The Making of The Millerton Farmer’s Market
It takes more than a handful of sunburned farmers with bushel baskets of just-picked vegetables to make a compelling farmers’ market. “It takes fruit, too!” says Jenny Hansell, who oversees the five-year-old Millerton Farmers’ Market (Saturdays 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.). She is—and isn’t—joking. Hansell functions like a curator, choosing vendors that will complement one another to create a one-stop shopping experience. “The goal is to make it possible for someone to do as much of their grocery shopping for the week as possible—bread, meat, cheese, fruit, vegetables, wine. And then, of course, we need enough customers to make it worthwhile for the farmers to show up every week.”
The Millerton Market is run by the Northeast Community Center, a not-for-profit that provides educational and social programs for children, parents and seniors. “Farm internships for teenagers is a major reason why the center runs the market, which is twice as big as last year’s,” says Hansell (near right with market manager Betsy McCall.) “We now have 20 vendors and we have a waiting list,” she says, explaining that a successful market is as much about fostering a sense of community as purchasing food. To generate traffic and goodwill, the market has live music every week, children’s activities, and cooking demonstrations by local chefs such as Tim Cocheo of No. 9 Restaurant. “But we won’t let it become a crafts fair—it’s still all about farmers,” says Hansell, who dislikes having to tell local residents that they cannot set up tables and sell tomatoes from their backyard gardens. “We had to make rules to protect the farmers who have made a commitment to us.”
It’s more of a balancing act than one might imagine. Hansell was excited to get Marilyn Moore to bring her roadside food cart to the market where she prepares made-to-order breakfast sandwiches on a grill. “But we had to make sure that she uses local eggs and local sausage,” says Hansell, which explains why the sandwich tastes so good but costs $5. She wooed Elizabeth Ryan of Breezy Hill Orchards in the Hudson Valley so the market would have fresh fruit like strawberries, cherries and peaches. But she also worried about Breezy Hill’s dominating the market with its large, ethnically diverse assortment of baked good and prepared foods such as challah, fresh pasta, fresh salsa and tamales. “The kitchen at our farm reflects the diversity of the people who work there,” explains Ryan. (FYI: The salsa and tamales are excellent.) Says Hansell: “Having Breezy Hill here has been a really great addition.”
Diversity is a theme of the Millerton Farmers’ Market. As everyone knows, the paradox of buying local food is that it’s usually more expensive than supermarket produce from California or South America, which can make farmers markets seem (counterintuitively) elitist. So Hansell has devised a way for people on food stamps to use their government issued EBT cards at the market to purchase wooden $1 and $5 tokens (right) that can be used at any of the farmers’ stalls. “And then we reimburse the farmers,” explains Besty McCall, the market manager who used to work at New York City’s Greenmarket and now spends weekdays at the Wassaic Community Farm. “Organic farmers like Dominic Palumbo of Moon on the Pond Farm, who have high prices, give double value to anyone using the tokens.”
One of the things that makes Millerton special, according to McCall, is that most of the stands are staffed by owners. “We have Don Lewis of Wild Hive, Jerry Peele of Herondale, and Dominic here almost every week,” she says. “Having relationships with farmers is what a really good farmers’ market is all about.”
Roberto Flores of Good Dogs Farm agrees. He says the Millerton market has its own personality, which is genuinely collegial and inclusive.. “You have rich people and not-so-rich people shopping side by side,” he says. “You don’t feel like anyone is there because they feel an obligation to shop locally. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.”
Millerton Farmers’ Market
Dutchess Avenue (across from The Moviehouse)
Saturdays from 9 a.m. 1 p.m.
