This was a transitional week — the kind that resets after a big trip. It opened with a marathon drive from Savannah back to Easton, found its rhythm with home-cooked pastas and Shaggy Coos burgers, took us on a small tour of every favorite spot in Easton with our daughter home, and closed with a Mother’s Day brunch in New Canaan that delivered exactly the laughs and the food the day called for. Some weeks the food is the headline. This week, the food was the comfort.
Monday: Buc-ee’s, Wawa, and the Long Drive Home
Monday was 100% road, no romance.
We’d stopped in Savannah on Sunday night to break up the trip back from Florida State, and Monday morning was about one thing: getting home. Easton was the goal, and every hour on the road was an hour closer.
You already know the deal. Long-haul drives like this one aren’t food stories — they’re fuel stories. Buc-ee’s for snacks, gas, and that wall of beef jerky that somehow always pulls you in. Wawa for a quick sandwich and coffee somewhere up the coast. A few bags of chips. A few bad gas station decisions. And eventually the comfort of pulling into your own driveway.
Not every meal needs to be memorable. Sometimes food is just the thing that keeps the wheels turning.
Tuesday: Slim Pickings, Saved by Carbone’s
Tuesday was the kind of fridge situation that always happens after a week away. Nothing fresh, no real plan, and no grocery run on the books yet.
So I leaned on the pantry. Penne pasta and a jar of Carbone’s Vodka Sauce turned into one of those quietly excellent home dinners that always seems to land when you don’t have the energy to do much.
Carbone’s vodka sauce has earned its reputation. It’s rich without being heavy, with that beautifully balanced tomato-cream-spice profile that holds up to short pasta exactly the way it should. Add a handful of grated parm and a little black pepper on top, and that’s the whole evening.
A reminder that “I didn’t go shopping yet” doesn’t have to mean a bad dinner. It just means a quick one.
Wednesday: Shaggy Coos Hot Dogs and Burgers
Wednesday was simple — hot dogs and hamburgers from Shaggy Coos Farm, fired up on the grill.
There’s a stretch of the year where this kind of dinner just feels right. The grill is back in play, the meat is from a place I trust, and the meal pretty much builds itself. Shaggy Coos hot dogs have that natural-casing snap, and the burgers cook up with that slightly nutty, properly-fatted flavor you only get from a farm-raised cut.
Add a slice of cheese, a soft bun, a pile of pickles, a side of chips, and you’re done. No production. No fuss. Just good ingredients doing their job.
📍 Shaggy Coos Farm | 281 N Park Ave, Easton, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thursday: Dig in the City, Colony Pizza Coming Home
Thursday was back into NYC for work, and lunch was at Dig (formerly Dig Inn).
I went with the Charred Chicken and Rice — Dig’s classic build — charred chicken thigh, brown rice, roasted sweet potatoes, charred broccoli with lemon, and garlic aioli on the side. It’s exactly the kind of lunch I reach for when I want to eat well without thinking too hard about it. The chicken has real char and seasoning, the sweet potatoes are properly roasted, and the whole bowl actually feels like food, not just a checked-off “healthy lunch” box.
Dig has held up over the years for a reason. The portions are honest, the vegetables are cooked with intent, and the whole concept is grounded in real ingredients rather than performance.
On the way home, I picked up a Colony Grill pizza for dinner — and if you live in Fairfield County, you know exactly what that means. Thin-crust bar pie, simple toppings, and a drizzle of that legendary hot oil that has been keeping locals loyal since 1935. There’s no overthinking a Colony pie. It’s crisp, a little greasy in the right way, properly spicy with the hot oil, and exactly what a Thursday-night dinner should be after a city day.
📍 Colony Grill | 1520 Post Rd, Fairfield, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Friday: The Full Easton Tour
Friday was one of my favorite kinds of days. With our daughter home from school, we did what every Easton family eventually does — we took her to all four of our local spots.
(Yes, four. That’s the whole list. It’s a small town, and we love it.)
Stop 1: Greiser’s Coffee & Market — A coffee, a pastry, a quick browse. Greiser’s has that perfect old-Easton-meets-new-Easton feel: a historic general store at its core, with the kind of bakery program, sandwich counter, and specialty market selection that makes you want to stop in every day. Saturdays here are always busy for a reason.
