This Week's Food

KITCHEN YODA

We'll admit to having way too many cookbooks. From Indian to Classic French Pastry our shelves are full of them, crammed with beautiful glossy photos and slightly complicated recipes. 

But, to be honest, most don't see every day use. Frankly, I don't always have time to sous-vide a tomato before passing it through a centrifuge and applying it, using a microscope, with tweezers to my plate at 7pm on a weeknight. I'm just not that motivated.

One book that I turn to over and over is Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden. (Obligatory note: we get nothing out of this commercially or otherwise- we just love the heck out of this and want to share it with you!)

This book is a wall-to-wall love letter to seasonal vegetables penned by the Master. Vegetables are venerated on center stage and highlighted using normal ingredients and approachable preparations. 

It's the perfect company for your weekly Family Dinner share. Think Winter Squash and Leek Risotto, Smashed Rutabaga with Apples and Ham or Grated Carrot Salad with Walnuts and Burrata (hello!).

Of the book Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill says it best: "This is not a cookbook for coffee tables or artfully curated bookshelves. Its recipes demand to be tasted until the pages are dog-eared and sauce-splattered and stick together." 

So if you're looking to up your veggie game, without having to use CRISPR on your cabbage, this is might be the book for you.

(And yes, I just made a CRISPR joke in a food blog. We're that nerdy.)

Good Morning! 

Just a reminder about the "In Season Dinner" series, a collaboration between Forge and Family Dinner.  This year we are kicking off with the famed Pizza and Beer night.  There will be tasty brews from Idle Hands and pizza from the magicians at Forge.

It all takes place on January 30th, 6:30 pm at Forge Baking Co in Somerville.  Tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite - we would love to see you there!

Also: CALLING ALL BAGS!  if you have a treasure trove of Family Dinner bags or ice packs - maybe you're taking them on vacation or letting your kids built a fort of out them that looks like Hogwarts (if so, send pics!) - we would love them back!  You can leave them out for your driver or exchange them in person for a high five!

Thanks!!

Erin + Tim

A TRIP ACROSS THE POND

Today we are headed to see these wonderful people at Heron Pond to pick up Sweet Potatoes (400#- that's a lot of spuds!) for the shares and Cranberries to bring to Forge for their new pastry special. Heron Pond is in South Hampton, NH, right over the border.

From their site: Heron Pond Farm is owned and operated by Greg Balog and Andre Cantelmo. Friends from college where they studied soil science, they have been a team for twenty years. Heron Pond is a four season farm that grows over 250 varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. Farming year-round has allowed us to grow and maintain an incredibly skilled and experienced staff whose passion brings higher yields, quality, and flavor to our food all year long.

It's a beautiful drive through Amesbury and down the long winding road that leads to the farm; no matter the weather I have the windows down and the music up.  It's a classic rock kind of a drive, if you know what I mean.  There's a real joy in meeting the people who grow the food we love to bring you; knowing their passion and trusting their process. Whether it's talking with Tad about meat or visiting Sarah at Vinal to pick up hundreds of her perfect English Muffins, its like being part of a big happy food Family. 

And so we'll spend this frigid New England day driving around in a truck full of hundreds of pounds of potatoes, hundreds of heads of lettuce drinking perfectly roasted Tandem coffee and cranking Queen's greatest hits with the windows down - all to bring you another week of delicious food from this wonderful Family. That's the dream right there.

Howdy! 

It is that time of year again, time to humble brag about our awesome collaboration with Forge Baking Co to bring you the "In Season Dinner" series.  This year we are kicking off with the famed Pizza and Beer night.  Idle Hands Brewing will provide the suds and Forge will provide the alchemy that turns flour and water into the most perfectly doughy, chewy crust imaginable. And it will all be topped with locally sourced goodies from your friends (us!) at Family Dinner.

It all takes place on January 30th, 6:30 pm at Forge Baking Co in Somerville.  Tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite - we would love to see you there!

With Pizza and Love,

Erin + Tim

Happy 2020 Folks!

It's been another great year at Family Dinner! We have been expanding - more cities and towns, more drivers, more wonderful members and more Farms and Producers that make the incredible food we are honored to bring you every week.