Related post: “The Return of the Farmers’ Markets 2010” (May 5, 2010)
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/29/10 at 07:46 PM • Permalink
The Return of the Farmers’ Markets 2010
Across our region, several of the major farmers’ markets are back in business for the season. What might you find this weekend? Various lettuces, spring mix, mesclun, arugula, kale, chard, broccoli rabe, asparagus, rhubarb, peas, mushrooms, spring garlic and herbs. You can also shop for milk, cheese, poultry, meat, fish, honey, maple syrup, wine, flowers, bread, pickles, jams, pies. There will also be lots of bedding plants for your garden and cut flowers, including lilacs. In Rhinebeck, by tradition, they will be giving free seedlings to moms for Mother’s Day.
Amenia Farmers’ Market
Route 22
May 21 - fall
Fridays 2 - 6 p.m.
Berkshire Area Farmers’ Market
Old State Road/Berkshire Mall parking lot, Lanesborough
May 1 - November 6
Wednesdays & Saturdays 8 AM - 2 PM
Chatham Farmers’ Market
15 Church Street (Route 203)
June 4 - October 15
Fridays 4 - 7 p.m.
Copake Farmer’s Market
Church Street Town Center Parking Lot
June 12 - October 9
Second and fourth Saturdays of the month 9 a.m.
Great Barrington Farmers’ Market
At the historic train station behind Town Hall.
May 8 - October 30
Saturdays: 9 AM - 1 PM
Great Barrington Nutrition Center Farmers’ Market
94 West Avenue
June 2 - September 2
Wednesdays: 3 - 6 PM
Hillsdale Farmers’ Market
Town Park behind Town Hall (Routes 22 & 23)
June 5 - October 2
First and third Saturdays (+ July 31) 9 a.m. - 12:30
Hudson Farmers’ Market
6th and Columbia Streets
May 8 - November 20
Saturdays: 9 AM - 1 PM
Kent Farmers’ Market
Kent Green
May - October
Saturdays 9 a.m. - noon
Kinderhook Farmer’s Market
7 Hudson Street (Village Green at Route 9)
June 7 - Mid-October
Saturdays 8 a.m. - noon
Lenox Farmers’ Market
Cliffwood Street
May 7 - October 8
Fridays: noon - 4 PM
Litchfield Hills Farm-Fresh Market
Center School Parking Lot/Route 202, Litchfield
June 12 - October
Saturdays 10 AM - 1 PM
Millbrook Farmers’ Market
Front Street & Franklin Ave
May 29 - October
Saturdays 9 AM - 1 PM
Millerton Farmers’ Market
Main Street & Dutchess Avenue
May 29 - Columbus Day
Saturdays: 9 AM - 1 PM
Norfolk Farmers’ Market
Route 44 & Shepard Road
May 29 - mid-October
Saturdays: 10 AM - 1 PM
North Adams Farmers’ Market
77 Holden Street
July 17 - October 30
Saturdays: 8 AM - noon
Otis Farmers Market
2000 East Otis Road
May 8 - October 30
Saturdays 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Pawling Farmers’ Market
Charles Colman Boulevard next to the Pawling Chamber of Commerce Building
July 10 - September 25
Saturdays, 9 a.m. - noon
Philmont Farmers’ Market
June 13 - October 3
Sundays, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Pine Plains Farmers’ Market
May 29 - September 25
Saturdays, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Pittsfield Farmers’ Market
May 20 - October
North Street
Thursdays, 4 - 7 p.m.
