Now Norma Knits

Two Posts in Two Days -- The Beginning of a Trend?

Cookie asked:  Yeah but did you eat at the diner? ;^)

Well, I'm glad you asked, Cookie. We sure did. We ate at the [old] Eveready Diner on Friday night, and I am sorry to report that everything was bad that night. Everything! If that had been the first time we had gone there, we never would have gone back. Thankfully, we had a long history of happy meals there, or we would not be able to forgive the cocktails that tasted like cough syrup and were spilling over the sides of the glasses. (Tip to makers of margaritas: If it's splashing over the side, the salt rim is washed away, and Norma, for one, is not happy -- even assuming that the drink was palatable otherwise, which it really wasn't.) In addition, that was my first taste of alcohol since being on these meds, and it really did not sit well, so that was my mistake.

The mac & cheese was at best uninspired (and we've had some really killer mac & cheese at that place in years past). The burgers were likewise rather tasteless and unimpressive.

We could not understand a word that came out of the mouth of the server. Correction: I, you will recall, am a professional listener. And so I had to translate everything he mumbled to my tablemates. Sandy just started saying, "Yeah," to everything he said, and I'd translate after he left. The whole night was just a bit of a disaster. 

It's not just that they were super-busy, because they have ALWAYS been super-busy all those many other times we've gone there and enjoyed great food, great service, great cocktails. It appears that they have sent all their good staff and good food over to the brand-spanking-new one that they built directly across from the fairgrounds.

That's me and Jenn walking in for breakfast at the new place.

It was fabulous.

All the same fixtures and decor and menu as the original, but so clean and new and shiny, with the same great food and wonderful service we've come to expect from the Eveready. 

Win! (With a caveat: We only ate breakfast there -- twice. So I can't report on lunch or dinner success or failure.)

We are hoping that our bad experience that Friday night was just a fluke.

Hey! That's two posts in two days! I have vowed to try to do better with the blog. It is so easy to get out of a good habit, isn't it? I've even saved up some content so I have more to blog about later. (Smart me.) 

 

Peeps The Way Nature Intended

As an Easter special cocktail garnish.

"The Peep" cocktail from Shore Acres in North Hero, Vermont:  Raspberry vodka, chambord, grenadine, champagne & Peep garnish. With an added secret ingredient, according to Mike, their excellent drink-slinger.

The rest of my meal was equally impressive:  mesclun salad with honey-lavender vinaigrette (omg, good!) and spinach-stuffed leg of lamb with some sort of amazing mashed potatoes and vegetables. The bread was amayyyyyyzinnnnnng. And for dessert, I had a really out-of-the-ordinary strawberry shortcake: lavender-and-honey marinated strawberries over a lemon-oat biscuit, with Starbucks coffee.

Zoinks. Good thing I had my run beforehand.

 

The Highly Unsophisticated Wine Buyer

When it comes to buying wine, I make no pretenses: I don't know what I'm doing. My number one priority is a cool label or a catchy name. Trailer Trash R Us, pretty much. 

 

I got so much mileage out of the little black dress I wore the other day, and this label says something on the back to the effect of "classic; goes with everything," just like the kind of LBD you wear, and it says it's from France, you know. So what could be bad? 

And the one about the goats... well. We're fiber people, right? And the name is a word play on Côtes du Rhône. That company also has a wine called Bored Doe. 

Don't judge me.

 

How To Get Through Tough Times

Surround yourself with wonderful people!

Carol and her family stopped by my town for a visit on their way to Montreal a few days ago. We took time out for a relaxing cocktail at One Federal, and I got a head start on indoctrinating her into French Canadian culture by sharing with her a plate of authentic (I guess, or as near as you can get from a true border town) French Canadian poutine before she crossed the border into Canada.

Truth be told, I had never had it either, except for the lobster poutine I had in Nova Scotia, which was actually kind of bland. One Federal's was much more tasty.

Call it The Summer of Poutine for me. Never too late to experience the good life, I say.

Yeah, baby. Smile, Carol!

Poutine and mojitos, a multi-cultural feast if I ever saw one!

