The year began cold as always but we were warmed by a wonderful scotch dinner at the Yardley Inn. This is an annual affair which takes place on the Sunday of Martin Luther King Day weekend. Even my husband – the bourbon aficionado – enjoyed the event and changed his mind about scotch (!). I have been a fan of single malt scotch for quite some time so it was heaven for me. Sitting down at our table and seeing five glasses of golden liquid at my place setting sent my heart soaring. And each of the scotches was paired with dishes that complemented and enhanced them. Chef Eben Copple created the menu and walked us through the background of each whiskey. To read more about the event, click here.

Another way to warm up in the middle of winter is to forego the usual Superbowl fare and go for barbecue instead. In February I posted about good BBQ places in Bucks. It’s a great list to draw from and certainly beats nachos for a football afternoon.

In March I had my 15 minutes of fame (probably more like five). I was part of the audience for the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives episode at the Pineville Tavern, and, well, the DDD producer liked my “sound bite” – a lot. Imagine my surprise, as I sat at the crowded PVT bar watching the episode for the first time and I saw my face on the big screen TV. Yikes. It has been fun this year as the episode is replayed (many times) and friends happen to catch it, not expecting to see someone they know on TV. Thanks to the Pineville and their great ravioli. You can read about it at Here Comes Guy Fieri.

In June, my partner, Alan Brown, and I launched a new venture called Bucks County Food Tours. We take folks on five-hour tours of some of the best food in Bucks, visiting bakeries, farms, cheesemakers, ice creameries, orchards, butchers and more. It’s a delicious and interesting day, meeting the people who produce and grow great food in Bucks. To learn more about the tours, including itineraries, click here.

One of our regular stops on the tours is oWowCow Creamery, now in Wrightstown as well as Ottsville, where we get a chance to chat with owner and ice cream maker John Fezzuoglio. oWow Cow relies heavily on local and organic ingredients for their innovative and fresh ice cream. Read more about them here in a post I did when they opened in Wrightstown this past July.

On Bucks County Taste I’m always trying to give exposure to what’s good in our own backyards, so to speak. But I can’t be everywhere at once! That’s why I asked you, my audience, what places you’d recommend as “don’t miss” food in Bucks. The result is a page full of restaurants, markets, ice cream, farms and other food producers. Check out the list here and add any of your favorites using the comment feature.

One of our favorite meals to eat out is breakfast and Bucks County is fortunate to have many good places. In our post, Breakfast in Bucks, we focus on three particular restaurants – Fred’s Breakfast Club (New Hope), the Vintage Grille (Fountainville) and Vera’s Country Café (Ottsville) – and then list almost three dozen breakfast spots in Bucks and nearby. Peruse the list and see if you can find a new breakfast place to try.

I don’t do many restaurant features but this year gave me the opportunity to do several, among them Hickory Kitchen in Doylestown and the Café Blue Moose in New Hope. Hickory Kitchen is one of our favorite places for barbecue, but that’s not all they do. The menu is versatile and truly has something for everyone. Café Blue Moose, which just opened in New Hope, is a youth-run restaurant. Skylar Bird, its owner and prime force, employs only teens. The enterprise used to be only a weekly event at his family’s converted mill but now Skylar has brought it to a permanent location in New Hope next to Zoubi’s on Mechanic Street. Read the post to learn more about Skylar and this new restaurant.

The Coffee Scoop is another of my favorite posts and one of the only organic coffee roasters in Pennsylvania. From their home in Pipersville, Karen and Warren May roast, package and distribute fresh organic coffee beans. I learned a lot about coffee while doing the article and gained a new appreciation for freshly roasted coffee. Read more here.

If you’ve a regular reader of Bucks County Taste you probably know of my love of cheese. I had the opportunity to interview Nina and Jonathan White of Bobolink Dairy and Bakehouse, where they produce fine artisanal cheese and fresh baked goods. I also learned how to make matzah from Nina. What fun. Read more about Bobolink here and see the video of matzah making here.

One of the most exciting developments in Bucks County is the increase in access to local and organic foods. Distribution is always the challenge but two organizations, Suburban Organics and Winter Sun Farms, offer new ways of getting quality food into your home. Suburban Organics delivers organic food right to your doorstep. Learn more about this Ottsville company here. Winter Sun Farms uses the CSA (community supported agriculture) model to distribute freshly frozen (right at harvest) vegetables and fruit, cleaned, cut and ready for cooking all winter long. Read the article about them here.

Learning about Castle Valley Mill, the first grain mill to operate in Bucks County in decades, was one of the highlights of the year for me. Seeing the mill machinery first hand was fascinating. Even more exciting is knowing that soon (hopefully this spring) Mark Fischer, owner of the mill, will have the old, water-powered mill operating too. Check out the article and photos here.

Wrapping up the year was a story I did after speaking with local chefs, “Holiday memories: the good, the bad and the ugly.” I asked them about their food holiday memories and was warmed by the responses as one after another they shared family stories of preparing and eating. The big surprise was the prevalence of Jell-o! Ah well.

I hope it has been a good year for you and your family, and I hope that the New Year is an even better one. Wishing you good health and good eating.

