From the Fy 8.13.2026

Farm Forecast

We are officially in that part of August where the farm is basically writing the menu for us.

And I mean that quite literally.

This week might be one of the most local ass menus we've had all summer. Tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, eggs, chicken, guinea hens, and herbs are all coming out of the farm and making their way directly into the kitchen. Add in corn from Schmidt's, berries and stone fruit from Wickham's, beautiful buffalo mozzarella from Connecticut, and our sourdough made with NYS flour, and suddenly "farm to table" feels like an almost inadequate description of what's happening around here.

This is the payoff. This is what we wait for.

Last week's Wood Fyr Friday was another absolutely beautiful evening, and I'm simultaneously thrilled and slightly devastated to remind you that our final one of the summer is SOLD OUT. It feels impossible that we're already talking about the end of the summer season when there are still tomatoes everywhere and I'm pretty sure I have sand permanently embedded in my car, but here we are. We have just a few precious weeks left in this glorious chaos, and I plan on squeezing every last drop out of them.

And if you can't snag a seat at the final dinner, there is still plenty of farm goodness happening every week in the café and market. Honestly, this week's menu might be one of the best examples of what we do here because so much of what you're eating was grown or raised within a ridiculously small radius of the plate it's sitting on.

Café Highlights

I am usually not your basic no meat sandwich kind of gal. I like a sandwich with some heft. Give me the meat. Give me the cheese. Give me the sauce. Preferably give me all three.

But that caprese sandwich has me questioning everything.

Buffalo mozzarella, juicy heirloom tomatoes, garden herb aioli, basil, and balsamic.

That's it. And holy cannoli, it knocks my socks off. This is one of those foods that reminds you why eating seasonally matters. A tomato in August does not need twelve ingredients piled on top of it. It needs something creamy, something herby, a little acid, good bread, and someone smart enough to leave it alone.

And tomatoes aren't just pretty summer candy. Especially freshly pickled, local ones.

They're a great source of vitamin C and provide potassium, folate, and a whole collection of beneficial plant compounds. They're especially famous for lycopene, the red pigment and antioxidant that has been studied for its potential role in cardiovascular health. Interestingly, cooking tomatoes makes lycopene easier for our bodies to absorb, and eating them with some fat helps with absorption too, which makes tomato sauce with olive oil sound less like an indulgence and more like excellent planning.

That said, my ideal move is absolutely finding a friend and splitting the caprese AND the roast beef. Because why choose?

The roast beef is exactly the kind of thing I'm always a sucker for here. It's a classic that somebody in the kitchen couldn't leave well enough alone. Roast beef and cheddar are familiar territory, but add pickled peppers and onions with garlic aioli and suddenly the sandwich you thought you knew has a completely different personality. And this is one personality you will get along with...very well.

The ratatouille ricotta toast is another perfect example of what's happening on the farm right now. The kitchen is taking zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant that are coming in by the armful, sorry, did I say armful? I mean barrel-ful and cooking them down into ratatouille, then piling it onto our sourdough with creamy ricotta. Simple, seasonal, freaking delicious. And, as we're about to discuss, toast is only the beginning of what you can do with it.

Even dessert is getting the full North Fork treatment. The stone fruit sorbet is made with Wickham's Farm nectarines and peaches, and while I'm sure it's lovely all by itself, I'm personally telling you to get it twisted with the vanilla custard. Juicy, tart, sweet summer fruit against creamy vanilla is pretty hard to beat.

Market Highlights

If you want to understand what August tastes like around here, take a look inside the market refrigerator this week.

The gazpacho is basically the farm's tomatoes in drinkable form. The ratatouille is zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant from the fields. The wings are from 8 Hands chickens. The corn chowder starts with corn from Schmidt's Farm Stand, then brings in our own green peppers and beautiful potatoes. Instead of deciding what we want to cook and then finding ingredients to make it, this time of year the ingredients show up and essentially tell us what dinner is going to be.

And can we give eggplant a little love while we're here?

Eggplant gives us fiber, potassium, and folate, along with a collection of antioxidant plant compounds. That gorgeous purple skin gets its color from anthocyanins, including one called nasunin. This is also why I keep coming back to the idea of eating as many different plants, and as many different colors, as possible. They aren't nutritionally interchangeable. Different plants bring different fibers, micronutrients, and phytochemicals to the party.

Which brings me to the health challenge I've talked about before and am bringing back with a vengeance: 30 different plants per week.

Not 30 servings. Thirty different kinds.

Vegetables, fruits, beans, lentils, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices all help bring diversity to the table. I love this goal because instead of making nutrition about what we need to eliminate, it turns the question into, what else can I add?

And apparently I wasn't satisfied with one challenge, because I've given myself a new one too: add legumes to every meal.

Beans, lentils, chickpeas, peas, whatever works. I'm not trying to make every meal a bean salad. I'm just looking for those little opportunities to toss in a handful here, spread some hummus there, add lentils to a sauce, or throw chickpeas onto a salad.

More on that in a minute.

First, the Southwest guinea hen salad.

If you've never eaten guinea hen, here's your opportunity. Guinea fowl are their own bird, not chickens or turkeys, and the meat tends to be darker, richer, and a little more deeply flavored than chicken while still being relatively lean and protein rich. It also provides iron, zinc, and B vitamins. They're not something you're commonly going to stumble across in your average deli case, which is exactly why I love seeing the farm's birds turned into something as familiar and approachable as chicken salad.

