Terrabyte Farm

We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of moving to our farm (we closed on 10/31/08).  In order to celebrate this amazing year, we are hosting a harvest potluck party.  We have invited friends, neighbors, and all of our customers to come and share in our amazing harvest.  Both our beef and our pork will be back from the butcher and we will also be butchering some of our poultry to add to the feast.  We have asked people to bring local, seasonal dishes and drinks to share.  It should be a lovely day, weather permitting, but even if the weather is bad, we have the wood stove and are more than happy to bring the party inside.

Here is a sample of the dishes we will be preparing for Saturday, all with our own meats and vegetables:

• Corned Beef Tongue with Lentils from The Meat Book by HFW
• Marinated Flank Steak
• Beef Liver Pate Two Ways (with chopped eggs the way my Jewish grandmother made it and then with butter and cream)
• Homemade Chorizo Sausage
• Homemade Sweet Italian Sausage
• Turducken
• Rabbit Ragut
• Artisan Bread
• Green Beans
• Roasted Potatoes
• Salad
• Pumpkin Cake
• Pumpkin Cookie Sandwiches

We are really excited.  We love hosting parties (and of course attending them).  It always motivates us to catch up on all of those little projects around the house that have gone neglected for months.  It also allows us to make dishes that we might not otherwise make just for ourselves, the Turducken, for example.

When we were in our first apartment in New Haven, we would hold fairly posh parties.  They always had a theme and always involved pretty extreme culinary feats, everything from salt encrusted whole red snapper to tequila and cilantro gravlax to handmade mini tartlets.  Now our dishes are more traditional farm cooking, but no less delicious.  There really is something so wonderful about cooking up a huge batch of food for a festive occasion (even more so if you have grown or raised the food yourself).  When we had parties in the past, I used to strongly discourage people from bringing food, I always suggested beverages or flowers would be better as I liked to have complete control over the menu.  Now I understand how fun it is to have so many different dishes and how nice it is to make something to bring to share, so it will be potlucks from here on out for us.

Make sure you take time to celebrate the harvest season and enjoy a party, even if just by yourself, sometime this month.  If you are one of the people coming this Saturday, make sure you bring your appetite, and wear your “comfy jeans” as we promise you will not go home without a full belly.