We are honored and delighted to announce our new partner: Imbibe Chattanooga.

Launched in 2015 by trusted and established restaurateur Josh Carter, Imbibe is Broad Street's 8,000 square-foot wine + spirits store that feels "like a boutique."

We spent a recent morning there, talking and tasting and laughing with wine director Caleb Kneip, whose easy, inviting presence and wildly rich intellect makes buying - and exploring - new drinks a real pleasure. A sparklingly good story with him is coming soon.

Imbibe's in the heart of downtown - 1616 Broad Street - perfect for any holiday shopping. (Or holiday help.)

Today, we have two welcome contributions from a pair of Food as a Verb friends.

First, many of you know Julian Kaufman: first-generation Italian-American, amateur chef, former owner of Forte Fitness and strength coach at Baylor School, father, grandfather, husband and neighbor. He and Mary Elizabeth host neighborhood dinners - conservative, liberal, gay, straight, Jew, Christian, atheist, all around the table together - in the North Shore.

"A true tapestry," he's called it. "The best of us. The best of what America is when it is at its best."

Julian bikes to the farmers' market; it's practical, but also, philosophical. On his two wheels, he sees the city ... and its potential. Julian is quite good at asking the right kind of questions.

Like this one:

"How do we get to the point in Chattanooga that multiple days a week, one could walk from any neighborhood in the city and access a farm stand of veggies?"

Julian also travels the world, with a daughter, son-in-law and grandchild in Italy. (Mary Elizabeth founded Via Curato.)

Often, he'll send stories and photos from Italy.

Like this one.

This is where today's story begins.

"The most important picture is of myself and Matteo," he said of his son-in-law. "The most important part of the photo is definitely not me, more so Matteo but mainly the bag of vegetables."

In parts of Europe, farmers bag up leftover produce that isn't selling. For 3 Euros, you can buy plenty of leftovers mixed together.

"What if our farmers markets did this?" he asked. "Even farmers from different farms could team together to do it and they could split the profit. What if our supermarkets did this?  How much do they throw away?"

"When I told Matteo that we don't have this habit in the US he looked at me so strangely.  As if it had not occurred to him that something so integrated into his life wasn't everywhere," Julian said.

This notion of leftovers feels right on time, both a way of responding to produce and life itself.

I asked Julian to write a bit more about the power of leftovers and what it means to him. With a nod to Julian, we're renaming our Wednesday column, calling it "Leftovers."

Along with contributed photos, Julian's guest essay begins here.

Avanzati (or, "Leftovers" in Italian)

I am so thankful for David and his team at Food As A Verb.  I am an Italian-American. Two of my heroes represent those two parts of who I am: Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, and Wendell Berry. Is there more to say?

In the 70s and early 80s, I spent several summers visiting my family in Italy.  Some of that time was spent in Caldine, a small town outside of Florence in the hills. 

The experiences that most deeply impacted me were the mornings there, getting up at sunrise with my cousins to work in the fields and gardens as a community. 

It was a time of men working or rather being together generationally in the fields. It could have been 1750 or 1000 AD or 100 AD in many respects. 

One of my cousins Giulio has often said we were so lucky to have had this experience.  No tractors.  No mechanized anything.  Sickles and hoes.  Fields of golden grain we harvested with our sickle and tied into bushels and stacked in the fields. Then we loaded it all up into old wooden trailers, with wooden wheels lined with a thin sheet of iron pulled by the white majestic oxen of Tuscany, the Chianina.  

Our gardens were full of eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes of every shape and color, cavolo nero (lacinato kale), beautiful green and purple string beans, borlotti beans, potatoes, basil, spinach, arugula, radicchio, rosemary, thyme, and much more.  

Orchards of olive trees, grape vines, cherry, peach, apricot, plum, and fig trees were fully fruiting and the pears, apples, and chestnuts were beginning to make themselves noticed as the fall was near.  Late fall and early winter would bring persimmons, pomegranates, and citrus.   

My soul was captured. 

We would work from sunrise until l’una, or 1:00pm which is lunch time in Italy.  

We would then gather under the shade trees that lined the front of the main farm house. Each with a proper table cloth set beautifully. 

The nonna’s, mama’s, zia’s and little girls had been working hard too but also together.  Long summer meals shared at the table followed by naps before the work would begin in the late afternoon. 

Antipasti, home cured salamis and prosciutti, cow and sheep cheeses of all stages of aging, fresh ricotta and the sweetest cantaloupe served with thinly sliced salty prosciutto.  

Primo piatto, handmade pasta or dry depending on the sauce, maybe pesto or simple fresh garden tomatoes with garlic and chili or tortelli in wild boar sauce.  

Secondo piatto, tripe in red sauce, lampredotto in salsa verde, a roast, veal cutlets pounded and fried all typically served with roasted potatoes and fresh vegetables. 

Insalata fresh from the garden always followed the secondo piatto. 

Watermelon, cherries, apricots, peaches, figs, peaches were our dolce or dessert. 

Sequatchie Cove Farm and the Keener family give me the greatest sense of what I felt as a child. Thank you Miriam and Bill. And thank you to our farmer’s market and all the farmers it represents.  

I am grateful for America.  I am challenged to be a part of the experiment of forming a more perfect union together. I don’t really know how to say this well as I am thankful for our supermarkets and all the good that goes into providing me access to food to fill and nourish me.  But I am often sad as well as I know we can do much better.

I want to share one of my favorite products that is in almost every open farmer’s market and supermarket in Italy.  They are bags of chopped vegetables. 

The farmers take celery, carrots, onions, cavolo nero, savoy cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, peas and more or less depending on the season and what they have available. 