We Got Yer Garlic Right Heyah

Comestibles That Came Home

Gooseberry jam made at the Acadian Museum:

As you can see, I have already - ahem - sampled it. My mom says that her father (who lived in rural Quebec) loved gooseberry jam, which she pronounces GOOZberry, which I assume is the way he pronounced it. He lived to be 95, so I figure it must be good for one's health. (Or it could be that it was something else -- the thing my grandmother believed was good for his health -- which is a shot of whiskey in his tea every morning despite the fact that he claimed to be a teetotaler. Boy, did my grandmother make good tea, he assumed! Nobody else makes good tea like you do, Ma! [that's what he called her] Must be because she was a nurse. Haha. Or it could just be good genes. The longevity genes, I haz them.)

I'd never tried goozberry jam, so when I saw it there I just had to buy some for me and for my mom. The man there who made it said it is made with just two ingredients -- goozberries and sugar. So it meets the Michael Pollan rule of eating nothing that contains more than five ingredients. Good enough for me. And oh, so tasty. 

A very special olive oil and a very special vinegar:

On Commercial Street in Portland, Maine, a shop whose name I have unfortunately forgotten had the most wonderful selection of oils and vinegars to sample. A sip of oil, a sip of vinegar, a sip of oil, a sip of vinegar. Yum! It was amazing to taste the differences. I truly could TASTE the differences and put words to the flavors:  "This one tastes like grass. This one is acidic and fizzy. This one tastes like cigar smoke." 

People do that with wine [and cheese] all the time, but up till now I've always thought, "Oh, how pretentious!" when they go on: "Figgy, with some smoke and a touch of plums; a little vinegar, with a light chocolate finish." Pfffffft.

I think I have a pretty sophisticated palate most of the time, but it all tastes like wine [or cheese] to me. I can say, "Mmmm, this tastes GREAT! I love this!" but it all just tastes like wine. Or cheese.

Apparently I'm an oil-and-vinegar girl, and not a wine or cheese girl. Or maybe I will be all over the wine and cheese subtleties when I grow up or something. We did buy a Nova Scotia wine that a woman in the liquor store highly recommended, and it turned out to be really just too sweet for my taste -- so much so that I couldn't finish my glass. So maybe I'm getting there. However, the local wine that Paula and Sandy bought the day before was much better. They chose it because the label was pretty, which is often what I do, and it just goes to show you...what, I'm not sure.

But anyway, I loved the California Manzanillo oil because it really tastes like ....... olives.  Clean, pure, true-young-olivey taste. Yummmmmdelicious! Can't wait to have some on salad. And I love the way they bottled it in the sexy bottles at the shop. And the pomegranate balsamic really hit a note with me. 

Then at Maine's Pantry, I went a little bit crazy with the Stonewall Kitchen jams and toppings they had. We get a few of these things in some of my local stores, but not this great variety. I'm just such a jamhead, really. There was some dark chocolate-salted-caramel sauce that didn't make it past me and Sandy, the hotel room, and a couple of spoons. Lucky for my waistline, we forgot the rest of the jar at Paula's. Enjoy it, Paula!

Also at Maine's Pantry, Mr. Jefferies got a couple treats:

The lobster treats are a huge hit. The blueberry ones, not so much. He says we can donate those to the pet shelter if we want. Or the compost pile.

Is it kind of a hoot how he is in the exact same pose for two of these photos, but his octopus has been moved? Looks kind of like I Photoshopped him in, eh? Translation: He wants me to play with him, and I was playing with him in between setting up shots. But he also wants to focus on the activity on the street in case any people-chasing or dog-chasing emergency comes up or something. He is just too funny, that boy.

 

A Day In The Life: Nova Scotian Acadians

Yesterday was foggy, a bit cool, and a bit rainy -- an absolutely perfect day to build a fire

lie low, and hang out at Paula's home, watching Lucy Neatby DVDs (right, this has nothing at all to do with being Acadian)

and cooking an authentic Acadian meal.

Sandy had purchased a couple of cookbooks earlier in the week.

We pored over them and decided on a menu, then went shopping for the essential ingredients, like:

and grated potatoes, which, together with perhaps butter and molasses (the four basic food groups?), are found pretty much in every.SINGLE.recipe. Those Acadians, they are/were a simple people. 

