What's there to eat?: Another whirlwind weekend northward

We set out for Vermont around 9 a.m. last Friday, stopping at Melick's in Oldwick on our way to pick up peaches as an offering to Will and Martha who we would be staying with for the weekend. We ended up with both yellow and white varieties as well as yellow sugar plums and a cantaloupe that Sylvain insisted on. This is our fifth July trip to Vermont and it has become a tradition to arrive bearing peaches. This time I started wondering why. Surely they have decent peaches in Vermont! Did this all begin with a misunderstanding? What if they don't even want peaches? Is it time to stop the insanity?!

By late morning we arrived at Jamie's in High Falls for a planned pit stop of a swim and lunch. It was another humid day in the 90s and we headed to the falls and enjoyed a long swim in the beautiful, deep river. After a quick change into dry clothes it was off to the Egg's Nest, a quirky-artsy-roadside-New York State kind of place and Huston's favorite eatery. The inside was quite something - no surface or space had escaped the artist's hand!

I thoroughly enjoyed a pesto and sun-dried tomato quesadilla that really hit the spot, and Jamie had the fish and chips accompanied by cole slaw and, with a nod to lingering hippies, a huge slab of banana bread. Nora had chicken fingers (no comment) and chips ("These are French fries???? What a rip off!") and Sylvain had the Greek Praeseux (pronounced "Pray Sue"), a baked tortilla topped with spinach, mushrooms, mozzarella, ricotta and feta. Sylvain, always a sucker for even the most half-hearted attempt at marketing, ordered a "Batman" to accompany his meal - seltzer with grenadine and orange juice.

After lunch we dropped off Jamie and continued north with a quick drop off of the fruit before continuing on to Keewaydin to pick up Thibault for dinner at the highly-recommended American Flatbread in Middlebury. During the week this is essentially a wholesale bakery that cranks out organic flatbread in a big wood-fired oven. On Friday and Saturday nights they open for dinner and serve a choice of salads, pizzas and desserts. We had been warned about the wait. There are several areas designed for waiting, indoors and out, plus a bar and a good supply of board games. This is not New Jersey. People deal with it. So did we and eventually we had a great, simple meal of a couple of house salads with greens, wakame and sesame seeds and a couple of pizzas - one tomato and cheese and the other maple sausage and herb.

We devoured everything in sight and agreed that next time we need to dine without a curfew - Thibault was due back at camp no later than 9 p.m. leaving no time for any of the nice-looking desserts we saw passing by. We delivered him just in the nick of time.

Will and Martha are the ultimate hosts and always feed us well when we visit but we especially enjoy the big farm breakfasts! Saturday morning was Martha's tasty, strong coffee, thick slab bacon with eggs and English muffins. I truly had the best poached egg ever, which Will modestly attributed to the quality of the eggs. They were incredible - local multi-hued eggs from (if I heard correctly) Korean hens.

The next morning I accompanied him down the road to a neighboring dairy farm to purchase fresh raw organic whole milk. The cows were being milked when we arrived and the milk was fed from their teats into pipes that in turn led into what looked like a huge ice chest. The cute farmer had a gold cow earring in one ear. His wife scooped out milk from the chest in a big plastic pitcher for us and poured it into our quart jars. Back at the house, Will cooked up a batch of corn flap jacks and we were ready to hit the road again for home. Wow.