It was the perfect fall afternoon to join a dinner party in the Blue Mountains with Woody, the Vizsla garden tour guide, and Nadia and Ted, our hosts.
Our hostess had expressed her desire to share the bounty from her summer garden by hosting a fall dinner party at their home high atop the hills and with a view of Bear Mountain. Dan could not make it nor could the husband of my pal Vivian, we became each other’s plus one. It was a nice lady date night. Vivian is always the best car pool friend as she is always open to driving with me on nearly any adventure…when she is not basket weaving. Little shout out to Vivian’s handy work here.
We arrived just in time to start a garden tour with our hosts and new friends. We met Annette Ogrodnik Corona, author of the New Ukrainian Cookbook , her husband Kevin, and Wendy and Troy Jochems, the owners of Hope Hill Lavender Farm. Nadia blogs at My Gardner’s Table and her cookbook “Spoonfuls of Germany” can be found via her blog.
We had done a summer garden tour with Nadia on a previous visit (one, two & three). It was interesting to see the gardens in late summer/early autumn.
We were joined for dinner by Woody. He pretty much stayed on the couch and didn’t beg for nibbles but if he had I would have given in. His ears are just so soft and he is oh so polite.
Dinner started with fresh from the oven rosemary scones and sun dried tomato scones with a fresh herbed butter. All the herbs in the goodies were no doubt from Nadia’s garden. The scones were served with a creamy red pepper soup. There is something so refreshing in savoring simplicity. This dinner was as much about what Nadia prepared as about the company and conversation.
The main course was a hearty serving of freshly dug fingering potatoes (more on those later), oven roasted fairytale eggplant and a hearty spinach and herb turkey meatloaf. Note to self: ask Nadia if she will share the meatloaf recipe. It needed no filler or gravy, each bite was the fresh taste of spinach and herbs, which she had harvested earlier in the season then froze for later use. Nadia makes the most out of her garden harvest.
Nadia had recently started to plant fingerling potatoes and asked a local friend for a cool dark place to store her harvest. Her friend made adequate room to prepare for the potatoes. When the day came for Nadia to begin the great potato harvest she was finished in under 10 minutes flat. Well, it might not have been that short a period of time but much to her dismay (using kind words here … it seems she might have been touched with a bit of madness for the afternoon) her harvest filled a small basket. She has since mastered the fingerlings and had a bounty to share with us that night.
Dessert was a lemon-basil sorbet and a melon sorbet served with little macaroon cookies. All the guests enjoyed the melon sorbet especially and a few cookies went home for Dan and Jerry (the men who left us to date each other that night).
Simple preparations from a garden harvest, the conversation of new friends, wonderful hosts sharing their garden and home at the close of summer…. what a perfect way to spend an evening. We need to do this again. Soon.
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