eat local Vermont | The Roving Locavore

Posts Tagged ‘eat local Vermont’

no more a-roving

Posted in Pasta, Poetry, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Byron roving, Byron we'll go no more a-roving, Cloudland Farm, Cloudland Farm Italian sausage, costata romanesca, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, Japanese eggplant, Killdeer, Killdeer Farm Stand, Killdeer Norwich, local eating, local food, locavore, New Hampshire locavore, Norwich farm, Norwich organic farm, organic sweet italian sausage, pasta sausage recipe, roving locavore, spring vegetable pasta recipe, Vermont farm stand, Vermont grass fed beef, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on July 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Roving is a romantic way of saying moving from place to place. At one time, the word contained more layers of significance than it does now, including something like “lookin’ for love.” This sense finds its beautiful epitome in Byron’s love lyric, “We’ll go no more a-roving.” More than a poem of love, this is a poem of eros. The short, simple poem, which Byron wrote while in Venice, speaks of the sweetness of longing and nostalgia as it relishes ironic double entendre.

Today, I’ve had a decidedly more banal, and boring, experience of roving: I drove all around this spread-out rural center of civilization in the northeast—seemingly just to keep the car capable of more driving. It was a day of logistics: dropping the boys at camp; driving to White River Junction with my sister to get her tire repaired for $13, which took all day; driving to drop off my sister at my dad’s office so that she could use his car; driving to the library for two hours of 1794 literary journals on microfilm; driving to pick up my boy; driving to CVS and the Hanover Food Co-op; driving back to the back roads of Norwich to drop off the cold food; driving to my dad’s office to pick up my sister; driving to the mechanic’s to pick up her car. On the way out of there, my automatic transmission problem alert signal came on. It’s an orange-lighted gear with an exclamation point in the center. Whoa! So, then we drove, in caravan, to another mechanic’s, who directed us to another, farther south along route 5 in Vermont. This will probably cost me quite a bit more than $13.

And then we drove back up route 5, which, happily, leads to Killdeer Farm Stand. I dropped off my sister and the boys at the UPS warehouse to see the trucks (my nephew’s current obsession) and drove to Killdeer. After a day of aggravation, this was bliss.

The vegetable baskets are more bountiful every day. I wanted to make a pasta dish with a classic combination of vegetables. I bought an eggplant, sweet green pepper, sweet onion, costata romanesca. I looked at everything, admired everything, knew I’d be back tomorrow.

spring veg

I left, reluctantly, to do more driving.

For dinner we had farfalle with all of the above, and some sweet Italian sausage, flavored with fennel seeds, from Cloudland Farm, which we’d had in the freezer. It was warm, green, springy, delicious.

Spring Pasta

Get the water boiling for pasta. Meanwhile, break a half-pound of sweet Italian sausage into chunks, and slice half of a sweet onion, one or two Japanese eggplants (their skin is more tender), one sweet green pepper, and one costata romanesca. Sauté the sausage until mid-rare and let drain in a bowl lined with paper towel. Sauté the vegetables, beginning with the onion, followed by the eggplant, pepper, and eggplant. Cook the pasta. When the vegetables are lightly caramelized, spoon in a couple of big spoonfuls of pasta-cooking water, and cover for a minute or less. Put the sausage back in the pan, and then combine pasta and vegetables in a big bowl or pot and toss with grated parmgiano reggiano. Serve with extra cheese at the table.

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Garlic Scape Mashed Potatoes

Posted in Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, eat local Vermont, eating locally, garlic mashed potatoes recipe, garlic scapes, locavore, roving locavore, Vermont locavore on June 29, 2009| 1 Comment »

scapes bin at the Norwich Farmers' Market

I love garlic mashed potatoes. Possibly even more delicious are mashed potatoes made with garlic scapes. Last night, I boiled about a pound of new red and gold potatoes (skin on). I tossed four curlicues of garlic scapes (1 per person) into the boiling water for a minute, just to soften them up a bit. Then I roughly diced and minced them. When the potatoes were fork tender, I used a hand-masher to blend in the scapes, milk, 2 tbs. of butter, salt and pepper. The result was delicious, and as pretty as a pile of potatoes can be: creamy white flecked with green and pink, and tasting of the freshest garlic. I love whole roasted bulbs of garlic, with that deep nutty caramelized flavor, mashed into potatoes. This was different. Garlicky, but greener, grassier, springy.

