Read and Eat Series at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm

Your friendly neighborhood rooftop farm (didn't know you had one, did you?) wants you to improve your brain AND your diet! In addition to operating a CSA, farmers' market, and education programs, Eagle Street Rooftop Farm will be hosting a Read and Eat series at 2 pm Saturdays this fall, featuring food-related authors reading from their work, as well as sharing recipes and snacks. This Saturday kicks off the series with Cathy Erway, who writes the blog Not Eating Out in New York, and recently published The Art of Eating In (which I just finished and found thoroughly charming). If city life has you jonesing to get your hands dirty in a real live garden, get there early for Open Farm Day from 9 am to 2 pm, when they welcome volunteers.

Saturday 9/5, 2 pm: Cathy Erway, author of The Art of Eating In
Saturday, 9/19, 2 pm: Anna Lappé, author of Diet for a Hot Planet
Saturday, 9/26, 2 pm: Annie Hauck-Lawson, co-editor of Gastropolis

The Farm is also open to the public on Sundays from 10am-4pm (check their calendar to confirm). They are located on Eagle Street between Franklin and West in Greenpoint, North Brooklyn.

Pack an awesome picnic

Holy spicy hotness, friendly readers! It's about 1000 degrees in NYC this week, and I am planning my life around moving as quickly as possible from one air-conditioned space to another. The heat comes as a firey blast in the face after a peaceful, verdant, computer-free weekend at my mom's amazing home in Connecticut (blueberry picking, swimming with dogs, and topping steaks with fresh chimichurri, anyone?). I'm digging myself out from under the pile of email I let accumulate over the long weekend, so in the interest of getting back to that arduous task, today's entry is a short one.

I realize, more and more, that it's not necessarily always FREE to attend free events - doing anything outside the home in the City leaves you vulnerable to sneaky ice cream trucks, tempting sidewalk cafes, and smoky rich aromas from gyro vendors. Stand your ground, my broke friends! One of the best ways you can learn how to save money and still do fun stuff is to bring your own food. In that spirit, I offer you the incomparable Mark Bittman, NYT food columnist who graced us with 101 Picnic Dishes back in 2008. I love this piece and still look to it for new outdoor eating inspiration. Peruse at your leisure. And now, back to my inbox...

p.s. Couldn't resist: even if you think you make the best deviled eggs around, you owe it to yourself and your guests to take a quick look at this video by Top Chef contestant Jamie Lauren on how to make the perfect deviled egg. I'll never mash with a fork again.

Today's free adventure: armchair travel

...or desk travel, as the case may be. (If you're reading this at work, I won't tell. Hell, I'm writing this at work.) I couldn't resist the urge to share with you the beautiful prose today of Francis Lam, one of my favorite writers on Salon.com. He's traveling around Paris, eating his way through the city, and his post today is pure poetry. A little sample of his words:

"MasMoudi is fascinating, a shop on the chic Boulevard Saint-Germain that looks like a fancy jeweler, selling instead gemlike Middle Eastern sweets in a room so intensely, gorgeously blue you'll feel like you're fever-dreaming on a raft in the Mediterranean. Skip the baklava and pay attention to the phenomenally meticulous quarter-size pistachio and pine nut confections, made with the crispest, lightest phyllo dough, rich nut bases, fragrant floral essences and stunningly arranged as if flower buds themselves."

Even if you have no desire at all to ever visit Paris, the sheer experience of reading his description of shopping for a picnic is heavenly. Enjoy.

(UPDATE: If you too were watching Top Chef Masters, you might want to check out Eater.com's exit interviews with all the contestants.)