And the Acadians traditionally did not eat many vegetables. It says so in all the books. 

So no green stuff.

This was our menu:

Pork & Chicken Rappie Pie. Being thrifty like the Acadians, we used our leftover pork chops from the night before, supplemented with a couple of chicken legs. This was, as near as we can tell, about four times the meat that ACTUALLY should be in a Rappie Pie. (recipe: "Put [no quantity given] meat or chicken in the pot with 30 cups water.") Get that? 30 cups water, quantity given. Meat? Well, however much you have or don't have. 

Pretty much like stone soup, as near as we can tell. 

In the Rappie Pie that we tasted at a restaurant a few days ago, we found one tiny sliver of chicken in a sea of grated potato.

San was in charge of the Rappie Pie. If I do say so, it turned out pretty photogenic, next to the fire. 

The rest of the meal:

Mashed turnips

Corn on the cob

Buttermilk Pie

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So after food shopping, with a few side trips to some amazing art galleries, we chopped and mixed and sauteed and baked. 

I was in charge of the buttermilk pie. This, my friends, is my first-ever lard pie crust. And I'm chagrined to say that I am SOLD on lard pie crust. This pie was awesome, if I do say so.

First rule against modern cuisine: Do not cook a monochromatic meal. (This meal was brought to you by the color YELLOW.) Oh, and do not put lard in EV-ERY-THING; minor detail. But the Acadians lived long lives, so this kind of eating apparently served them well enough.

A true conversation:

Norma:  Sandy, do you want butter for your corn?

Sandy:  No. No butter.

Norma: Lard, then?

And last evening, three out of three knitters polled decided that it was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS.

The Acadian flag

 

 

North Hero House -- A Restaurant Review

We had the pleasure of having dinner at the North Hero House one night last week. The place is a fixture in the center of North Hero, which is just up the road from where I grew up. It provided seasonal employment over the years for a good number of people around there. A couple of my teenage friends, and my cousin at one time, worked there summers as chambermaids and waitresses and the like. It used to be super-exciting in those days, because it was a holiday destination for Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward -- at least once (there's a photo proving it), and in the local lore it grew to "every year," though I'm not sure about that.

The North Hero House has gone through a few iterations over the years, and is now open year-round. My sister was married there in the '80s -- it was a sweet little ceremony on the grass pier. Throughout the '80s and early '90s, when I was the court reporter at the courthouse which is immediately next door to the place, I'd often go over for a charming lunch with the court staff and the judge. The restaurant really started to become an upscale eatery, and now it is truly at the higher end of the dining experience. I don't know anything about the sleeping/staying accommodations except that it appears to be super-charming and beautifully renovated all the way around, with the sort of attention to detail by the staff and the surroundings that really makes a person feel welcome.

We chose to sit on their pretty and intimate enclosed porch which overlooks the lake. This is the porch from the outside:

It was a beautiful evening that night (I just missed catching a rainbow with my camera, and the drive home was under the full moon), and we had an absolutely delightful meal with super-friendly service, after we were seated by the charming maître d', Frank. Part of the view from the porch:

The gray house is another of their several accommodations on the property. 

David had gazpacho which I tasted, and it was the best I'd ever had. I had a mojito which was perfect - so delicious and fresh and refreshing --and the presentation delighted me almost more than the drink itself. Tall, slim, and sexy! You will no doubt notice that I had taken a couple (or four) large slurps before I thought of capturing the image for the blog.

There was a large selection of interesting homemade dinner rolls, and the salad was very fresh, pretty and delicious, and lightly dressed. I think the salad greens were from their gardens just down the road, which I wanted to photograph as well, but it got too dark. I even went back the next day and hoped to get a photo, but it was raining too hard that day.  

David had the salmon roulade, which was so delicious I accused him of being a little bit too much like Mr. Jefferies, in that he wanted to lick the plate, and I didn't blame him. 

And I had the fish and chips, which were easily the best fish & chips I've ever had:

The fish was Great Lakes Walleye, the batter was JUST.RIGHT, and the French fries had a special seasoning that was OMGfabulous. 

It was just a really wonderful meal in a very charming location.

