ULTIMATE WINTER WEEKEND GIVEAWAY
food+drink A sampling of the wild meats
DEADLINE
JAN.4
Winter just got a little bit
PHOTOS: HANNAH PALMER EGAN
cooler!
What’s up for grabs? • • • •
Two nights accommodations at Hotel Vermont A $1,000 Burton Snowboards shopping spree for two Two all-access passes to Stowe Mountain Resort Dinner for two at Burlington’s Hen of the Wood
Sounds epic, right?
Enter to win at: vermontvacation.com 11/17/15 3:53 PM
46 FOOD
SEVEN DAYS
12.02.15-12.09.15
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
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11/30/15 4:44 PM
End Game « P.44 We check our numbers and turn toward the door, filing past more ladies selling knit caps and crab-apple jelly from a table at the back. Down the wood staircase and into the dining room, ushers collect our tickets and guide us into a buffet line. A boy hands me a plate, then sends me to the meat gauntlet, where I exchange greetings with 20-odd volunteers, many of whom I know. They ask after my parents and offer portions of roast and steak and sausage, each tagged with a colored toothpick. Depending on the day, this room serves as food pantry and community meeting space. It’s also the Sundayschool classroom, where village children study picture-book stories of plagues and miracles, pharaohs and famines. Here, too, they dress for the Christmas pageant, donning robes and wings to retell the story of a baby born to a virgin in a faraway manger. But tonight we’re here to eat. Waiters dart through the room, carrying plastic pitchers of cider and brown gravy and trays of potatoes. White name tags identify them by first name only. All told, the volunteers are in the hundreds, says 2015 supper cochair Julie Porter, who adds that, with a shrinking church population, finding help is the meal’s biggest challenge. Upstairs, 20 musicians cycle through pro bono sets in the sanctuary. Prior to the big day, cooks prepare the meats, working in shifts in the church and high school kitchens. Fourteen women bake rabbit pies in their home ovens, Porter says.
Dozens more prepare roasts and sausages of buffalo, bear, moose and game birds, many following recipes volunteers have used for 60 years. So when my dad tells me the pheasant and rice is not to be missed, he’s talking about the exact pudding he sampled decades ago. “[The recipes are] all on an original note card tucked away until the time of the dinner,” Porter says, adding that each dish is scaled to feed 500 people
A STRIP OF BOAR BACON IS LEANER THAN A DOMESTICATED CURE,
AND NUTTY, AS IF THE WILD PORKER HAD GORGED ON FALLEN ACORNS BEFORE ITS DEMISE. or more — down to the whipped cream spooned over the spiced gingerbread cake at meal’s end. Seated at a long table next to strangers, I stare down at the two-bite nibbles of bear and venison steak, wild boar bacon, rabbit pot pie, roast beaver, and sausages made with any or all of the above. I plunge my spoon into a plastic ramekin of bear-and-venison chili, then contemplate the tomato-tinged red beans and ground game. It’s a little ... gamey, but mostly tastes like chili. A strip of boar bacon is leaner than a domesticated cure, and nutty, as if the