Trader Joe’s Cookbook; Review of Resto @ Paper Mill Playhouse; Suburban Living Amidst a Farm

Attention Trader Joe’s Fans! Meet the author of  “Cooking with Trader Joe’s/Lighten Up” @ Princeton Barnes & Noble

Author and nutritionist Susan Greeley’s popular book uses Trader Joe’s products for quick and easy recipes that she says are smart & lightened up to be more nutritious. She’ll be talking & signing on Sunday March 16, 1 PM at Barnes & Noble at Market Fair, 3535 US Highway 1, Princeton. Phone 609-750-9010 for info.

My Review of the Carriage House @ The Paper Mill

With its first ever bona fide chef (Holly Gruber), I’m happy to take advantage of the gently priced fixed meals served in a pretty setting before performances at the venerable Paper Mill Playhouse. My take on the latest incarnation of the Carriage House here, in the March issue of New Jersey Monthly.

Agri-hoods: Who Knew I’d be Decades ahead of this Trend?!

Farmer Ronny Lee, right. Courtesy Lee Turkey Farm.

I had a good chuckle reading this story in Wednesday’s NY Times dining section about the phenomenon of suburban tract housing centered around small farms. It wasn’t quite like that when I moved my family to an East Windsor development in 1986 that happens to back onto Lee Turkey Farm, but the effect was the same. My daughters grew up able to walk directly from our unfenced backyard onto fields growing corn and strawberries (in alternate years), to pick their own seasonal produce, and to regularly visit turkey chicks as young as one day old. (Let us not discuss what happened when the girls discovered what became of those chicks mere months later. Let’s just say that these days both girls eat turkey with gusto and are thankful that they had a farm in their literal and figurative backgrounds.)