Eternal Sunshine, Latest On The Flu, Food Friday

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• Former Chef Describes A Moveable Feast

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  Behind every great meal is an equally great story, so believes restaurateur-turned-farmer Kurt Timmermeister.

  Indeed, Timmermeister has his own compelling story to tell — one that leads from city to farm to one unbelievably bountiful table. His latest book, “Growing a Feast: The Chronicle of a Farm-to-Table Meal,” tells the story of a single meal — a feast really — and the many, many journeys each single ingredient took to arrive, ripe and rich and flavorful on that table.

  Timmermeister’s own journey starts a few years earlier. Leaving behind the bright lights and international food scene in Seattle, he bought a small piece of land and with no previous farming experience, set about wrangling a dairy farm out of the wild. It took a few years, but the one-time chef eventually sold his restaurant and dedicated his life to the farm.

  One of the main reasons for the radical switch was the fact that he had fallen in love with the concept of “local” — locally grown milk, hand-beaten butter, homemade cheese, wild foraged mushrooms and milk-fed beef.

  “I’m very much devoted to my farm… the food especially,” he said. “It would be hard to go back and have food I didn’t grow for myself.”

  What to do with such a plentiful yield? Timmermeister started hosting a Sunday supper club out on his farm.

  “I like the idea of having a group of 20 people around a big table, sharing a meal, not knowing necessarily what it would be. People would come out on a Sunday afternoon and sit down to an eight-, nine- or 10-course meal. All the food was from the farm,” he said.

  Which brings us to the feast, a particularly memorable meal, which is the subject of his book. Timmermeister writes about the courses he served up: thin, wood-fired pizzas, foraged chanterelle mushrooms, a variety of cheeses, pickled red currants, pasture eggs with kale and béarnaise sauce, beef soaked in lots of milk and roasted, fingerling potatoes.

  Just as important, he dishes up the stories that made those foods so savory: the sweet milk from his calf, Alice, churned into butter, which formed the base for the unforgettable Béarnaise sauce, which was served with the eggs and kale plucked the morning of the feast.

  “The reason I wrote this book was that I wanted to show what went into putting on a feast,” said Timmermeister. “Food has great stories. It’s not that important to me what you eat, but I wanted to show that food has great story lines.”

  With his love of all things dairy and fresh produce this city boy-turned-farmer would find himself right at home in Wisconsin.

• A New Drug Could Help You Forget Old Traumatic Memories

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  Researchers have discovered a new drug that could possibly help you forget traumatic memories. A science writer explains how the drug works and how it could be prescribed in the future.

• Flu Season Is Hitting Working-age Adults Hard

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  This year’s flu season is hitting working-age adults particularly hard. We talk with Wisconsin’s Influenza Coordinator to find out what’s going on and how to best protect ourselves.

• Food Friday: Growing A Feast

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  For this Food Friday, a former chef discusses his decision to leave the Seattle food scene and start growing his own food. He explains how he started to use the products of his farm in his kitchen and how you can use more local ingredients.