Also sad is that Meil’s in Stockton is for sale, due to health issues of its owner. Yikes. Meil’s is a landmark, for goodness sake. Let’s pray too that a buyer comes along and recognizes the value of keeping things the same at this haven for comfort food. Best wishes to its owner as well.

On a brighter note, we recently bought a special holiday  sausage from Purely Farm at the Stockton Market last weekend. I don’t normally write about specific food products, but wow, this deserves it. Mixed in with the pork are caramelized onions and raisins, a special recipe created by Joanna Michini, one of the farm’s owners. The combination is delicious. Purely Farm raises its own pigs, grazing them on pasture using all natural methods. If you haven’t tried their pork, chicken or lamb, do yourself a favor and stop by their booth at the market on Saturdays and Sundays.

Finally, Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton have issued a new installment in the Canal House Cooking series just in time for holiday gift giving. And oh what a gift. This  year the authors are focusing on Italian food. They spent a month in Tuscany researching this book (do try not to be insanely jealous). Already steeped in knowledge of Italian food from all over Italy they were hungry for more, to go to the sources and eat fresh each day. The result is a book full of paninis, pasta, fish, birds (and rabbits), meat, vegetables and, of course, sweets. I love the section entitled, “Why Buy It When You Can Make It?” which includes recipes for salsa verde, fresh ricotta and ragù bolognese. Accompanying the recipes as always are Hirsheimer’s equally delicious photography. You can purchase the Canal House Cooking (vol. 7) – La Dolce Vita online at their website or from Amazon.com.

Related posts:

1. Welcome Stockton Market!

After regaining my power of speech, I looked up from the cheese to Jonathan White, standing proudly behind his cheese, smiling. Questions rushed into my mind: Who are you? Where did you come from? And please tell me you’re not too far away and I’ll be able to buy more of this cheese.

Moving on down. In fact, Jonathan, and his wife and partner, Nina, resided at the time on a leased farm up in Vernon, New Jersey. They had been producing their excellent cheese for eight years at that site but were looking for their own land. With the help of the Hunterdon Land Trust, they were able to do a simultaneous preservation and purchase of the Stamets Farm in Milford, New Jersey, which has been farmed by just two families since the American Revolution. In the spring of 2010, they moved their herd and all to the new farm. There the Whites raise almost 50 cows on 184 acres of clean, natural pasture. No pesticides, no GMO grains, no antibiotics, no hormones, no nuthin’. The cows spend most of their time in the pastures, eating rich millet, wildflowers and grass, and fertilizing the fields at the same time. They are milked once a day in the morning, then go back out to pasture. They are allowed to suckle their calves, which results in less milk to make cheese, but which is healthier and more conducive to a longer life for the cow. Commercially raised cows, who spend their days in milking sheds, live an average of 2.9 years. Pastured cows can live over 15 years. Two of the Whites’ cows, Flora and Liberty, are 16 and 17 years old respectively. Not a bad life.

The Whites are quite happy with this arrangement. Their goal is to run a completely sustainable farm. So, for instance, the large amounts of whey that are a by-product of the cheese making process go to feeding their hogs. Chickens are kept on the farm not just to provide eggs, but to eat the flies that are always hanging around a dairy barn. Jonathan, a former software engineer, applies his talents now to improving the systems around the farm – like finding a type of millet that has more leaves and less seeds, or cross-breeding the cows. The former to reduce the chance of E-coli entering the water table, the latter because most dairy cows today were bred to stand in a milking shed all day, not roam in pastures.

American cheese. Jonathan began making cheese in the late 1980s as a hobby. He had learned to love cheese as the cheese buyer for the Hoboken Co-op in the 1970s, and then later when his work took him to England. In the early 1990s, he began making cheese professionally using industrially-produced milk. But he really wanted to use milk from 100 percent grass-fed cows. It was time to become a farmer. The family moved to Vernon and bought their first dairy cows, using their own raw milk to make exceptional cheeses.

“What kind of cheeses do they make?” asked my friend, Lauren, when I told her about Bobolink. Um, how do I answer that question? I thought. She probably expects an answer like cheddar or Gouda. Many Americans are at least somewhat familiar with different cheeses, knowing that Velveeta is “bad,” and anything aged is “good.” But how can I begin to explain Bobolink’s cheese? What I’ve learned is that a cheese comes from its place – its terrain, its grass, its climate and the animals that live in all that, what winemakers refer to as terroir. Perhaps most of all, a cheese comes from its history. This is the challenge American artisanal cheese makers have had to overcome in selling and marketing their cheese. How can – and why should– you make a copy of a cheese that’s been made for centuries in France, or Italy, or England? Why not make something unique to this land?

So what kind of cheese does Bobolink make? Small round ones, like Amram and the Tower of Bobol, which are made in the spring and fall, when there is less milk from the cows. Or Baudolino, a soft-ripened cheese, that varies in firmness and taste depending on the season (like when the cows are eating wild garlic). Then there is Drumm, mostly firm and a little crumbly, with a rich flavor. Jean-Louis, one of my favorites, is very grassy and can only be made in the late spring and early summer when there is plenty of milk to fill the large molds. It’s soft in the inside, like brie, and firmer towards the rind.

