I made another quiche (filled with potato, kale, cheddar). As you may have noticed, it’s one of my staples— souffle pie never gets old. A friend was coming over for dinner and I made this, hot toddies, a green salad, and molten chocolate cake with maple-vanilla bean gelato. We were both quite pleased with the meal. It was a lovely Monday night dinner, and also lunch for the next couple of days. 

All of the green things came from the greenhouse at Amee Farm. 

Latke time- happy Hanukkah. (Taken with instagram)

Thanksgiving is a big deal in my family. Not the actual holiday, but the meal. More on that later.

For the moment, I just want to share a recipe with you. But first, a note about bread. My family eats a lot of bread. We love it. Eat With Bread is something said at nearly every meal we eat together. We are not afraid of carbs, or wheat, or gluten. Nor of butter. You will not find margarine in our refrigerators. We eat real food made with real things, and apologies are not made for this*. We eat bread. 

In 2008 I came up with these rolls for Thanksgiving. I’m not sure if they’re something my brother specifically asked for, or if he just liked them so much that in my mind I make them for him. But I do: these are the rolls I make for my brother. I’m sharing this with you ahead of time, without photos of my proces or the finished rolls, because they are delicious and well worth the work. 

Rich Buttery Dinner Rolls (makes ≈36 rolls)

Warm/melt over medium-low heat: 

• 1 c. yogurt
• 2 c. milk
• 1/2 c. butter

Remove from heat, let cool a bit, then add: 

• 2 T. yeast
• 3 T. sugar (or 2 T. maple syrup)
• 1 T. salt

Winter salad of arugula, beet greens, and pickled (in a rice vinegar brine) radishes, all from Amee Farm. (Taken with instagram)

This gorgeous garlic was grown by a friend of mine in northern Vermont. When broken open, this one head was seen to contain only four enormous cloves of some of the most amazing garlic I’ve had in a very long time. Peter G, what variety is this?  (Taken with instagram)

Eggplant is a vegetable I’ve begun to eat only in the past few years. The majority of what people make with eggplant is unappealing to me, so it really wan’t until I found caponata that I learned to like it. And now caponata is one of my staples, something I always have in my fridge. It’s great on bread bruschetta-style, probably the most common way of eating it. But it really shines for me when I come home from a long, cold day on the mountain and want a nice dinner for myself (I live alone) without spending hours on it. I cook a little pot of quinoa, stir in a generous spoonful of caponata, wilt some kale on it, and add pickled vegetables, seeds, dried fruit, hardboiled egg, sometimes feta, and whatever else is in my fridge. Bam: nearly-instant dinner that is delicious and still made from recognizable ingredients. 

This is what I put in my caponata: eggplant, onion, garlic, tomato, sweet peppers, celery, olives, capers, raisins, olive oil, salt, black pepper, sugar, vinegar. It is traditionally made with pine nuts and without peppers, according to the Silver Spoon. I say go with what you like. 

The eggplant and peppers in this batch came from the farm, the tomatoes from my mother’s garden. 

Dinner last night, the one that was eaten before we had pie, was quiche. This was a request made by the same nice boy who went grocery shopping for me. I made two quiches, identical in fillings, because my dinner guests were three boys with huge appetites. In fact, I’m completely amazed that I had any left at all to put away in my fridge. In any case, here’s what went in:

potato, onion, fennel, kale, basil, tomatoes, broccoli, seriously sharp cheddar (aka a little bit of everything)

Here’s how they were: awesome. Then again, you already know how I feel about quiche. In case you’ve forgotten, I give you exhibits A, B, and C. 

That mondo beet was so beautiful, if a little confused— was it a chioggia? A Detroit Red? After cutting it up and looking more closely, I’m still not sure. But it certainly was delicious. And my mother always grows fancy zucchini with undulating ridges that look like elegant sprockets in cross section. 

I met a friend at a swimming hole just down the road and the two of us basked in just how perfect a spot we were in. From where we were in the river you couldn’t see anything man-made at all, though we could hear cars going by on the road. The water temperature was perfect, and the ripples on the surface were like little prisms, casting tiny rainbows below on toes and rocks. After our swim we went back to my house for dinner, most of which came from the garden. 

Dinner last night: a kale salad very similar to the one on Friday (kale massaged with lime and salt, basil, carrots, radishes, english peas, sugar snap peas, sunflower seeds, raisins) with piles on top of gingered zucchini; black quinoa with caponata; a trio of roasted beets; hardboiled eggs. And sauvignon blanc made by the friend whose de-stemming party I went to a while back.

As two people who grew up here, spent time living in various other non-Vermont places, and have now moved back, the evening served up many welcome reminders of why we love it here. Please and Thank you.

I’ve left Vermont for a few days to visit family and friends. This was Tuesday night’s dinner at my aunt’s house: a salad made mostly of things from her garden; an eggplant spread she described as Romanian peasant food that her father, my grandfather, loved to make; mojitos (not shown here) filled with just-picked mint. 

Yes, the heat and humidity have returned. 

Hello, dinner.
Wherever you’re reading this, it’s probably really hot there. Vermont is no exception to the current heat wave. So I’ve been making and eating a lot of salads to cope.

In about ten minutes, I picked this in the garden: 

lettuce, sugar snap peas, english peas, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, chioggia beets, golden beet, basil, dill, red onion

After washing and chopping a bunch of this stuff, plus a cucumber from over near Middlebury, I cubed up the last of some Red Hen bread and threw it in the oven. While the croutons were baking I made salad dressing and caught up on my Words With Friends. Bam: perfect summer dinner. 

Here is yet another quiche. This one is filled with things from the garden: red onion, cauliflower, fennel, russian kale, thyme. Plus eggs from my neighbor, milk from over the mountain, and Vermont cheddar. 

Win.

Since dinner was happening at my mom’s house, I grabbed a big wooden salad bowl from her kitchen and filled it with things from the garden: 

lettuce, cauliflower, sugar snap peas, broccoli, kale, basil, dill, fennel, thyme, onions

And then I took all of that back to my house, danced around in the kitchen, and turned it into dinner. 

My cauliflower is prettier than your cauliflower. No, really: it is. It has white florets with purple undersides and lovely pale green stems. It is clearly superior.

Dinner took the form of: steamed aforementioned cauliflower, the russian kale shown beside it, purple chive flowers, dill (all from the garden); an egg from my neighbor, hardboiled; black quinoa. 

I’m not really sure what to call this, but I guess it could be described as italian stewed navy beans? It might also be described as having had to make room in my fridge for the things I brought home from the co-op today. This is what’s in it: 

onions, carrots, celery, fennel, navy beans, tomatoes, salt, black pepper, olive oil, thyme, rosemary, cabernet sauvignon, apple cider vinegar, a little sugar, 

This is how it tastes: delicious. Tomorrow it will be even better, after everything has sat together overnight.