Burgers or veggie dogs. 5. What five cooking utensils/gadgets do you rely on the most? A wok, food processor, pizza stone, whisk, and a little wooden Indian-style rolling pin. 6. When did you start cooking? I think I was about 10 when I made my first whole meal by myself. 7. What's the most challenging recipe you've ever made? Why? Sometimes the most simple is the hardest. It is incredibly difficult to make a perfect poori – which is a crispy, puffy, fried Indian bread. All it has is flour, water and salt. Then oil for frying. There are no exact measurements. Everything has to be just right for the poori to puff -- the ratio of water to flour, how well it’s kneaded. Each poori has to be round and uniformly thick. Then the oil needs to be just the right temperature and you have to flip and press the bread in a certain manner to coax it to puff. But they are divine and worth the effort. 8. What do you typically have/make for weekend breakfasts? Buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup – or homemade waffles. 9. What is your family's favorite dish that you cook? I am notorious for hardly making the same thing twice. I have a lot of cookbooks and I like to try new recipes on a daily basis. Though now that I think of it, I make homemade pizza every Friday night. I’ve been doing that for at least 10 years, so I have a lot of practice. 10. Does anyone else in your family cook? Arvind makes great omelets, but he won’t eat them. Nick is in smoothie mode right now. I have a freezer full of fruit and frozen yogurt for him to experiment. Abby knows how to make perfect scones. My mother is a wonderful cook. Her lemon meringue pie is ethereal. My sister makes Nachos every night for supper.

Make sure you say hello -- and thanks -- to Crystal when you see her this Saturday at the Market. We're so fortunate to have her in Cheverly!