butter

  NAMES: Jonny & Christopher Piana FARM: Fable Farm AGEs: 28 & 34 Can you provide some brief background information about your farm? In your opinion, what makes it special or unique? Fable Farm is a 100-member CSA vegetable and herb farm in Barnard, Vermont. In addition to our regular season CSA, we offer winter shares of root cellar crops. We borrow and lease land peppered throughout our hillsides, and hold CSA pick-up gatherings at a village-center farmhouse that we rent. Soon we will begin growing more tree crops and perennials and work towards establishing processing facilities for value-added products. In collaboration with other local farmers, we are working towards...

from the FarmPlate Kitchen Be wary of an oyster recipe with more than six or seven main ingredients—the last thing you want to do is to overwhelm the sea-fresh taste of oysters. 2 dozen Wellfleet oysters, shucked, with their liquor 1½ cups Strafford Organic Creamery whole milk 3 tablespoons dry sherry 4 tablespoons Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery cultured butter 1 cup cream Freshly ground white pepper In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the oysters and their liquor, milk, sherry and two tablespoons of the butter over low heat. Cook very gently until the oysters begin to curl. Add the cream and continue to heat through. Add the pepper to taste and swirl in the remaining two...

Do you ever wonder about buttermilk? Most people know that buttermilk is--at least it used to be--the liquid leftover from churning butter. The solid butter got all the fat, leaving the liquid buttermilk nearly fat-free. But what's the story behind buttermilk's sour tang? In the early 1930s, American farmers were literally in the dark. Nine out of ten farms had no electricity. By the time fresh cream arrived at the dairy for processing, it had fermented or soured, giving the buttermilk and the butter a distinctive tang. The Rural Electricity Administration brought power to the countryside and by the time of WWII, nine out of ten American farms were electrified. The cream could be quickly...

  What do Vermont localvores give their chocolate-loving sweethearts for Valentine's Day since the nearest cacao plantation is on the island of Jamaica, not in the southern Vermont town of Jamaica? Truffles. Chocolate truffles. From Lake Champlain Chocolates, of course. Most people don't think of chocolate as a local product, but Burlington's Lake Champlain Chocolates is working hard to change that. The company uses as many local products as possible, from butter and cream to honey to maple syrup. Because it's not just chocolate that makes their chocolate truffles so rich, so creamy, so irresistible. The secret is in the prize-winning butter, Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery's...

from Sarah McClain I absolutely love good ’ol sugar cookies. For the last three years, my almost 5-year-old niece, Iris, and I have been making sugar cookies on Christmas Eve for Santa. We tie our aprons and get to work. My poor sister—by the end of each cookie session, her kitchen is covered with a fine layer of flour. I bounce around with which recipe to use each year, but my most recent favorite is this one, courtesy of Linda McClure, from the Food Network's Sweet Dreams episode “Cookie Jar.” King Arthur Flour's Baker's Catalogue has a wide selection of colored sugars and holiday sprinkles to decorate cookies. 2¾ cups flour 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon baking powder 1 cup butter, at...