Rhinebeck Farmers’ Market
Rhinbeck Municipal Parking Lot on East Market Street
May 9 - Thanksgiving
Sundays: 10 AM - 2 PM
Sheffield Farmers’ Market
May 21 - Columbus Day Weekend
Fridays: 3:30 - 6:30 PM
Stuyvesant Farmers’ Market
Railroad Station at Riverview Street
May 7 - September 24
Fridays: 4 - 7 PM
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/05/10 at 01:21 PM • Permalink
Warren Kitchen & Cutlery, A Cut Above
Kitchen supply stores in malls or on Main Streets are likely to have something for everyone—items that dazzle those who like to cook, those who like to entertain, and those in the market for something a little different to taste. Warren Kitchen & Cutlery in Rhinebeck is not like that. Situated on a stretch of Route 9 that gets no foot traffic, it is a destination. Its customer base includes enthusiastic home cooks, students at the Culinary Institute of America (just down the road in Hyde Park), and chefs from throughout the region and beyond. Warren’s carries a comprehensive (some would say, exhaustive) range of baking equipment, high-end cookware, coffee and tea-making equipment, and a wide selection of mixers and food processors. But it’s knives that give Warren’s “The Edge,” as their slogan boasts; they carry over 1,000 different styles. “If we had more space, we’d have more knives,” says Richard Von Husen, who co-owns the store with a partner, Jim Zitz.
Selling knives for Zitz’s uncle, whose business they bought in the early ‘90s, was how the partners got their start, and they still consider Warren Cutlery their primary business. “We are wholesale dealers in small hand tools, with a specialty in industrial blades—woodcarving tools, blades for cutting leather to make shoes, a specialty blade similar to an Exacto knife that we manufacture,” says Von Husen. From the start, they also carried some kitchen knives. At about the same time they bought the wholesale blade business, they took the space around the corner on Route 9 formerly occupied by the restaurant Chez Marcel and opened a retail store. “We expanded the product line and moved the kitchen knife part of the business to that building.”
“If people are going to make the effort to come to our store—we’re sort of out of the way—we’ve got to have what they’re looking for,” says Von Husen. This creed, plus a sales team that really knows its stuff (CIA student: “I need a chef’s jacket that doesn’t show stains.” Saleswoman: “You can try black, but I hear that Tide mixed with Cascade will get the stains out of the white ones.”), seem to be the partners’ sole stabs at the modern art of merchandising. Don’t look for seductive displays here. “I have my hands full keeping the place clean and organized,” says Von Husen.
At Warren’s, the sizzle is all in the steak. They carry Le Creuset enameled cast iron from France, but that doesn’t stop them from also carrying two other French brands, Staub and Emile Henry. They get their knives from all over—the U.S. (Dexter and Lamson, both from Massachusetts), Germany (Henckels, Wusthof, Messermeister, as well as their own Warren house brand—“they’re forged like a Henckels but at a lower price point”), Switzerland (Victorinox, “the people who make the Swiss army knife”), and Japan (Kikuichi, Tojiro, Global, Mac). “Japanese knives have become nearly half of our knife business,” says Von Husen. “Chefs are the ones who are driving it. They’re lighter, with a thinner blade than a German knife.” And they are sharp, which is another house specialty. Warren’s sharpens—superbly. (Best $8.11 this reporter ever spent—for 5 dull, old, then suddenly razor-sharp knives.) Asked about home sharpeners, Von Husen replies dryly, “They don’t do any harm. But they won’t get your knives very sharp.”
Warren Kitchen & Cutlery
6934 Route 9
Rhinebeck, NY 845.876.6208
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/30/10 at 03:35 PM • Permalink
Berkshire Preserves Launches with a Tasting at Guido’s
It all began, as so much food sleuthing does, with a memory. “In 1969, I traveled to England for the first time,” says Barbara Fields, sole proprietor of a new company Berkshire Preserves™, which officially launches this Thursday with a tasting at Guido’s. “My then-husband was the attorney for Alan Klein, the Beatles manager, so he was meeting with them. (No, he DID NOT introduce me. Really!!!!) Back then, England was still emerging from the vestiges of the Second World War, and it immediately won my heart and mind. The people were warm and kind, and the food was dreadful, except for the extraordinary marmalades and jams at breakfast.”
