The Rural Diaries

by Hilarie Burton

  I wanted to find a way to use the abundance of eggs our hens were laying with the heaping baskets of zucchini we gathered multiple times a week. Hence, this Mischief Farm take on the classic Eggs Benedict.

  Zucchini Fritter Benedict (Vegetarian)

  FOR THE FRITTERS

  1 pound zucchini (about 2 medium/large around 12 inches long)

  1 teaspoon + ½ teaspoon kosher or sea salt

  2 eggs, beaten

  Zest of one lemon

  1 tablespoon fresh thyme

  ¼ cup chopped scallion

  ½ cup all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon black pepper

  Canola oil for pan

  FOR THE SAUCE

  ½ cup crème fraîche

  1½ tablespoons lemon juice

  1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

  1 tablespoon mayonnaise

  1 teaspoon hot sauce

  1 teaspoon lemon zest

  Paprika

  3 chives, chopped

  FOR THE POACHED EGGS

  4 fresh eggs

  Rice vinegar

  Salt

  Trim ends of zucchini. Grate and place in fine-mesh colander; mix with 1 teaspoon salt and let sit for 10 minutes with colander draining over a bowl.

  Meanwhile, make sauce. Mix crème fraîche with lemon juice, mustard, mayo, and hot sauce. Stir in zest and chives.

  Squeeze out remaining liquid from zucchini using a clean dish towel. You should have around 2 cups of zucchini. Place in a mixing bowl and add beaten eggs, lemon zest, thyme, and scallion.

  In a small bowl combine ½ teaspoon salt, flour, baking powder, and black pepper. Sprinkle over the zucchini mixture and combine.

  Heat 2 tablespoons canola oil in a nonstick skillet over medium high heat.

  Add 2-tablespoon scoops of batter into the pan and flatten with a spatula. Cook until golden brown, about 2 minutes; then flip and cook the other side until golden brown. Place in warming drawer or oven set at a low temperature.

  To poach the eggs, boil water in a saucepan and then reduce to a simmer. Add rice vinegar and salt to water.

  Crack eggs into a cup one at a time. Create a vortex with a whisk in the water and slip eggs, one at a time, into hot water. Cook for 4 minutes. Remove egg and let dry on paper towel.

  Place a fritter on a plate and put a poached egg on top. Drizzle with sauce and sprinkle lightly with paprika and chopped chives.

  ENJOY!!

  * * *

  I went over to HomeGoods across the Hudson River and bought every cake stand with a glass dome that they had. When we set them up in all their varying heights and colors, the salad bar vibe was gone, and our baked goods sparkled like gems in playful jewel boxes.

  “Ira would have liked this,” John said. It made me sad to think about all the awesome things Ira would have done if he’d only had the capital. He had such a big imagination.

  * * *

  By the time October rolled around, Jeff was home again for a short visit and amazed by all the hard work we’d put in around the farm and the shop. All of the buildings on our property had been transformed with paint; our plantings had reached maturity; the sunflowers were ten feet tall; the garden was a machine of productivity; and the chickens were laying eggs at such a rate I couldn’t give them away fast enough. John Traver became my dealer of sorts. I’d keep him flush with eggs, and then he’d dole out extras to our bakers and friends who had done favors for the shop. On other occasions, I’d take a big shopping bag of egg crates to the preschool parking lot and thank the parents for supporting Samuel’s. In my experience, bottles of wine and fresh eggs are the two gifts people get most excited about.

  Then, on top of everything, I decided on a whim to renovate the farm kitchen in the wee hours of the morning after I’d put Gus to sleep. I knew it was gonna be a while before we had time to fully renovate it, and with the garden going nuts as it was, I was spending a significant amount of time in that space. But I needed the kitchen to be bright and airy and tidy. Over the course of a week, I covered the dark green tile on the countertops and backsplash with a concrete kit. Lemme tell you something: concrete makes everything cooler. I was meticulous about sanding between each layer of concrete to get a smooth, polished finish. Once that was done, I sanded down the cabinets and painted them a bright, soft white. The kitchen immediately seemed bigger. I also planned a special touch for Jeffrey. Remember how much he loves red? I threw him a bone and painted the kitchen island red. It was, of course, the first thing he noticed when he got home, and as I had hoped, he loved it.