And then all of a sudden I noticed that on the soundtrack, they were playing Tom Jones, and I'm sorry, but for me that just sealed the deal. A little bit giggly from my mojito, I couldn't help but remember one of my favorite comedy routines from Dana Carvey, about Tom .... and his JONES.

I still have a soft spot for good old Tom. You have just got to LOVE a guy who spends his entire life singing five songs over and over and over again, and doing it with such heart and energy, as if 50 years has not even passed by at all. And for still being so steamy and dreamy. If I already weren't charmed enough by this whole experience, when I was doing my usual thorough research for this post I found this Uncyclopedia article which made me laugh and laugh, to the point of tears streaming down my once-high cheekbones.

Please do not show me any current pictures of him. I just want to think of him like this: 

In case that picture wasn't enough, I had to find another picture to illustrate what Dana was talking about, and yeah, I think I found one:

You can leave your hat on....

Beet It!

This is your chance to tell us your love of, your hatred of, your gaggy, your wonderful, beet stories. Have a picture of a baby smeared with beets? Leave us a link here in the comments. Leave us recipes, or links to them.

I Hate Beets stories are welcome here, too, but mostly, tell us why you love beets! We wanna hear about red flannel hash and beet chocolate cake and pickled beets and borscht and Harvard beets and beet juice and beet salads and beet-greens-with-bacon, and family memories and family recipes.  

One of my favorite stories about beets is one I read in a memoir about the Holocaust. I cannot remember whose memoir it was anymore, but I remember the beet story -- how 'bout that? The author told a story that there was only one person she knew who came back from the Holocaust in better shape than he went in -- he was a person who had suffered all his adult life from ulcers and was sickly and underweight when he went to the concentration camp. When he returned, he was the picture of health. He said the only thing they had to eat was raw beets, and they served to heal his ulcers, so he ended up getting healthy and strong and was able to survive the camp and come home, to everyone's surprise.

Here's a link to my aunt's "famous" pickled beets. I make the family pickled beets now, and if I don't bring them to every holiday dinner, I'm in TROUBLE. If you think you don't like beets, pickled beets might be your entrée into the world of loving beets. They are sweet-sour, with a lovely pickling spice mix -- cinnamon, cardamom, [I think] cloves, mustard seed, bay.... I don't know all that's in it, but it's mmmmmmm.

Pickled beets are wonderful on their own, and they are wonderful thrown in salads, eaten with cottage cheese, thrown into a potato salad (it makes pink potato salad -- perfect for a bridal shower IMHO), eaten straight from the jar!!!  

I only planted a small plot of beets this year (half of a 3X3-foot grow bed), and so if I don't get on the stick and plant more, I will be IN TROUBLE because I won't have any to pickle. One year I cheated and bought beets at my green grocer, but last year I tried that and they had a terrible beet-growing year and there weren't enough there, either. So two days ago I planted another plot of them for a late-summer harvest, and I'm going to plant even more in the next week or so. We love them!

The beets that were in the picture on Tuesday became this for dinner that night --

-- which, due to the limitations of home food photo styling, may not look nearly as good as it tasted, and I apologize for that. 

It was a locavore meal of a Boyden beef burger, a piece of Mad River Grain bread from the Red Hen Bakery* (though as I mentioned the other day after my visit to the research farm, it is unlikely that the flours in this bread are Vermont-grown), and our own beets and beet greens and onions. I boiled the small beets and slipped the skins off to serve them with the greens which had been braised with our young onions in a small bit of grapeseed oil and sprinkled with just a few drops of balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. 

Beet greens might be a bit of a hard sell to people who don't like greens, but I love them. When I grew up, my mother would boil them in the baby stage with the baby beets still attached, and with a small piece of salt pork added. I still love them that way. I often love to cook a couple pieces of bacon, then braise the greens in some olive oil with garlic and onions, and then fold in the bacon pieces and then sprinkle with lemon juice or balsamic vinegar. These are tricks to deal with greens that can sometimes be a bit bitter. They're the same tricks I use with dandelion greens. Beet greens are not as bitter as dandelion greens, but they are more bitter than spinach. Baby beet greens are not bitter, and are wonderful fresh in salads, and are a fabulous addition to mesclun seed mixes.  

