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?