And it's been a year of growth and new horizons for us as well. Erin left MIT after 11 years to be fully at the Family Dinner helm, Tim has been focusing more on optimizing and streamlining processes - we even promoted Frank to CDO status - Chief Dog Officer. It's been a whirlwind.

We are incredibly grateful to everyone's support, love, patience and feedback as we continue this journey into 2020.

Love,

Erin, Tim + Frank

* And speaking of growing the Family, we have a promo going for 50% off new customers' first order with the code 2020 at checkout. Is your brother interested in grass fed meats? Are your co-workers always reading these emails over your shoulder? Is the town librarian an aspiring locavore? Spread the word and give them some love. And thank you!

... I say "let's make BLTs!!!"  Oh wait. That doesn't rhyme at all. 

Anyway, today we are headed out to Hadley, MA to visit Five College Farms and pick up a truck full of tomatoes for the shares this week! (spoiler alert: there's also Bacon from Tad!)

A bit about them:

 "Five College Farms is a USDA certified organic farm nestled in Hadley, in the verdant Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. We are a 72 acre farm with  2 acres farmed  under roof in our greenhouses. We’re all about growing some of the healthiest produce.  Currently, we grow several varieties of certified organic tomatoes. Our organic tomatoes are vine ripened and harvested by hand at peak ripeness. All of our tomatoes are grown in greenhouses, which means that you can enjoy healthy and locally grown produce year round." 

Hence, the indescribable joy of a perfectly delicious tomato for your perfect BLT in the dead of Winter. It's like magic.

We are really looking forward to picking these gems out today. Who knows, maybe Erin will even relive her undergrad days at UMass and drink some terrible beer, eat a whole pizza by herself while throwing a frisbee into the wind and listening to Ani DiFranco on repeat.  Ah, the Zoo.

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and is enjoying a Happy Hanukkah.

Cheers,

Erin + Tim

Hello!

They say it's the most wonderful time of the year and we totally agree. It's the time of year when you can wear foolish jammies, put brandy in all of your warm beverages and watch Love Actually AND Die Hard on repeat. What's not to love? 

This week we have a few reminders:

-We are selling amazing meats for your Holiday table. Holiday Roasts will be delivered on 12/24, just in time. Choose from Prime Rib, Pork Shoulder Roasts, Whole Chickens and More! Add on Bacon, Eggs for brunch left overs!

-We still have Gift Cards! Give the good gift of Food.

We hope you enjoy everything the season has to offer. Have an extra slice of pie, ogle at Bruce Willis a little longer and hug the folks you love just a little tighter.

Much Love,

Erin + Tim

FLOUR POWER:

For this week's grain we turned to Noah and Sophie (pictured, photo by Paul Carey Goldberg) from Aprilla Farm in Essex, MA. Aprilla is a beautiful place, nuzzled by the Castle Neck and Essex River estuaries. They milled Wheat Flour for Family Dinner just this week, to order.  You may be saying to yourself: Grains? In Massachusetts? What the Holy Heck are you talking about?

At Aprilla they explain it this way:

"As farmers in the 19th century pushed west, it’s not hard to understand how big stretches of flat prairie were enticingly able to pump out a huge amount of shelf-stable, shippable, commodity calories. Subsequently, the small, regionally-adapted New England grain varieties, and the knowledge, threshing, milling, and baking infrastructure that accompanied them slowly died out in the Northeast.
 
And yet, at Alprilla, we’ve made a significant push to try our hand at growing wheat, flint corn, barley, and beans. Our reasons are both intellectual and practical. As Noah says, the Local Food Movement can’t be just a Produce Movement; We need beer and bread, too."

Beer and Bread. Sounds like supper is ready. 

Enjoy!

In Mariah Carey's breathy rendition of the classic holiday jam, she croons:

"I don't want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need...

Make my wish come truuuuue... All I want for Christmas is youuuuuu"

We think this dazzling Diva has it all wrong. At Family Dinner we're going with the slight but essential edit of :

" All I want for Christmas (Hanukkah/Kwanza/Festivus/Finish Independence Day) is FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD"

That's right folks; this year skip the footed jammies, the Frozen 2 Electric Toothbrush set and the stuffed armadillo. This year give folks a gift they will really love - a Family Dinner Gift Certificate! They come in Veggie Only, Half, Whole and Double Share sizes. 