Years passed, one marriage ended, another and a business, PAPERCHASERS®, Manhattan-based professional organizers, began. All the while, Fields kept an eye out for a great jam. “I’ve been on a quest these last 40 years to find marmalades like those I had on that visit—bitter-sweet, loaded with fruit peel, dense yet spreadable, and tasting of fruit as fruit was meant to be. Not one supermarket brand, ‘gourmet’ or otherwise, has met the challenge. They’re either cloyingly sweet, or have had fruit peel marched somewhere near them but never actually in them. Or they taste like ‘fruit’ made from chemicals.”
Then one day she came across a marmalade recipe that sounded as if it had the right stuff—fruit and plenty of serious, rough-cut 1-inch by 1/4-inch chunks of peel, not too much sugar, and a little lemon juice. She boiled up a batch and England 1969 came flooding back. Says Fields, “I said to my husband, ‘I think I have a product here.’ So I brought some to Guido’s and asked them to taste it. Am I crazy? Maybe this stuff is no good? But they said, ‘No, we think it’s delicious. Bring us some.’ ”
These days, Fields divides her time between running her business in Manhattan and hovering over vats of Seville Orange Bitter-Sweet Marmalade, Pink Grapefruit Marmalade and Blood Orange Marmalade at the weekend house in South Egremont she shares with her husband Lanny. “I am negotiating to rent commercial kitchen space,” she says. With her new-found confidence as a jam maker, Fields also intends to broaden her product line this summer. “My plan is to produce small-batch marmalades, jams and preserves made from, whenever possible, local, seasonal ingredients. I’ve been talking to Dan at Taft Farm in Great Barrington, whose strawberries are sensational.”
“I want to work, and I have to work,” says Fields. “But I’d been looking for a way to spend more time in the Berkshires. Then this marmalade thing came along.”
Berkshire Preserves
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
South Egremont, MA; 413.528.2824, 917.696,8104
Guido’s Fresh Marketplace
Great Barrington, MA; tasting, Thursday, March 25; 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Berkshire Preserves is also available at Bizalions
Great Barrington, MA
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/22/10 at 11:25 AM • Permalink
BOLA Granola: The Best in the Berkshires - And Beyond?
Everybody in our region knows someone who makes really great granola. Michele Miller’s husband, furniture maker Peter Murkett, was convinced that her granola was truly exceptional. Two years ago, he encouraged her to try packaging her very crunchy, not-too-sweet, savory blend of oats, almonds, brown sugar and pumpkin seeds. The first wholesale customer for BOLA Granola (“It’s a goofy, made-up name that makes people smile,” she says) was the Monterey General Store in the town where she lives. Next, she got into Guido’s, which is the Berkshires equivalent of getting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Then she got into her car and started visiting specialty food stores and independent grocers across New England. “I like to visit every store I sell to and hand out samples,” says Miller. “People say, ‘You made this yourself?’ They love that.”
Working out of the SoCo Creamery plant in Great Barrington, Miller roasts her granola in commercial ovens, working three eight-hour shifts a week. “We mix everything by hand so the oats don’t get pulverized,” says Miller, who manages to look stylish in her shower cap and plastic gloves as she rotates trays in the oven. “It takes another day and a half to do the packaging,” she says, explaining how she designed the label herself on her home computer and then had Chatham graphic designer Millie Rossman Kidd refine it. She had to adapt her original recipe to make it more affordable and consumer friendly. “It was a lot nuttier before,” says Miller, who promotes her cereal as having 20 percent almonds. “It’s less like a trail mix than it used to be.”
How did Miller make the leap from Guido’s to Whole Foods? “It’s fairly easy to get your foot in the door if you present yourself as a local business,” she says. “I started with the Whole Foods in Hadley and now we’re in Whole Foods all over the Boston area.” 