It may be what they know isn’t going to sell fast enough before spoiling or exterior parts that naturally lean to falling off but they are creative and don’t waste. They are in small bags for 2 to 3 euro and will feed a family of four easily.  

It is affordable, filling and very nutritious! It can be supplemented with a can of cannellini beans, chickpeas, or lentils for $1 - $1.30 to truly create a complete meal.  Additionally Italians will add bread that has gone stale, small pasta shapes like ditalini, acini di pepe, stelline, farro, barley, a peeled potato or two, leftover chicken or beef bones or some combo of the aforementioned. 

This dinner can literally be made in 5 - 10 minutes.  The vegetables take 5-6 minutes to cook. Bring water to a boil, just enough to cover the vegetables, salt the water, add 2-3 peppercorns, a bay leaf if you like. 

If you are adding pasta and the pasta needs nine minutes then set a timer for three minutes and then add the veggies and it will all be ready at the same time.  

Serve it up in a bowl and to make it absolutely perfect add a splash of olive oil in each bowl.  If you want to go full blown Italian grate some parmigiano reggiano on top! 

Honestly, even just the vegetables boiled with some salt and a dash of olive oil at the time of serving is enough to make a delicious soup! 

Yes, we have bagged vegetable products in our grocery stores but usually salads or one type of veggie.  They are often half rotten when you open them or mainly thick stems. 

If I want to add one or two potatoes I have to buy a five pound bag. It just doesn’t make sense.  

When I want to make this soup here in the States I get so sad and frustrated with the supermarket powers because I have to spend a fortune to create the same soup that costs 2-3 Euro in Italy.  

Buying these simple bags of vegetables from the farmer or at least the family running the farmer’s market stand is such a joy. 

When I tell these Italians working these stands that we don’t have this tradition in the US they look at me blank faced and really can’t believe it. And you can taste the work, care, and love in each bag. 

I want to make this soup for our Chattanooga community and especially for those in our underserved food desert communities.

What if our farmers markets did this? Even farmers from different farms could team together to do it and they could split the profit. What if our supermarkets did this?  How much do they throw away?

It would be another stream of revenue, maybe another form of employment, more sustainability, could we feed those suffering home insecurity, could we have samples to taste and the recipe electronically sent with a video of how simple it is to make?     

They are inspired by the culture of cucina povera that couldn’t waste and had to deliver nutrition beautifully with love. 

"Avanzati" also means "advanced" - We can make this advance together one vegetable and bowl of soup at a time. 

Buon appetito! 

• Next, Jon Geerlings, our friend and farmer near Decatur, Tennessee, who was the first to respond to last week's question to readers by offering an essay and DIY recipe - he calls it an "appendix" - for holiday pastry pies.

His essay and "appendix" will close today's "Leftovers" post. See everyone Sunday with a beautiful Christmas story.

Here's Jon. (With contributed photos.)

Rolling one's own pastry for pie when following the most popular recipes from Julia Child to America's Test Kitchen can be daunting. The popular recipes require using chilled fat which becomes very stiff and requires significant force to roll into a thin crust.

The recommended tool used to roll is a straight stick rolling pin of a size Shohei Ohtani might be able to hit a home run with.

The result from these popular recipes can be very nice pastry. It's the effort required that makes buying a frozen crust so appealing.

My pastry, which shares key ingredients with traditionally made strudel and baklava, rolls as easily as Play Doh from a freshly opened container and rivals any pie crust made with cold fat.

The magic ingredients are egg and vinegar. Protein from the egg and acid from the vinegar combine with room temperature butter, water, and flour to create a dough that's easy as pie to roll.

I use the same recipe for holiday pies, quiche, beef Wellington, and Dutch almond pastry. As a bonus, there is no worry about overworking this dough and it becoming too stiff. Watch an eight-minute of two Hungarian sisters working strudel dough to death. [Find it on Youtube by searching Atlantic video Hungarian sisters pastry - sorry if I weren't a Boomer I'd have a direct link.]

(Editor's note: Food as a Verb's non-Boomer staff is happy to help. Here's the link.)

Skills like those sisters who stretch dough with just their hands is not required. Strength to overpower cold fat is also not needed. A stick rolling pin could be used, but I find the wheeled rolling pin that a culinary trained expert might look at with disdain as the easier way to pie.

Recipe makes 4 pie crusts

• 2 1/2 sticks butter (if you don't use salted butter you may want to add salt)
• 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 cups bread flour (all purpose works close to as well)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg separated (yolk for dough mix, white for egg wash)
• 1/2 Tablespoon vinegar
• Water

In a large bowl combine butter, 2 1/2 cups of the flour, and baking powder with hands or pastry blender. Mix until crumbs are pea sized, add some of the reserved flour as needed.

In a glass measuring cup combine egg yolk and vinegar, then fill with water up to the 1/2 cup level. Add the liquid to the dough mix.

Combine until dough comes together. It will likely be sticky so add enough flour to make the dough the consistency of fresh Play Doh. Knead it a few times adding flour as needed to prevent sticking.

Cover and let rest for thirty minutes. Recipe is enough for 2 double crust pies or four single crust pies. 1 pecan, plus 1 pumpkin, plus 1 apple equals nice holiday and just enough for that.

After the rest, divide dough in half twice which should yield four balls comparable to tennis ball size. Wrap and freeze any you won't be baking in the next two days. 

On a floured surface, press dough into a flattened disk. Use rolling pin to flatten into shape.

Flip when about six inches in diameter to ensure enough flour on both sides so it won't stick to counter or rolling pin. Continue to roll until crust is a bit larger than pie pan. Place crust in pan and follow your favorite pie recipe.

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.