Food is an expression of the place where you are. Bearing that in mind, last week my long-time friend and Deep Springs classmate Kevin West and I headed to the Eastern Sierra (Deep Springs country) to cook several memorable meals in the iconic town of Lone Pine, in Inyo County’s southern Owens Valley, for a visionary group of creative folks called The Metabolic Studio (“at the intersection of art and philanthropy”). These dynamic Angelenos, well aware of the upcoming 2013 centenary of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s diversion of water from the Owens River via the Los Angeles Aqueduct (remember the movie Chinatown?), are taking a keen, artistic-philanthropic interest in the Owens Valley region and its promising agricultural and culinary future, as the valley’s water is gradually restored. Today, a visitor to the Owens Valley sees mostly desert and a few cattle ranches among towering mountainscapes, but with a little poking around, he or she might find an apple farm, a sprawling vegetable garden in someone’s backyard, wild watercress growing in a pond, nettles near a stream, herds of elk, or piñons in the lower mountain elevations.
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“When the last princesse slip was freshly beribboned, our beloved Hungarian laundress sometimes found time to give us a treat. She made strudel. Draping the round dining room table with a fresh cloth, she patiently worked flour into it. Neighborhood small fry gathered on the fringes of the light cast by the Tiffany dome, and their eyes would pop as she rolled the dough, no bigger than a softball, into a big thin circle. Then, hands lightly clenched, palms down, working under the sheet of dough and from the center out, she stretched it with the flat planes of the knuckles…. She would play it out, so to speak, not so much pulling it as coaxing it with long, even friction, moving round and round the table as she worked. …Browned bread crumbs, lemon rind grated into sugar, raisins, currants, very finely sliced apples, almonds and a small pitcher of melted butter were all set out on a tray. These were strewn alternately over the surface of the dough. Then came the forming of the roll. Using both hands, Janka picked up one side of the cloth and, while never actually touching the dough itself, tilted and nudged the cloth and the sheet this way and that until the dough rolled over on itself—jelly-roll fashion—and completely enclosed the filling. Finally, she slid the long cylinder onto a greased baking sheet and curved it into a horseshoe. From beginning to end the process had masterly craftsmanship.” --The Joy of Cooking, Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, 1975 
With a Christmas dinner menu of Glazed Ham, Roast Yams with Pears and Bourbon, and apple pie for dessert, the question of what to drink naturally arises. If you live in or near the apple-growing regions of the northern United States or Canada, you are poised to experience what I think must be the Next Big Thing in the world of drink: high-quality, artisan hard apple cider, whose delicacy, complexity, and overall deliciousness can easily measure up to fine wine. I’m not talking about anything that comes in a 6-pack, or that has flavors added—I am talking about nothing but the juice of fine apples, preferably from a blend of apple varieties (including bitter or sour ones you wouldn’t want to eat or cook with), fermented into a dry, effervescent, yeasty brew with an alcohol content somewhere between beer and wine, in a 750-ml bottle with a cork, with a soft, delicate apple aroma evoking cold winters. 
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