As a native of the Berkshires who attended Lenox High School and worked at the legendary Alice’s Restaurant and was the first chef at the Old Inn on the Green, Miller is an instinctive but pragmatic Yankee locavore. She uses organic oats but has no qualms that they’re not local. “Salt and pepper are not local either. I am not going to give up lemons or chocolate,” she says brightly. “What I believe in is people making things locally and people supporting local makers. It’s about local energy and local enterprise. I am very proud that I am providing jobs.” While she employs assistants to make and package the granola, she relies on UPS for her distribution: “They get it to the stores the day after we make it—freshness is really important to me.” Without hiring a publicist, she managed to get the attention of the magazine Everyday with Rachel Ray (above), which named BOLA “best traditional” granola available in supermarkets in the United States in the April 2010 issue. “We’re supposed to be Snack of the Day soon on her TV show, too. I had to give her 150 bags of granola for the audience.”
Miller, who has cooked professionally in the Berkshires since 1974 (except for a recent five year stint as a corporate flight attendant) attributes the popularity of BOLA Granola to the simplicity of the product, which is distinctly crunchy and slightly salty. “I only make one variety,” she says. “People like that they don’t have to make a choice.” (Her next product will likely be a crunchy chocolate granola bar.) Miller likes to eat her granola straight from the bag (no milk! no yogurt!), though she has come up with some other ways to serve it. “I really like it sprinkled on a spinach salad with a balsamic vinaigrette or on top of an ice cream sundae.”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 03/16/10 at 05:11 PM • Permalink
The Market: A Grocery Store Takes Pittsfield Back to the Future
Jim Benson, the owner of The Market, finds it depressing when people have to do their grocery shopping at Rite Aid. Until last week, if you lived or worked in downtown Pittsfield and wanted to buy a half-gallon of milk, paper towels, and a box of cereal, Rite Aid was the default option. But with the opening of The Market, an old-fashioned corner grocery with a 21st century sensibility (the cash registers are iMacs), there is now a cheerful, locally-owned place to not only buy milk and cereal but also everything from organic produce and fresh flowers to Ioka Valley Farm maple sugar and artisanal marshmallows.
Benson, who also owns Mission Bar + Tapas across the street, deputized Jazu Stine, his former executive chef, to build and manage a corner store that could be a cornerstone of the community, catering to both longtime residents as well as urban homesteaders like themselves who’ve settled in Pittsfield. “I have chosen to live in Pittsfield because I want to live in a city in the Berkshires, not a country village,” explains Benson, who grew up in the midwest. “Mission is a city kind of bar—we serve food until midnight. The market is a city grocer, and we’ll deliver. The idea is not to be upscale necessarily but to be nice.” The Market’s $3 hot dog is upscale and very nice. It’s made with grass-fed beef from Fox Hill Farm in Ancramdale, NY, and it’s served with Woodstock Farm brown mustard, Real Pickles sauerkraut on a locally-made Clover Town Baker brioche bun. You can get a side of excellent cole slaw or potato salad for $1, which makes for a satisfying, healthy lunch.
The Market is the archetypal bourgeois bodega. It carries a well-curated assortment of modern necessities: Seventh Generation paper towel, Tom’s of Maine toothpaste, The New York Times, frozen organic edamame, Bob’s Red Mill grains, Peace Cereals, and Annie’s mac-and-cheese. There’s a wide selection of olive oils, vinegars, potato chips, and Koyo instant-broth organic ramen noodles ($1.29) for budget-conscious college students. (Photograph left by Jay Elling.)
While Benson and Stine care deeply about the quality of the products they sell, their larger goal is to improve quality of life in their adopted city. “That’s why we’re staying open until 8 p.m.,” says Stine. “If we closed at 5 p.m. that wouldn’t change downtown life.” Stine, who grew up in Westchester Couny and first came to the Berkshires to work for the Ferrin Gallery, built most of the store himself, spending weeks stripping paint to reveal the original checkerboard transom windows. He made shelves and counters from an old maple that once stood in front of Canyon Ranch, and he used brown kraft paper to make a decoupage floor. One of the best discoveries Stine made when he first started working on the store was that it had a gorgeous view across the street to St. Joseph’s Church and its expansive front lawn. He built a narrow counter by the windows where patrons can sit on stools and drink a coffee or eat lunch, and enjoy the view. “It will be really beautiful whet it leafs out in spring,” he says.
