harvest barn dinner | collaboration with wheelhouse catering

I wait all year for fall. Everyone has a season / day of the week / hour that makes them come alive most and for me that is Autumn.

Candlelit dinners, wool sweaters, outside explorations with leaves underfoot.

BOOTS, AGAIN.

Fall is felt through every sense, and a dinner that pairs with the feel of the season is the coziest kind.

Wheelhouse Catering is a Western Mass. based catering company that savours on farm-to-table connection. Just about everything is locally sourced, seasonally-created, and artfully-prepared-- we're talking caramel and olive spread on grilled sourdough topped with squash and fried sage.

The barn was glowing with tiny glass orbs, and the sun painted purple streaks on the mountains as we watched it set from our seats. Under the lights were 30 diners, and long farm table adorned with foraged leaves, bark and moss that cuddled up to gold candleabras and gauzy dyed fabric. It was a forest nymph's daydream. And a hunter's too, because then came the...

local beef tenderloin.

the bits of fried rosemary.

the pearly orzo.

the MARMALADE ON TOP OF THE BEEF.

my God, I almost had to leave the barn it was so good.

But of course I stayed. Because after I thanked all the harvest goddesses for their gifts, a beet cake with fresh cream was tucked in front of me. And just like my favorite book from childhood 'If you give a mouse a cookie'... if you bless me with cake, I'm going to want a creamy hot coffee to go with it. The sun was down, the barn lights twinkled, and we all nestled around in conversation with porcelain mugs in our hands.

An Equinox to remember.