Low Tech Cooking

Call me a Neo-Luddite, but much of technology is just downright scary. Take Google’s latest product, now in beta testing: Google Glass. Isabel, my seventeen year old, brought this to my attention after some of her friends were raving about it, saying that they can’t wait for it to hit the market. Thankfully, Isabel herself is skeptical and concerned about Glass’s ramifications. To me, it seems not very far removed from the 1991 Wim Wenders sci-fi film Until the End of the World, in which people become addicted to glasses that allow them to view their own dreams, as society collapses around them. I’m aware of the irony in my writing this blog post on a Google platform, using technology that didn’t exist in the not so distant past….

How does this relate to food, you may wonder? I’m a low tech cook. I don’t tend to own a lot of fancy kitchen gadgets or appliances, in part because I don’t like clutter, but also because I’m of the belief that they don’t necessarily make food taste better. Most of the time, in fact, the opposite is true. If you start with quality ingredients, the less you fuss with them, the truer they taste. Elaborate preparations often just mask a food’s essential flavor with an inferior flavor.  

Birthday Dinner

I celebrated a birthday this week. It wasn’t a big one, but it was the birthday before the Big One. We fêted it as a family by going for a long cross country ski at a location we hadn’t tried before, a tradition we started about five years ago. This year we went to Mountain Top Inn, down near Killington. It was a gorgeous March day with a deep blue sky, “computer screen” blue as one of my daughters described it. That’s not the word that came to my almost-50-year-old mind.

The Complexities of Being an Omnivore

I’m in the process of writing an article for Edible Green Mountains about Icelandic lamb. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this primitive breed (I had never eaten it before now), it’s a premium lamb that’s highly sought after for its incomparable flavor and lean quality. In the interest of research, I of course had to taste some. The lamb is raised at Stark Hollow Farm, a small sustainable farm in Huntington run by Vanessa Riva and Laura Smith. They ship their lamb all over the country, with some customers paying more for the shipping than for the lamb itself.

I had visited Stark Hollow Farm already and seen their happy sheep grazing on a hillside (they’re 100 percent grass-fed), but I hadn’t bought any lamb that day. 

On Proust and Thin Mints

Who doesn’t love home baked cookies, that crispy-on-the-outside-but-soft-in-the middle small package of sweetness? They conjure up more feelings of old fashioned hominess than just about any other food. Yesterday my daughter Isabel told me about this video that’s gone viral called The Scared is Scared, made by a Middlebury College student, in which cookies figure prominently. Isabel is a high school senior and anxiously awaiting acceptance letters from colleges, so the video spoke to her. It spoke to me too, as I think it does to anyone who is facing or has faced a big life transition. In other words, all of us.

Blue Hawaii

Much as I love the charms of a Vermont winter, at about this time of year I like to get away to warmer climes. As I write, we’re in the midst of Winter Storm Nemo, but I’m still glowing from a recent trip to Hawaii with Chris. He had the good fortune to need to do some research on Oahu, so I went along and we added on a few days on Kauai. We had never been to these two islands before, just to Maui and the Big Island, but with Kauai we saved the best for last. It’s the Vermont of Hawaii, with stunning scenery, a low-key vibe, and an eclectic mix of people.

Après Ski

Some days I wonder why we live in Vermont. “Remind me why again,” I’ll say to Chris when the temperature drops below zero, causing cars to stall and pipes to freeze. Even when wearing appropriate high tech apparel, my fingers and toes still go numb. “It keeps the population down,” Chris will respond cheerfully. Callie our dog even seems to wonder why we live here as she dashes outside to do her business and then turns right around to come back in the house, lifting her paws high off the cold ground. I pack our wood stove with logs to try to combat the draftiness of our old house and drink mug after mug of hot tea.

We’ve had a string of these sub-zero days recently, with the only consolation being the bright sun and the snow on the ground. When the temperature nudges up, it’s crucial to get outside and enjoy winter. I’ve learned that it’s the only way to survive the longest season in Vermont. My preferred outdoor activity? Cross country skiing. 

The Garden in Winter

Although the garden is now dormant, much beauty can be found there during this time of year.

Stone wall

Tree shadow