A Green Book and a Stowe Chef

Ever wish you had staff? Maybe you have staff — I don’t. I had dinner at a friend’s house last week to celebrate our mutual friend Christie Matheson, whose 53rd book, Green Chic: Saving the Earth, has just been printed. It’s not really Christie’s 53rd book, but it is her fifth or sixth, and frankly, that’s impressive. And she is. The book is terrific. It’s filled with a lot of common-sense approaches to keeping this planet of ours just a little healthier, as well as stuff you’d never think of on your own. Christie also manages to make it all seem cool and, well, chic. Brava, dear Christie. And while the dinner was very much about Christie and her book, let me get back to the idea of staffing … Lorin, our host, is working on the Stowe (Vermont) Mountain Lodge development, so to kill two birds with one stone, she asked the Lodge’s chef, Sean Buchanan, to cook us dinner at her house. The project won’t be open for several months, so she figured it’d be a good exercise for chef Sean. We all have big mouths, so we’d talk about how well we dined. And Lorin is very pregnant (as were two of the guests), so the thought of preparing and serving dinner on a Monday night was overwhelming. Clever, that Lorin. Very clever. The meal was really terrific. Sean has an affinity for local ingredients, and so his Vermont-centric meal worked well in celebrating our Christie, and yes, it was a chic meal, too. We began with an amuse-bouche of smoked mussels, then moved into dishes that included local honey and cranberries, farm-raised barramundi, polenta with pungent Tarentaise cheese, and maple-braised short ribs with cranberry beans. We finished with crepes and honey cakes … yum. As we blabbed about the food and the book and skiing and cashmere and sexy yoga instructors and possible honeymoon destinations, the kitchen was scrubbed down and the food put away, as if Sean and his crew had never been there. I could get used to having a staff … Oh, by the way, I was up at Stowe in February and saw [Stowe Mountain Lodge][2]. It’s going to be really gorgeous, and the plans are quite ambitious and luxurious, while being … guess what? Green. So chic! [2]: http://www.stowemountainlodge.com/ Read more about local chefs in New England is Delicious.