Archive - Staff Blog

A blog about everything from cooking food to farming it.

Almost before you know it, apple season is here and gone. I usually begin to crave apples as soon as I smell that crisp autumn scent on the air and launch into a frenzy of apple-related activities — apple picking, apple spice cookie making, applesauce stewing, Mom’s sour cream apple pie baking, you name it.

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Another gorgeous September Saturday goaded me into a long leisurely run. Since Sunday will be the day of the TAM team trek, a fundraiser for the Trail Around Middlebury, and family commitments will keep me away from this event, it seemed like a good day to take on a long stretch of this convenient and pretty trail. I chose to run on my favorite section, heading from town up the east bank of the Otter Creek to the Belden Dam in New Haven, returning through the forest and fields to the west.

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A blog about everything from cooking food to farming it.

Fall is a whirlwind of change. The leaves change, the air gets colder and we say goodbye to summer berries and greens and welcome their more hearty cousins: sweet winter squash, potatoes, onions, apples.

For the inhabitants of Middlebury College’s Weybridge House, this fall isn’t about saying goodbye to summer’s produce: instead, the 18 residents of the cooperative environmental interest house have been figuring out how to pickle, freeze and can it all.

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Table Talk: A blog about everything from cooking food to eating it, by Andrea Suozzo

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that I’m not the only one who gets nervous about food prices. Sometimes I’ll stand in the middle of an aisle for several minutes, debating whether or not to buy the better-quality olive oil for two dollars more – that’s two dollars that I could be spending on rent, gas or my school loans instead of on food, which is fleeting and temporary.

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After all these years of living in the area, I realized that I had never run up to the top of the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, so it seemed like a fun thing to do on a perfect Sunday afternoon. Starting in the Snow Bowl parking lot, I headed up the dirt road just to the left of the ski patrol cabin. I figured, correctly, that this would ascend on the Voter trail, which was after all the easiest way to ski down from the summit, and should make for an easy climb. Note to self: those bunny trails which are so easy in the winter, can be very steep from the runner’s perspective!

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On Sunday afternoon I hustled into the Town Hall Theater, set up my camera in the back of the room, and waited for the show to start.

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Vermont’s and New York’s annual shared celebration of Lake Champlain takes on a heightened importance in this year of the quadricentennial of the arrival of Samuel de Champlain into Lake Champlain. The Festival of Nations hosted by the Chimney Point Historic Site in Addison, Vt., and Crown Point, N.Y., Historic Site this Friday through Sunday will feature a wide variety of events, including the 14th Annual Northeastern Open Atlatl Championship at Chimney Point, named a Top Ten Vermont Fall Event for 2009 by the Vermont State Chamber of Commerce.

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When it comes to where we live and what we consume, Vermonters never run out of declarations to color the state’s portrait: green, organic, natural, fair-trade, local.

But when Morgan Wolaver, owner and president of Otter Creek Brewing and the man behind the one of the first organic ales in the country, stepped into a bar more than a decade ago, he was surprised to see the word “organic” on a beer label. At that point, organic milk, eggs, fruit and veggies were standard, but organic beer was still an oxymoron.

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