The menus are here! The menus are here!

We're so excited to announce our next round of menus! Here they are:

January 9th
A Healthy New Year
Sesame cabbage salad ~ vegetarian dumplings ~ baked fish with ginger and shitake mushrooms, served with jasmine rice and sautéed kale ~ walnut cookies and ginger ice cream

January 16th
Mexican Fiesta
Guest chefs: Joe Frye and Lisa Newman
Spicy pickled vegetables ~ chips and fresh salsa ~ black bean, corn, and red onion salad ~ chicken tortilla pie with Spanish rice ~ leche quemada dessert

January 23rd
Chicken Theresa
House pickle ~ fresh bread with homemade butter ~ mixed-green salad with Cathy’s secret dressing ~ Misty Knoll Farm chicken (pounded, breaded, and baked with provolone, basil, and diced tomato) served with parmesan pasta ~ semolina pudding

February 6th
Pan-Asian Celebration
Sesame pickled vegetables ~ fresh spring rolls with plum dipping sauce ~ coconut-lime soup with jasmine rice and pan-fried tofu ~ shrimp pad thai with fresh bean sprouts and cilantro ~ lime meringue tartlets

February 13th
Valentine Feast
Guest chef: Alice Cozzolino
Polenta bites with garden pesto ~ corn, bean, and roasted squash soup ~ watercress salad ~ scallops and porcini-leek risotto with parmigiano reggiano ~ roasted winter vegetables ~ hand-dipped chocolate truffles and poached pears with crème fraiche and red wine coulis
(Because of increased demand, we will have two seatings for this dinner — one at 6pm and one at 8pm.)

February 27th
Polska Kielbasa
Fresh bread with homemade butter ~ mixed green salad with Cathy’s secret dressing ~ potato and cheese pierogies ~ Holiday Brook Farm kielbasa with homemade whole-grain mustard and fresh sauerkraut ~ chocolate babka

A Lodge Homage

We're taking a couple of weeks off for Thanksgiving, but hope you'll all join us for our next dinner on December 5th: Beef Stroganoff! Sooooo delicious! I will make fresh sour cream for it, and we'll do handmade egg noodles, too. Hopefully, the farmers over at Gordon's Fold will have their tasty highland beef back by then! Cathy will be making a delightful arugula salad, as well as her signature lemon-glazed gingerbread. Yum.

What else? Be sure to pop over to Fran and Dan's blog, platetoplate.com, to check out some awesome photos of their trip to the Lodge. So glad to know there are pickle lovers in the world! Thanks, guys!

An Ode to Fresh Chestnuts

Our chestnut delivery finally arrived, and I am in heaven. (Because the chestnuts you find at the grocery store aren't refrigerated, as they should be, more often than not they're stale and moldy by the time you get them home. I order mine from Empire Chestnut Company in Ohio, which sends beautiful, crunchy, sweet chestnuts.) I've started roasting them for the pork and chestnut stew we'll be serving on Saturday, but I also love to eat them raw. The flavor is something like a dense, crunchy, sweet carrot, and quickly becomes addictive.

After scoring each chestnut and roasting them, the meat inside turns starchy and soft. A different flavor, but equally good. It adds its own flavor to the stew, and thickens it as well.

The part of dinner I'm most excited about, though, is serving fresh, hot biscuits with our homemade butter! This is truly a unique experience. How often do you get really good biscuits at a restaurant, served hot out of the oven?

Something ghoulish is going on . . .

. . . it's the Ghoulish Goodies dinner, this Saturday (that's Halloween, in case you'd forgotten). We will be serving unblinking eye meatloaf (only because we couldn't figure out how to keep the eye blinking in the oven), ghostly mashed potatoes, ladies fingers, monster eyeballs, and more. Come check it out!

Fall and winter menus

Bon appetit, as Julia would say:

October 10th: Pork-o-rama

Stuffed pork roast served with homemade spaetzle noodles and chunky applesauce ~ French onion soup fresh coleslaw ~ Alsatian pear tart

October 17th: Festival of Squash

Curried buttercup squash soup, served with homemade crème fraiche ~ mixed squash pickle ~ baked delicata, stuffed with quinoa, pecans, cranberries, and cheddar ~ roasted green beans ~ cardamom pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting

October 31: Ghoulish Goodies

Bandaged glazed carrot fingers ~ unblinking-eye meatloaf ~ ghostly mashed potatoes ~ chocolate spiders ~ ladies’ fingers ~ monster eyeballs

November 7th: All Things Latin

Salvadoran pickled cabbage ~ Cuban black bean soup ~ fresh corn tortillas ~ Rio verde chicken enchiladas, baked in a salsa cream sauce ~ flan

November 14th: Good Ol’ Stew and Biscuits

Pickled beets and carrots ~ hot, flaky biscuits served with homemade butter ~ pork and chestnut stew ~ house salad ~ homemade apple pie

December 5th: Beef Stroganoff

Arugula salad with dried tart cherries, blue cheese, and walnuts ~ beef stroganoff with handmade egg noodles, served with homemade crème fraiche ~ lemon-glazed gingerbread

December 12th: Lasagna Night

Antipasto sampler ~ Caesar salad with homemade dressing and croutons ~ lasagna Bolognese or spinach lasagna with toasted, slivered almonds ~
a platter of Italian cookies and lemon ice

January 9th: A Healthy New Year

Sesame cabbage salad ~ vegetarian dumplings ~ baked fish with ginger and shitake mushrooms, served with jasmine rice and roasted kale ~ walnut cookies and ginger ice cream

It helps to have professional photographers in the house . . .

