Celebrate the culture of agriculture & share skills (Growing! Cooking! Eating!)

Meet Your Neighbors: Emily

HERE'S TO EMILY! HOMEGROWN friends, we are pleased as punch (and/or pinot grigio) to introduce Emily. She'll be tending and watering HOMEGROWN for the next couple of months, as Jennifer moves on to other pastures. In fact, you've probably already seen Emily around. It's hard to resist the pots of deliciousness she and her family have been cooking up in Soup Jazz Sunday! Get to know Emily better below then please help give her a big old HOMEGROWN welcome!

What is Meet Your Neighbors? We can spend a fair amount of time tending our online gardens, but it’s easy to forget there’s a real person behind every quiche recipe, chicken inquiry, and hoophouse design on HOMEGROWN. Nuts to that! MYN gives us a chance to meet over the back fence and shake hands.

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Comment by HOMEGROWN.org on March 25, 2015 at 11:21am: Hello, Emily! Woohoo! So glad you're here, hanging out on HOMEGROWN! OK. First question: We hear you're from Hadley, Mass, which sounds like the food capital of the world—or at least of Massachusetts. Can you tell us a bit more about some of the good stuff growing and going on there? We heard a rumor about butternut squash.

Comment by Emily Eagan on March 25, 2015 at 11:26am: Hello, HOMEGROWN! SO glad to be here. So, my ol' stomping ground of Hadley, MA, is known for oh so many incredible fruits and veggies. Asparagus is the biggie - it's consumed on the daily in springtime by locals in many different ways, from grilled to boiled to featured in ice cream. There really is a special crop for every season... Summertime corn, fall butternut (my personal favorite)... It was a great place to grow up!

Comment by HOMEGROWN.org on March 25, 2015 at 11:29am: OK. Now we're just hungry. But since we're on the topic food, we hear you come from a food family. Can you tell us more about your background?

Comment by Emily Eagan on March 25, 2015 at 11:36am: Indeed! My mother, Katie, is a co-owner of Judie's Restaurant in Amherst, MA, which has been serving up a huge menu of unique cuisine to folks since 1977 - their specialty is popovers, which we say are "the size of your head." I played various roles at the restaurant throughout high school and some of college as well, so I had access to some really incredible people who know all about good food, including my mom.

Comment by HOMEGROWN.org on March 25, 2015 at 11:38am: Popovers the size of your head: DROOOOOL. And speaking of baked goods, your mom sounds like one smart cookie. (Sorry. Couldn't resist!) Could you share maybe one thing you've learned about food from your mom that has really stuck with you?

Comment by Emily Eagan on March 25, 2015 at 11:44am: Oh so many things, from kitchen layouts to the perfect homemade cheese sauce to vegetable roasting techniques... My mom and I both have really weird taste buds, too - we love pickles and olives and other brine-y things. We make a great team in the kitchen, knowing our palettes are so similar!

Comment by HOMEGROWN.org on March 25, 2015 at 11:47am: Girl, you're gonna get along well with the HOMEGROWN crowd. We've got a lot of pickle and fermentation fanatics around these parts! I know a few folks who will be happy to swap marinade recipes. But let's get back to your family for a minute. Your sister is in on the food act, too, right? We've been reading about your standing date of Soup Jazz Sundays. How did that tradition get started?

Comment by Emily Eagan on March 25, 2015 at 11:56am: Can't wait! Yes, my sister, Brenna, is food-obsessed as well - we have really similar tastes. It's probably all those years of being young kids watching too much Good Eats on Food Network. We love our Soup Jazz Sundays! I have to give Brenna and her boyfriend, Jake, all the credit for getting that started. They loved having a nice big pot of soup going on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so I decided to exploit their tradition! It's been really great, though. They've totally embraced having me take pictures of their latest and greatest recipe.

Comment by HOMEGROWN.org on March 25, 2015 at 12:00pm: Hooray for getting everybody around the table for good food! Since we're back on the subject of food (Oh, wait, we never really left it, did we?), we have to ask: What's for dinner at your place tonight? And before we sign off, thanks so much for chatting with HOMEGROWN, Emily! We're lucky to have you!

Comment by Emily Eagan on March 25, 2015 at 12:06pm: Tonight, I'm cooking with the boyfriend! In fact, we just decided on a stir-fry of quinoa, broccoli, kale, carrots, and tofu with a fresh ginger, sesame oil, garlic, honey, and soy sauce dressing. He's pretty great for cooking vegetarian all the time. But hey, it's going to be delicious, and that's all that matters!

I'm incredibly excited to be here on HOMEGROWN! Looking forward to learning new things and sharing some great DIY conquests!

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