Posts Tagged ‘travel’
Vermont – The Wondrous Maple Land
Posted August 24, 2009
on:- In: Brattleboro | Food adventuring | food travel | New England | New England eating | Savory | Sweets | Vermont
- 1 Comment
Before I moved to the East Coast and actually lived a summer here, I’d never really known about what a “real” summer was like. Back in San Francisco, the land of everyday fog and households ignorant of the need of air conditioners (if you lived in 50-60 degree Fahrenheit weather year-round, would you need central AC?), I lived in complete ignorance of what it is like to change living habits based on the seasons. We never limited ourselves to cooking stews and braises for the winter or making lemonade and sorbets in the summer. We could do whatever we wanted year round, and our kitchen would be at about the same temperature. Cooking was cooking.
Well, I’m no longer in San Francisco now. In my apartment in New York, in which I have lived for over a year, which I will also tell you until yesterday had no AC (my landlord likes me now, so he is loaning me one for the duration of my stay here), if you want to bake blueberry muffins or even do the simplest saute, it will feel as though you are baking yourself. You will just want to throw yourself into the freezer and stay there – forever. I know this because this is how I have felt the few times I have tried to cook this summer. There you have it — my long-winded reason for not updating my blog since June.
Blueberry and I have actually been spending quite a bit of time eating out this summer, partly because of the blistering summer heat, which has just very recently gotten much worse, and partly because we are just out and about in New York and New England and want to try restaurants and check out areas we haven’t yet been to. Last weekend, we wanted to get away and took a day trip to the area around Brattleboro, Vermont. A month ago, a very generous coworker brought me back the most amazing Grade A Dark Amber Vermont maple syrup, and as soon as I’d had a taste on my blueberry pancakes, I knew we had to go to this wondrous maple land that is two hours outside of Boston.
The first stop that we made was at the Brattleboro Farmers Market. It’s considered one of Southern Vermont’s premier farmers markets and has over 50 vendors with everything from Vermont artisanal arts and crafts to local produce and prepared foods from a variety of cultures. The first thing that caught my eye there was this cute Thai food truck run by Anon’s Thai Food:
This farmers market was probably the nicest farmers market I’ve ever been to — it was bustling with lots of people, and the variety of produce, flowers, food, and items being sold was amazing. The stands themselves looked so rustic, all made of these wooden branches that had little roofs. While I love the New York City Greenmarket and all, it really can’t hold a candle to the depth and breadth of this Vermont farmers market. The vendors themselves were incredibly friendly, too, and more than willing to elaborate on their products and their businesses as a whole, which is not always the case at the Greenmarket back home, unfortunately.
We picked out some really unique fruit wines from an artisanal winery stand – the Putney Mountain Winery from Putney, VT. One was a sparkling apple wine with a very bright effervescence and a slightly bitter aftertaste. This was definitely a different taste than what I am used to with apple cider-type drinks; the aftertaste was really unique. The other bottle we got was the Vermont Cassis, which is a sweet and tart dessert wine made with local black currants. The woman at the booth who gave us free tastings of all her wines told us that it would be a great topping for ice cream and would last quite a while on the shelf after opening, which was a new idea to us since most wines we have had have lasted only a few days max.
We also found a prepared food stand that was selling Malian dishes. We had never had Malian food, so we got a combination plate with peanut butter chicken, beef and spinach stew, rice, and a special Malian hot sauce that was hotter than hot. Blueberry, who usually loves heat in his food, tortured himself eating more and more of this fiery sauce. The small reddish-green pile at the bottom right corner is the Hot Sauce of Death. Here’s our plate of Malian food:
We also had a cup of hibiscus juice here. It was really refreshing; sweetened with a bit of sugar, it was ideal for a hot summer’s day. The juice had a hint of floral flavor from the hibiscus and seemed to taste more like a sweetened floral tea than an actual juice.
From The Sun-Dried Tomato Mediterranean stand, we got a spinach-mozzarella roll-up and a piece of homemade baklava. Our baklava was incredibly sweet, nutty, and satisfying. Look at all those layers:
After the Brattleboro Farmers Market, our next stop was at the Robb Family Farm. The Robb Family Farm is a family-owned farm/business that has been around since 1907. Their farm is about 470 acres right outside of Brattleboro, and they own over 100 cows, half of whose lives are devoted to producing milk and cheese wholesale and for regional companies such as Hood and Cabot Cheese. They also have a big family of maple trees for genuine Vermont maple syrup. Depending on what time of the year you come, you can also schedule tours, hay rides, sleigh rides, and see maple syrup being extracted and produced. They also produce a small amount of raw milk that you can pick up if you are lucky enough to get there early in the mornings. Unfortunately we didn’t get there until early afternoon, so we missed our chance to taste raw milk. I’ve always wanted to drink raw milk, but with all these tough restrictions in the U.S., it’s hard to find it in regular markets near me.
However, we were able to go into the barn and see the cows. Here are two of the little calves we saw. These girls are young and feisty, especially the one on the right, which had a slight obsession with licking my arm all over:
I always romanticize, like a lot of city people do, about how sweet and idyllic it could be if I just lived out in the countryside, owned a farm, and produced all my own food instead of being so far removed from the food production process in a great big metropolis like New York City or San Francisco. Being out there on the farm and seeing all the cows was fun, but I think after a while I could tire of it, especially from the cow dung smell, honestly. 🙂
We left the farm with a large 16 oz. container of Grade A Dark Amber maple syrup from their farm. Since we got it in a metal container, we’re planning to get some mason jars to store the syrup longer, since maple syrup tends to have a longer life in the fridge if you store it in glass.
Afterwards, we stopped by an organic farm called the Lilac Ridge farm and passed by a cute sign that they had up:
Another place that was on our itinerary was the Grafton Village Cheese Company. While we were excited to taste different cheeses, we were a little disappointed that the cheese company seemed to be more commercial than we had originally hoped. And while the Vermont-made cheddar cheeses were tasty, none of them were so exceptional that we thought we needed to buy them while we were there. We actually thought that our local markets made cheddar cheeses that were just as good, if not better. Sadly, the one cheese we tried that blew us a way — a really nutty, subtly sweet Gruyere — was actually an import from Switzerland. So much for trying to support local, independent businesses.
We ended our day in Vermont with canoeing on the Connecticut river and having dinner at a nice Italian restaurant called Fireworks in downtown Brattleboro. It seemed to be a somewhat new restaurant, what they called a “work in progress.” They try to use organic produce whenever possible, use free-range chicken, and cook with cured meats made only by local producers. It was a fun, relaxing day, and we definitely plan to come back to Vermont for autumn hiking when the leaves are changing color and in the early spring when maple syrup is being extracted and processed. For foodies who are interested in learning more about how different foods are produced, especially maple syrup and Vermont cheese, Vermont is definitely a must-see with the added bonus of having beautiful scenery. New England has so many hidden gems; it makes me happy and grateful to be able to live near an area as beautiful as this.