Here are some great shots by Mars Vilaubi, who came to dinner on Saturday (aka Ravioli Night around the Lodge) with his wife, Alethea, and their son, Xavier:





And check out these swank photos on Flickr, taken by Fran Duncan (www.platetoplate.com), on Ravioli Night: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frangrit/sets/72157622267004929/

She and her husband, Dan Williams (the fastest pasta roller in the Berkshires), helped out in the kitchen on Saturday. Thanks, guys!

Local chicken!

This morning we received our delivery of local, organic chickens for this weekend's dinner! They're from Lauren and Eric Abend at Earthfire Farm in Ashfield, Ma. It's SO nice to finally have a local source for chickens. Can't wait to cook 'em up into tasty potpies. Yum.

And, if I had thought to have my camera handy (bad blogger, bad blogger!), this is where I would have posted a photo of Lauren coming through the door with a bushel basket full of chickens. You'll have to just use your powers of visualization, I suppose.

Our first dinner

Thank you all for
making our first dinner at the Lodge such a success! We hosted 66 people for dinner on Saturday night, and we're so humbled by the positive responses we received about the food, the warm atmosphere, and simply having a place for people to linger and chat with friends. It was lovely.

Our next dinner, this coming Saturday, will feature homemade ravioli. Because they are so labor-intensive to produce, however, we have decided to limit the seating for this dinner and have stopped taking reservations at this time.

If you were hoping to attend, we definitely recommend our chicken pot pie night on September 19th! Our pies will feature local chicken and vegetables baked in a savory gravy under a flaky layer of pastry. We will also be serving our curried zucchini pickles, fresh bread with homemade butter, mesclun salad with Cathy's secret-recipe dressing, and hot apple crisp (from local apples, of course!)

And (as if that weren't enough!) we will end the evening with a hootenanny! We'll pass out the lyrics to some classic folk songs (such as these: http://www.folkalley.com/lists/) and sing along with Deb Burns and her trio, Singing School. If you love to sing, please come! If you've got an instrument, please bring it!

Sold Out!

Hello, fellow chowhounds!
We are officially sold out for our first dinner on September 5th. There are lots of tasty meals to come, however, including deelicious handmade ravioli on September 12th (that's next Saturday, so get your reservation in soon).

Thanks!

Join us for dinner!

After a long Fourth of July weekend, with the help of good friends (thanks, Sue, Bud, Jimmy, and Bob!), we are finally moved into the Lodge! We're excited to be in a place of our own, surrounded by stacks of cookbooks, dreaming up meals and planning future events (hootenanny, anyone?).

We are so fortunate to have so much support from everyone in the Hilltowns; people from Springfield to Williamstown are sending positive energy our way (along with lots of menu suggestions! Keep 'em coming!) Thank you, all.

Here's what we've cooked up for the first round of dinners. We've tried to take advantage of what's in season, and we've tried to keep a balance of vegetarian and carnivorous meals, as well as a balance of homey, familiar food and a few more exotic items. One thing you can count on: at the core of every meal will be handmade food from the freshest available ingredients. Whenever we can buy from local farms, we certainly will.

Please send us your suggestions for future meals! Thanks so much!

September 5th
Marinated, grilled portabella mushrooms stuffed with feta, caramelized onions, and roasted red peppers (with or without sausage), nutty couscous and garlicky grilled summer squash ~ fresh corn chowder~ house pickles ~ freshly baked bread w/homemade butter ~ peach cobbler w/vanilla ice cream

September 12th
A medley of handmade ravioli ~ fresh Caesar salad with house-made dressing~ crusty garlic bread ~ creamy semolina pudding with tart fall raspberry sauce

September 19th
Local chicken pot pie ~ garden-fresh mesclun salad ~ house pickles ~ freshly baked bread w/homemade butter ~ hot apple crisp w/vanilla ice cream

September 26th
Mrs. Sangar’s homemade samosas ~ saag paneer w/ cashew basmati rice ~ fresh naan with a sampler tray of chutneys and raitas ~ coconut-cardamom rice pudding

October 3rd
No dinner—please attend the West Cummington Congregational Church’s annual auction & dinner!

October 10th
Stuffed pork roast served with homemade spaetzle noodles and chunky applesauce ~ French onion soup ~ fresh coleslaw ~ Alsatian pear tart

What are your intentions?

Seems like every time we mention to someone that we're buying the old Remington Lodge in Cummington, they ask us "so, what are you going to do there?"

When we explain that we're going to a) live there and b) serve family style dinners once a week with music afterward, the next question they ask is "Great! When can we come?"

So, here's the answer: hopefully by Labor Day!

We're still in the process of buying the lodge, but if all goes well, we should be able to move in June 30th, do some cleaning and repairs, and be up and going by the end of the summer.

Check back for (hopefully) regular updates on how things are progressing, and if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for dinners or musicians, please let us know!
Thanks so much!
Cathy Stillerman and Carleen Madigan