  We spent Halloween together, going pumpkin picking with Andy, Phoebe, and the Rudds. The kids ran hay mazes together, and we all oohed over the donkeys and goats. But then Jeff was off again: “It’s a fun script; Robert De Niro is producing and acting in it.” I didn’t want him to leave again, but who am I to deny a man his opportunity to work with De Niro?

  Jeff made it back just in time for Thanksgiving, which we spent with the Rudds again. Julie and Paul’s excitement about things is intoxicating, and while the kids wrestled and chased each other, we conspired over Samuel’s. We planned to get as many local artisans as we could, and someone mentioned checking out the chocolate festival across the river. We had fun dreaming of all we could do with the shop.

  The day after Thanksgiving John and I created the Christmas display for the shop window. Ira had loved creating scenes and dioramas for that window. John showed me another photo album. “Check this out,” he said, flipping to a shot of the window, complete with an antique fireplace mantel, stockings, fake snow, and a slew of presents. It was exactly the kind of display that begged you to come on in.

  A bar table ran the length of the window now, so doing anything quite that elaborate was out of the question. But if I could just make something colorful and shallow, we could slip it in between the table and glass. Much to Jeffrey’s dismay, this sent me into turbo craft mode. He’d worked so hard to get home, and there I was hiding out in the basement with a glue gun, some foam core, a razor knife, paints, and an array of gorgeous handmade paper I picked up from our new pal Doug at the Rhinebeck Artist’s Shop in town.

  As we counted down the days until our ownership of the shop would become official, and also Christmas, I made an Advent calendar for the shop’s display. From the foam core I cut thin strips I made into a grid. To add a touch of whimsy, I added a snow-covered roof and chimney. Each box was lined with a different fabulous paper, and then the edges were gilded in gold. It was a delicate four-foot-high by three-foot-wide by two-inch-deep dollhouse of wonder. John and I carefully transported it over to the shop and put it in place, then scavenged the shop to find the perfect treats to fill up the cubes.

  Every other shop in town was flocked with garland and tinsel and twinkly lights. Ira, God bless him, had always made Christmas in the shop seem sweet and magical and homespun. But now that I was the one going through boxes of decorations, it became very apparent that Samuel’s was in need of some upgrades. We cleaned out all the old stuff Ira had held on to. He saved everything: ribbon, magazines with ideas for the shop, props for window displays. One night, we found a stash of very old candy nutcrackers. John held one up and lovingly impersonated Ira saying, “You never know when you might need it again.” We smiled as we remembered our friend.

  I ran out to Home Depot and went full Griswold, filling a shopping cart with large globe string lights and bright blue and red shiny garland. I found ornaments as big as my head and large magnets so we could hang them from our ceiling fans. Signs and Santas and mini-trees overflowed from the back of my SUV as I rolled back up to the shop. John, Vincent, and a few other teenagers pulled an all-nighter as we decorated the shop.

  Since Andy, Phoebe, Julie, and Paul spent the week in the city where their kids were in school, their role in our new operation was to check out the layout and functionality of shops there and find exclusive products (Megpies were a Phoebe find and are now at Starbucks, b
ut we had ’em first!). Then they’d come up every weekend and assess all the work John and I were doing. Our friends had gambled on Jeffrey’s whim, and so even though we still didn’t own Samuel’s, I wanted them to see the bright, shiny future that lay ahead of us.

  The workload was nuts. We had to pack thousands of bags of candies for Sinterklaas and start filling hundreds of holiday mail-order boxes. Everyone in town who had been moved by Ira’s life called the shop wanting to send gift boxes, just as Jeffrey and I had done the year before. The store was still in massive debt and couldn’t afford to hire holiday help, so an army of volunteers made up of Ira’s friends marched in and rolled up their sleeves. Meredith, who has a bunch of kids to whom Ira was an uncle, came in practically every day and helped us bag candy, measuring the pieces out to a fraction of a gram, carefully placing a logo sticker on the front and a description label on the back, then tying a tidy bow at the top.

