Thanksgiving Recipes

We hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving! It is one of our favorite holidays. For one, late fall is the easiest time to travel. The goats are coasting through to the end of their ten month lactations, grass is no longer growing, milk is not flowing as heavily, yet the temperatures haven’t drop low enough to cause frozen pipes and other such bothers that those in our corner of the world are so familiar with. Plus, every farmer relishes a holiday which is all about people giving thanks for our bounty. It’s a good time of the year to be the bounty-provider! You may not know that 64,000 Vermonters have jobs in the food sector. That means just about 1 in 10 Vermonters will benefit from your supporting local food enterprises this and every holiday season!

With thoughts of food, warm kitchens and traditions, the timing couldn’t have been better for us to be featured in the Late Fall/Holiday edition of Edible Green Mountains! This summer I traveled ahead in time and submitted some of our favorite fall recipes for this edition, and they sent out talented photographer Brent Harrewyn to somehow turn our cluttered, busy farmhouse kitchen into a studio set to document the cooking of said recipes. We featured a Simple Beet Salad recipe, made with Blue Ledge Farm Plain Chèvre, and we shared our recipe for pizza which has been passed down for generations in Greg’s Italian family and is a really hot commodity when it comes to Friday nights and high school sports ‘team dinners’ at Blue Ledge Farm. It is simply called “Greg’s Pizza”, but it is much more!

With shorter days and chillier temps our thoughts turn to soup and so here is the recipe for “Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Apples, Sage, and Middlebury Blue Cheese” as it appears in Edible Green Mountains! It’s the sweet apples contrasting the savory blue…Try it. You won’t be disappointed. And you may be so smitten with this fall delight that you fail to notice it is dark just after lunch.

Happy Thanksgiving! And thanks to all of the bounty-producers out there! And to those who support them.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Apples, Sage & Blue Ledge Farm Middlebury Blue cheese

Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 2 medium Butternut Squash (approx 4 lbs)
• 2 Tabl. butter
• 1 apple
• ½ yellow onion
• 2 ½ cups chicken broth
• 2 ½ cups water
• 1+ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• ¼ tsp sage
• 1/3 cup cream or milk
• 6 oz. Middlebury Blue cheese

Directions:

Heat oven to 425. Slice squash in half lenghwise, remove seeds, dot with 1 Tabl. butter, roast one hour until flesh is completely soft. Let cool and scoop squash from skin. Cook chopped onion with remaining butter until soft, add salt, pepper, sage, squash, apple, broth and water. Bring to boil, lower heat and cook until soft. Add milk or cream and blend in batches. Serve in bowls and top each serving with 1 oz of crumbled Middlebury Blue cheese. 

This recipe based on Chowhound’s:

https://www.chowhound.com/recipes/roasted-butternut-squash-soup-30466

Simple Beet Salad with Blue Ledge Farm Chèvre

Ingredients: 

• 4 large beets
• 4 oz Blue Ledge Farm Plain Chèvre
• ¼ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 Tabl. Red wine vinegar
• 2 Tabl. Balsamic vinegar
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper

Directions: 

Wash and quarter beets. Boil for 45 minutes or until completely soft (be sure that beets stay submerged in water). Let cool. When able to handle, slide skin off of beets and finely chop beets into approx 1/4” pieces (smaller is better). Whisk together the oil and vinegars and add to chopped beets. Add salt and pepper to taste. Crumble chèvre and add to beets, mixing. Enjoy on its own or on a bed of fresh greens.