Hello!

Welcome back, we missed you! We thank you for your patience with us as we took the past week off to spend time with family and give our amazing team a moment to breathe.

We hope you enjoyed the holiday with delicious provisions and passable time with Family with minimal quarrels about sports and politics. 

We also want to send a nod and some love to folks for whom the holidays, these in particular, are a time marbled with joy and sadness. Maybe the missing of someone, the sadness of time passing have you not feeling so joyful.  We started taking this week off when my father passed two years ago when Family Dinner was just a baby. It's been a bittersweet season since and we appreciate the time and space to reflect, to be sad and to let food and laughter heal what ails us.

All that said, we have some fun goods in store for this week. Steak from Tad, tomatoes to make you dream of summer and a soapbox sermon about the merits of cast iron pans. 

We hope you enjoy.

Erin, Tim and Frank the Dog

NOTE: 

The snow is making driveways/pathways a little more complicated. If you're not home, please make sure your cooler is somewhere accessible! Our drivers appreciate it!

One Pan to Rule Them All:

Yes. We are making a culinary Lord of the Rings Reference. Yes, we are nerds. And yes you are correct...no one invited us to Prom.

I digress.

The world is full of fancy kitchen crap you don't actually need. The avocado peelers and melon ballers are just as well served by the sharp knives and dull spoons you already have. But if Cast Iron pans are in a different category.

If you love to cook and don't have a cast iron, it might be time to dive in. I cook everything except scrambled eggs in ours. That includes meat, fish, fried rice, frittata and fresh baked bread. 

We prefer Lodge pans and have a slew of them. The basics are under $30, you can buy them anywhere and treated correctly you will have them until Hell freezes over. (Which, given Climate Change, may be before the 2020 elections).

They're great Christmas Gifts, cool Yankee Swaps and amazing weapons of self-defense in the unlikely event of a burglary.

Last call for Birds!

So we have mentioned a few times that we are doing Thanksgiving orders for delivery on 11/26.  We don't want to be too repetitive but we DO want the idea that you don't HAVE to do the tedious shopping this year to get stuck in your head. Sort of like the terrible refrain from the 1963 ditty from the Trashmen, from which the title of this email is .... plucked.

We have great Thanksgiving shares to offer! Turkeys from Hurd Farm , Chickens from Tad and all the Thankgiving-y produce you want. Let us do all the work for you, order your share today.  All orders will be delivered on Tuesday 11/26.

Happy Not Shopping!

Cheers,

Erin + Tim

BREAKING NEWS! 

Family Dinner is growing! We will be advertising on NRP/WBUR this week. Listen in on your morning drive, cheer loudly in your cars, and spread the word to your fellow commuters stuck in the hellacious gridlock of 93 South.

People often ask how Family Dinner operates in the winter when the fields in New England look like the frozen terroir of the White Walkers. 

The answer is we have to get creative, cast a wider net and the result is we get to meet amazing people growing really delicious products in nonconventional ways.

This week we took a trip back to Lexington Community Farm to visit Mark Gabrenya from  Brite Harvest Farms. 

To get to Mark, you walk through the rows of kale and carrots, up a hill and past the alpacas. ( I paused to tell them a joke: "You guys wanna go on a trip? Alpaca my bags!" They were nonplussed.) Once you see the 40ft shipping container, you can stop. You're at the right place.

Mark grows greens year round in a recycling shipping container from local start-up Freight Farms. He grows hydroponically - meaning the plants are grown in a water-based, nutrient rich solution. They grow under lights supported by solar power, it is an amazing operation.

Growing in a 40-foot recycled shipping container with solar power allows Mark to harvest greens regardless of the outside temperatures. The lettuces and greens are more delicate than their soil-based compatriots outside, but holy heck are they tasty.  The leaves are tender but textured and very simply lettucey. Lettuce like. Hmm. That's not right. Letticious? 

You get the point, they're delicious.

We will have Brite Harvest green partially in our rotation for the coming months. We hope you enjoy!