Middleburg

We all needed to beat the city for a while today so we headed out to Middleburg. It's out northwest of here about 50 miles and, despite the pervasive stench of wealth, feels like a different atmosphere than the DC metro area.

Lo and behold, we found this little gem of a store -- an organic, old-fashioned butcher and market. If I had known about this place, we would have come to Middleburg a long time ago. Most of the meat they had was from local producers and certified humane.


They also had a large selection of interesting food books, including the River Cottage Meat Book and a book Darla recently told me about called Nourishing Traditions.


Nikki and I had some pancetta and bread there. It was super delicious. We also got some real butcher's bangers, which I think are going to form the centerpiece of our Easter dinner tomorrow.

For the ride home we took a backcountry road through horse country. It mostly looked like this:

It's nice to know that it's so easy to escape to a different landscape. Somewhere near Aldie I saw a British grocer and then we never found it again so that will have to give us a reason to go back soon.