FOOD ON THE FOOD

Two Years of Fun, Unnaturalness

Well, would you look at that?  Food on the Food is mentioned in today’s Boston Globe Magazine roundup of the best local blogs!  That’s pretty cool, given that my blog just turned two years old this month.  And especially, ahem, after what happened six months ago with the Globe and the misquote and the empty stripping threats.

So, I was reading along this morning, everything seemed to be going fine, my name was spelled correctly, both Tammys were fairly represented, all the facts appeared to be in good working order, when…wha?  “Unnatural?”  I had an “unnatural” fixation on someone?  Hmmph.  As if the USDA has a standard labeling system that categorizes the nutritiousness of our relationships.  God.  (Actually, that would come in pretty handy.  Could someone get on that?). 

Stupid Boston Globe, calling a spade a spade.  Anyway, if you want to check out some terrific local blogs, they’re here.  Universal Hub is a good one.  You may remember the other Tammy at Boston Food & Whine.  Many thanks to Michael Prager for including my quirky blog in the article, and also for calling me fun.  Because nobody ever calls me that.  Like ever. 

Ever ever ever.

Smoked Turkey Day

So, about Thanksgiving.  We had a great time with my in-laws’ family in the greater Worcester area, with lots of great food and too many laughs to count.  However, the morning leading up to the big event was a little chaotic. 

It started with smoke.  Lots of it.  Sudden, thick plumes of smoke coming from our kitchen aren’t necessarily unheard of around the holidays, but at the time they appeared, I wasn’t cooking anything at all.  I was in the shower, in fact.  I emerged from the bathroom to find myself engulfed in smoke of the electrical sort and to hear Husband make the casual observation that something might be burning.  Might, I shrieked?  Then, I pounced on the children.

Me: Kids, get your coats on.

Them: Why?  Why?

Me: SMOKE!  Put your coats on now.

Them: Why?  I don’t want to.

Me: FIRE!  Put your shoes on.

Them: Fire?  Where, Mommy?  I don’t want my shoes.

Me: SMOKE!!  FIRE!!  STOP, DROP, AND ROLL!  PUT YOUR GODDAMNED COATS ON!!!

Clearly, we need to practice fire drills.  I dragged them coatless and shoeless out the door, dialing 911 with my teeth, while Husband tried to locate the source of the smoke and debated with himself whether or not this situation really qualified as an emergency.  Meanwhile, we arrived at our neighbor’s doorstep, me in my wet hair, granny bathrobe, kitchen clogs, and, inexplicably, one black stocking pulled up to the knee.  In the reflection of the storm door, I caught a glimpse of what I’m going to look like 30 years from now, and the future’s not bright.

The entire City of Waltham fire department showed up.  Six fire trucks, maybe a dozen firefighters.  All of them thinking, I can only assume, that there better fucking be some kind of a fire.  I tried to assess whether any of them had started eating turkey, yet.  Might they be too drowsy to fight any potential fires?  Are their families going to kill me?  What if they’re not back in time for pie?  Will they come back and set the rest of my house on fire in the night? 

Anyway, it took a bit of time but they did locate the source.  A component of the refrigerator had burnt itself out and melted itself down, but there was no damage to the surrounding walls.  My freshly painted kitchen walls.  Can you imagine how pissed I would have been?  Yeah, my house is still standing, BUT DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO PAINT THAT KITCHEN? 

I can think of no one so thankful this Thanksgiving than us.  Best of all, the firemen were back to the station well before pie.  Thank you, Firefighters! 

Strangers with Poultry

Why do I always find myself exchanging money for meat products out of the back of someone’s car?  Shouldn’t I be more concerned about my reputation?  Pffft.  No.  Just hand over the turkeys and let’s skip the half-hearted cuddling, shall we?  Business is business.

The lovely Miss. Von Schtoop of Calamity Shazaam in the Kitchen, has been going on and on and on about Diemand Farm turkeys out in western Mass., so when she offered to pick one up for me during her annual pre-Thanksgiving Turkey Shoot, I just had to find out what all the fuss was about.  Plus, I'll admit, I was curious to meet her.  Pam of Cave Cibum, also a stranger to me, went along, too.  Meanwhile, I stayed home and considered which of the things on my mounting To Do list should be ignored first.

