new toy

Here are photos of my christmas gift and two meals made so far.A reproduction reflector oven from Sturbridge Village. I also received hearth cooking lessons at woody hill Inn in RI. The first meal we cooked was a pork roast with potatoes and turnip greens and an apple cake all produce was local.The pork roast cooked in front of the fire for only 35 minutes.It was excellent. The second meal was a local chicken with local sweet potato and a salad of greens dried cranberries and mushrooms.the chicken cooked in 45 minutes was done perfect and had a beautiful crispy skin.We also took a hearth cooking class at Plymouth plantation.We were the only students so we had the instructor all to ourselves.We had an egg and bacon fricassee,onions and currants on sop(toasted bread) a cabbage pottage,mince pie,cranberry tart and cranberry pie.We haven't the class at the Inn yet I will write about that later.

crab cakes

I was lucky enough to get 6 crabs from Danielle (the fishwife) at plymouths farmers market Thursday. I ended up with 1 lb of meat and made 8 lucious crab cakes.We had 4 for dinner with a Salad from the garden and 4 went to the freezer.Danielles crabs were 2$ a piece so 8 large crab cakes only cost 12.00.It would cost me more than that for 2 small cakes in a restaraunt.So our meal last night was at a cost of 6.00 and a few pantry items the salad was from the back yard.It took a little bit of time to pick the crab meat I only do it once or twice a year but it is so worth it.The home made crabcakes are so fresh they really out do any I have had in restaraunts.Joe laughs because I swear I will never do this again while I am picking the crabs, but the next day when I make the crabcakes I always say it was worth it.

busy weekend

Yesterday I made ricotta cheese for a future batch of ravioli. Today I made 20 1/2 pints of sweet pickle relish and as soon as I can find some heads of dill I will make some dill pickles.I have yet to make a batch of dill pickles that are not mushy so I keep trying.Any good recipes?
I forgot to take pictures but lunch today was Blt's with foccacia bread from Marthas Stone soup and local tomato and lettuce.The bacon was not local.Tonight we had burgers on the foccacia bread with homemade ketchup and local lettuce and onions and the burgers were from dufort farms in Rehoboth,Really good juicy burgers. We went on a foraging walk at Colechester farm today with john Root from Amherst.About 25 people.I had seen him speak before but it was really fun to walk through the farm and see all the edible plants in their habitat.