Last week, I mentioned taking notes at restaurants about how I might recreate a particularly yummy dish. After my conversation with Nova Wehman-Brown about her recipe journal, Grace Edwards and I joined a group of friends for dinner at Wagon Wheel Restaurant in Gill. Grace often gets one of the specials, but instead she ordered a black bean burger because they’re so good and she wanted to study it to figure out how to recreate it at home.
A long-time favorite recipe, inspired by a wonderful restaurant meal, is one that Yvonne Crevier and I concocted based on a meal at Bottle of Bread in Shelburne Falls many years ago. I first shared this recipe in my column in 2008 right after the first Greenfield winter farmers market. It’s a perfect use of wonderful fall vegetables now available at farm stands and farmers markets.
Last Saturday was the end of this season’s outdoor summer Greenfield farmers market and Saturday, Nov. 4, begins the indoor Greenfield winter farmers market season. The winter market will be at The Discovery School at Four Corners (parking available off Ferrante Avenue and Bernardston Road) from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the first Saturdays of November through March. A special pre-Thanksgiving market will take place Nov. 4 and 18.
Writing about the now-monthly Greenfield Winter Farmers Market makes me smile and remember Juanita Nelson and her inspiration for that first winter market in 2008. This column grew out of the press releases that Nelson and I wrote leading up to that market. Nelson was a key mentor for me in recognizing the importance and deliciousness of eating locally grown food year-round. She would be so thrilled to know her winter market legacy continues.
I am thinking about this food column’s beginnings in 2007 because this week marks a big change in my life — I start a wonderful and challenging new job at Community Action as the community collaboration coordinator. My job will be to help Community Action and other Franklin County, North Quabbin and Hampshire County social service agencies, medical institutions and mental health agencies better coordinate their work with our neighbors. I am excited to have the opportunity to support the work of the many organizations that are core to creating a healthy, just and prosperous community for us all.
To succeed in this new position, I must cut back my other work, including my freelance writing. I have decided to step back from writing this column. My Nov. 15 column will be my final column, reflecting on the past 10 plus years of writing about locally grown food and Franklin County farms.
This Week We’re Eating ...Savory bread pudding: (inspired by Maggie Zaccara, formerly of Bottle of Bread, now of Hope & Olive Restaurant with notes from a test by Mary and Yvonne Crevier, Leverett).
Ingredients:
3 C. milk/cream (we used 2 plus skim and some heavy cream)
3 C. bread (dry bread first, we used rosemary sourdough)
4 C. cooked vegetables, including one sauteed onion, mushrooms, cubed steamed butternut squash, kale
1 C. grated gruyere
2 eggs beaten
Instructions:
This amount filled two round baking dishes, could have been one lasagna dish.
We scalded milk/cream and soaked the bread. Mix it all together, bake for an hour and 45 minutes at 325 degrees. oven. Let cool after baking to firm up.
Fell free to alter recipe to include more or less of vegetables for taste preferences.
Local food advocate and community organizer Mary McClintock lives in Conway and works as a freelance writer, editor, and book indexer. Send column suggestions and recipes to: mmcclinto@yahoo.com.