The Market’s graphics were designed Minc House, which is another one of the businesses being incubated by Benson from a communal office in George Whaling’s Greystone Building. The office—a graciously proportioned two-bedroom apartment with a fireplace—is where Benson often puts up bands that play at Mission and it is headquarters for the Word X Word Festival that he started last year. “What it all boils down to is there are now a bunch of creative people doing really cool stuff in Pittsfield,” he says, “and now they have someplace to shop for food.”
The Market
391 North Street, Pittsfield, MA; 413.395.9766
Monday - Saturday 8 a.m.- 8 p.m.
Sunday 10 a.m.- 6 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 01/26/10 at 12:05 PM • Permalink
Food Shopping: Delicious Holiday Gifts
One size fits all. But that’s just one of many good reasons to give edibles as gifts. Food gets shared, which is always festive. And the fact that it is ephemeral is a nothing but a plus—who among us has room for another tchotchke? Besides, a gift of food supports all the wonderful farmers, bakers, chocolatiers, and chefs who contribute so mightily to the quality of life around here.
White Christmas
The Red Barn Restaurant no sooner closed for the season, than it promptly reopened as a weekends-only take-out shop specializing in Bert Goldfinger’s prepared entrees plus lots of locally-made goodies in jars, such as the Tortured Orchard Spreads made in North Egremont by the mother-daughter team Sandra and Amanda Walley—perfect for assembling into your own gift basket. Or you can make a friend smile with one of Mrs. Goldfinger’s (better known as Christine Jones) old-fashioned 4-layer coconut cakes, $24; or her smaller, square coconut Lady Cake, $14.
The Red Barn
47 Old Post Road (Route 9H)
Ghent, NY; 518.828.6677
Rara Avis
Sometimes one exotic item is enough—a tin of caviar leaps to mind. Alternately, clockwise from upper left, chestnut honey in a clay crock from Spain, $25; Unio Moscatel, a sweet Spanish vinegar, $12.50; a twelve-year-old, syrupy, rich balsamic vinegar from Modena, $48; Panforte, a traditional Italian pastry from Sienna in two sizes, $16 & $28.
Olde Hudson
434 Warren Street
Hudson, NY; 518.828.6923
All Local, All Organic
This home-delivery service has a range of baskets. The one shown here contains 1 bag of a locallly-roasted Berkshire Blend coffee, 1 Berkshire Bark Chocolate, 2 Harney Juices, 1 organic orange, 1 organic pear, 2 organic apples, 1 tray of locally-made Cookiehead cookies, 1 locally-made Klara’s Gourmet Cookies, 1 bag of locally-made Biscotti Babies, 1 pint of local maple syrup, 1 bag of local [ancake mix, all nicely arranged in a wicker basket, with a gift tag attached; $59.99. Local delivery available.
Berkshire Organics
813 Dalton Division Road (Burgner’s Farm)
Dalton, MA; 413.442.0888
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Buttermilk Pancakes in a Bowl
This assemblage consists a 1-lb. bag of Southfield Store’s own buttermilk pancake mix, a bottle of local maple syrup, a wooden spoon and two cotton dishtowels, all artfully spilling out of a Mason & Cash batter bowl; $49.50.
Southfield Store
163 Main Street, Southfield MA; 413.229.5050
Customerized Gift Baskets
Annie & Chris Whalen, who, as Bella Flora, are Guido’s in-house florists, do great gift baskets, ranging from The Student @ $75, a care package with a snackish bias, to a big one suitable for a family of epicures @ $125. They even have highly customized gluten-free and vegan options. Best of all, phone orders are encouraged, and local delivery is available.
