Every year, my friend, Sarah, takes me with her out of the city to her parent's house in Amherst, MA for Memorial Day weekend. We ride through the fields with the windows rolled down listening to pop music from the '90s, we watch movies, we hang out with her folks, and consequently, we eat great food. Highlights from Amherst Weekend 2008 include:
Greene St. Café in Northampton-- a restaurant after my own heart in so many, many ways. On the front door there was a simple list of all the local ingredients that were incorporated into the evening's menu: swiss chard, asparagus, and wild mushrooms to name a few. The decided favorite at our table was the lavender creme anglaise we ate by the spoonful for dessert.
Flayvors at Cooks Farm in Hadley-- eat your ice cream and wander around the farm. What could be better? Their signiture flavor is grass ice cream, so you can graze just like those happy cows you're moo-ing at.
The Roadhouse-- the apple does not fall far from the tree. At age 25 my dad opened the Fleetwood Diner in Ann Arbor, MI. He ran it for three years and surprisingly still loves (always has) a good diner breakfast. What can I say? I'm my father's daughter, and The Roadhouse offers up nothing but the best-- sour cream coffee cake, asparagus goat cheese omlettes, banana bread french toast, and always very crispy, very brown, garlicy potatoes. Sarah often suggests other breakfast places to try, but I will not be deterred-- Amherst Weekend only rolls around once a year, and I won't take my chances.
The only tough part about Amherst Weekend is tearing myself away from those green pastures of the Happy Valley and boarding a train to go back to New York. As luck would have it tough, the strawberries had arrived by the time I made it home, and just like that I was back in the swing of the city.
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