Food Glorious Food: Make Mine Local
It started snowing last Saturday in the early morning hours and continued throughout the day and into the late evening. I love watching the snow from my apartment window as it falls onto the street below. For a few hours the City is quiet and is transformed into a wonderland. Of course New Yorkers are intrepid and I noticed someone riding a bicycle down our steep downhill street and wondered if they have ever experienced snow and ice before? Perhaps they have just arrived in New York from a tropical climate?
Snow days are just perfect for settling in with a few good books and letting the mind wander. I began thinking about indulgence, which seems to define the magical December holidays. Even those who are the most disciplined find it difficult to resist the temptations that just keep appearing. Plates of decorated cookies, small breads that go perfectly with a cup of tea, a piece of warm mincemeat pie with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Then, of course, there are the large roasts of meat, with gravy and winter vegetables.
The most memorable of my Christmas dining experiences was a lunch of soups (chicken stew, broccoli and cheddar and pea) with close family and friends in Northwood, New Hampshire. The family once owned a large farm and I learned as a child that sitting around their long kitchen table meant real farm-to-table food. Raspberry tarts, beef from their cattle, fresh eggs. This year it was the pea soup made with a ham bone, carrots and onions that was my favorite.
I was also thinking about the pea soup because it would have been the perfect lunch on Saturday, served with a thick homemade bread. Then I was curious, where pea soup is served? According to what I learned in Australia, Britain and Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries. Makes perfect sense. In the United States pea soup is probably most popular in New England. As soupe aux pois (jaunes) yellow pea soup is a national dish in Canada, the dish was probably introduced by “French-Canadian mill workers in the 19th Century.”
As I think about style and re-imagining Laconia food clearly comes to mine. How fortunate we are to now have a shop on Main Street where one can find local meat and fish. Beef from cows raised in New Hampshire, on farms within easy driving distance. Lamb that comes from sheep who have wandered across a rocky field along the Connecticut River perhaps? And to know that two local restaurants, the Holy Grail and the Local Eatery, are serving local farm to table food. Supporting these shops that have only been in Laconia for a few years is critical to beginning to develop more of a sense of place around downtown. Of course we can’t forget all the small café’s and restaurants that have defined the downtown for years either – they will only benefit from more options for dining.
Checking the weather it seems the Lakes Region will be getting some rain and snow over the next week. Don’t be without the ingredients to make a good pea soup – carrots, onions, a ham bone and dried peas. According to Betty Crocker it can be made by heating peas and water in a 4-quart Dutch oven, stirring in onion, celery and pepper and then adding the ham bone. Remove ham from the bone, cut and return to the soup with carrots. Heat to boiling and then simmer.
On a cold January day there is nothing as comforting as a cup of homemade soup.
From Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland:
“Beautiful soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup! Beautiful soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup! Beautiful soup!
…Who cares for fish
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth of beautiful Soup?”
From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll