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Posts Tagged ‘eat locally Vermont’

roadside veggies

Posted in Salads, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Cape Cod local food, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, Mass. local food, Truro on August 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Late August on the Outer Cape is like one long lazy day. Mornings and evenings are cool, but the sun warms everything in between—except the Atlantic waves.

collecting tomatoes

We’ve eaten fish, of course, but the food fun I had yesterday we found by the roadside instead of the seaside. Just down Long Nook Road from Jack’s grandparents’ house, we stopped at a little farmstand to buy some things for lunch. Jack wanted the pumpkin, but I picked out sungolds, a squash, and the tiniest red potatoes I’ve ever seen.

prayer flags
pumpkin

Then, we went to the playground.

the twirling tire swing is the best!

resting, alongside a bluefin

Back home for lunch, I boiled the potatoes, warmed some scallions and leftover grilled chicken in olive oil, and then tossed it all together in a bowl with some vinegar and mustard. A quick, warm salad makes a delicious lunch.

bite-sized beauties

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the humble egg

Posted in Eggs, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, fritatta, local eating, local eggs, local food, roving locavore, sage fritatta, scrambled eggs, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 27, 2009| 1 Comment »

Eggs make frequent but unspectacular appearances on this blog. Like dead metaphors–staples of language we barely notice–eggs are ubiquitous, humble, and very nearly necessary.

Aside from windowsill herbs, eggs are probably the easiest foods to find locally. In every little region, you’ll find someone who keeps a backyard flock of laying hens. Just ask around.

We eat eggs often, and of course not just for breakfast. Like dairy products, eggs are nearly perfect foods, offering a healthy dose of fats and protein in neatly portioned packages. They are also relatively cheap, when compared to other sources of animal protein. And to top it off, they cook in minutes. Find fresh, local eggs whenever you can; the difference in taste and quality is huge.

The easiest, and no less delicious, way to cook an egg is to scramble it with some salt and pepper, heat a pan on high, melt a bit of butter, pour in the egg, turn off the heat, move it around a bit, slide it onto a plate, and eat. Lunch in our house is often a changing combination of vegetables alongside an 8-minute egg. Jack loves eggs in all forms, which gives us an easy dinner option when he refuses the bluefish or something “smelly” like that. (Though he did eat bluefish “pate” with relish the other day, when he thought it was just some salty spread.) Fritatta is an easy dinner we have frequently. Anything can be thrown in–from last night’s steamed broccoli to a bit of frozen bacon or a handful of fresh herbs.

One of the best, and simplest, fritattas I’ve had was made by a friend of a friend of the family’s whose apartment we were staying in for a night in Paris. Peter and I were on a post-college trip, crashing for free when possible. These friends of friends, whom we’d only just met that weekend, invited us to stay with them on the night before our early flight home. They had a two-year-old daughter, Chloe, who had to be fed and put to bed before dinner. They’d just arrived back home on a Sunday evening after a weekend at their parents’ in a suburb of Bordeaux. It had been a long day, and a quick meal was in order. The meal Valerie cooked up was a fritatta made with whole sage leaves spread in a six-pointed circle. The eggy texture was perfect–set but still moist in the middle. There was also a bit of salad and baguette. Perfectly simple.

Fresh Herb Fritatta

6 eggs
6 fresh sage leaves
butter
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350. Whisk eggs with salt and pepper until foamy. Heat an oven-proof skillet over moderately high heat, and melt a bit of butter, spreading it evenly and thinly over the whole pan. Pour in the eggs and cook until it starts to bubble and form a skin on the bottom. Lay in the sage leaves. Pop it in the oven for about 10 minutes or until set. When set, invert onto a serving plate, slice, and serve.

Or, introduce and endless variety of other ingredients….

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Bread Loaf

Posted in Beer, Poetry, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, eat local Vermont, eat locally Vermont, locavore, Robert Frost After Apple Picking, roving locavore, Vermont beer, Vermont breweries, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

No, not the food staple, but the writers’ conference. I went up to Ripton, VT, to spend the last night of the conference with Peter. It was a great evening. Peter gave a late-afternoon reading of poems from his most recent book, The Lions, in the century-old clapboarded Little Theater.

After the reading, some went to change into their party-wear, while others ambled across rural Route 125 to one of the little yellow cottages, where the cocktail party was happening. There was plenty of imported gin going around, along with some local beer. The choice: Otter Creek Copper Ale.

Peter with friends, old and new

The dinner that followed was full of local yummies, including nasturtiums, though not much grows on this Green Mountain ridgeline but trees.