All of Bobolink’s cheeses are made from raw milk – which is not homogenized or pasteurized. The latter is particularly important since pasteurization entails boiling the milk, which kills all bacteria, including the good kind that makes flavorful, intense cheese, unique to its place and the time of the year. Because the cheese is made from raw milk, by law it must age for at least 60 days. Most of Bobolink’s cheeses age longer, up to 24 months, kept in their cheese cave, a refrigerator kept at 55 degrees or colder.

Baking it up. Cheese is made every day at the farm with milk from that day’s milking of the cows. As is bread, another Bobolink product. Nina is the baker. She began baking as a child, and when the cheese business began to pick up, she baked artisanal, whole grain breads to “go with.” Except the breads started selling as well as the cheese, and so their bread business began. At the front of the renovated barn is a wood-fired brick oven which reaches temperatures over 600 degrees. A computer screen sits beside the oven, covered in flour dust. It gives Nina data about the oven, a graph representing varying temperatures. “The oven dictates how much of what kind of bread we’ll make,” she explains. She tries to balance the oven’s mood with that of her customers’ wants. The most popular breads? The ciabattas – which come in many variations. Plain, cheese, olive onion, and roasted garlic with duck fat. Nina experiments with different grain flours, adding variety that way instead of mixing in seeds, like other bakers. To learn more about Nina’s baking, see our previous post and video.

You can taste and buy Bobolink’s cheese and bread, along with yogurt, butter, and meat products in season, at their market on the farm. Be sure to also go on the tour, and meet the cows. The farm is very kid-friendly too, so bring them along. You can also buy Bobolink’s products at the Stockton Farm Market every Saturday, at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers’ Market at Dvoor Farm in Flemington (May 15 – November 20), at several New York farmers’ markets and online at their website, www.cowsoutside.com. The farm is at 369 Stamets Road, Milford, New Jersey.

This article was originally published in Bucks Life magazine.

by guest blogger Dana Hunting

August 14, 2011: This August we’ve received more rain than we received in June and July combined, and after this current storm completely passes through, we might even be able to throw May in there, too. Not that it is completely unwelcome, but anytime we receive more than an inch or two of rain from a storm, water tends to pool in the aisles as well as form little rivers in the fields. Unfortunately the water also takes soil along with it and can leach nutrients and minerals. In our three years here, it seems that we get two to three storm events during the season that dump three to five inches of rain, and this is the second one of this year. Let’s hope the carrots make it through!

In anticipation of all this rain, we spent the past couple of days racing around getting ready for and sowing cover crops. We love cover crops and rely on them to improve and protect our soils when we’re not growing produce. At this point and for a little while now, we’ve been able to sow cover crops knowing that those areas of the fields are done producing crops for the season. Mentally, that is satisfying because we don’t need to think about those areas anymore. Up until now we’ve been able to sow summer cover crops like buckwheat and sorghum-sudan grass which are frost killed. For the past couple of weeks we’ve sowed tillage radish which will grow until a heavy frost or freeze. Now, we’re starting to transition to traditional fall cover crops like oats and crimson clover which thrive in cooler weather. About a month or month and a half from now we’ll begin sowing traditional late fall cover crops like rye, vetch, and winter peas.

August 21, 2011: Over the past week the farm was the recipient of nearly an inch of rain per day! August isn’t usually our wettest month, but it might be this year. I find consolation knowing that the ground water is being replenished and that maybe tree rings for this particular year will be a tad thicker than others, perhaps. We like big trees. On the other hand, our non-perennial field crops are suffering slightly with the constant presence of water. Their little wilting leaves seem to express that they “just… can’t… drink… anymore…”

Additionally, the saturated atmosphere speeds up the transmission of fungal diseases on our cucurbits, like summer squash and cucumbers, as well as on our solanaceous crops, like tomatoes. As a result, powdery mildew on our cucurbits is fast shortening the life span of those plants. Fortunately we practice successional plantings which we keep under a protective covering so to extend the harvest season for summer squash and cucumbers. However, as soon as we remove the covering to begin harvesting from the new plants, they are exposed to powdery mildew spores. Especially in wet weather like this powdery mildew can spread very quickly. With that said, we probably have a few more weeks of summer squash, but sadly cucumber season might be over.

Despite various annoyances with our saturated state, the cooler temperatures and respite from the sun has been an admittedly welcomed pleasure. Unable to work the fields has allowed a bit of a breather from our usual frenetic pace and it has been a treat to enjoy the treasure trove of sights and sounds indicative of this time of year. The constant buzz of crickets broken by occasional chirping frogs or toads, bird calls and loping butterflies is lovely brain fodder for a happily spent farmer.

p.s. In case it’s unclear, we really would like it to stop raining!

Correction: Just corn for now. He covered up the “tomatoes” part of the sign. Guess they’re not ready (sigh).

For some great recipes using our great Bucks County corn, see our post, A few of my favorite things.

Related posts:

1. Bucks County Farmers’ Markets 2010
2. Farm markets in winter
3. Weekend Eats in Bucks County