A free, hands-on cooking event and meal at a Guilford farm this summer proved that too many cooks in a kitchen can be a good thing.
Twenty-eight people, ages 5 to 70-plus, accepted an open invitation to collaborate on a June 22 dinner cohosted by Tapalou Guilds flower farm and Vermont Wild Kitchen. The latter is a partnership between the nonprofit Rural Vermont and the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. For three years, project organizers have held free events statewide designed to foster an appreciation of — and shorten the distance between — the foods, people and land that nourish us.
Months earlier, Tapalou Guilds co-owner Hanna Jenkins had responded to a social media post seeking event hosts, explained Shelby Girard, Rural Vermont’s development director. The “mystery dinner” was the first of its kind for Vermont Wild Kitchen, an experiment to see how friends, neighbors and strangers could work together to create an ad hoc locavore meal from a crowdsourced basket of surprise ingredients.
Jenkins, who conceived the idea, imagined an event that would also weave deeper connections between community members. The mystery of the dinner, it turned out, was not just which ingredients people brought and what the group created with them but also how the process unfolded as a shared experience.
As a local, I knew Jenkins through her flower CSA and occasional farm workshops. When she mentioned the dinner, I was intrigued and brought my 11-year-old twin daughters along. We arrived at 4 p.m. and joined others around the farmhouse kitchen’s antique butcher block to assess our hodgepodge of contributions.
Participants had been asked to bring an ingredient with which they like to cook, and many shared early-summer garden bounty: freshly picked greens and herbs, tender baby bok choy, nubby new potatoes, slightly dirty radishes. Other local offerings included edible violet flowers, homemade goat cheese, foraged spruce-tip sugar and fermented black garlic. One person brought sea salt collected on a beach in Sonoma, Calif. Jenkins had soaked quinoa and local amaranth to make batter for Indian-style crêpes known as dosas. To anchor the meal, Vermont Wild Kitchen provided chicken from Reading’s Leaping Bear Farm.
But what to do with it all?
With intuition leading the way, we dove in. A few people decided to make spice rubs for the chicken as others washed lettuce, massaged kale, sliced bok choy and squeezed black garlic from its skin.
Some kids fled to the barn to play while others arranged vases of Tapalou Guilds’ red and pink poppies. A few introverted folks absconded with the chicken to the grill, but the kitchen remained the hub. It was crowded, but that only seemed to contribute to cooperation and flow.
“Anyone bring a lemon?” rang out. “Anyone else planning on using these violet petals for anything?” another cook called.
“I gripe about one husband in the kitchen — but 28 other people? Totally fine!” joked Jenkins, the host.
Within about two hours, everything came together. The mystery dinner was no longer a mystery; it was a beautiful, nourishing meal.
The spread included grilled chicken with five different spice rubs and dosas wrapped around goat cheese-garlic scape pesto. Bok choy had been sautéed in spruce sugar, potatoes pan-fried with fresh herbs, two kale salads diligently massaged, and greens and radishes dressed with basil vinaigrette. Someone had whipped up a magical black-garlic purée to slather on everything.
Before digging in, we took a moment to appreciate the feast we had made together, with participants describing each dish in turn. Plates filled, silverware clattered, and conversation flowed.
The whole thing felt so relaxed and organic, like cooking together with friends.
Ragan Anderson
My daughters tasted several things they never would have tried at home, including the pesto. After one bite, their verdict changed from “gross” to “yum!”
The meal was delicious, but what I’ll most remember is the camaraderie.
Ragan Anderson, who lives down Sweet Pond Road from the farm, had spearheaded the pesto with a coven of enthusiastic young helpers. “I loved how the kids were engaged and wanting to help,” she later recalled. “The whole thing felt so relaxed and organic, like cooking together with friends — very primal and experiential and natural and all the good feelings of being human.”
Jenkins was gratified by how well everyone collaborated in her kitchen to share what she sees as the “sacred and everyday act” of feeding oneself and others.
“Cooking, especially cooking together, is an alchemical process,” she later reflected. “When done in community, it transforms food and relationships.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Culinary Alchemy | At a Vermont Wild Kitchen dinner in Guilford, guests turned crowdsourced ingredients into a shared feast”
This article appears in August 5 • 2026.
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