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*I eat almost no grains, but a loaf of this scrumptious bread is an almost-weekly treat nowadays. It is soooo good, and I keep the size of the slices to a minimum, and we make a loaf last at least three days, hard as it is to hold back from eating the whole thing in one go. 

A Locavore Meal and An Excellent & Entertaining Video: Dan Barber, Chef and Scholar

 

A place called Hog Island Organics, which I'd been eyeing for a long time but was always closed when I drove past, was finally open when we went by the other day. I am thrilled with their little place -- the freezer was full of a great selection of locally raised meats and poultry -- beef, pork, emu, chicken -- and that's just what I took note of. There might have been even more things. The prices were great for the meats and poultry, and the eggs were a downright bargain -- two dozen for $4. It's not that far from me, it's convenient on the way to and from the Islands, and I'll be going out there often, though I will have to try to stock up my freezer for winter, because it is only open seasonally. And they don't (yet) take credit cards. The proprietor said she doesn't have a phone line because, being just a seasonal business, the hookup and unhooking charges are exorbitant. She is looking into other options, but in the meantime if you go, bring cash or the checkbook.  

So Sunday evening we had this meal composed of a roasted loin of local pork, together with a salad of mesclun greens and roasted asparagus and sliced radishes from our garden. Mmmm, perfection! 

Recently a friend asked if I save money by growing my own vegetables. At the time I said no, but seriously, this meal was CHEAP. The organic roast cost $16, and we have enough left from it for another meal. The veggies, for all intents and purposes -- well, maybe I'm stretching the truth here slightly, but really only slightly -- after having so many meals of asparagus and mesclun greens this spring, I'm inclined to say that the veggies were just about free. And you just can't GET any fresher or more delicious. 

Another bonus: When I was at Hog Island, I asked about raw milk for my yogurt and cheesemaking. There is a law on the books in Vermont permitting people to buy and sell raw milk, but only in very limited quantities and only direct from the farm and by word of mouth (in other words, no advertising), and honestly, as one of "those people" -- you know the ones I mean -- one of those annoying crunchy-granola-eat-local-go-organic wingnuts -- and being a farm girl who grew up in Vermont and who lives in the Dairy Capital of the state and not much more than a half mile from the St. Albans Co-Operative Creamery, I find it infuriatingly difficult to find such a seemingly simple and natural thing as raw milk. Good grief! I should be tripping over it! I should be having to wipe it off my shoes every time I go for a walk! I should be complaining about the smell keeping me awake at night! 

But no. It's like it does not exist. "No, ma'am, it's like they tell the kids in kindergarten in New York City -- Milk comes from plastic cartons in the supermarket, and Jamie Oliver is all wrong -- milk is not white, but it is pink or brown, is homogenized and pasteurized to within an inch of its life, and has about 24 tablespoons of high-fructose corn syrup per serving in the kiddie size. Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you. Cows? We don't got no cows around here."

Grr...

Even this list is not up to date or complete, but the nice young man behind the counter gave me directions to his uncle's farm, and I think it was his mom who was the proprietor, and she gave me the phone number. So we're golden. When the tomatoes are ripe and the basil is plentiful later this summer, you can bet your sweet patooties I'll be making some homemade mozzarella to go with. Because not long ago I attended a fabulous Italy-themed party at the beautiful home of Mike and Rebecca, and one of their guests served homemade mozzarella that she had made that afternoon. 

I only have two words about it:

LIFE. CHANGING. 

Of course we hit it off like two peas in a pod, and she said if I make my own yogurt, mozzarella is even easier. So oh yeah, baby. She told me where to get the starter kit, and I've already got it. BONUS: The cheesemaker's/buttermaker's grade of cheesecloth that was in the package makes the Greek yogurt all in one strainer batch! It makes it so much better and so much more easily, that alone is worth the cost of the kit.

And this is so timely -- I had just finished writing this post, and my friend and fellow clean-sustainable-local-good-food aficionado Kristen sent me a link to this fabulous talk. 

This guy had me laughing and cheering. I sure hope Dan Barber is one of the next speakers at UVM, what with their new focus on clean, sustainable food production which makes me more in love with the university than I already was. 

Love this! It's 20 minutes long, but I hope you can find the time to watch it: