You needn’t be Irish to celebrate the food traditions of St. Patrick’s Day. You’ll find all the components you’ll need in our weekly sale display from March 10th – 16th and this recipe will help you pull this traditional one-pot meal together!
Drip, drip, drip….we can almost hear the maple sap beginning to collect in pails in sugarbushes across Vermont and our Weekly Sale from March 3rd – 9th celebrates the start of sugaring season with a handful of ingredients well suited to a hearty maple-themed breakfast! You’ll find local, organic, dark robust maple syrup quarts from Shaker Maple Farm; local apples from Champlain Orchards; local, organic granola from Patrick’s Artisan Bakery; local, organic Rogers Farmstead yogurt; local Brio coffee; and ham steaks that are just begging for a maple glaze. This recipe pulls together many of those ingredients into a Vermont breakfast spread that also doubles as a decadent dessert when you swap out the local yogurt with a scoop of Strafford Organic Creamery’s ice cream or Larson’s Farm & Creamery gelato.
Mardi Gras/Carnival season officially began on January 6th or the “Twelfth Night,” also known to Christians as the “Epiphany,” and culminates on Tuesday, March 1st – a day affectionately known as “Fat Tuesday”. While there are many traditional Mardi Gras dishes to enjoy during this time of feasting and revelry leading up to Lent, none is quite so ubiquitous as the king cake.
The rich history of the king cake dates all the way back to the Middle Ages with the first known king cakes baked in Europe in celebration of the Catholic Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day on January 6th. The French brought the cake with them to the Gulf Coast region of the United States in the 1870s, and it has since become synonymous with American celebrations of Mardi Gras. The first Mardi Gras celebration in America took place in 1703, when a group of French soldiers held an impromptu celebration in the settlement of Mobile, Alabama.
While there are many regional variations, Mardi Gras king cakes found in most American bakeries are traditionally crown-shaped brioche-style confections decorated in royal colors of purple, green, and gold representing justice, faith, and power, respectively. They also typically contain a token of good fortune hidden within the cake, bestowing the recipient with luck and prosperity and the responsibility of providing the king cake for the next year’s festivities. This token is often represented as a bean, pea, or plastic baby.
You’ll find many of the ingredients needed to prepare your own Mardi Gras king cake in our weekly sale from February 24th – March 2nd, so it’s a perfect time to give this traditional treat a try!
Jambalaya is a dish that brings together West African, French, and Spanish influences all into one colorful, flavorful dish. It’s popular fare during the Mardi Gras/Carnival season that culminates on “Fat Tuesday” which falls on March 1st this year. Our weekly sale from February 24th – March 2nd celebrates the traditional flavors of Mardi Gras, so it’s a perfect time to try this one-pot comfort food wonder!
Dal is a layered dish with thousands of variations determined by everything from the availability of certain ingredients to family traditions. But amongst them all, two components are essential to dal: tender lentils and tempered spices. Soft-cooked lentils stewed in an aromatic broth full of onions, garlic, and ginger become the base of most dals. Tomatoes, potatoes, or other vegetables can be added as well, but those elements depend on the cook, the region, and the traditions that influence what goes in the pot. Our Indian Cuisine-themed weekly sale from February 17th – 23rd features organic red lentils, so it’s a great time to give this comforting dish a try!
Our Weekly Sale from February 17th – 23rd celebrates Indian cuisine and features a lineup of ingredients to help you bring the flavors of India to your kitchen table. While using dried chickpeas requires a bit more time than their canned counterparts, we think you’ll enjoy the extra cost savings and appreciate the way that the dried chickpeas absorb the rich curry flavors as they cook.
It’s Super Bowl season and regardless of your sports fan status, we think you’ll love diving into this hot and cheesy dip recipe. It comes together in about 20 minutes and features a handful of ingredients from the February 10th – 16th weekly sale, so it’s easy on the budget, too!
Our weekly sale from February 3rd – 9th celebrates Moroccan cuisine and we think you’ll love this warm, hearty vegetable tagine that can easily be pulled together using ingredients from the weekly sale. The word tagine refers both to this traditional Moroccan meal and also the traditional clay or ceramic vessel with a domed or conical-shaped lid in which the stew is often cooked. Since most of us do not have a tagine on hand, this recipe offers a way to prepare this delicious dish using a heavy pot or Dutch oven.
If you find pork dumplings from your favorite take-out spot irresistible, just wait until you taste this homemade version! Pork dumplings, or jiaozi, are the quintessential dish of Lunar New Year celebrations and these have everything you want in a dumpling: plump and nicely chewy, filled with tender pork, flavored with fresh ginger, green onion, and sesame oil. Lunar New Year, Chinese Chunjie, Korean Seollal, Tibetan Losar, and Spring Festival all describe the celebration that begins with the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends on the first full moon, 15 days later. This year, many will hold celebrations on Feb 1. The Lunar New Year festival is thousands of years old, and today nearly 25% of the world’s population participate in this celebration.
Because of their resemblance to gold ingots, making and eating dumplings during Lunar New Year celebrations is a way to express wishes of prosperity and fortune in the coming year. Making dumplings is also a group effort, so Lunar New Year celebrations are good times to get the whole family involved in making — and eating! — several batches. Whether you’re celebrating the Lunar New Year or stocking your freezer for a busy month ahead, these dumplings should definitely be on your list. You’ll find many of the ingredients in our Lunar New Year-themed weekly sale from January 27th – February 2nd, so it’s a perfect time to give them a try!
Making pizza at home might seem intimidating – especially compared to the relative ease of popping a pre-made frozen pie into the oven, but we think you’ll agree that nothing tastes better than homemade and the process is actually quite simple. Local pizza dough is featured in our weekly sale from January 20th – 26th, along with local Maplebrook fresh mozzarella, Organicville pizza sauce, and a handful of perfect pizza toppings, including local Vermont Smoke and Cure Pepperoni, so it’s an excellent time to try your hand at homemade pizza! Feel free to get creative with the toppings!