  Our chocolate bark maker, Celeste, works at an accounting firm and has a little boy the same age as Gus. Ira was family to her, and as soon as she heard we needed help, she rallied. I have no idea how she works a full-time job, takes care of her family, and still finds time to make mountains of chocolate.

  It was beautiful chaos. We packed into the tiny store a lot of women, a lot of boxes, a lot of caffeine and craft brown tissue paper, and a constellation of candy and customers. I could hear John talking to customers—praising Donna’s cookies, giving someone a sample of Celeste’s bark, asking one of our regulars, Heinz, about his family. Or asking the high schoolers about their teachers, whom John knew from his days as a student at Rhinebeck High. I smiled to myself, remembering how we’d been unsure whether John was up for the role. But now I could see that he truly was the Candy Man.

  We worked way after dark and long after closing, Christmas music rollicking in the background. We listened to Ira’s playlist over and over during that week after Thanksgiving—songs he personally chose, burned onto a CD, and played on that monstrosity of a stereo perched atop the milk fridge. John took stock of everything around us. “Ira would have loved all this! I wish he could see it.”

  “I know,” I said, feeling a little guilty. None of us had known the financial danger the shop had been in. Had Ira ever mentioned it, all these same volunteers would have shown up to help. We would have donated the decorations, solicited mail orders to help pay off the bills. It would have been a very different story for our friend. The idea of his carrying that burden with only young John to confide in made me very sad.

  Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” came on and the group fell quiet. It’s funny how you can hear a song your whole life and it’s just words and music. And then one day that same song can take on a whole new meaning and knock the breath out of you. “Blue Christmas” is Ira’s song now.

  In a flurry of activity, we finally got a closing date. Andy called with the news. “Hil, can you go to the signing as our representative tomorrow?” It was scheduled for 5 p.m., just a couple of short days before the biggest weekend of the year in Rhinebeck—Sinterklaas.

  I was on pins and needles. Andy had taught me so much about business over the previous six months. He’d been well-versed and thoughtful about all the financial decisions we’d made as a group. His asking me to go to the signing felt like a show of confidence. I was leaving my teen-drama cocoon and emerging a business-lady butterfly.

  All that time during negotiations we hadn’t been able to talk about what we were up to because it wasn’t a done deal yet. But these were my friends and neighbors; I couldn’t contain my excitement. The morning of the signing I sent Gus’s preschool teacher Ms. Patty a letter. The kids had a field trip to the hospital the next day, and I was signed up to chaperone. “Signing the paperwork on our ownership of Samuel’s tonight! If you could pass along to the other parent chaperones that they are all welcome to come in, I’d love to treat them to coffee.”

  I picked Gus up at school, dropped him off with Jeffrey at home, got good-luck kisses from my boys, and then put on my big girl business blazer and headed into town for the meeting. The law office was just down the street from the shop. I met our lawyer, John Marvin, over there as well as Ira’s husband, also named John, and his legal team. Sitting down at a long, shiny conference table, there was certainly an element of awkwardness. Everyone wanted to claim Ira, and ownership over the shop had been a tug-of-war between friends and family and John-the-husband. But then, John-the-husband pulled out a gift bag from under the table.

  “I just thought you should have this,” he said to me. Inside was Ira’s teddy bear, the one he had used in the Sinterklaas pageant every year. I stroked the bear’s soft fur and smiled.

  “This means a lot to me, John.”

  The meeting was long. Technical. Arduous. But we had done it. Samuel’s was ours.

  The moment it was over I raced to Rhinebeck Wine and Liquor right across the street from Samuel’s. The store was bustling with holiday activity. The owners of the shop are Joe and Kim Curthoys, parents to one of Gus’s classmates. “Good news?” they asked as they rang up a bottle of champagne.

  “Great news!” It was so nice to finally say out loud that we had bought the shop.

  “Well, let’s make sure we give you the local merchant discount.” I grinned and waved goodbye, and then raced across the street.

  John Traver met me out front. “Is it a done deal?”

