Sunday Stills: the letter “F”
Farm Fresh Food…
There are two things that either make or break a bed and breakfast: the comfort of the bed, and the breakfast. Our farmstay guests enjoy sleeping in antique four poster beds and meals made with all local organic foods grown right here on our farm, or neighboring farms. This past summer, we had two sets of guests that I think had never eaten farm fresh food before.
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| Eggs Florentine-VT Grand View Farm |
The first, a young woman from a large urban area, had come to VT Grand View Farm to experience rural living. She and her partner were excited to share our farm with us. In the morning, they were eager to try what I had described as a “country breakfast”. I served them Eggs Florentine, a dish made with our own eggs, organic spinach, black olives, and Vermont cheese, along with an open half of a tomato, lightly grilled with olive oil and fresh herbs from the garden. They also had a dish of local yogurt and fresh fruit. When I asked how she enjoyed her breakfast, she was almost at a loss for words. Finally, after much stalling and thinking, she responded, “Fresh, that is the only word I know to describe it, fresh and delicious!” She said that where she lives, purchasing food directly from farms was not easy to do, and that she had no idea that tomatoes tasted so good. (Be sure to read to the bottom of the post for the recipe for Eggs Florentine. Thank you to Jennifer at The Sachem Farm for sharing her recipe with me!)
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| Pasture Raised Pigs at Grand View Farm |
A few weeks later, we had a family come to our Bed and Breakfast for an overnight farmstay experience. They came from another sprawling urban area. Mom, dad, and two children rented a car from the city, and headed to our Vermont hillside farm. In the morning, I served a plate of sausage with their pancakes and Vermont maple syrup. When I went out to check on them, only one piece of sausage had a bite taken out of it. The mother pointed to the plate and asked, “What’s that?” I told her that I had given them a plate of our own pasture raised pork sausage. She looked at her husband and said, “I told you so.” Then her husband asked, “Why does it taste so different?” I told him that he was tasting fresh sausage, which tastes different from most sausage you buy in the store. The wife looked at him again and said, “I told you that too!”
I left them to finish their breakfast, but did not know if they would actually eat the remainder of the sausage. When I came back to clear their plates, every bit of the sausage had disappeared. I asked them how they liked it, and they all agreed that they had never tasted sausage so tasty.
So with this in mind, I thought it only appropriate that for this week’s Sunday Stills, I should photograph some of our farm fresh food for the letter “F”.
Eggs Florentine-VT Grand View Farm
Organic, Farm Fresh Ingredients:
small potato grated
small onion grated
menaced garlic
generous handful of chopped fresh spinach, kale, or beet greens
grated Vermont cheese (cheddar or mozzarella)
2 fresh eggs beaten well with 1/8 cup of milk added
Off-Farm Ingredients:
high quality CA olive oil
black olives
salt and pepper
Mix the grated potato and onion with the menaced garlic. Put the potato mixture in the bottom of a small skillet that has a tablespoon of olive oil coating the bottom. Put the chopped greens on top of the potato, and add the grated cheese on top of the greens, now add a few chopped black olives. Pour the beaten egg/milk mixture over top of the greens, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover the skillet and cook on low heat for 10 minutes or until egg is set.
