Recently, Louise D. and I had a chat about the importance and benefits of buying food locally and she told me about all the fresh goodies found at Hamilton Farms. She's followed up by writing this description of her T-day dinner:
I procured the majority of my Thanksgiving dinner at Hamilton Farms and nearly everything was marked Jersey Fresh. They had wonderful new potatoes which I mashed with their skins on and used some more of them in our traditional "Aunt Sally's potato rolls". The waxed turnip was delicious and the first time there wasn't a speck of turnip left over ( hint- I mash it with butter, milk, salt, pepper and the secret ingredient a sprinkling of sugar). The carrots were incredible ( they still had the
tops on) and I love to cook/mash them with parsnips, which I also got at the farm. For those I mash them with the milk, butter, salt, pepper and some freshly grated nutmeg. The apples were all Jersey Fresh and I bought 1/2 bushel- so we will be having lots of apple items in the near future. My apple pie was sweetened with fresh local honey that I also got at the farm. My trick there is, you sweeten the pie with the honey and then sprinkle about a table spoon of sugar on the top of the pie. I bought the pie pumpkins- cut them in half- took the seeds out which I roasted ( yum yum) put them upside down on a baking dish and baked for about an hour. I then ran the pumpkin through the food processor and just added the other ingredients as well and the filling was ready for the crust. There were fresh Jersey cranberries, onions, celery, butter, milk, eggs, etc. I was checking out ( no lines) and said "if only I could get my turkey here". The answer was "you can". Those need to be ordered in advance but there were still 2 left- so I took them both and of course they were Jersey Fresh as well. Hint on cooking turkeys- I cook them in a brown paper bag. They take about 1/2 hour less time to cook, don't require basting ( none of that energy lost opening and closing the oven door), come out moist and tender and clean up is a snap. I didn't even have to soak the roasting pan. There was very little fat and the juice made wonderful gravy.
Hamilton Farms is a wonderful resource that is right in our back yard- open daily including Sunday. The produce store will be open through December and then open again April 1st.
Thanks, Louise!