Both were remarkably cheery when they arrived at my house around dusk after the 160-mile round trip.  Perhaps that was because the trunk was jam-packed with turkey products: sausages and stock and eggs and the birds themselves.  I came skipping down my steps, lalalaaaalalaaa, eager to receive my shipment, all limber from not having driven anywhere all day, bladder blissfully empty.  I’m sure they wanted to punch me in the face.  But they didn’t, and I was thankful.

So, now I have my turkey (and a chicken, plus two eggs they stuffed into my coat pockets).  Woo hoo!  But that wasn’t my assignment for Thanksgiving.  My assignment was to bring dessert.  Hmmmm.  So, I guess we’ll be having turkey for Christmas, then, too?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chocolate Fix

Now that the cold, dark, sickly, depressing season is upon us (which is made even less tolerable by the seepage of premature Christmas music), comfort food has become paramount once again.  And so I have instituted Sunday family dinners with my dad, effective immediately. 

Our first feast: roasted leg of Codman Farm lamb with rosemary, garlic, and a red wine pan sauce, turnip and potato gratin, and braised kale.  For dessert, we had molten chocolate cakes spiked with cognac.  Because, let’s face it, that was the only way my dad was going to eat his kale.  And turnips.  Weird how the lamb disappeared so quickly, though.  (He is his daughter’s father, after all.)

This is not the same kind of chocolate cake that Bill Cosby spoke so highly of as part of a balanced breakfast.  These are more like individual chocolate soufflés encased in chocolate cake.  You know, the kind you have to order at the same time as your meal at an expensive restaurant so they’ll be done in time.  I was sure the kids wouldn’t like them at all, being gooey in the middle and frostingless and somewhat boozy.  But they did, goddamnit.  I had hoped the remaining cakes would last me until at least Wednesday.  Nope, just Monday.  Round about 7 a.m.  When I ate the last one out of the microwave while the kids had Chex.

 

Molten Chocolate Cakes

Don’t worry, they get more alcohol than this in their cough medicine.

9 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 Tbsp. cognac
4 eggs, separated
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 Tbsp. cake flour
Confectioner’s sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 400°F.  Butter 6 individual ramekins and dust lightly with flour, shaking out any extra.

In a double-boiler, combine chocolate, butter, and cognac, and stir until melted and smooth.  (No double-boiler?  No problem.  Just set a large metal bowl over a medium pan of simmering water and proceed.  The steam from the water will heat the bowl enough to melt the chocolate without scorching.  Oven mitts are recommended.)  Remove from heat.

Beat the egg whites in a medium bowl until they hold stiff peaks.  In a separate large bowl, beat the yolks and sugar until the color lightens and the mixture falls off the beaters like ribbons.  Gently fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture.  Sift the cake flour over the egg mixture and fold in.  Add the chocolate mixture and fold in.  You want the batter to be uniform color but still maintain as much of its airy lightness as possible.  Spoon batter into ramekins.  (You can refrigerate them, covered, for several hours at this point.)

Set dishes on a baking sheet and bake 10-12 minutes until they rise and the tops just start to crack.  Do not overbake.  Remember, you want the centers to basically be hot batter.  Invert onto a plate and then onto serving plates.  Dust with confectioner’s sugar and serve immediately.

No, This is Not a Cat Blog

However, I had to put my cat to sleep, so that’s what we’ve got to work with today.

What can I say about Mr. Nathan?  He was a cat.  He was gray.  He was none too bright.  He was also my very first pet (if you don’t count all those fish I killed).  As college seniors, my BFF and I went down to the Union Square animal shelter looking for some cute decoys to stall our biological clocks for as long as humanly possible.  One little kitten crawled into my lap and fell asleep.  I swooned.  At the time, I didn’t realize he was only looking for a warm place to sleep, it didn’t matter where (a trait that would remain constant throughout his 14 years).  No, I thought he was claiming me.  And I wanted to be claimed.

