My life of food is categorized in a few different stages: growing up in Vermont, making dinner for my family, recipes I put together for our farm dinners at South Pond and now making smaller dinners for just the two of us.
I have a distinct memory of what dishes my mother made for our family as we were growing up. Pork roasts with apples and braised red cabbage German style, baked beans, mashed potatoes with bitter lettuce (this must have been something my mother had during the war when sources of protein were non-existent and one was literally eating out of the garden).
When we lived on the farm, baked squash with orange, fall stews with lots of onions, carrots, brussels sprouts, potatoes and sausages, stewed tomatoes, eggplant, lots of garlic and oven roasted chicken. Simple dishes, flavourful because my mother cooked with a lot of herbs, onions, garlic and leeks. She loved leeks and I too use them a lot interchangeable with onions, in my soups throughout the fall and winter.
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