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What's the big Dill ?

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     In August of last year I had one of the best sandwiches I have ever had. It is pictured here. That sandwich was served to me at the HARVEST TABLE restaurant in Meadowview, Virginia. The restaurant's menu is always changing to take advantage of local products. The owner insist on serving local products and even has a list of around 90 businesses and farms where she gets her food. The list also tells how far the businesses are from the restaurant. Some as close as 1 mile to the farthest about 200 miles. The sandwich featured here is their chicken salad (not like a chicken salad I was used to). Poached or roasted chicken between two slices of cheddar cheese, one yellow the other white, with a fried egg on top. But the bread was what sold me. It was a Dill Bread that had been toasted.
    I decided that day that I would try to recreate the sandwich at home. First I had to find a dill bread recipe. I went to the source but as I thought, the chef at the HARVEST TABLE declined to give me the restaurant's recipe. Next I went on line. There I found many recipes. It seems a lot of them use cottage cheese in the dough and dill seed as apposed to the dill weed I was familiar with. Eventually I settled on a recipe from a TASTE of HOME Holiday  cookbook from 2010. Have I mentioned that I collect cookbooks? This had been in my possession from 2010 and sadly I had not made a recipe from it until this last week. The bread turned out very good. I first sampled the bread sliced warm with a dab of butter. Then later constructed the restaurant's sandwich and the next day we finished the loaf with more traditional chicken salad sandwiches. All were very good but my favorite was the warm slice with the dab of butter.
    If you get a chance, go to the HARVEST TABLE restaurant. But at least read the book by the owner "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. She is of course a well known writer with multiple best selling novels. This book chronicles a year in her life when she converted to local organic only food. It is much more than a food diary. It entertains throughout! It is an inspiration to me to make changes. I believe I can increase my consumption of local grown and raised organic food. But no matter how inspired, I will never be the writer she is!





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