He was a loyal friend, Mr. Nathan.  He saw me through five apartments, six jobs, and one very persistent boyfriend.  Did he complain when I got married, had kids, and then barely paid him any attention?  Yes, actually, he did complain about that.  As he should have.  But did he complain when I actually named one of the kids a variation of his own name, because it really was one of the few names I liked, thereby infringing on the only thing he could truly call his own?  He probably complained about that, too.  I don’t speak cat.  But the point is that he didn’t throw in the towel.  He might have run away a couple of times, but he always came back.

In the end, it was a tumor blocking his intestines that promised to starve him to death before too long, so we made a call.  No cat chemo.  No surgery.  Just a week of full-on attention like the good old days.  Jazz and tuna fish milkshakes. 

I loved that stupid cat.

(Or was he a llama?)

Sine of the Times

By now I’m sure we all know that the four food groups most of us grew up with are obsolete and have now been replaced with a nutrition pyramid.  Yes, the USDA has gone all trigonometric on our asses.  Their reasoning: not all food groups are created equal.  Some are more equal than others. 

I can’t understand this new food pyramid, though.  It has all these stripes running from top to bottom that look more or less the same in size.  I mean, if you’re going to use a triangle to illustrate your point, then at least take advantage of what a triangle has to offer.  The opportunity to discriminate.  Put the larger stripes on the bottom and the smaller stripes at the top.  Otherwise, you might as well have just added a couple of boxes to the original four-square diagram and called it a rectangle.  Or, better yet, just use a circle and cut out pie slices because that’s all we’re going to eat anyway.  Pie.

I prefer the previous version of the food pyramid, myself.  It’s more intuitive. 

I don’t have a nutrition degree, so I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but then accuracy’s not very important to me.  Mostly, I just like the way delicious, bulky carbs fill out the wide foundation.  Then come the (local) fruits and vegetables to shore up the middle.  Dairy and meat taper off towards the top.  And fats and sugars glisten threateningly at the apex, like the pointy end of an insulin needle.  It’s maybe not the exact order I would have put things in, but then the USDA has PhDs and shit.

Anyway, I bring this up because something went horribly wrong with the food pyramid that the Kindergartener brought home from school yesterday.  If by wrong I mean very, very right.  It takes a while for new information to trickle down to the public schools, so they’re working off the old pyramid.  Can you spot the problem?

I Heart My Waitress

I totally forgot to post this at the time, but Husband and I went out to dinner for my birthday last month.  Since it was the Eat Local Challenge, we (I) wanted to go to a place where the chef really valued local ingredients.  This is not hard to find in Boston.  Most of the best area chefs buy a goodly portion of their produce locally, so it was really just a matter of picking a place.  There’s Steve Johnson’s Rendezvous.  Ana Sortun’s Oleana.  Craigie on Main.  Hungry Mother.  Harvest.  Why are all of these in Cambridge?  They do it in Boston, too, I swear.

We decided on the Garden at the Cellar outside Central Square.  The chef, Will Gilson, is the son of farmers who run The Herb Lyceum in Groton.  I figured he must really, really like local produce.  Also, according to certain customer reviews, word is that the chef is pretty tasty himself (be sure to read the one by Jennifer S.).  And, well, there is a newly opened position on my blog…

Whenever we go out to eat, I end up liking Husband’s meal better.  Like 100% of the time.  But, I’m starting to catch on.  When Husband decided what to order, I swooped in and stole his idea because it was my birthday, not his.  And, you know what?  It worked.  My grilled pork chop with roasted apples, Brussels sprout-bacon hash, and fingerling potato au gratin had me doing all the annoying Rachael Ray eye-rolling and moaning.  And if you don’t think I’ll be stealing the idea of hashing Brussels sprouts with bacon, then you’re obviously new to my blog.  Husband’s salmon was excellent, too, by the way.  Organically farmed, whatever that means.  But I still liked mine better.