  Holding up the bottle, I squealed, “We gotta take a picture!”

  The next day the real work began. To my delight, all the parents from school showed up in support: Tara, whom I always parked next to and gossiped with in the back of the parking lot; Piper, whose family owned several buildings in town; Allison, who taught yoga; Hallie, who always wore a megawatt smile; Joe, the dad of one of Gus’s buddies; and countless other parents. To go from living in a place where your neighbor doesn’t recognize you after five years to this? It justified every decision Jeffrey and I had made. It confirmed that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  Our group of friends-now-business-partners had been emailing like mad about all sorts of details—new products, store hours, revenue, giveaways for the festival that weekend. I sent out an email. We all had big ideas about how to make this the best Sinterklaas ever. But real life was full of practicalities.

  Thu, Dec 4, 2014, 4:28 PM

  Hi guys!

  So before I get into a store update, I just gotta throw this out there. I don’t want to be Buzzkill Burton, but I feel pretty strongly that all the “new stuff” needs to wait until after Sinterklaas.

  The logistics of just standard operating on such a big day are hard enough as is. We have JT and two employees working that day, and it’s their first Sinterklaas Festival in the shop. It’s tight quarters. Our counter space is nonexistent. And the free samples that are already planned are for items like bark and the locally made candy canes.

  I know everyone is excited, but we’re in “stabilization” mode right now. I think the best thing we can do as new owners is just be around, maybe in shifts. Every day, folks have been coming in asking about the ownership, and starting yesterday we could finally tell them. It’s been a warm response, and all people wanna do is shake hands and say congrats.

  I was just telling Jeff that we had a really wonderful interaction today. A man named Blair came in and asked what was going on. I explained our group to him and how we are preserving Ira’s life’s work, and he told me he was a good friend of Ira’s. He had been in the shop two days before Ira passed, and had not been back since. It was too hard. But he was so lovely and thanked us and said he was happy to be a customer again, knowing the store was being loved.

  Okay, on to store business . . .

  Today was an education in the shop. I’ve inventoried 95 percent of the product on our shelves, learned prices, organized some software that allows for a quick search of prices. JT is excited about that.

  Most everything is bagged and priced. Mail-order packages are being assembled and th
e first ones go out tomorrow. Our FedEx account has been reinstated.

  Ira’s mom called. She had no idea what has been going on. JT told her about us and she cried. She’s very happy her boy is being honored.

  Today doing inventory I asked if they were called gummie fish or Swedish fish, and they said we should call them Paul’s fish since he buys them a lot. Cute.

  I have to go back tomorrow. Let me know if there is anything you want me to look into while I’m there, but Oh My God! We can finally celebrate. And at Sinterklaas no less!!! A few minutes before the parade, they call out “last call” for hot chocolate and push everyone out of the store so we can all watch the parade together. Then they head back in a few minutes before the finale to get started again and stay open till 10 p.m.

  Dinner tomorrow would be great.

  xoxoxox

  h

  Sinterklaas had taken on an entirely new meaning to all of us now that we were store owners. Andy showed up early in the morning and hobnobbed with customers until it was time to judge the teddy bear contest. Along with John, they did their best to fill Ira’s shoes and gifted every kid with a certificate and chocolate bear. Andy and Phoebe had a knack for communicating with the clientele on the weekends, creating casual conversation to get feedback that would inform our direction in the shop. The Rudds took the afternoon shift, shaking hands and being the outgoing, warm people that they are.

  I was on evening shift. In our months working together, John and I had taken on the subconscious habit of dressing alike. Decked out in our matching plaid shirts, we stirred hot chocolate by the gallon, shared the good news of ownership with all who came in, and plotted the special event that was going to take place in the shop later that evening. A few weeks before, John had pulled me aside. “Hilarie, I got a call today from a lady in town. Her daughter was a really big One Tree Hill fan.” He paused for a second, looking a little sheepish. “Well, her daughter’s boyfriend wants to propose to her during Sinterklaas at the candy store, and she wondered whether you could be there.” I could see how much he hated asking, but I was more than happy to do the favor for him. And now tonight was the night!