Menu
Farm to Fork dinner experience celebrates Putnam beauty, bounty
Nestled into a beauteous bucolic background of gently rolling landscape, shrouded in trees and tucked into nature as it's meant to be experienced, a uniquely rural event unfolded this past weekend in the far southwest corner of Greencastle Township, west of Limedale.
It was there, on beautiful rural acreage that owners Janice White and Ruth Brown have dubbed Juniper Ridge Manor, that friends both new and old mingled and laughed and shared stories and drink and absorbed the surroundings nature's palette offered while painting their own palates with the taste of foods mostly grown or raised in Putnam County.
The idea for the annual Farm to Fork Dinner was hatched three years ago, volunteer Maurice McKee explained, during one of the weekly sessions of Monday night cocktails hosted by White in which she treats her guests to food and drink and a smaller version of the experience about 120 blessed visitors shared Saturday evening.
The inaugural event, staged last summer despite thunderstorms that knocked out the power and dampened everything but the spirits of those attending, was put on a bit closer to the road (County Road 300 West) than the 2015 version.
On Saturday, guests were seated on hay bales at a long row of tables set up in the shadow of Juniper Ridge Manor itself, still under construction but already a beautiful creation that overlooks a pond as tranquil as Max Yasgur's famed waterhole before the reality of Woodstock descended upon it.
But this multi-faceted event is about much more than celebrating the beauty and the bounty of the Putnam County countryside we all seem to take for granted far too often. It was also about friends and neighbors connecting with new friends and other neighbors, all the while assisting with the production of everything from the table setting to the meat and vegetables to the music. Across-the-road neighbor Rick Smock even brought along his musically talented friends from The Fret Set to entertain for more than an hour as guests arrived.
Certainly this was no simple picnic. Not a plastic fork or spoon to be found. Not a paper plate or cup in sight. And reuse that dinner plate for multiple courses? Certainly not on Janice White's watch.
Each of the six courses on the Farm to Fork menu came with its own plate or bowl, neatly stacked in front of each place setting.
White, now a mystery writer who is retired from the military after living all over the world, has chosen this retreat not only to entertain and amaze friends and family but to create a haven in which she plans to host getaway weekends with guests involved in mystery stories she will create for them once the building is all done.
Saturday night her mission was no mystery, it was a message of love and joy and respect for the land and its offerings as the host narrated the proceedings, detailing each dinner course in front of her guests.
Carotte soup started everyone off. A cold soup laden with purple carrots cut laterally, it was served encased in a souvenir container labeled with each guest's name.
The salad followed, dubbed Salade du Jour, topped with Juniper sauce, a tasty vinaigrette, to enliven the chopped veggies (mostly grown by committee member volunteers) that whet the appetite for three meat dishes to come.
First, it was Kaleidoscope Poivre, combining a cache of colorful peppers grown by Bobby Zaring (although it sounded as if White called him Bobby Zartran in what could only be a Cajun miscommunication of sorts), all mingled with seasoned ground beef provided by Mike and Jane Sutherlin.
Meat dish No. 2 was called Vers la Fin Poulet, or chicken in freekeh -- roasted wheat kernels similar to couscous -- as "an interestingly different way to cook chicken," White noted.
Pork cooked with wild rice and eggplant was next in a dish called Aubergine Porc with the other white meat coming courtesy Terry and Yvonne Clifford.
For dessert, Bonnie Lowry, who along with White also provided much of the homemade bread for the meal, whipped up Tarte aux Patate Douce -- that's sweet potato pie as its rolls off the Hoosier palate.
Oddly, White noted, finding sweet potatoes in Putnam County is a bit like finding hen's teeth. They had to be imported from Parke County before Lowry could work her magic, topping her pie tableside with real whipped cream and roasted pecans.
The committee creating the magic moments of the Farm to Fork dinner in the countryside included Terry and Yvonne Clifford, John and Kathleen Deweese, Gene and Cheri Grable, Janet Jayne, Karen Jones, Mary Kertzman, Bonnie Lowry, Maurice and Terri McKee, Rick and Angie Smock, Jane Stark, Jeremiah Sutherlin, Mike and Jane Sutherlin and Brian White.