Our Winter Issue, “Local Heroes” has arrived! It’s always a flurry of activity from the moment the freight company drops off the pallets in our driveway until the last stop on our distribution route. We typically log about 1200 miles between two vehicles and while the hours are long, I love it as it gives me the opportunity to see the region in all it’s seasonal glory and to check in with our stockists, readers, and advertisers. It’s also an excellent excuse to consume many baked goods along the way…
This gorgeous cover is the work of Roshi Arnold, a Staunton-based artist. Our winter issue is dedicated to the food heroes in our community. From farmers, to farmers market managers. From distillers, to those willing to lend a hand when they see someone in need. This issue also coincides with the beginning of holidays, so be sure to check out the shop local gift guide and support your local artisans this season.
Welcome to the Edible Blue Ridge newsletter that brings you food stories from our region and beyond. You're receiving this email because you've purchased a magazine subscription—thank you!—or you signed up via our online form. If you need to opt out at any time, there's a link at the bottom. We're glad you're here.
Thanks for reading, happy eating, and enjoy your weekend,
Lisa - Publisher & Editor
EVENTS
Have an event you’d like us to share? Email: info@edibleblueridge.com
11.17-1.06 Veritas Illuminated - Afton
11.18 Apple Butter Festival at Bryant’s Cider - Roseland
11.26 Holiday Makers Market at Parkway Brewing - Salem
12.02 Crozet Winter Brews Fest - Crozet
SEASONAL TABLE CENTERPIECES
A festive, produce-filled table is a vehicle for conversation, a stand in grazing board and just plain beautiful. This Thanksgiving we encourage you to think outside the box as you set your holiday table. Yes, pull out the china, the flatware and nice wine glasses, but have some fun when it comes to the centerpiece! Can you combine natural elements that engage your guests, spark conversations and whet their appetites?
We went to our local market for our holiday shopping and added a few items to set the stage for the big meal. Vibrant purple cauliflower, kholrabi and pearly white turnips offer texture and fun, carrots can be placed in candlesticks (after all, most of us will be dining before the sun sets). Pears feel as if they’ve stepped right out of a still life painting, and pomegranates and cranberries add depth and color to the spread. We paid a visit to our neighbors yard and left with a branch from their magnolia tree (always ask permission before clipping branches!). The glossy leaves create a luscious backdrop, but holly, dried grasses or Swiss chard and collard greens are all perfectly good replacements. We’ll also add a few more dips and maybe mini pumpkin-shaped dinner rolls to round out the display.
Excited to try this for your next gathering? Tag us @edibleblueridge and we’ll share your holiday centerpieces with our community!
WHAT WE’RE COOKING: Kinloch Farm Bone Broth
POEM OF THE WEEK
Family Reunion BY MAXINE KUMIN The week in August you come home, adult, professional, aloof, we roast and carve the fatted calf —in our case home-grown pig, the chine garlicked and crisped, the applesauce hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine. Nothing is cost-effective here. The peas, the beets, the lettuces hand sown, are raised to stand apart. The electric fence ticks like the slow heart of something we fed and bedded for a year, then killed with kindness’s one bullet and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering. In winter we lure the birds with suet, thaw lungs and kidneys for the cat. Darlings, it’s all a circle from the ring of wire that keeps the raccoons from the corn to the gouged pine table that we lounge around, distressed before any of you was born. Benign and dozy from our gluttonies, the candles down to stubs, defenses down, love leaking out unguarded the way juice dribbles from the fence when grounded by grass stalks or a forgotten hoe, how eloquent, how beautiful you seem! Wearing our gestures, how wise you grow, ballooning to overfill our space, the almost-parents of your parents now. So briefly having you back to measure us is harder than having let you go. Maxine Kumin, “Family Reunion” from Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief (New York: Viking Press, 1982). Copyright © 1982
Looking for our Winter Issue? Order an annual subscription for $28 and have it mailed right to your door. Or, find it at one of these businesses who offer it as their gift to you. You can also read the whole issue in a flip-through digital edition (plus our archive).
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