Wheatberry: the perfect place for an after-school snack or lunch

For me, the perfect scone is flavorful and light and rich. Not too chewy and not dry. This can be tricky especially when you are trying to use organic ingredients and whole wheat flour.

At Wheatberry, a bakery and lunch place at 321 Main St. in Amherst (near Triangle Street – careful of the challenging parking lot), they have mastered the whole wheat cherry scone. Sure, it doesn’t have the consistency of a scone made with white flour, but it is moist and delicious.

Recently, my daughter and I stopped for a snack at Wheatberry after school. It’s close to Amherst Regional Middle School and it has some nice tables out in front now that the weather is good. (www.wheatberry.org. Also check out their grain CSA which will offer distributions again next fall.)

While I got my scone ($2,55), Livvy had the Locavore ($7.50), an organic bagel with an organic pastured egg from Red Fire Farm in Granby. (I’m assuming that means the chicken lived happily and roamed freely when producing the egg.) There was also Chase Hill organic farm cheese on the sandwich and she loved it.

She really raved about the Chai Latte, Wheatberry’s own “brew,” sweetened and mixed with local milk and served on ice. “It tastes so good,’’ Livvy said on the first few sips.

Wheatberry has some great offerings for those who are interested in buying local, buying organic and even going gluten-free.
One of their latest innovations is the gluten-free local corn muffin for $2.62. I didn’t try it but it looked yummy.

They’ve got some great crusty loaves of bread, including the organic sesame French bread ($6.05), the organic rosemary olive bread ($6.55 – I have to admit I wonder where organic olives come from), and a loaf of bread from only locally grown wheat for $7.25.

Wheatberry also has a few other breakfast offerings, local sausage, several kinds of soups and sandwiches for lunch and hot chocolate made with Taza chocolate which is made in Somerville.

Restaurants produce top-notch sandwiches

Sometimes I just want a quick sandwich for lunch, but not something with a soggy roll and tasteless innards.

In the last week, I’ve found one new delicious sandwich and gotten the chance to eat two old favorites. At the Wheatberry Bakery and Café, 321 Main St. in Amherst (www.wheatberry.org) , I got one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in a long time.

While not cheap at $9.56, I know this sandwich was made with the most local ingredients and before the animal died to be a part of that amazing beef brisket, it was really happy and ate grass. This was a simple grilled sandwich on grilled country white.

The main ingredients were the brisket, sauerkraut and Maille mustard. I had a choice of a small side salad or a pickle and I went for the greens which were lightly coated with a home-made dressing which I would love to be able to figure out how to create.

I normally wouldn’t have ordered anything with ‘kraut on it, but they were out of the pork that went into the pork and apples sandwich. The chicken spelt soup and Miso soup sounded good, but I’m not a big soup fan.

It’s hard to describe why this sandwich was so great, except to say the flavors mingled well together without overpowering each other. Even though I got it as take-out, by the time I got home it was still perfectly warm and the grilled bread perfectly crisp.

Another favorite I got to eat this week was the smoked salmon sandwich on a baguette (I think it was $5.25) at Esselon Café at 99 Russell St. (Route 9) in Hadley (www.esselon.com).

Esselon has a lot of great made-to-order sandwiches, but I was wanted something less expensive and quick to go along with my hot chocolate and whipped cream.

The baguette sandwich was great, especially because the baguette was so perfectly crisp and the salmon was full of flavor.

Esselon, which opened in June 2006, is a favorite of mine not just because they serve the fitness muffins from Woodstar Café (more on that in a moment), but because the dining room is so beautiful and in better weather the outdoor seating is terrific (other than the vehicle noise from Route 9 which is somewhat decreased by the garden.)

From the Web site, it seems the business had expanded into to a retail and wholesale provider of coffee, tea and related accessories. The quality of the food seems to have been maintained.

My perennial favorite sandwich is at the Woodstar Café at 60 Masonic St. in Northampton. Called the Chillmark, this sandwich has chicken slices (like from a chicken breast, not a deli counter), cream cheese with olives in it and cucumber. It’s almost always pre-made for an easy get-away.

Again, it’s on a roll with distinctive texture, with possibly as much flavor as the fixings in it.

Woodstar, which doesn’t have a Web site (or I couldn’t find it), also has lots of made-to-order sandwiches. My favorite is the North End ($6.19) which has Genoa salami, prosciutto, provolone, roasted red peppers, Kalmata olive spread and baby spinach on an herbed focaccia bread.

As an aside, those gluten-free fitness muffins are amazing. They aren't too heavy and there are little chunks of carrots that make it seem virtuous. On some days, I consider this muffin to be a perfect lunch.

Some folks have written me to say that when the read my blog, it makes them hungry. I have to admit, sometimes when I am writing, it makes me hungry too.

Wheatberry offers share of local grains

I may never have tried watermelon radish or Toscano kale if I hadn't joined Brookfield Farm in Amherst years ago and gone weekly during growing season to collect my share of vegetables and fruit at the farm's bucolic Hulst Road distribution site.

So as I did research for my first Table Hopping column for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I was intrigued to find that you could buy a share from a farm that provides heritage grains and beans.

The Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain CSA (CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, but seems to be used as a noun meaning something similar to farm), is the brainchild and labor of love of Ben and Adrie Lester, founders of Wheatberry, a bakery and cafe at 321 Main St. in Amherst. (www.localgrain.org, www.wheatberry.org)

The farm, which has growing sites in Shutesbury, Hadley and Gill, provides each shareholder (price: $350, $200 for a half-share) with 100 pounds of heritage wheat, heirloom dry beans, spelt, rye, corn and "sometimes an extra surprise from our trials.''

(Heirloom and heritage are terms used for plants now being grown that date back to early times of human history before mass production
agriculture began. The movement to grow these seeds has expanded in the last decade.)

For those of us used to buying our grains pre-milled in a tightly-folded bag from the supermarket, this farm provides something different.

Grains are distributed in "whole berry form,'' meaning they are not milled. If kept clean and dry, they will reportedly will last "indefinitely'' (assuming your house has not been infested with those pantry pest moths.) The whole grains can be cooked as is, or brought to Wheatberry to be milled.

After learning that fresh ground flour tastes better and is more nutritious (as well as the promise of long term storage in its unmilled form), I brought my daughter to visit Wheatberry bakery on a recent afternoon.

I loved the dense and golden-hued scone and my daughter, Olivia, enjoyed the bagel (with cream cheese made at the bakery), especially dipped in the honey from Warm Colors Apiary in South Deerfield. (www.warmcolorsapiary.com)

Right inside the dining area is a recently-installed grain mill, and my daughter and I soon learned how to grind our own.

Shares must be ordered well before the first distribution date of Nov. 6. Brochures are available on-line or at the bakery.

Table Hopping will appear regularly on the gazettenet.com Web site. Later this week, I will take a look at the special menus and meals that area restaurants are offering in honor of the autumn season. I welcome any suggestions for this column and I can be reached at nancyhgweld@gmail.com.