Good Food Down on the Farm

Darrell wrote down his recipe for pea soup for a friend who purchased a picnic ham from us. Thought I'd share the instructions here: Darrell's Pea Soup Pigs in Blankets made with some of our Berkshire Breakfast Sausage links and pastry crust make a great accompaniment to pea soup! I’ve never written the recipe for pea soup down before, I’ve always just made it.   Unlike most pea soups, I like some whole dried peas as well as split peas.   When I make it, the batches are in increments of pounds.   A 1 pound batch has a pound of whole peas and a pound of split peas, a 2 pound batch would have 2 pounds of each, etc.   Because I have a 25 quart stock pot and a love of pea soup, I can make up to a 5 pound batch but I need to have a good bit of ham and at least 2 ham bones (from previously baked hams) for a batch that size.   Pea soup also freezes well; a few quarts of pea soup in the freezer are one of the requirements for making it through the...

Well, this post is only a little over a week late - we've had so much going on, haven't had time to recap some new Thanksgiving goodies! Between out-of-town family around all weekend and a Holiday Market I went to with some of my cards and calendars, it was pretty hectic. Photo: Charles Masters On Thursday, with one side of the family, we brought the  Fall Harvest Salad  again, as it was greatly acclaimed and completely devoured last year. Then, as a potato dish, Darrell had found this  Mashed Potato Casserole  recipe which is so simple and SOOO good - the crusty parmesan/panko topping really made it wonderful, and the cream cheese instead of milk rendered it ultra creamy. My one change was to use Redskin potatoes, as that's what we had on hand. I made the potato casserole Thursday morning while he worked on the dessert, which was a berry/apple crisp (cranberries and blueberries) with an oatmeal crisp topping, which was served with a home-made ice cream...