I’ve always wondered why so many old farm wives surrounded their houses with hostas. Why, with all that lawn available, with all those spaces around a farm house to tuck in bleeding hearts or sunflowers, or to trail petunias over the porch ledge, or to hang fuscias, would they leave their porches bare, and then […]
Archives for May 2017
One Chicken, Three Meals: The Best Bargain at the Farmers’ Market
By Shannon Hayes Pardon the pun, but the one cut of meat I am most likely to see a new customer “bawk” at is a whole chicken. Whole, pasture-raised chickens sell from anywhere from $5-$8 per pound. Our price for whole birds is one third the price of a grassfed steak. Poultry is the […]
Slow. (Not stupid.)
Bob and I are on our morning walk, our ears tuned in to the new warblers that have come into the area this week, our eyes honed to catch glimpses of them along the side of the dirt road. This has become a deeply pleasurable ritual for us: the girls get their own breakfasts and […]
Perfectly Grilled Grassfed Burgers
For years I frittered around trying to make the perfect burger. I added garlic, Worcestershire sauce, any number of ingredients. Over time I discovered that, because ground beef is made from the most flavorful meat on the animal, less is more. A tiny bit of salt and a dash of pepper is all you need. […]
Hobby?!
I never anticipated such nasty language erupting from such a nice lady’s mouth. Her daughter just moved to the area, and they had come in to see what the cafe was like. As I cleared their plates, she told me about the years she and her husband had run a restaurant. “It was fun,” she […]
Slow-Cooker Chili
The secret to chili is how you select and use your chili peppers. If dried ancho and chipotle peppers are not available in your local market, just substitute, bearing these points in mind: dried chiles have a richer, fruitier flavor than fresh; smaller chiles are hotter than larger ones; the seeds and white veins generally […]
The $4000.00 Cartwheel
I should have pruned my blueberries months ago, when the winter sun was just starting to rise higher in the sky. I should have broadforked my cut flower bed last fall, then seeded it to a winter cover crop so the soil would be nourished and easier to work this spring. I should have kept […]
Ground Beef Curry
Week two of my ground beef Odyssey…. Here, again, I used ground beef in a braising recipe that would ordinarily take several hours with stew beef. By substituting the ground beef, I had a one-dish meal on the table in under 45 minutes. And the leftovers have been fabulous. Serves 6-8 3 tablespoons lard […]