What’s for Supper?

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Vermont is one of 27 landlocked states in the US but surprisingly wild saltwater fish is on the menu in most restaurants. It’s often on our home menu too. This is because in the Northeast, fresh fish is driven overnight from Boston harbor and arrives in our neighborhood seafood market the very next day. Next to the trout caught in any of our plentiful local waterways, this is as fresh as seafood gets, and it’s always lovely. Come mid-winter I often crave a meal that tastes like summer, light yet hearty, something with tomato, something with a bite, something like a fish stew. The following is a recipe concocted by my dearest chef, the Savvy Skillet and it’s guaranteed to satisfy everyone around your table.

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Escaping into Downton Abbey

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2015: a futuristic year we never believed would ever come. We leap forward without a flying car but with plenty of techie gadgets to wow our past selves. So much so that one might ask, with our growing adoration for all things shiny and digital, what’s the global appeal of the 1920’s British period drama Downton Abbey? Perhaps paradoxically, as we steamroll further into FaceTime and shared Google Docs, we pine for handwritten letters carried into our drawing room on a footman’s silver tray and question if the future portends undesirable change. Downton’s loyal butler, Carson, likens the shifts in his era to the ground shaking under his feet and longs for an earlier stability. We too romanticize our past, including those Edwardians of Downton Abbey, and in the case of myself and several hundred ticket holders, this shared obsession is manifested at a wonderful gala, a night to live out our fantasy of days long past in costume.

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Come What May

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As 2015 stands in the doorway I reflect back on all that brought me here: we can’t change the past nor can we know what lies ahead, we can only determine how to live within this moment. In private I will review my shortcomings, but in this post I’ll relive the highlights, each memory bringing joy into my heart and soul, each worth a remembrance on the sweet possibilities gifted each day.

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