Travelling Potato

My kitchen really is lonely lately. I’ve been travelling with my job, and will continue to do so through to December. The nice thing is (usually), this is a great travelling time of year. The hills are already changing to beautiful red, yellows and oranges, the air is crisp and the sunlight is a little more mellow, less harsh.

Eating on the road can be difficult. I travel to a lot of small towns, so I end up at a lot of hotel/inn restaurants, mom and pop joints or the ubiquitous Pizza Delight- which I do love. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to experience an incredible food experience, but a lot of the time, I’m wishing for my own cupboards. The hardest thing is simply not being able to go to the kitchen and grab an apple, a glass of something, or a stack of crackers. On the road, changing hotels every day, everything has to be purchased and considered for the size, expiry, storage requirements, etc.

My most recent set of adventures were in Western New Brunswick: Grand Falls, Perth-Andover, Plaster Rock, Woodstock, Hartland, Nackawic, and Fredericton. If you’re a Maritimer, you’re probably familiar with the names at least, and may have driven through the area on your way to Quebec. It’s not very populated, and is mostly known for its longest covered bridge in the world (Hartland), its beauty (rivers and valleys) and its potatoes. There is a potato museum, an oversized potato man statue waving at you, and the local schoolkids even start classes early so they can have two weeks off later in the year to help with the potato crop.

The postcard above is of the potato harvest. It was the biggest seller in my hotels, and I bought all the remaining copies they had. I couldn’t pass up such a unique postcard topic. The harvest is already in, and the fields are empty as you’re driving by. But there are still a few tractors and other colourful pieces of equipment hanging out in front of barns.

Snow Covered Gingersnaps (before the snow)

These are an old family favourite I’ve been making since I was a kid- and I’m the only one in my family who makes them. It’s an old Christmas Cookbook Treasury of my mother’s, a Christmas gift from her mother. It had a very confusing structure: five cookbooks in one, and they all had their own table of contents and pagination. It would have been printed in the early 80s, before digital software made editing and printing so much easier.

The Cookbook Treasury lived up to its name and was one of our (re. kids’) favourite cookbooks because it had lots of full colour photos of fluffy frosted cakes, candies spilling out of tiered dishes and elaborate holiday dishware. The favourite picture was a whole page of springerle, frosted gingerbread and sugar cookies ‘spilling’ out of a basket beside a frosted Christmas tree: this was the equivalent of cookie heaven. It was also this book that inspired my mother to create gingerbread boxes for each of us, and fill them with an assortment of cookies.

Keeping with the Christmas theme, these cookies are called “Snow Covered Gingersnaps” because they’re rolled in confectioner’s sugar before cooking. In the oven, they spread out and the sugar cracks, and they kind of look like snow (the almost gone Spring variety). Very pretty, but it’s kind of messy to eat so I sometimes bake them plain.

Snow Covered Gingersnaps
¾ C vegetable shortening
1 C sugar
¼ C molasses
1 egg
2 C flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 scant tsp salt
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
confectioner’s sugar

1. Cream shortening; add sugar gradually, creaming well after each addition.
2. Add molasses; mix well.
3. Add egg; beat.
4. Add flour salt and spices; stir into dough.
5. Roll into balls the size of a walnut.
6. Roll the balls in confectioner’s sugar.
7. Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet.
8. Bake at 350F for 10 minutes, until spread and cracked.

These keep well in an airtight container, or frozen. You can also freeze the balls of raw dough and cook fom frozen.

Maple Syrup Taste Test

Quebec produces 70% of the world’s maple syrup. At home, I would be hard pressed to find any Quebec maple syrup, it’s all New Brunswick maple syrup, of course. According to a colleague, Vermont maple syrup is best or so she had heard. And I was sceptical- how different could it be?

So we conducted a taste test. While in Vermont, I purchased a bottle of Grade A medium amber produced by Lucien O. Laroche from Franklin, Vt. I also bought a jar of Hudak’s Grade A Dark Amber and Grade B. At home, I already had a bottle of Canada No. 1 Medium maple syrup made by L. Briggs and Family from Stilesville, NB and a can of Medium from Elgin, NB.

In order to be more fair, I really should have had some from Quebec, Maine, Ontario and other and types, including other producers in New Brunswick. But five containers of maple syrup will take us a while to get through, as it is.

The Hudaks maple syrups definitely had more character- sweeter, more raw, darker. They were prettier, but they were immediately cut from my list. And there was an obvious difference between the Grade A and Grade B- the B was sweeter. My brother Josh preferred the Hudak’s Grade A Dark Amber to all the others- he really liked the flavour.

The other three were similar- the nature of being a ‘medium’ I guess. In the end, I preferred the Briggs family maple syrup from Stilesville. I think the flavour was a little lighter, mellower, fruitier- but I’m suspicious of my own ability to differentiate. I know I prefer medium maple syrup, whether it’s from New Brunswick or Vermont. And I’ll pay a little more attention next time I’m buying maple syrup.

Epps Nectarines

I found these in the Market on Thursday. They were gone by Friday. And I've been happily eating them since. They're smaller than the average nectarine, and seem more like a plum. Their flesh is like a plum, some of them are small enough to pop whole in your mouth (you can eat around the pit, like a cherry), and they're hairless, mellow, sweet and gem coloured. The Ontario fruit basket handles said "Epps Nectarines", which could be the variety, or the farm. I don't know, but I recommend picking some up if you come across them.

Hudak's

Hudak’s is an organic market about 10 minutes from my Gramie’s on Route 7, just outside of St. Alban’s, Vermont. I managed to visit every day, attracted initially by their corn on the cob, which is picked fresh daily on the surrounding fields. This was the sweetest most flavourful corn I’ve ever had. Corn is best eaten as soon as possible from the time it is picked, as the sugars will convert to starches as time passes. I don’t usually even have the opportunity to buy or eat fresh picked corn, so this was a culinary novelty for me. I wish I could have taken some home with me.

Hudak’s also has piles of basketball-sized cantaloupes, peppers, tomatoes, honey, maple syrup, local cheese, beans and garden plants for sale. Everything is Hudak’s grown, from local farms, or from other organic producers. In three days I also managed to buy local cheese, Amish peaches, Hudak's cantaloupe, and Hudak's maple syrup. I really really wanted to buy the pick polka dotted French haricots, and bundles of fresh garlic, but managed to restrain myself. In case you're not as easily sold as I am, they have a sample table which offered melon, salsa, bean salads, and cheese dips- you could have had lunch just from the sample table. There is a resident cat, dog, and wandering chicken. There are turkeys in a pretty cool fenced area. There is even a cider mill on site and a baby blue 30’s era Porsche for sale. This place gets bonus points for style, on top of their great food.