12/13-12/15/2018 Hibernation, ambition, and diapers

A few quick things:

• Want to receive this list via email each week? Sign up here.
• THANK YOU for the incredible amount of love, support, and well-wishes you’ve sent our way in the last week. We are humbled and awed and oh-so-inspired by your excitement and faith in us. We’re going to work really hard not to let you down. 🙂
• I am sorry to say, no fresh baguettes this week. We’ve got a pretty good frozen supply.
• Christmas is fast approaching, but you can still purchase R&R gift cards on the website or in-store.
• If you’re already thinking about next year (as in New Years), we’ve got pork shoulders available for pre-order!
• This week’s Staff Pick: Apple Butter from Three Springs Fruit Farm, selected by Dusty.

Scroll down for the full list of what we’ll have this week!

Our niece!

Just in case you think we eat well all the time, I have a confession to make: I’ve eaten a lot of ramen in the last week. And I didn’t even take any pictures of it!

So today’s featured image is one that was taken in the last week, and I justify it as being relevant because it was taken at the stand. We’ll say I’m advertising a little known R&R service — if your child will let us, and it’s not too busy, we’ll happily babysit while you shop! No need to think anything cynical about me using an adorable baby (and a pretty good-looking man) as click bait, right? (I’m mostly serious about the babysitting thing.)

In truth, if I had taken pictures of the ramen I’ve eaten over the last week, it might be less embarrassing than just telling you I’ve been eating a lot of ramen. Between us, Dusty and I have made three or four rounds of pickled daikon and/or hakurei turnips (each batch good for several servings of ramen, though that’s not all we’ve been eating them with), I’ve soft-boiled nearly a dozen eggs, we’ve gone through two jars of kim chi (one homemade, one from Sweet Farm), and I’ve eaten so many seaweed snacks I might turn into a mermaid. And those seaweed snacks are the only accompaniment that isn’t local! (When I think about it that way, I’m kind of tickled with myself for finding ways to put a local spin on my 30 cent pack of ramen!) At least one round also involved a very special ramen broth Dusty made and canned a few weeks ago.

Still, even though I don’t seem to be very kitchen-ambitious at the moment, I think it’s about time to eat some meals that are a little more veggie heavy. Last night I had a Baby Red Russian Kale salad with Caesar dressing, a tin of sardines, and a bunch of butter-slathered sourdough bread. That was a good start, and super easy. Rumor has it there are a ton of Brussels Sprouts arriving tomorrow (I’m not crowing too loudly about those, until they’re actually in hand), so I’m dreaming about roasting some of those little guys, maybe along with some thinly shaved fennel (already here, but arrived looking sad enough that it’ll be way marked down), probably to accompany a pork chop. That would be an easy one, and fairly quick, or at least quick-feeling, if you use the roasting time wisely.

I’m also starting to think about what to have for Christmas dinner. Maybe goose? Maybe lamb? I might squirrel away some of those sprouts and save them for Christmas, assuming they arrive looking like they’ll make it that long. And you know, we’ve got those pork shoulders for pre-order for New Years, but if you’ve got a hankering for something special for Christmas, talk to us — we’ve got some connections and would be happy to help you find a fat goose.

-Julia

P.S. Fair warning — I am really enjoying daikon pickled in rice wine vinegar with a little sugar and salt, but for some reason, it emits an odor not unlike that of a baby’s diaper. It doesn’t taste like that at all! But maybe it’s the real reason I was inspired to use that picture?

This week’s Staff Pick from Dusty

Three Springs Fruit Farm Apple Butter
Normally $3.50, this week $2.98

When I was kid, my family would occasionally go to this out of the way restaurant (it could have been called Luddy’s, maybe in Goldsboro, PA?) for the express purpose of indulging in the all-you-can-eat seafood feasts they would have. There were hardshell crabs, shrimp, snow crab legs, steamed clams and oysters, the works, from what I remember. Included in the price of this gluttonous affair was unlimited trips to a modest salad bar. I was too young to know or care how much all this cost, but I definitely understood it to be expensive. Which is probably why it was mildly upsetting to my family that, once we were seated at our table, I would head straight to the salad bar and get a plate of pillowy white Italian bread slices topped with butter and huge dollops of apple butter. And then I would go back again, and again, and again, slowly but surely working myself into an apple butter-induced torpor. I vaguely remember marveling at how something so wonderful and delicious could be available in an unlimited supply like that. It seemed magical, too good to be true. We only paid for seafood but I was sneakily eating all the bread and apple butter instead! Of course, now I know it was the restaurateurs who were having the last laugh. I’m sure if I had been old enough, my family would have LOVED to leave me at home with a loaf of bread and few jars of apple butter, rather than spend whatever princely sum they did to allow me to gorge on apple butter at a seafood restaurant.

-Dusty

Produce

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