Guido’s Fresh Marketplace
Great Barrington, MA
Pittsfield, MA
413.442.9912; ext. 148
Local Bread from Somewhere Else
Bread Alone, Daniel Leader’s bakeries in Boiceville, Woodstock, and Rhinebeck, NY, feature the whole-grain and sourdough breads he learned to make in the bakeries of Paris more than twenty years ago, secrets he shared in his first book, Bread Alone. Now, with his latest, Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe’s Best Artisan Bakers, $35, Leader shares the latest intelligence on how to bake such new-wave wonders as a sourdough baguette made with spelt, flaxseed, and soy, a recipe he picked up at an organic bakery in Alsace, and how to duplicate the award-winning Italian country loaves he learned to make in Genzano, outside of Rome. Once strictly local, these breads and others just as cutting edge now can be made by anyone, anywhere, thanks to Leader’s painstakingly detailed instructions.
The Bookloft
322 Stockbridge Road
Great Barrington, MA 413.528.1521
A Boxed Set of Olive Oils
Among the many gift boxes and baskets available at Bizalion’s, the one we covet most is this selection of olive oils—2 each from France, Spain and Italy—chosen by them from their exciting range of bottle-your-own oils so we can compare and contrast them at home; $59.95
Bizalion’s Fine Food
684 South Main Street
Great Barrington; 413.644.9988
Handmade Chocolate Truffles
Nobody ever regretted receiving a box of these chocolate truffles. Even if the recipient was hoping for something else—a Maserati, say, or an engagement ring—instant consolation is at hand. Owner Joshua Needleman, who grew up in the spa town of Lebanon Springs, NY, understands that chocolate is no mere food or flavor, it is an aphrodisiac, an antidepressant, a stimulant, a mood enhancer, and, always, especially in the form of truffles, a gift. A 20-piece custom assortment of chocolate truffles, $35. Phone and internet orders are welcomed; shipping can be arranged.
Chocolate Springs
55 Pittsfield Road
Lenox, MA; 413.637.9820
Dutch Treat
Berkshire Mountain’s Holiday Bread is a close approximation of a Kerststol, the traditional Dutch Christmas bread. Trained primarily in the Netherlands, baker Richard Bourdon recreated this confection from memory and sells it only during the holidays at his company headquarters in Housatonic, as well as at Guido’s and McEnroe’s. Studded with golden raisins, candied ginger, and apricots, the center has a pocket stuffed with almond filling. According to Bourdon, the Dutch heat a slice, then scoop the filling out of the pocket with a knife and smear it on the bread.
Berkshire Mountain Bakery
367 Park Street (Route 183),
Housatonic, MA: 413.274.3412
Light and Luxurious
Macaroons, those meringue confections that are crispy on the outside, chewy within, are usually flavored with coconut, chocolate or almond extract. At Harney & Son tea shop in Millerton, 3rd generation master tea blender Emeric Harney is flavoring these delicacies with tea. He keeps experimenting. Last weekend, he offered three flavors—lavender, rose & jasmine—to enjoy with tea in Harney’s café or to purchase to go, beautifully packaged in gift boxes, @ $12 per dozen.
Harney’s Tea Room
Main Street, The Railroad Plaza
Millerton, NY; 518.789.2121
Old Fashioned Christmas Cookies
The cookie-meister here offers several gift options, including this 8-inch Party Bowl containing 4 1/2 dozen cookies—ginger molasses, crispy chocolate chip pecan, oatmeal raisin, butter pecan, crunchy oatmeal cranberry, or peanut butter; $29. Other, smaller bowls start for as little as $7.
Sweet William’s Bakery
Salisbury, CT; 860.435.8889
The Hudson Valley Express
Gigi Market’s gift baskets can be customized to contain any number of local and imported products, but two items are constants: Gigi’s private-label Sicilian olive oil—a time-tested favorite that has been winning friends by sitting on the tables at Gigi’s Trattoria in Rhinebeck for the past eight years, $18 per litre—and owner Laura Pensiero’s popular new cookbook, Hudson Valley Mediterranean.