The conference began as an idea of early-twentieth-century-poet Robert Frost’s, in the 1920s. I love so many of his poems, it would be hard to choose a favorite, but here is one that has to do with a local crop:

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

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roasty, toasty, rainy

Posted in Baking, Fruit, Pasta, Sweet Things, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, berry crumble recipe, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, organic strawberries, roasted tomato pasta recipe, roving locavore, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

umrella hat

The other rainy night, we had a little casual dinner party with my parents’ best friends of four decades, who happen now to live on the same long dirt driveway in Norwich, Vermont. I’d been wanting to make a recipe from one of my favorite bloggers, Tribeca Yummy Mummy, for roasted tomato pasta with scallops. It was amazingly delicious, especially with picked-that-day organic sungolds and grape tomatoes and basil. Here are the tomatoes, slicked with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, ready to get roasty:

roast tomat

We had spicy greens in a salad, and then a berry crumble. I like making crumble, because it’s so easy. You don’t even need to look at a recipe for the topping if you just remember “it’s all 1.”

Mixed Berry Crumble

Topping:
1 c. flour
1 c. sugar (mix brown and white)
1 stick butter, cut into small nobs
1 tsp. salt
1 handful sliced almonds (or walnuts, or oats)

Filling:

3-4 c. mixed berries (I used blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries)
1/3 c. sugar
a sprinkle of almond extract

Preheat oven to 400. Mix the filling in the baking pan. Frozen berries are ok.

With your fingertips, blend the topping until it all clings together in clumps. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the filling. Bake for 40 minutes or so.

berry crumble

Get it before it’s gone!

crumble

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raw pleasure

Posted in Salads, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Cedar Circle Farm, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, grass fed beef, Hogwash Farm, Killdeer, Killdeer Farm, local eating, local food, locavore, Norwich organic farm, raw salad, roving locavore, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »

When we got to the Hanover Farmers’ Market yesterday, thunder was rumbling in the not-too-far distance. We wouldn’t be able to linger. I went straight for the Cedar Circle Farm booth, where I was almost overcome by the vivid colors spread before me!

I spent all the cash in my pocket on this pile of (always organic) beauty:

cedar circ vegs

When we got back to my parents’ house at the far end of Turnpike Road in Norwich, it was still too hot to turn on the oven or even think systematically about a meal. I pulled out a tub of hummus, and we used it as dip for the celery (the most celeryish celery I’ve ever tasted!) and the sungolds.

In spite of the sky–another storm brewing after some hot sun–we decided to cook out.

dark clouds over the back hill

We had some grass fed ground beef from Hogwash Farm, so we decided to do burgers, corn on the cob, and a big chopped salad combining the tomatoes, some peppers, radishes from Killdeer, and cucumbers and herbs from our garden. Dressed with a bit of mustard vinaigrette, it was flavorful, cool, and perfectly satisfying.

This is the only season when a raw salad like that, with little adornment or special treatment, tastes so vivid.

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worth the heat

Posted in Baking, Fruit, Sweet Things, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, roving locavore, strawberry-rhubarb pie recipe, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

pie

For the crust, check out my post of June 7, 2009, but make a double portion, since you’ll need extra pastry for the lattice. Make the pastry, shape into two discs, and chill for several hours.

For the filling, you’ll need 3 cups fresh cut strawberries and 2 cups fresh or frozen chopped rhubarb. Mix these with 1/2 c. flour, 1/2 c. sugar, and 1 tsp. corn starch.

Preheat oven to 375. Roll out two 11-inch rounds of pastry, put one in a 9-inch pie plate, and cut the other into strips. Pour in filling, and construct an over-under lattice with the pastry strips. Bake (with a cookie sheet underneath in case of drips) for 45 or so minutes, until the crust is golden.

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Summer Baking

Posted in Baking, Fruit, Ice Cream, Sweet Things, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, organic strawberries, pastry frissage, roving locavore, Shiro plums, strawberry rhubarb pie, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore, Vermont plums on August 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

It’s summer. It’s hot. The fruit is ripe. But what the heck, let’s fire up the oven.

We have Shiro plums, the mild little yellow variety which grew originally in Japan, and now grows all over the place here.

shiso

These plums are from Dummerston, Vermont. (The name brings to mind Fort Dummer, near Brattleboro, where we used to go cross country skiing, and where my Dad would release the squirrels he’d caught in his “Have-a-Heart” trap. These were crazed, ferocious squirrels that chewed our wooden siding and clung to the screens of our dining room windows while we ate dinner.)

