Want to Make a Deer Dance? Offer It One of These Little Buttery Cookies

Dancing Deer Baking Company is a company of people passionate about food, nature, aesthetics and community. That’s a lot to be passionate about and still have enough energy left to invest into baking delicious, buttery cookies.

Dancing Deer was started by three company founders; all successful businesswomen from Boston, Massachusetts. The name comes from that of a quaint little New England antique shop owned by one of the women's grandmothers.

The founding troika included: a talented baker, Suzanne Lombardi, who originated many of Dancing Deer's recipes, a theoretical physicist/business strategist, Ayis Antoniou, who loves to cook, and a business woman/artist, Trish Carter, whose passion is nature and the environment. According to the company history; all three have since moved on, but many of their founding principles still remain with the management and employees of Dancing Deer.

Since 1994, the company has been known for its delicious tasting all-natural brownies, cookies, cakes and baking mixes, which are sold in specialty, natural food and grocery stores nationwide and online as gourmet gift arrangements for consumers and corporations. Dancing Deer has won many national awards and accolades for its distinctive products and innovative business practices, and was one of the first 25 Massachusetts companies to be certified as a Sustainable Business Leader. The company was awarded Elite status by STELLA Service in recognition of its high quality customer service. Dancing Deer places an enormous emphasis on giving back to the community, most notably by helping homeless and at-risk families through their Sweet Home Project.

On a recent trip through New England, Betsy and I discovered the great taste of Dancing Deer gourmet cookies in a little gift ship in Concord, New Hampshire. The store had four or five different types of cookies on their shelves. They looked awfully good, so we decided to try some at the shop owner’s recommendation.

We tried the “Tangerine Butterfly” shortbread cookies and found them to be firm, buttery and with a hint of orange flavor. They are so good you can’t eat just one. This is an all natural product with 0 transfat. Two small cookies equal about 150 calories, so go lightly – if you can.

Dancing Deer produces a fair number of distinct baked goods from brownies to shortbread cookies to cakes. The flavors are pretty unique, in many cases. Among the cookies are Molasses Clove and Sugar Cane Lime; the brownies include: salty caramel and peanut butter and jelly.

On a culinary website unrelated to the company a past customer of Dancing Deer products – perhaps - sums their cookies up best using the following expression:

"Surely these must be the cookies they serve in heaven!" They are among the best cookies I have ever eaten!

Now, these cookies aren’t cheap – especially if you order them at the company’s website. Even in the stores a small bag of cookies will run you about $6.50. The Dancing Deer website also provides an option to search for their products, locally. In doing our own search for New Jersey, we found Dancing Deer cookies to be available at a local Whole Foods Store in Middletown, NJ among other locations.

And so, you will ask, if company recipes are available for home baking. They are. In fact, company founder Trish Carter offers up some of her shortbread cookie recipes online at:

We enjoyed these cookies very much and will look for these and other Dancing Deer variations in our local area. If you like good cookies with a tall glass of ice cold milk, you should, too.

In the "Thick" of Clam Chowder Searching We Discovered Old Salt's

New Hampshire isn’t really nationally known for its beaches. Yes, they have a small shore of their own and most people who visit there either already live in the state or in one nearby. That being said, the east side of New Hampshire still makes for a nice late spring through early fall getaway destination.

Our children live near Keene, New Hampshire in the southwestern portion of the state and close to the Vermont border. Keene is a little, cozy college town best known for its annual Halloween festival, which tens of thousands of people flock to each fall.

Last summer, Betsy and I decided to vacation in Hampton, New Hampshire and meet up with the kids there. They decided to weekend in Manchester, about a 20 minute drive from where we were staying. This would be their own getaway.

Checking out Inns and Bed and Breakfasts in the Hampton area, we can across Lamie’s Inn (490 Lafayette Rd (Rte 1) Hampton, NH 03842), with its regionally well-known Old Salt restaurant. It was described quite nicely as a very homey sort of place with an excellent restaurant, attached. We later found out that it once served as the base of operation for the Eisenhower’s Thanksgiving celebration.

Thanksgiving of 1963 brought President and Mrs. Dwight Eisenhower, along with their son John and his family, to Lamie’s for two nights while grandson, David, was a student at Philips Exeter Academy. A personal note from the President expresses the sentiments of Lamie’s visitors for decades, “I cannot tell you how pleased the entire family was with the hospitality and courtesy that they constantly encountered during their stay at Lamie’s. All of us are more than grateful…”

Frankly, we are not quite sure if the place has ever been renovated since then. It is a decent place to stay, but nothing much out of the ordinary. But, what they do have at Lamie’s is a very good restaurant on the premises – The Old Salt. Gourmet restaurant? Not really. It is just a warm and cozy place that happens to serves good food at fair prices. What they do offer is an award winning clam chowder that they serve to diners on-site and offer to the public in cans at the restaurant and online.

Old Salt’s Clam Chowder (New England Style) has good flavor, is very creamy, and is a nice mix of potatoes and clams. If you buy the can, expect to have some cream on hand to add to the well seasoned stock. The stuff is very good out of the can, but is a notch lower than what they serve hot at the table of the restaurant. Still, it is better than most canned soups we have eaten.

Recipe? Of course, we’ll share that. But, for this one there is a video with the Old Salt’s Chef mixing up a batch of the stuff.

Another customer says this about Old Salt’s Clam Chowder:

“This restaurant had the best clam chowder I've ever had. We stopped in during their "Tavern Walk" this weekend (October 13). They had samples of the chowder during the Tavern Walk so my husband & I loved it so much we decided to stay and eat lunch.”

So, if you like good clam chowder and don’t want to spend the night at a – just OK – Inn. When you are in the are, stop by the Old Salt Restaurant for a bowl or stay home and order some online. It be clams, mateys!