This Week at the Herdic House
Summer is waning fast, and summer vacation even faster. Already, many schools are back in session (though Wilpo gets one more precious week!), and the temperatures are dropping fast in the evenings, a phenomenon the (in)famous Larry Bassett from WAHS used to call “good sleeping weather”. On a hike over the weekend, Liz and the kids saw more kinds of fungi in a brief hour than the kids had ever seen before…so ’tis true—autumn is encroaching on summer’s last fling.
But we’re clinging to summer’s coattails with both hands, here at the Herdic, because winter lasts too long to get it started early. This week’s Blue Plate is perfectly summery, in fact: Misty Mountain pork shoulder carnitas, served over beans and rice, and finished with lime, queso and cilantro. The Blue Plate, as always, is $18 at our House and $20 to go, and you can reach us at 570-322-0165 to book a table! Plus, we’ll have an oyster mushroom and zucchini soup finished with basil pesto, and a peach, chevre and toasted almond salad…
Come join us for our Thursday happy hours at the bar, from 5-7 pm, with $1 off all beers and $2 off wines by the glass. In the kitchen, we’ll be making grilled Misty Mountain sausage and sweet pepper sandwiches (it’s still baseball season after all), served with fresh cut fries…
This Friday marks the full moon in August, as well as a rather momentous secondary event: a 96% moon eclipse due to take place very early Friday morning, and visible from right here in rural Pennsylvania. These two concurrent events got us thinking about how many wonderful summer, nighttime happenings there are, and how spectacular summer nights can be…which led us to nightshades (as happens in the minds of foodies), then to one specific nightshade plant: heirloom tomatoes. And we realized we have yet to make an heirloom tomato menu in 2026. Yikes.
What an omission! We’ve been rolling in delightful tomatoes of all colors, shapes and sizes for the past few months, but we’ve forgotten to give credit where credit is due. So join us on Friday night, under the full moon, for a menu featuring Alice’s Dreams, Black from Tulas, Brandywines, and several other tomato stars of summer, paired with their natural companions: those night-blooming plants that yield some of the staples of the American diet: potatoes, eggplants, peppers of all varieties…
- Brandywine tomato gazpacho finished olive oil croutons and a caper-herb salad
- Wedges of Alice’s Dream, Johnson’s Striped and Black Tula tomatoes served with whipped housemade ricotta, fresh basil, spicy oil and balsamic vinegar
- Red snapper roasted with chile oil in a blush tomato broth, served with fried baby eggplant, marinated zucchini and charred sweet pepper, and finished with crispy carola potato
- Sweet tomato torte served with a scoop of housemade plum-honey ice cream
P.S. Please note that Anne and Ruthann Miller have kindly offered to take Elli Groninger’s place on September’s First Friday! Stop down next Friday to slurp oysters and have a gander at the fine artworks of this mother-daughter duo…