The baba ganoush is another one not to overlook, especially while eggplant is everywhere. Roasting completely transforms eggplant into something silky, smoky, and almost creamy, and baba ganoush gives you all of that plus tahini, which brings its own sesame seed goodness and unsaturated fats to the equation.

And I need to discuss the tuna salad because this is NOT your standard scoop of mayo deli tuna situation. Local tuna, togarashi, pickled eggs. It's salty, spicy, savory, unexpected, and very Fyr & Salt. We only made a limited batch, and when it's gone, that's it. Consider yourselves warned.

Of course, the famous beef burritos are back too. Eat one cold if that's your thing, or pop it into the oven and let the outside crisp back up while the inside gets hot. Add some hot sauce, zucchini relish, or whatever jar you've currently become emotionally attached to from the market and dinner is handled.

But if I were telling you to take one thing home this week and play with it, I'd send you

directly to the ratatouille.

THE MOST DELICIOUS BREAKFAST all available at the market!). Took 5 minutes. Bed of cottage cheese (use yogurt), cooked french lentils, ratatouille, fried egg, pickled onion, parsley. I would definitely finish this with some lemon and hot sauce.

Kitchen Spark

"We all find ourselves in food ruts, so here's a little spark to light the fyr in your kitchen."

Ratatouille Is Not a Side Dish

I think ratatouille gets unfairly shoved into the vegetable side dish category when really it's one of the most useful things you can have sitting in your refrigerator.

Especially right now.

Ours is already doing the work you don't necessarily feel like doing in August. Zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant from the farm are cooked together until everything becomes soft, savory, and concentrated. You could absolutely warm it up and put it next to a piece of chicken.

But we can do better than that.

1. Make the Café Toast at Home

This week's café gives you the blueprint. Toast a thick slice of sourdough, add a generous layer of ricotta, pile warm ratatouille over the top, and finish with salt, pepper, and fresh herbs.

At home, I'm just as likely to use cottage cheese. You still get that creamy contrast, plus a nice little protein boost, and it's one of those lunches that feels far more put together than the amount of effort involved would suggest.

Feta would be incredible too. So would goat cheese. Or skip the cheese entirely and rub the toast with a little garlic and olive oil.

2. You can do it, put an egg on to it.

Warm the ratatouille in a skillet, make a few little wells, crack eggs directly into it, and cover until the whites set and the yolks are still runny.

Suddenly you've got a very loose, very summery shakshuka situation. Add sourdough for scooping and I would happily eat this for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

3. Stretch It: ADD LENTILS

If I'm challenging myself to put legumes into every meal, this is quite possibly the easiest place to start.

Warm cooked lentils directly into the ratatouille and suddenly you've taken a beautiful pile of summer vegetables and given it even more staying power. Lentils bring both plant protein and a serious dose of fiber, plus iron, folate, potassium, and other minerals. They're inexpensive, they keep beautifully in the refrigerator, and they're mild enough to disappear into foods you're already eating.

And fiber is about so much more than keeping you regular. Some types of fiber become food for the microbes living in our gut. Those microbes ferment certain fibers and produce compounds called short chain fatty acids, which play important roles in supporting our intestinal barrier, metabolism, and immune system. Legumes are also associated with cardiovascular benefits, which makes them one of those deeply unsexy foods that I think deserve WAY more attention.

We've spent years trying to figure out how to add another 20 grams of protein to everything. I'm currently much more interested in asking: where can I add the beans?

So add lentils to the ratatouille. Put the whole thing over cottage cheese or ricotta. Add an egg. Serve it alongside fish or chicken. Throw some feta and herbs over it and call it dinner.

And just like that, you've got vegetables, legumes, and herbs before you've even figured out what else you're eating.

Thirty plants a week starts adding up pretty freaking fast when you cook this way.

4. Make It Pasta

Warm the ratatouille in a big skillet with a splash of pasta water, toss in your pasta, and finish with Parmesan or ricotta. If you want a smoother sauce, blitz some or all of the ratatouille first.

And yes, you can add lentils here too. I'm serious about this challenge.

You now have an entire pasta sauce made from vegetables and legumes without chopping a single thing.

5. Build a Bowl

This is probably how it would actually go down in my house. Greens or a whole grain on the bottom, ratatouille, lentils, whatever protein is around, something creamy like yogurt or feta, fresh herbs, and something acidic or pickled.

If you want crunch, add toasted breadcrumbs or crushed tallow tortilla chips. If you've got leftover chicken, use it. A piece of fish? Perfect. Ground turkey? Absolutely. And if the refrigerator is looking particularly empty, ratatouille, lentils, cottage cheese, and sourdough are already a pretty spectacular dinner.

That's what I love about prepared food when it's done well. You don't have to treat it as a finished meal with rules around it. Sometimes you're buying the hardest part of dinner already made and taking it home to make it yours.

And when the hardest part happens to be zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes that were growing right here during the absolute height of the North Fork season?

Even better.

So here's my challenge for you this week: count your plants. Aim for 30 different ones, and then see how many meals you can sneak a legume into. Don't take anything away. Just keep adding good stuff and see where you end up.