The Weekly Newsletter
Menus and Stories for November 19 - 23, 2007
Last day to order Thanksgiving Dinners

Okay - here's your last chance. We'll take orders until the end of the day on Monday. Hope you join us for this year's Thanksgiving Dinner to Go.

The dinners are made on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, in the morning and are ready to pick up that day, between 2 and 4 (when we close.) Our meals are packed in reheatable containers and simple reheating instructions are included.
Sound good?
Give us a call to place your order.
252-1500.
Or if you prefer the personal approach, just stop by and one of us can take your order.


Here is this year's menu:
Thanksgiving 2007 "A Taste of the South"

Starters:
Cheddar Cheese Sausage Balls (with Hickory Nut Gap Sausage)

The Dinner:
Sorghum-glazed Turkey with Apple Chestnut Stuffing
Cheesy Mashed Potatoes with Classic Gravy
“Green Bean Casserole” Haricots Verts with Crunchy Onions And Roasted Mushrooms (a fancy version of the traditional one)
Southern Corn Pudding
Cranberry Orange “Jubilee” Chutney
Clover Leaf Rolls
Traditional Pumpkin Pie or Apple Crumb Pie
$29.95 per person


Sarah and her sprouts

Glory be!
I think I've told you about Sarah and her husband Andrew. She works with us in the shop. He sometimes gets hauled in to help do something too but the thing they do together is farm a plot of land near Max Patch. She strolled in the other day with these beauties and the kitchen gang told her to come find me because they knew I'd want a snap. They were right.

I decided to buy their entire crop (about 45 stalks). It takes MONTHS to bring them out of the ground and to maturity so they are very special and very deliciously sweet. Come see if we have any today. (I'm bringing some home to my sister for Thanksgiving but we'll see if we can stretch the supply here so you can try them too.)

New from Maine

Stonewall Kitchens, just over the New Hampshire border in Maine, makes all kinds of condiments and crackers and things. The crackers are especially nice and we're happy that they're here. But the other night, on David Hurand's "Conversations: a listener call-in radio show" I tasted this garlic and onion jam for the first time (Emily had tried it and liked it but that was my first taste.) I had brought some of our artisanal cheeses to taste too and found the Sweet Grass Dairy a perfect complement to it.

(I know I talk about cheese a lot these days but did you know that Sweet Grass just won top prize at the American Cheese Society's annual conference this summer? That's a very big deal, my friend. Very big.)

Dinners to go

Dinners, as you know, come with a freshly-made green salad, salad dressing of the day, and made-right-here bread of the day. We take reservations until noon or so. Please order by phone (252-1500), by FAX (252-02002) or stop in to speak to one of us in person.

As a reminder, every time you order a dinner to go you are eligible to enter our drawing. Just drop a card in our drawing jar (a business card works or fill out one of the cards that we have right here) and, at the end of the month, we'll pull one card which will be good for two free dinners-to-go.

Maybe you'll win next month.

Order a lot? Enter a lot!
Good luck!!

Here is this week's menu:



Monday November 19 Lemon Rosemary Chicken with Potato Pancakes 10.25
Tuesday November 20 Cashew Crusted Tuna Filet 17.95
Wednesday November 21 Thanksgiving Dinner to Go day (see inside)
Thursday November 22 Thanksgiving Day – Happy feasting!
Friday November 23 We’ll be off today. See you on Monday

Our website
Special casserole of the week - on Tuesday this week only

We make a special casserole each week, usually on Wednesday. Order before noon and we'll have yours ready to pick up between 4:30 and 6:00 that very afternoon. (Yes, you can order in advance too.) Order a full for 9 portions or, if your gang is smaller, opt for the half-sized one, which serves 4 or so.

Say, we'll happily make a salad and provide bread for you if you like, just let us know when you call and we'll get you all set up.

This week's special casserole is going to be made on Tuesday since we'll be busy with Thanksgiving on Wednesday.

Tuesday, November 20

Beef and Autumn Vegetable Ragout
Full: 38.50
Half:19.00
It might be time to start stockpiling casseroles for the upcoming holidays. Just give us the word and we'll make 'em. (252-1500)

Fran's back

Oh lucky lucky you. Dark chocolate caramels with smoky sea salt on them. (I like the milk chocolate ones better and we have them too.)

These come all the way from Seattle.

Bring on the honeybees!!!

I've wanted to keep honeybees for years, but have always worried that my allergy to yellow jackets would mean that I was allergic to honeybees too. I got poked last week and found that I am NOT allergic to honeybees (YAY!!!) My arm looked like a mess, because I am, indeed allergic to the other things. But I'm excited to know that honeybees are in my future.

The Turkey Passeth

Can't get much closer than this. No need to go to New York, we've got balloons right here!

