[1] Over at Seacoastonline.com, Rachel Forrest has written a guide to shopping at the [2] Winter Farmers’ Market for your Thanksgiving dinner. The article comes complete with delicious ideas for planning your holiday dinner using the many vegetables to be found there, and includes basic instructions. We may not be able to wait until Thanksgiving to try them out!

 

I’ve checked out the long list of vendors and what they are bringing to the first Winter Farmers Market on Nov. 20 and I think that if I planned it just right, I could buy almost everything I need for an entire Thanksgiving dinner at that one market.

 

The only thing I’d be worried about is the turkey because you’d likely have to have already ordered your turkey by now, but check the Seacoast Eat Local website and [3] Facebook page because they will be updating us on who is bringing turkeys to the market. FYI — Seacoast Eat Local’s fourth annual Holiday Farmers Market is Nov. 20 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. indoors at the Wentworth Greenhouses, 141 Rollins Road, a mile past Red’s Shoe Barn of Dover. The Winter Markets continue until April in both the Rollinsford location and at Exeter High School.

 

For that first market, there will be 50 farmers and food vendors participating with cheese, wine and apple cider, pie pumpkins, apples and cream for dessert. Potatoes, carrots, winter squash, onions, beets, leeks, broccoli, parsnips, turnips, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and salad greens will be in abundance, along with eggs, honey, and maple syrup. There will even be wheat flour and dried chili peppers.

 

A wide variety of beef, pork, poultry and seafood will also be for sale. Dinner rolls, pre-baked pies from locally grown fruit, bread for stuffing, and area food producers have pledged to a high standard of localism this year and will be offering ready to eat meals, soups and stews, jams and jellies that all contain locally grown ingredients.

 

I’ll be volunteering on Thanksgiving and after that, unknown. Teen Daughter Avalon will be away so taking time to work on various writing projects will be on the agenda for the long weekend as well as lazing around watching movies, reading books, exercising and perhaps some mayhem. However, if I were to make Thanksgiving dinner, which I still might, my ideal dinner is set out below — the simple version — and I think I can do it all from the winter market. I will often try at least one dish from a fancy food magazine but for the most part, it’s simple and basic.

 

For my Thanksgiving meal you will need about three pounds of butter. Just warning you. Oh, and IPA, which you cannot get at the farmers market. You can buy wine, however, and plenty of it.

 

Heritage Breed Turkey. Or at least organic or all-natural. Get Heritage turkey from Yellow House Farm (but they’re probably gone), organic from Philbrick’s, Carl’s Meat Market, and even Market Basket has all-natural. Check out www.localharvest.org for more ideas as well as the aforementioned Seacoast Eat Local sites. My turkey involves putting a cheese cloth soaked in butter on top for a period of time. No bags, no deep frying and I rarely brine, although I taste the difference in brining and like it.

 

Stuffing. Bread, sweet sausage, celery, onions, walnuts, apples, thyme or sage. All but the bread sauteed in butter. A great deal of butter is consumed in my Thanksgiving dinner. The bread should be a baguette cut into large cubes and left overnight to “stale.” Toss the ingredients with the bread and a little stock. Stuff the turkey. It looks like the only thing I can’t get at the winter market is celery and nuts.

Go to Seacoastonline.com to read the rest of [4] Rachel’s article >