Rappahannock Cook & Kitchen Gardener

I love visiting other people’s gardens and tasting food they cook from their garden. So when I went to visit Pat D.’s garden in Castleton, VA, I was in for a treat. She asked me to stay for lunch, and served a most intriguing Tomatillo Chicken soup: pale green, slightly sour with a hint of [...]

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When I am really busy, I don’t always have the time to cook from scratch everyday (and frankly, sometimes I don’t have the energy!). Yet, we eat well. One of my strategies is to cook something purposefully large on the week-end, and reuse it during the week, but in such a manner that the weekly [...]

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The season is changing: I can taste it in the air. The nights are getting cool yet the days are still warm. The daylight hours are shortening; the light is mellowing; the air is crisper. The leaves on the trees are subtly goldening – soon to burnish or russet. The dew sparkles again in the [...]

Posted in Cookery, Kitchen Garden, Recipe, Soups, Vegetable recipe, locavore log Comments(6)

(This the THIRD bonus post from Keith, the last one in the series about spit-roasting a whole pig. Read Part One here, Part Two here and see a couple of additional photos here)
Wake Up
Using backward planning, I rolled out of bed at 4:15 a.m. Sunday morning. Chief Ann wanted the pig ready to eat at [...]

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(This the SECOND bonus post from Keith - me thinks he is having some fun with this. Read Part 1 “The Pig” as well as my own post for our Busy Weekend . Sylvie)
I wasn’t going to talk about the delivery of the pig, but I must. Let me begin by repeating that Belle Meade [...]

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(Bonus post from Keith, also read Sylvie’s post for our Busy Weekend)
So far as manly man food goes, a pig roast has to be close to the top. To round out the event, let’s make it a pig roast for a volunteer fire company in rural Virginia. Yeah.
It had been years since anyone could recall [...]

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First it was dinner for 29 on Friday for a troupe of 16 student actors from Cambridge, England, and the families who were hosting them for the two nights they were in Washington, VA. On their annual touring of the US East Coast, CAST stopped at The Theater in Washington, VA, for two enjoyable lively [...]

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Attempt number 1.
Not bad… actually, taste is great, but I need to steep the cheese longer next time (more than 10 minutes!) so it has a better rounder shape.

Goes heavenly for with all those late summer tomatoes, a little fried garlic and some fruity olive oil.

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Vanille teased me for being in an “upside-down” baking mood (and she should know - being “down under” in New Zealand) because I blogged back-to-back about Tomato Tatin and then about Upside Down Plum Spiced Cake. I felt like I had to make a post that was not upside down. Well, not really… but I [...]

Posted in Cookery, Desserts, Fruit recipe, Recipe, locavore log Comments(1)

Should you go walking along a bottomland stream in Rappahannock County, you are likely to encounter pawpaws (or paw-paws or paw paws). You may not notice them though – unless you paid attention - because they are small under story trees that grow in clumps. Nothing majestic about a pawpaw tree! Blooming in April [...]

Posted in Wild Food, fruit, locavore log Comments(2)