Christmas at Heartbeet Farm

Gary in recent years had observed, with plate tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts.... Gary wished that all further migration [could] be banned and all Midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity.

- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Gary, we stayed right here in SE Minnesota and joined Anita out at the farm where she was staying while Joe & Becca were away in South Carolina visiting her family for the holidays. We also played games for hours.

And Gary, was our Christmas dinner pasty enough for you?

Shepherd’s pie

Glazed Carrots

Granny’s white dinner rolls with lemon curd and strawberry jam (homemade)

Cranberry wassail

Don’t you love the colors, too, Gary? I used blue potatoes (grown here on the farm) but when you cook and mash them they turn a pale pinky-purple shade. The red plate, the orange carrots? Perfect match. (We glazed the carrots in cast-iron on the Beast.)

P.S. I agree. Although the pie tasted great, it looked pretty icky.