A Note From Laurey

November 18, 2007

Whewf what a week it has been! I’m writing from home and it is Sunday morning. This is the first time I’ve stopped and I must say it feels good to be here, sitting, writing, thinking about the week that has been and the week to come.

Yesterday was a big day. In the morning my friend Kim and I had planned on Cranberry Chutney production. She has a quiet kitchen that has all the big equipment a chutney-making gal could wish for, a tilt-braiser (a huge pot, basically), a fast dishwasher, and a jar-filler. Oh, and no other distractions except for an occasional train hooting past on the tracks just outside the kitchen’s windows.

We cooked almost 100 pounds of cranberries, all of which fit into the tilt-braiser in one round. (In my kitchen that would have been about 10 different batches.) And when the chutney was all hot and the jars were all ready and the lids were hot and EVERYTHING was ready, Kim filled up the jar filler and gave it a test round. She had already calibrated the filler with water and it was time to check it with the chutney. The first, and second and third attempts did not work and we grudingly realized that her jar filler is meant for thinner, less chunky products. SO we filled all the jars by hand, one at a time. It was still faster than it would have been at my shop, and we finished right on time for my next task.

I piled the cases of chuntey (20 cases in all) into my car and drove back to the shop. Well, let’s say I TRIED to. The Christmas Parade was setting up and every single approach to my shop was barricaded. The police officer was not interested in my 20 cases of hot cranberry chutney and no, no one had told her about businesses remaining open so no, she would not let me pass. I tried to thank her politely for considering my request to drive around the barricade and did manage to find an opening on another street and did make it in, no thanks to her.

The next event was introducing the author Jean Anderson at Malaprops. We had made some food for the guests but I quickly realized that I would not be able to drive to Malaprops because of the parade. Sigh. So I loaded up the baskets and carried them through the streets (only about 5 blocks) to the bookstore. Jean had had a hard time of getting there too, but did manage to read some interesting bits from her new book A Love Affair With Southern Cooking. (It’s a great book – do take a look at Malaprops.)

By that time, the chest cold I had been ignoring was rising to the surface and I thought I’d like to just go back to the shop and tell everyone goodbye and go home to take a nap. But when I got back to the shop things were fairly frenzied. The parade was now in full swing and was on its route right in front of the shop. Our front sidewalk was loaded with parade-watchers, the streets were filled with marching bands and cement mixers (we had many cement mixers this year), and large puppets and floats. It was quite a scene. Our staff was madly trying to keep up with the requests for the smallest thing possible (bought so that the purchaser could use our ladies room) all the while finishing up the food for two large deliveries.

Andrew, shop director-turned delivery fellow, collected all the items for one delivery and carried everything down the stairs and out the back door to the van. I’m not sure how he made it to the delivery site, as it was in the midst of the parade route (none of us thought about this when we were taking orders months ago) but I’m sure he figured it out. On the street a group of unicycling kids spun and wove.

Right about then the phone rang and it was a client who was trying to figure out how he could get to us to pick up his order. I was at a loss. I’m bad at giving directions in the best of times and this was a very complicated day for that sort of thing. I stumbled to try to say something and finally just gave up. With no help from me, he managed to get to us and was almost loaded up when the phone rang again. This time it was the final client of the day, also trying to figure out how to get to us. In desperation I asked the man (who had made it to us) to tell her how to get here. He hopped to the phone and talked her through the streets, corners, barricades one maneuver at a time (“Just tell them to let you through…!”) And she made it! Out front another cement mixer rumbled past.

I gave the man some Fran’s Chocolates and a big hug, helped the new client to maneuver her car to the driveway up on our sidewalk’s level, and helped collect and load everything up for her. She was picking up two orders that were each split into three locations so it was a complicated mess to make sure she had three of everything that was perfectly marked for the two day’s three groups. (We had color coded everything, but it was still complicated.) And in the meantime, a troupe of synchronized jump ropers skipped past the front door.

It was getting crazy.

The woman, by the way, was dressed up for some special part of her workshop and on any other day she would have stood out like crazy, but somehow a woman wearing sneakers, fishnet hose and a red sequined dress didn’t even make anyone blink yesterday. Everyone thought she was from the parade, I guess.

Anyway, we loaded up my little red wagon and hauled everything up the sidewalk to her car, piling it all in as carefully as possible. Parade watchers smiled at us, commented, barely gave way for us to pass. Just as we got it all loaded in, the final float came along, Santa Claus and a gaggle of carolers shouting “…and a happy new year…” at the top of their lungs.

I was supposed to go have dinner with Jean Anderson but by then I had nothing left in my body, especially for casual conversation, so I went to the store, bought some chicken noodle soup, went home, made some hot chocolate, lit a fire in the woodstove, put on A Prairie Home Companion, and drifted off to sleep lulled by the voice of my friend Laurie Lewis, who was this week’s guest.

It was, all in all, a perfect day.


Dressed for chutney (and deliveries)

See what I mean?

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