Slow Food | Knowledge & Wisdom

New England’s traditional, hearty, slow food warms up our winters.

This is the season to get out that old pair of skates, to take advantage of a solitary woodland pond where the ice groans like a living being, or just to pull on heavy boots and mittens for a walk to the post office, with the snow creaking underfoot and icy branches chattering overhead. Of course a large part of the charm comes from knowing there’s a warm fireside, literal or figurative, to come home to, and perhaps a bowl of chowder and a skillet of cornbread to stoke inner fires. If winter demands a different way of dressing and a different way of moving, it also requires a different way of eating: hearty, wholesome food that sets this season off from the rest of the year. Our traditional foods—chowders, baked beans, steamed puddings, baked pies, and that most maligned but most delicious (when properly made) of dishes, the boiled dinner—all seem made for cold weather.

—“In Praise of Slow Food,” by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, January 1996