Blog by Mail incoming

Less than twenty-four hours after I sent my BBM package to Weekly Dish, I found a cardboard box on my doorstep from Jenny Collins from Salem, Massachusetts. Inside, I found lots of lovely New England goodies.



A letter from Jenny said:

Hi Mairead -

I thought long and hard about what to send - things that would be sort of exotic to you (or at least hard to get in Australia) but not so exotic that no sane person would try them. They also had to be sturdy enough not to melt, or be crushed, or otherwise destroyed in transit. So here's what I came up with. A bunch of things that are cloal to Massachusetts, and to New England generally:

Dried cranberries and wild blueberries

A jar of jam made with cranberries and raspberries

The Toll House Cookbook - it has lots of old-fashioned New England recipes - pot roast, Indian Pudding (I love it, but it's an acquired taste, I think), and grapenut pudding. It also includes the original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. The bad news - it uses American temperatures and measurements so you would have to convert to use it...

A tin of Cope's dried sweet corn. This is from Amish Country in Pennsylvania, not New England. It's very good, with a caramely sort of taste due to the special drying process. There's a recipe on the tin, and more at www.copefoods.com.

Hope you enjoy!

Jen

I am fascinated by the dried sweet corn (what do you do with it? Sprinkle it on your breakfast? Put it in a stew?) and will research fully before cooking with it.

Thanks so much for the lovely package, Jenny!