QUECHEE — It started with some leftover cream cheese.
Kelly Simpson decided that to use it up, she’d make a batch of bagels, something she’d never attempted before. To the surprise of her husband, Scott Simpson, who grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., near the nation’s bagel capital, they were good, great even.
That episode unfolded in January 2025 in the log cabin the couple were sharing with their four children on a back road in Woodstock, a home that had belonged to Scott’s grandmother. They had moved up from Massachusetts, where Scott was still working for a chain of car dealerships.
The bagels were so good that Scott urged Kelly to package some up and take them to F.H. Gillingham and Sons, the Woodstock version of a Vermont general store, where they quickly sold out.
Kelly Simpson, of Woodstock, scoops chocolate cookie dough onto a sheet at…
