Lani here. I’m excited to take over the fall edition of the Big Spooner! Why? Because this is a great excuse to share my side of a long-standing debate in our house about seasons. 

Nate and I met in New York City, and although he was born and raised in Northern California just like I was, he often spoke about preferring the east coast lifestyle because there were more dramatic seasonal shifts. He’d constantly cite research that found the routines, emotions, and nostalgia attached to certain seasons and the transitions between them leads to clearer memory recall. You could say, since there were leaves on the ground when this happened it must have been autumn. Or you could say, since there was snow on the sidewalk it must have been winter. He’d say California is mild year-round in comparison and so it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when memories occurred.

My rebuttal to this argument was always that, contrary to this Groundhog Day-like characterization of weather in California, we do have seasons! New York carries memories of snowed-in days, sticky summers, firefly sightings, and a renowned leaf-peeping season. But here in Sonoma County, we have super blooms, peak river time, harvest, and long winters kept cozy with wood fires. My experience has actually led me to feel the seasons are more extreme in California because these structures are not insulated to withstand cold weather! But anyways…

Nothing has rooted us more into this seasonal lifestyle than starting a food business at the farmers’ markets and curating our seasonal sauce releases. We are living deeply in our northern California seasons and all they bring with them. We have seaweed season, Meyer lemon season, garlic scape season, and chile pepper season, to name a few. And let me tell you, we have vivid memories that tie clearly to each of those seasons in turn.

Fall seasonal chili crisp: Kraken Sauce 

While every jar of chili crisp we make uses chiles that have been carefully dried and stored for maximum freshness, any sauce we mix in the fall will be *chef’s kiss* fresh. These jalapeños and poblanos were soaking up that hot Sonoma County sun just days before we folded them into this year’s batch of Kraken Sauce. Yep, we’re bringing back an old favorite this round! This year’s Kraken Sauce is a delightful concoction of aromatic garlic chives, sesame, the last of our kombu and nori stores from this year’s winter harvest, and a nice kick from some local green chile peppers.

The producer behind these peppers is a farmer whose praise you’ve heard us sing before, Sammy Tookey of Tookey Farms in Healdsburg, CA. We’ve been buying Sammy’s peppers to use in our seasonal club batches for the better part of a year.

Sammy grew up immersed in the southern California farming culture around San Juan Capistrano. It was only natural that one day he’d run his own farm. He and his partner settled here in Sonoma County and Sammy started farming up in the Dry Creek Valley area. And just like us, he’s a young business owner, still experimenting season to season to find what grows and sells best. We love chatting with him about the niche peppers he’s growing. He’s introduced us to what feels like half a dozen melon varieties, and shared with us some of the sweetest corn we tasted this summer. 

We are thankful for our partnership and what it’s brought to both Club Big Spoon as well as our dinner tables!

Recipe: Shrimp toast

We recently returned from a trip to Scandinavia, where we witnessed two of our dear friends, Zach and Catharina, tie the knot in the Swedish countryside. Always our partners in hunting down the nearest gastronomic experiences, they curated a detailed guide to the best food and drink in Stockholm for all of their guests. The numerous references to a ‘shrimp sandwich’ did not go unnoticed. 

Sure enough, we found a version of toast skagen (Swedish shrimp toast) on the menu at nearly every bar, cafe, and restaurant we visited during our week in Sweden. The shrimp used in toast skagen are from the Baltic Sea and are smaller and sweeter than the shrimp we typically see in the States, kind of like the bay shrimp you’d find on a Shrimp Louie. Swedish toast skagen is essentially a heaping pile of mayonnaise-based shrimp salad, served open face on a slice of buttered and toasted bread, then topped with roe, lemon, and dill. Truly, what’s not to like?

Because we’re fresh off a very shrimpy adventure in Scandinavia, and shrimp is the cosmic Cantonese pairing with the funky garlic chive, our featured recipe for this newsletter is our take on Swedish shrimp toast.