Also, we had one of the most beautiful small plates I’ve ever seen.  It was thick curls of grilled calamari, perfectly tender, scattered with sprouts and edible flower petals all basking gently on some kind of sauce.  It all worked so well together, I couldn’t even identify the sauce.  It was sauce.  That’s all I know.  Anyway, it was spectacular-looking on its long, rectangular plate, but more importantly, it tasted amazing. 

But excellent food aside, I want to talk about service.  Great service is hard to find, and yet it’s so crucial to the overall dining experience.  Poor service affects how you experience the food.  But, admittedly, it’s also very subjective.  Every diner has different expectations and it really has a lot to do with individual personalities and your own mood, blah, blah, blah.  So, when you have a server who really clicks with you and does a good job almost effortlessly, it’s like magic.  My particular perfect waitress can be found at the Garden at the Cellar.  She was knowledgeable.  She was attentive without hovering.  She smiled often and her face didn’t crack under the strain of it.  And when I told her that I didn’t like my cocktail, did she get all defensive and hurl my glass across the room to smash against the bar?  No.  No, she did not.  She simply asked why and we talked about what I might like better.  Her suggestion was perfect.  I offered to pay for it, but she didn’t charge me. 

They don’t serve dessert or coffee at the Garden, just some nice chocolates with the bill.  I was secretly grateful.  I can’t not order dessert if it’s on offer, and I will ask unreasonable things from my digestive organs in order to cram some sugar into a space that’s already bursting beyond reason.  The focus here really is on the food.

The end result?  A fabulous birthday for me and a big-ass tip for my server.  Win-win.

Farewell to the Muse

According to the person of questionable sense who hijacked my body, I decided not to join Drumlin’s Winter CSA this year.  I have yet to fully understand the logic behind this decision, especially given my recent cost analysis, but I think it had something to do with the avalanche of squash.  If you need me, I’ll be furiously digging a root cellar under my house to keep the five or six local vegetables I have fresh throughout the winter.

Ah well, the Farmer has tolerated my overbearing affection longer than any halfway reasonable person should have to (without alerting the authorities, I might add).  And so I believe it’s time for us to bid him farewell.  He is hereby retired from this blog so that he might tend to his crops unmolested by excitable food writers.  Well, this one anyway.  I can’t speak for them all.  It’s pretty rare to come across someone who captures your imagination the way he clearly did, but now it’s time to get back to real life.  Normal Social Boundaries, reactivate.

What the hell am I going to write about now?

You’ll send him off right, won’t you?

An In-Depth Financial Analysis

You might want to chug a Red Bull before reading this post, just FYI.

So, I saved all the receipts from the Eat Local Challenge.  However, when I went to compare them to our regular food budget, I remembered that I had stopped tracking our family budget two years ago when the numbers started getting scary.  Which is always the right strategy.  To back away from cold, hard prudence and retreat into the cozy but precariously perched nest of ignorance.

Without those figures, it’s hard to give a fully accurate reading of how our spending changed last month.  Still, I was able to make a few observations based on the numbers I had:

• Local dairy is expensive.  Local milk and butter are about double the price of the generic brand at the local supermarket.  Apparently growth hormones really keep costs down.  Fortunately, I figured out early on that Russo’s carries Cabot butter at $1 per pound cheaper ($3.69!!!) than the same exact thing at Shaw’s ($4.69?).  Russo’s also sells local milk at $4.49 per gallon (compared to $3.99 for a gallon of regular milk at Shaw’s), which seems quite reasonable.  No wonder it’s always so effing crowded at Russo's.  Local cheese is more expensive, too, but that’s a whole different animal and so I’m not even going to make comparisons between Westfield Farm goat cheese and Kraft singles.

• Local meat is expensive.  Especially the kind raised like this:

Meat from small, local farms can be twice, even three times as expensive as supermarket meat.  Why?  Because conscientiously raised animals take longer to reach market weight when they can move around and eat healthy food and frolic and pursue a liberal arts degree.  Plus, waste management is included up front in the price of the meat, instead of ignored and left as a toxic waste problem for our children to deal with (my kids say thanks!).