Stop 2: Sherwood Farm — One of the oldest family-owned farms in the United States, with 17 generations of Sherwoods on the property. There’s something genuinely special about Sherwood. The farm store is full of local produce, eggs, breads, honey, and meats, and the animals out back — goats, sheep, ponies, chickens — make it feel like a place where the land is still doing what it has always done. We picked up a few staples and let our daughter wander.
Stop 3: Silverman’s Farm — Another Easton classic. Silverman’s is the bigger, more touristy of the local farms, with the animal park, the apple cider, the pies, and the seasonal harvests that pull people in from all over Fairfield County. It’s the kind of place where you go for one apple and leave with a half-gallon of cider and a baked good you didn’t plan for.
Stop 4: Shaggy Coos Farm — This time for beef and dessert. We grabbed some ribeye and skirt steak for later in the weekend, along with a cannoli box with the shells and filling separate so you fill them yourself when you’re ready to eat them. That’s the trick with good cannolis. Pre-filled shells go soft. Self-filled shells stay crispy, and the contrast against that sweet ricotta-cream filling is the whole point.
📍 Greiser’s Coffee & Market | 349 Black Rock Tpke, Easton, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📍 Sherwood Farm | 355 Sport Hill Rd, Easton, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📍 Silverman’s Farm | 451 Sport Hill Rd, Easton, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📍 Shaggy Coos Farm | 281 N Park Ave, Easton, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Saturday: Penne, Chicken, and Garlic Butter
Saturday was a lazy day, and lazy days call for lazy-but-good dinners.
I cooked up some penne with chicken in a garlic butter sauce for late lunch / early dinner — the kind of “Saturday afternoon meal” that doesn’t fit neatly into a category but somehow always hits exactly when you want it to.
The sauce was simple. A lot of butter. A lot of garlic. A splash of pasta water to bring it together. A little fresh parsley. The chicken was seared off in the same pan first to build the base, then sliced and tossed back in at the end. Penne hold sauce beautifully — those ridges grab everything — and the whole dish came together in maybe 25 minutes.
Not every meal needs to be ambitious. Some of the best ones are just garlic, butter, pasta, and time.
Sunday: Mother’s Day Brunch at Spiga
Sunday was Mother’s Day, and the whole family headed over to New Canaan for brunch at Spiga Wine Bar & Salumeria on Main Street.
Spiga has been one of those reliable New Canaan spots for years — an Italian restaurant that does the wine bar, salumeria, brick oven, and pasta program all under one roof, with a brunch that draws a real crowd on Sundays. The space is warm and lively, with that big custom zinc bar at the center and the kind of buzz that makes you settle in immediately.
The table was perfect. Bellinis for everyone. (And what a way to start a Mother’s Day brunch — that peach-prosecco combination is engineered to make any morning feel like a celebration.)
The orders were all over the place in the best way. Chicken and waffles with that classic sweet-and-savory balance. Steak and eggs with a properly cooked cut and runny yolks. Avocado toast that took itself just seriously enough. Eggs Benedict with a hollandaise that landed exactly where it should — rich, lemony, balanced. Every plate disappeared, and every plate got commented on.
But the real meal was the company. Mother’s Day always sits a little differently with a graduated daughter and a full table. There’s something about the noise of a family brunch — overlapping conversations, glasses clinking, someone reaching across to steal a piece of bacon — that no restaurant can manufacture but every great restaurant knows how to hold.
Spiga did exactly that.
📍 Spiga Wine Bar & Salumeria | 136 Main St, New Canaan, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Closing Reflection
This week reset the rhythm.
A long drive home from Savannah. A pantry-rescue penne with Carbone’s. Shaggy Coos burgers on the grill. A Dig bowl in the city. A Colony pie on the way home. A full tour of every Easton spot with our daughter. A garlic butter pasta on a slow Saturday. And a Mother’s Day brunch at Spiga that brought everything together.
There’s a particular kind of week that follows a big trip. You’re tired. The fridge is empty. The mail is piled up. But somehow the meals shape themselves around what you need — quiet, easy, local, familiar.
This week leaned on the table the way you lean on home after a long stretch away. With everything still in place, exactly where you left it.
And that, more than anything, was the meal.