The only problem was that I made too few. Everyone wanted more potatoes.

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turquoise eggs

Posted in Eggs, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Araucana eggs, eat local Vermont, eating locally, locavore, roving locavore, turquoise eggs, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore, Vermont organic eggs on June 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

On our way home from the strawberry festival, after driving through the little downtown of Norwich in which all was quiet (it’s Sunday) except for Dan & Whit’s general store (“If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”), we drove up Turnpike Road, kept going until it turned to dirt, and saw a sign: “eggs.” We slowed down, and stopped at the table where a young neighbor was selling eggs and chocolate chunk cookies.

eggs 4 sale
We bought a dozen eggs and two cookies. The eggs came from two breeds of chicken: New Hampshire Reds and Araucana. The Araucana’s eggs are a pale greenish blue. I boiled two for lunch, and found when I peeled them that the inner shells are a deeper turquoise. The yolks were the color of black-eyed Susan petals.

My parents’ house is about a half-mile further on Turnpike Road. It’s satisfying to eat a lunch so fresh, and in hues I’d love to paint.

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Burlington’s Bees

Posted in Sweet Things, Whimsical, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eating locally, local honey, locavore, roving locavore, Vermont honey, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on June 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

honey

We drove up I89 yesterday to Vermont’s city, Burlington, to have dinner with Peter’s friend, the Irish poet, Greg Delanty, his wife Patti, and their son Dan (who gave Jack his outgrown tractor toys on indefinite loan). It was rainbow weather. The sky had been heavy and dark in Norwich—rain for days, all the Vermonters complaining about such an injustice, and on the solstice too! But as we drove through the Green Mountains and into the Champlain Valley, the sky opened into a shifting patchwork of gray, white, and blue. Some mountain tops were hidden in dark blurs, some were lit up bright green by shafts of sunlight. Some clouds were white wisps, some were poofy cumulous towers. We saw a rainstorm up ahead over the next valley, we were in it, and back in the hot sun again.

After this beautiful drive, we were welcomed onto a sunny deck by Patti, who is passionate about local food: there was late-afternoon local beer, and asparagus with dinner (to green up the Irish ham and potato plate). This morning there were jumbo eggs from a nearby farm, toast from a nearby bread baker’s.

But the most delicious element of either meal was also the most local: Patti’s honey. She keeps a hive in a wooden box in the side yard, the yellow walls of which match the yellow and purple trim on their old New England house, which stands at the corner of the lake-front street packed with other little old houses whose clapboards are whimsically painted other shades of purple, orange, or bright blue. After breakfast, Jack and I went for a walk and stopped to sniff the roses, peonies, and lilies planted in abundant disorderly patches of overgrown grass in front of the porches along the way. We saw bees dipping into these polleny perennials as well as into the flowering vines covering the fences and the little nosegays of wildflowers in cracks on the sidewalk and on the edges of driveways and yards. Patti’s honey has all of the flavors and aromas of this big mixed bouquet.

Because of bees’ omnivorousness when it comes to nectar, and the portion of pollen that ends up in the honeycombs, eating local honey can help us ward off seasonal allergies, and is said to be an immunity booster in general. But more importantly, honey is a comfort food for me: I associate it with childhood, with the pink and white clovers and buttercups of Vermont, and with Winnie the Pooh’s “little smackerel of something.” I still enjoy it on toast and in tea, but there are more grown-up ways to eat it too: as a dressing for Mission figs and manchego; drizzled on soft goat cheese; or as a seasoning with braised lamb.

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