I spent $4.50/lb. on a whole chicken from a local, certified organic farm versus $1.69/lb. for the kind from the chicken factories.  That’s $18 for a 4-lb. chicken versus less than $7.  That qualifies as prohibitively expensive.  Or maybe that’s just how much it costs to raise chickens properly.  However, prices vary from meat to meat, farm to farm.  At Codman Farm, for example, where I’m particularly enamored with their pork and lamb (and now goat!), I bought pork chops for $5.50/lb. versus $4.69/lb. for supermarket chops.  And there is no comparison.  At all.  I’d even be willing to eat less of the better, slightly more expensive meat.  (The less part is coming soon, I swear!)

• Local sweeteners are expensive.  Like honey and maple products (we used no cane sugar or corn syrup all month).  We spent about $60 to more or less maintain the same level of sweetness we’ve come to expect in our lives.  Can you believe that?  Sixty dollars!  We didn’t even have dessert every night.  On a strict budget, we’d be lucky to have dessert once a week.  Oh, how we take for granted the sweet stuff in our daily lives.  (Pass the Halloween candy.)

• Vegetables are cheap.  I’m still convinced that a vegetable CSA, depending on how well it’s run and the weather, is a good value.  We paid about $30/week for two huge grocery bags full of vegetables, though share size ebbs and flows with the season, obviously.  According to the Drumlin Summer CSA’s end-of-season cost summary, which tallies up how much of each fruit/vegetable we got, assigns it a value (comparable to regular supermarket prices), adds it up, and then subtracts that number from what we paid in the beginning of the season, we saved $200 over the whole summer.  Plus, consider that the quality is way better than trucked-in produce, and by getting inundated with vegetables, you end up spending less money on more expensive foods you would have otherwise bought.  CSAs are good.

• Riding a bike is fun.  Though it's maybe not the most efficient way to grocery shop.  We saved maybe $5 in gas all month.  That’s not even really accurate because I made twice as many trips to the store due to the small storage capacity.  Maybe $2?  However, I did save on a gym membership that I would have paid for and then never used, so there’s that.  And can you really put a price on a smile?

In total, subtracting my $2 bicycle credit and the $20 we saved through Drumlin’s CSA, we spent just under $1,000 on local food here in Massachusetts in October for a family of four (two adults, two small kids).  We normally budget about $850.  It should be noted that $200 went toward restaurants and emergency takeout and $75 went toward booze.  Normally, we don’t consume that much alcohol or go out to eat that much, so I’m tempted to subtract that all out to make it look like a normal month.  Then we would have actually come in under budget.  But that also would have meant more cooking for me and perhaps checking myself into a psychiatric facility, so let's just keep it.

I have a more detailed breakdown of the numbers (amount spent on vegetables vs. meat, etc.), but I can’t bring myself to believe that you care.  So, that’s it.  You can wake up now.  Dismissed.

Remember the UPS Man

Have you ever made such a spectacular fool out of yourself that the more you try to explain, the worse it gets? 

Whenever this occurs (fairly frequently, I might add), it reminds me of the time I got my wisdom teeth pulled.  I was in my studio apartment in godforsaken Malden waiting for the Novocain to wear off when the UPS guy arrived.  He was cute and I was on pain meds, so I set about answering his delivery-related questions with much enthusiasm, forgetting, of course, that my mouth wasn’t working.  And, well, there’s no other way to put it…I sounded like I was retarded.  A retarded adult living alone with her two cats in a one-room, rent-controlled apartment in the middle of nowhere.  The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.  And the more I gestured wildly about dental procedures and fumbled around for a pen and paper to clarify, the more he backed himself down the hallway, and the more I tried to sponge off the drool and reassure him that no, no, I’m actually not retarded, while sounding completely, 100% retarded. 

Someday, they’ll find an antidote for bruised pride—something better than time, which takes too long.  Until then, take my advice and remember the UPS man.  Shut your trap, and don’t open it again until you're alone with a plate of turnovers sitting in front of you.  Cranberry cardamom or fig with blue cheese and walnut, for example.  You’ll thank me later.

