Over Do at Stew’s

We knew we were in danger of over doing it when we walked into Stew Leonard’s in Norwalk, CT to purchase food for the next 2 days camping at Hammonasset State Park in Madison, CT.

Stew Leonard’s is a unique supermarket Disneyland experience. As you enter the store you are funneled through a maze of grocery items like baked goods, cheese, fish, dairy, specialty products—all the foods. Farm animal characters, cows that talk, and avocados that sing greet you at every turn. Stew’s has been around since 1968 and its origins go back to the 1920’s as a family dairy farm in Norwalk, CT. Norwalk is the mothership. There are other 7 other locations in CT, NY, and NJ. Stew Leonard Sr., the founder, is deceased and has had media attention both good and not good during his life including creating what would become known as the largest dairy store according to “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”. Stew Leonard Sr. also had some difficult moments such as a conviction of tax evasion in 1993. His son Stew Jr. took over in 1991 and is responsible for opening the many other stores today as well as for recognition in Fortune Magazine as one of the “100 best companies to work for” 10 consecutive years from 2001-2011.

My parents shopped here when I was young during the tax evasion years and the transfer from senior Leonard to junior. I do not remember any of that. My memories are the summer evenings we had fried chicken from Stew Leonard’s on the front patio and finding bakery items like buttery crisp croissants stuffed with ham and cheese and blueberry muffins in our kitchen.

So when my husband and I recently dropped by as we often do on our way home from New York, nostalgia took over and we made our way along the path through baked goods, dairy products, meat, poultry, fish, fruits, vegetables, and finally their prepared foods section. We had selected a delicious menu of foods for the 2 nights at the beach and $229.05 confirms it. Needless to say, we came home with enough extra to avoid our less-fun local grocery store when we returned home.

Here’s a sample of what we managed over the fire pit and with easy assembly:

Shrimp with garlic, olive oil, herbs, grilled country hearth bread. This was pre made so all we had to do was brush olive oil and butter on the bread slices and arrange in cast iron pan and put over the hot spot on the fire.

We had a pre made Caesar salad for lunch and we added anchovies, country hearth bread, slices of salami and provolone

Grilled chicken sausage with corn on the cob was an easy dinner to coordinate over the fire. We put the corn on a warmer part of the grill while the sausages got the flame.

We enjoyed a Capo Spritz the first night camping and a bottle of FRV100 de Jean-Paul Brun, an effervescent, 7.5% alcohol, sparkling rosé from the Burgundy region during our second night.