Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
August is a magnificent month for many reasons, not the least of which is that the zucchini crop seems still controllable.
An early-morning search in the garden, gingerly parting those large prickly leaves, produces delicate green fingers of squash, a smattering of glorious buttery blossoms with not a late-season monster in sight.
Zucchini grow at an alarming rate. Those lovely blossoms can turn into 8-inch fruit in just a few days. If you are slow to pick them, you end up with a garden full of torpedoes. A web search for “largest zucchini ever grown” identifies one that weighs in at 65 pounds. That's a lot of zucchini bread.
Many of our mothers served up all varieties of summer squash in bland, overcooked, mushy mounds whose tepid, watery residue would run all over the plate into the mashed potatoes. Generations of squash haters were thus created.
Independence Day is one of those holidays that comes with its own menu. Imagining a July 4 without grilled meat, potato salad, and a dessert that involves red, white, and blue is like imagining Thanksgiving without gravy. Sure, we get to fool around a bit with the side dishes,
It was 7:45 p.m., and dinner had just come to an end: roasted baby peppers stuffed with leftover risotto and goat cheese. They were sweet, caramelized, simultaneously crunchy and creamy, and very good. But the star of supper was salad. It was a crazy, mixed-up bowl of wonderful flavors,
Ah, May. Was there ever anything more filled with promise? May allows me to imagine that anything is possible. In May, I walk around my garden and have the most ridiculous notions of what I will accomplish over the summer: an elaborate stone terrace, a fragrant rose hedge facing south, pear trees espaliered along the greenhouse wall, a permanent herb garden featuring walkways and tall urns filled with thorny spires of artichokes and cardoons. I see them all. Yes, I...
On the day the time changed last month, I drove home from work giddily feeling like I was playing hooky. I examined my thawing garden on my way from the car to the porch. Everywhere there were bulbs popping little green shoots out of the brown, cold ground. The day stayed warm and light almost through dinner. We did not need a fire. But the shiny red ornaments I hung in November from the tree outside the front door remain,
This time of year, I often sit in front of the fire with a pile of cookbooks at my feet like a little group of faithful dogs. I pick them up one by one, leaf through the pages in a leisurely manner, not necessarily looking for recipes for tomorrow's dinner. Cookbooks filled with ingredients and methods can be strangely devoid of a voice or a story that makes me care about the food described. I know why I cook, what...
I woke on Jan. 1 with cheery anticipation to carry out my very favorite New Year's ritual: cleaning out the refrigerator. I challenge anyone to best my collection of little jars filled with half-used condiments and more than the usual dying and moldy chunks of cheese and abandoned bread. I managed until that morning to ignore the bag of sad, limp greens that had never made it into a Christmas salad. On the little narrow shelves of the icebox door...
December is the final month. It begs contemplation of the year about to pass, it encompasses the darkest and longest night, and it embraces the commingling of mindless consumption and simple, lovely hope. I am far from a practicing Christian, yet I harbor a deep fondness for Christmas and its message of peace and goodwill. I love the ritual of bringing a tree into the house, yet I embrace my cynicism with a vengeance. I am drawn to the secular...