Cranberry Cardamom Turnovers

I love these as is, but one of you should put a little orange rind in there and see what happens.  For the fig version, simply slice fresh figs into thickish ovals (no pre-cooking required), overlap three or four to a turnover, dot with blue cheese (I wished I had used more), and sprinkle with chopped walnuts before sealing them up. 

Crust
2 cups flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
12 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
10-12 Tbsp. ice water

Filling
1 cup cranberries
½ cup sugar
¼ cup water
½ tsp. cardamom

1 egg, beaten

For the crust, mix flour, sugar, and salt in food processor.  Add cold butter and pulse in 1-second beats until butter is the size of small peas (around 20 pulses).  Dump mixture into a large bowl and add ice water, a few tablespoons at a time, fluffing with a fork until gently absorbed.  You don’t want it wet and sticky, but if there’s too much dry flour, the dough won’t come together right.  It should just hold together when you press on it.  Don’t knead or it will become too tough.  Tear off two pieces of plastic wrap.  Dump half of the dough mixture in the middle of each, and flatten the mixture into disks (or rectangles or rhombi) about a half-inch thick, using the plastic wrap to help shape and compress them.  Wrap tightly and refrigerate until ready to use (or at least a half hour to let the gluten relax).

Meanwhile, in a small pot, bring cranberries, sugar, water, and cardamom to a boil and simmer on low, 15-20 minutes, until berries burst and thicken.  Let cool.

Preheat oven to 425°F.  Line sheet pans with parchment paper.  Flour your counter and rolling pin well (the dough shouldn’t stick at all).  Take one of the disks (keep the other refrigerated) and roll it out about ¼-inch thick.  Roll from the middle out in all directions.  Don’t grind the dough down into the counter—push it out to the sides.  If the dough sticks, sprinkle more flour.  A bench scraper comes in really handy for loosening stuck dough.

Cut dough into rectangles about 3 inches wide by 9 inches long, or whatever looks like a reasonable turnover size once you fold it in half.  Place filling on one side of dough, leaving space all around the perimeter to seal it up.  Fold dough over and press edges to seal.  If the dough doesn’t stick to itself, run a wet finger in between.  Crimp edges with a fork.  Cut steam vents in top crust with a knife.  Brush with beaten egg and set gently on parchment-lined pan.  Repeat with remaining dough (any leftover scraps can be gathered up and re-rolled).  Bake 15-20 minutes, until crust turns golden brown.  Let cool.  Makes about 12.

But Not NECCO Wafers

Even though the Eat Local Challenge is but a distant memory, I’ve still been having these urges to itemize all my meals for you.  But I won’t give in, I won’t.  Every time I feel it coming on, I have a piece of Halloween candy instead.  Which means if I actually were to itemize my meals, they would look like this:

Breakfast:
Halloween candy

Snack:
Halloween candy

Lunch:
Halloween candy

Dinner:
Halloween candy and, wait, wait……Halloween candy.

Such are the sacrifices I make for my best, best Internet friends.

Eat Local Challenge by the Numbers

Loaves of bread baked in October: 11
With a bread machine: 0
Shopping trips made: 14
Number of miles biked: 31
Pounds of butter bought: 6
Pounds of weight lost: 0
Apples consumed: 4,006
Number of unhappy children at snack time: 2
Husbands who cheated: 1
Survivors: 4 out of 4
Local farms supported: 33

Mercy

Farewell October.  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  Slammmmmm.

So, yeah.  The Eat Local Challenge is hard in Massachusetts in October.  Don’t let me tell you otherwise two months from now, for I would be a liar.  It surprised me because, in a normal month, about 70% of the stuff we eat originates locally, but it's the last 30% that's a real challenge to convert (hence the name, I guess).  Plus, I’m a big baby.  So I’m out of garlic.  Boo hoo.  I swear to god, though, it felt like the end of the world at the time.

