Happy Well Fed Readers

If you missed out on yesterday’s Ice Cream Sandwich Throwdown, you will just have to wait until Monday to hear the official results. It takes time to go through all those scoresheets. And today, after returning from the tour, I completely crashed from all the sugar.

As I get older I find it more difficult to bounce back from these all-day eating affairs. Not just things like the tours but also my annual Super Bowl rites. Still, that’s not going to stop me from judging BaconFest or attending the Saratoga Wine & Food and Fall Ferrari Festival in the weeks to come.

I like to imagine that those who joined in the festivities yesterday left happy and well fed. More accurately it was probably tired and overfed. But I’m pleased to report that the FUSSYlittleBLOG has been able surprise and delight readers recently with some tasty treats and food experiences.

Today, I thought it would be fun to share with you a couple of their stories.

Do you remember Fuddley? He was one of the three winners of the All Good Baker’s egg and cheese sandwich. To win, he left a comment answering the question Where do you get your eggs? Fuddley’s response was, “Price Chopper. My palate needs a bit of educating.” Well, Random.org selected his answer and started that process of that education. After collecting his winnings, Fuddley sent in the following note:

Daniel, as a recipient of one of AGB’s egg sandwiches I must say that sucker is a handful of happy. At Nick’s suggestion I went for the Bialy as a base. It was the perfect choice to house the other ingredients. The egg was so delicious and matched with the sharpness of the cheese, the whole lot of it took the lowly breakfast Sammie to a level I never imagined. AGB is a nice funky place to have a cup of tea while savoring the goodies and the whole staff was just as friendly as could be.

I made sure to grab a loaf of the sourdough bread before departing. Boy does that make for a good sandwich.

In closing, thanks for complicating my life as I now find myself constantly looking for opportunities to get over there for another one. I still think some locally sourced ham would be great but I don’t wish to insult anyone’s vegetarian / vegan sensibilities. It’s pretty darn good as it is.

Thanks again,
Fuddley

Bob W. was one of the recipients of a week’s worth of local produce from my CSA, Roxbury Farm. There are some of you who may consider joining a community supported agriculture arrangement next year, and may be curious to hear the perspective of someone who isn’t a food blogger. To that end, I’m sharing the email that he sent me with the names of his family redacted for their privacy:

Apologies for the delay in a recap/thank you for the very generous week of your CSA. It has been a busy/emotional couple of weeks in the Webster house — it started off with my family and I having to put down one of our beloved cats (our sweet, wonderful 16-year-old Ciara) mere hours before the CSA pick up, and the month only went downhill from there.

But, the good news is we seem to have righted the ship to finish off the summer, and our experience with the CSA was uniformly excellent. Thank you so much for your generosity – everything was used except one potato which had gone bad (poor selection on my part) and the greens from the carrots. And even both of those items ended up in the compost pile, so waste was not an issue.

The week’s bounty included:
·         A large amount of green beans
·         A handful of purple basil
·         Two green bell peppers
·         Small bushel of potatoes
·         Four onions
·         Five ears of sweet corn
·         Bunch of Swiss chard
·         Two summer squash
·         One zucchini
·         Two cucumbers
·         Bunch of carrots
·         One purple eggplant
·         Small bushel of nectarines

Quite the haul! And how did we consume these delights? Well, the green beans were all consumed raw that night, as fresh green beans were always Ciara’s favorite summer snack. It was nice to reminisce about her while we munched on that crunchy, sweet pile of beans.

We also ate all the nectarines that night as, and I say this without any hyperbole, they were the most delicious fruits I had ever consumed. I’m not really a fruit guy (fall apples, summer strawberries from our garden are about it), but these were beyond amazing and the boys and Erica concurred (fruit lovers, all). Juicy, sweet – they were the highlight.

The next day I boiled up the corn and served it with some grilled chicken topped with pesto I made with the purple basil. My favorite meal that week, for certain – it was simply summer on a plate.

Everything else got worked into various meals – nothing terribly elaborate, but all delicious. One onion went into a batch of black beans, another into a sautéed medley of bell pepper, squash and zucchini, one into a chicken stir fry, and the last went into a homemade barbecue sauce recipe I got from America’s Test Kitchen that was a HUGE hit (even with Fussy Little Erica). The Swiss chard got sautéed like spinach; the eggplant got made into baba ganoush; the cukes were sliced and served with dill dip; carrots were cooked with a maple glaze; and the potatoes were baked and served with butter and fresh chives.

Like Stephanie, I was interested to see how I would be able to handle such a large influx of produce. I was pleased to see it was quite manageable – I am seriously considering joining the CSA next year, confident that I’d be likely to keep with the prep and cooking.

So, again – THANK YOU! It was the highlight of a difficult week and, for that, I cannot thank you enough. My family really enjoyed the variety, I liked having so much delicious produce readily at hand while I prepared meals for the week, and it felt good knowing it was all raised locally.

Cheers,
Bob W.

Thank you Fuddley and Bob W. for your letters. I’m so glad that everything worked out. Usually I just write about food and make folks hungry. It feels good to sometimes be able to actually feed people the good stuff. Especially when it’s well appreciated.