My Italian grandmother made pasta e fagioli with fatback (picture a giant slice of bacon without the meat), kidney beans and pasta. Nothing more, nothing less. Matter of fact, she made most of her meals with fatback: scungilli and fatback, swiss chard and fatback pieces, chicken fried in fatback, fatback cooked in fatback. It was…
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
One of the most peaceful places I know, is in the barn, late at night. Away from the rest of the world, the only sounds that are heard is the slow, methodical chewing of hay… The clanging of the stanchions as the cows jockey for position, trying to find the spot and the soft, low…
My cranberry craze continues! Only this time, I’ve added some hooch. Refrigerate overnight or let it sit for a few weeks to mellow. Either way, it produces quite a kick! Please enjoy responsibly – too much moonshine can make the toughest of men lose what sense God gave them. Just like the time I found…
Cranberries and Christmas. ‘Tis the season. This is one of my favorite recipes to serve at holiday dinners. You’ll never serve that store bought, can-shaped, jiggly cranberry stuff again!
Around here, autumn is heralded with the making of hard cider. The apples are pressed. The top secret ingredients are mixed in with the apple juice. Then, barrels upon barrels of cider are buried in the ground to work their magic over a year or more. If you are a hard cider master brewer, the…
The “entertainment reporter” was carrying on and on about a certain actress who’s done this and that and more of this and that and how she’s “hit her stride” with her current project. So, as I stood in the shower this morning, fishing my daughter’s long hair out of the drain, I got to thinking…
Finding extraordinary magic in ordinary days only takes a walk in the woods.
The wild apples trees on the farm are flush with fruit. The old timer up the road says that’s a bad sign – lots of apples means a long, harsh winter. He also says women shouldn’t be allowed to drive and that moonshine will cure the flu. But I digress… This jam is autumn at…
“Is it hot in here or is it just me?” I ask my daughter, hoping she’s going to tell me that it is, in fact, NOT me and it is actually 279 degrees in the house. “Nooooo, it’s YOU!” she whines back, without ever looking up from her phone to make sure that I’m not…
I am happy among the cows… In the fields surrounded by the old stone walls… Listening to the calves beller for their mothers… Looking over the mountaintops… Watching the cows silently graze their way across the pasture. Our farm is my happy place.
The Farmers in the Dell 