Back on topic here… plums make a scrumptious rustic galette. I had a helper this morning making pastry. A pinch of salt:

J baking

And a demonstration of the frissage technique, which spreads and flattens those yummy bits of butter, providing the basis for flakiness (push with the heels, fold with the fingertips, repeat):

frissage

We also have chopped rhubarb and strawberries in the freezer–remains from an earlier season. My sister, Bridget, has always loved strawberry-rhubarb pie. We always thought her red hair and freckles predestined her to be a strawberry lover: strawberry ice cream, strawberry shortcake, strawberry-rhubarb pie, strawberries on cereal, strawberry lip balm, the list goes on. She’s moving to North Carolina this week, where strawberries and rhubarb will be distant memories. I think I’ll make her that pie.

And serve it warm with local vanilla ice cream, of course.

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tomatoes, hot and cold

Posted in Baking, Cheese, Salads, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, Killdeer, local eating, local food, locavore, organic tomato recipe, panzanella, roving locavore, tomato bread salad, tomato salad, tomato tart, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Mmmm… I have such a craving for a luscious tomato tart. Roasting brings out such intense flavors. And melted cheese: the deliciousness of the thought speaks for itself.

However, it’s pushing 90 today, and I won’t be turning on the oven. How to celebrate high tomato season with something a little simpler, more “rustic” and conducive to lazing around than the pretty spiral of tomato, mozz, and basil (though I have nothing against that salad!)?

Panzanella! A bread salad made with summer’s basics: stale bread, tomatoes, basil.

panz ingreds

The structure of this basic flavor combination provides a strong background for additions, if they come in as accents. Have some leftover anchovies or olives? A wedge of lemon? Toss in a few capers, too, from that bottle that always seems full. Some other backyard herbs would be nice too, as long as the basil sets the tone.

We’ll have this tonight, with grilled chicken. Killdeer folks: see you soon.

For the cooler nights later this week, though, I’ll be turning to the tart. I think I’ll try this recipe, recently posted in the Times.

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en route

Posted in Seafood, Whimsical, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, Nantucket bluefin tuna, Nantucket local food, roving locavore on August 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We’re on Nantucket for a bit this week. My cousin’s getting married, so our family (minus Peter, who’s at Breadloaf) is crashing in a mothbally cottage that sits on a rare high hill on this island, and would have a 360-degree view if it weren’t for the fog, clouds, and rain. “It’s ANOTHER blustery day!” shouts Jack, thrilled by any weather.

I’ve been enjoying local food steadily, but don’t have a steady stream of internet access. I’m sitting in a corner in the “Atheneum”–the town library–right now, but I forgot to upload the great pictures I took last night of three tunas being butchered dockside.

So… more on tuna and other treasures of the sea, and the organic farm, and Something Natural, later.

Jack and I enjoyed a simple meal on the ferry on the way over: slices of Jarlsberg, “crispy wheats,” amber ale, lemondade.

Jack ferry

His favorite part was watching the wake.

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escape

Posted in Cheese, Eggs, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, heirloom tomatoes, king arthur flour, local eating, local food, locavore, roving locavore, Tarentaise, Thistle Hill cheese, Vermont farmers' markets, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 11, 2009| 1 Comment »

This summer, while we live–on extended visits–with various units of extended family, my cooking life has been tyrannized. Not by non-omnivores or picky children so much as by the need to please everyone. How to do so? In our family, it’s with the Square Meal. Protein, veg, “starch,” bev.

Last night, I said, “forget it, I’m making what I want and I’m not cooking.” Well, I did cook, but just two 8-minute eggs for Jack and a handful of green beans. We ate a cold and warm assortment of fresh, ripe, local foods. Remember those heirloom tomatoes I bought on Saturday? Black and pink brandywines. I sliced them thick and sprinkled them with fresh mozzarella, basil chiffonade, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I cooked the green and yellow wax beans just a bit, and tossed them with leftover sweet corn that had been cut off the cob, and with an assortment of chopped herbs from the back yard. We also had Tarentaise, the cheese made by the Putnams of Thistle Hill Farm in North Pomfret. A bowlful of mixed greens with mustardy vinaigrette. A King Arthur baguette. Vinho Verde, the effervescent, airy as seagrass Portuguese white that I love.

I know, doesn’t sound like a very adventurous escape. Ah, well. It was a good meal.

And escape from the tyranny of square meals is a topic that warrants discussion. We eat that way quite a bit more at home, and not just because we’re busy parents of a busy four-year-old. It’s refreshing to eat picnics inside, or to make a meal of the humble egg.

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