High Points
Riding my bike to the markets (fun!)
Raspberries
Locally grown ginger
Finding wine I consistently like
Pancakes and bacon
Indian food
Shepherd’s pie made with local beer
Maple ice cream
Finding stuff I made ahead of time in the freezer

Low Points
Our breakfast repertoire
Our lunch repertoire
Waaaaaay too many apples
My whining
My mental health
My blog stats

Anyway, I learned a lot.  Remember, the important thing to take away from this is NOT that the Eat Local Challenge is crazy and impossible.  It’s that incorporating local products into your lives is actually much easier than you think.  When you’re not doing it all the time.  Every second of the day.  Hold me.

***

Eat Local Challenge Recap: 10/28-10/31

Tuesday, October 28
Breakfast: Yogurt, toast with jam, cranberry juice

Lunch: Chicken sandwich with melted cheese and homemade pickles.  Kids had hard-boiled eggs, bread and butter, cheese, apples, and carrot sticks.

Snack: Toasted pumpkin seeds

Dinner: Eggplant rolatini with tomato sauce (basically eggplant parm with a ricotta filling), garlicky turnip greens, apples.  Maple ice cream.

Wednesday, October 29
Breakfast: Yogurt, granola, cranberry juice

Lunch: Leftover bluefish and green beans.  Kids had peanut butter and jelly, apples, turnips, and cheese.

Snack: Pears

Dinner: Bacon, mashed sweet potatoes, and jalapeño cornbread.  Maple ice cream.

Thursday, October 30
Breakfast: Yogurt, toast with jam, cranberry juice

Snack: Pears

Lunch: Radish sandwiches and apple.  Kids had hard-boiled eggs, cheese, bread, radishes, and apples.

Dinner: Shepherd’s pie with beef, carrots, green beans, and mashed potatoes.  Pumpkin pie.

Friday, October 31
Breakfast: Yogurt, toast with honey, apple cider

Lunch: Leftover eggplant rolatini, apple.  Kids had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese, apples, and radishes.

Dinner: Kids had leftover shepherd’s pie.  Adults had wine, baguette, and a local cheese plate.  And Halloween candy.

Sources:
Drumlin Farm, Lincoln, MA: Cucumbers, pumpkins, tarragon, eggplant, tomatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, hot peppers, radishes, green beans, potatoes

Milk: Stonyfield Farm, Londonderry, NH
Butter, sour cream: Cabot, Cabot, VT
Eggs: Chip-In Farm, Bedford, MA (Russo’s)
Yogurt: Stonyfield Farm, Londonderry, NH
Cheese: Cabot, Cabot, VT; Westfield Farm, Hubbardston, MA; Great Hill Blue, Marion, MA; Blythedale Farm, Corinth, VT
Ricotta: Purity Cheese, Quincy, MA (Russo's)
Flour: Wood Prairie Farm, Bridgewater, ME (mail order); King Arthur Flour, Norwich, VT
Cornmeal: Gray’s Grist Mill, Westport, MA
Honey: Golden Meadow, Reseska Apiaries, Holliston, MA (Russo's)
Jam: Trappist, Saint Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer, MA
Hot pepper jelly: Olde Nourse Farm, Westborough, MA
Peanut butter: Teddie, Everett, MA
Maple syrup, maple sugar: The Warren Farm & Sugarhouse, North Brookfield, MA (Waltham Farmer’s Market)
Apples: Autumn Hills Orchard, Groton, MA
Apple cider: Box Mill Farms, Carver Hill Orchard, Stow, MA (Russo's)
Cranberry juice: Ocean Spray, Lakeville-Middleboro, MA
Apple cider vinegar: Carlson Orchards, Harvard, MA (Russo's)
Mustard: Raye’s, Eastport, ME (mail order)
Garlic, chicken: Butter Brook Farm, Acton, MA (In Season)
Onions, turnips, carrots: Dick’s Market Garden, Lunenburg, MA (Waltham Farmer’s Market)
Pears, baguettes: Russo’s, Watertown, MA
Bluefish: Steamers, Newton, MA
Bacon, stew beef: Codman Farm, Lincoln, MA
Beer: Berkshire Brewing Co. "Shabadoo" Black and Tan Ale, South Deerfield, MA; Smuttynose Brewing Co. Pumpkin Ale, Portsmouth, NH
Wine: Westport Rivers Chardonnay, Westport, MA