Vermont food from a country kitchen

Veg Box Dinner – Stir Fry and Bok Choy with Chinese Black Beans

October 19th, 2011 / comments 3

I’ve traveled to Brighton, a seaside town sixty miles south of London, to visit my son Matthew while his wife, Alison, is in Australia on a business trip. Weekday mornings we take the train to the university where Matthew is teaching and we work – he writes and I write. We meet for mid-morning tea, lunch and mid-afternoon tea before heading home. During, between and after meals, our conversations regularly turn to food.

Matthew and Alison have a “veg” box from Riverford Farm delivered every Thursday. The organic vegetables and fruit come in a reusable cardboard box and are accompanied by seasonal recipes and news from the farm. The “veg” box, augmented with a bit of meat or fish, milk, cheese and eggs and miscellaneous items like fresh ginger and hot peppers from the grocer at the train station, is the center of their healthy and sustainable diet. This week’s box had leeks, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, parsnips, fennel, potatoes, onions and baby bok choy.

On Thursday, we had “veg” box stir-fry and bok choy with black beans for dinner. Here’s how Matthew did it: … read more

Concord Grape Focaccia

October 12th, 2011 / Comments 0

I found concord grapes in the market last weekend and they transported me back to my childhood and Ruby’s grape arbor. Ruby was a gardener and a cook who lived next door.

concord grapes co Concord Grape Focaccia

Concord Grapes Carol Egbert

She showed me how to use small clippers to harvest the bunches of fragrant, purple-black grapes. We sat on her back porch and watched birds feasting on grapes as we separated the ripe grapes from the stems, leaves and spider webs. Ruby always used the grapes we gathered to make enough grape jelly for a winter’s worth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. … read more

Celebrate Johnny Appleseed’s Birthday with Apple Butter

September 21st, 2011 / Comments 0

On September 26th, I’ll be celebrating John Chapman’s birthday with a bowl of apple sauce, a smear of apple jelly and a dollop of apple butter on toast. He was a barefoot itinerant arborist who wore a tin pot instead of a hat. I met this gentle man between the covers of a Golden Book when I was six, you probably know him as Johnny Appleseed.

When the sweet aroma of apples cooking to make applesauce and jelly as inspiration and a chance meeting with an overloaded apple tree, Charles gathered loads of apples. Here’s how I made a batch of apple butter: … read more

Vermont Flood, Friends & Apple Cake

September 7th, 2011 / comments 3

It has been a crazy week and a half. When our friends from Washington, DC, Annie and Andre, came to visit, we enjoyed idyllic sunny days, lovely drives on country lanes and wonderful meals made with Vermont vegetables and not much else except for the night that Andre made pasta from scratch. They planned to visit friends on the Connecticut coast and their daughter in Brooklyn on their way home. With warnings about hurricane Irene filling the air, we suggested that they stay with us until the storm had passed but Andre was certain that the storm would “fizzle out”. So, they left Vermont on Friday.

Locust Creek K Fiske Vermont Flood, Friends & Apple Cake

Locust Creek by Kathy Fiske

Saturday was a quiet day – laundry and leftovers. The rain that woke us on Sunday was heavy but not alarming. By noon, friends had moved their computers out of a riverside studio in their house on the bank of the Ottaquechee River. When Charles and I crossed the Quechee covered bridge just after noon, the river was high and roiling but still within its banks. … read more

Aga in the Kitchen – Fabada Beans and an Aga to Weather the Storm

September 1st, 2011 / comments 3

With the river roaring and bridges failing in Vermont, it was a treat to get a letter from my friend Char Gardner. Years ago we cooked together, taught nursery school together and owned a weaving and spinning shop together. She and her husband live in Baltimore and although we haven’t seen each other in years we have reconnected with the help of technology. Char has a wonderful story to tell about the technology in her kitchen – an Aga cooker that I am delighted to be able to share with each of you. From Char:

My Improv Partner in the Kitchen

I was well over fifty with a lifetime of cooking under my belt before I ever had the opportunity to choose a cooker from scratch. All those years accepting whatever stoves came my way, in sixteen moves to apartments and houses, city to country and back again, not counting temporary quarters in makeshift kitchens from the Middle East to the Baltic, I was never conscious of pining for any particular brand or model. But when finally faced with an irreparable stove, I surprised even myself by declaring that all I wanted was an Aga.

Had I been influenced by a constant diet of British novels? … read more

Peach Pie with Cardamom and Rum

August 31st, 2011 / Comments 0

We enjoyed the sour cream peach pie as dessert and being true New Englanders, at least where breakfast is concerned, ate the rest of the pie as breakfasts for the next few days, but that one pie didn’t solve the streusel vs. lattice debate. I had to make another pie. Fortunately, the market still had a supply of peaches. The elevated stature of peaches in mythology and folk tales suggested that I make a peach pie of elevated stature. Here’s how I did it: … read more