Gigi Market
227 Pitcher Lane
Red Hook, NY; 845.758.1999
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 12/08/09 at 11:55 AM • Permalink
Berkshire Organics: Fresh Produce Plus, Delivered to Your Door
All photographs by Sean McLaughlin
Fresh-picked, organic vegetables year ‘round, from as nearby as the weather will allow, delivered to your door once a week.
No, this is not some pie-in-the-sky fantasy; this is Berkshire Organics, a business founded in May 2008 by Aleisha Gibbons, now 30.
Gibbons, who grew up in Berkshire County and now lives and works in Dalton, sensed a need. “I looked on-line and saw that there’s a ton of these businesses out west. Boston Organics does a similar thing, and they’ve been going since 2001,” she says. “Still, I thought it would a part-time thing. But within the first month, I had left my full-time job, and, by summer, I had to hire additional help.”
Berkshire Organics customers receive an e-mail on Tuesdays with a list of what’s going to be in their baskets that Friday. A typical basket at this time of year might include acorn squash, carrots, potatoes, onions, apples, pears, cauliflower, braising mix—chard, kale, mustard greens, “wonderful for sauteeing,” according to Gibbons—and a head of lettuce, all from local farms. Then from farther afield, there might be a Florida avocado, some oranges and bananas, all certified organic. There is also a list of alternatives. By reply e-mail, the customer makes as many substitutions as he/she likes. A minimum order is $25 and includes delivery to your door.
“At first, I didn’t think it would be able to go year ‘round, but, in fact, we’re just getting into our busy season now. In summer, there are lots of other options—farm stands and farmers’ markets every few miles.” To meet the wintertime demand, quite a number of Berkshire Organics’ farmers are experimenting with greenhouse produce for the first time this year. Until local supply meets demand, however, Gibbons will continue to work with Enterprise Produce in Whatley, MA, 45 minutes east of Dalton. ” They have a winter CSA program,” she says. “They work with small, organic farms all along the east coast—Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia—that ship to them overnight. They are trying to change the food distribution system.”
Berkshire Organics now has over 400 home-delivery customers in three states—Berkshire County and the western Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts, southern Vermont, and, just recently, they expanded to eastern Columbia County in New York State. Aleisha’s husband Brian Gibbons has come on board; he and his twin brother Brendan do most of the deliveries. “And I have 4 part-time employees,” Aleisha says. Delivery subscriptions are flexible, with frequencies ranging from once, to once in a while, to once a week.
Gibbons recently opened a retail store in Dalton, where walk-in customers may get the same produce basket that Berkshire Organics delivers for 10% less. “Fifty of our subscribers come in to pick up their baskets,” she says. Others just drop by to buy some produce, possibly at deep discounts, depending on the day. On Sundays, prices are reduced by 25%; by Monday and Tuesday, they’re 40% off. “Those sale days are very busy in our store,” says Gibbons. “It’s an affordable way to buy organic produce.”
In addition to vegetables, Gibbons has recently added fresh bread, eggs, meat, granola, cheese, yogurt, maple syrup, mushrooms, homemade soups, and fresh-cut flowers to her list of weekly offerings. She also does gift baskets, in wicker, instead of Berkshire Organics’ standard green plastic, that include heirloom fruit and locally made jams, syrups, cheeses, breads and baked goods from The Sweetish Baker in Great Barrington, who, Gibbons says, “works with local and organic ingredients, and also offers a lot of vegan baked goods. We even have a gluten-free baker.”
Asked (pleadingly) if she has any plans to extend her delivery area deeper into Columbia County and perhaps farther south into Litchfield and Dutchess, she replies, “We would love to find drop-off points—other businesses that would want to work with us.”
Berkshire Organics
Dalton, MA; 413.442.0888
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/04/09 at 10:32 AM • Permalink
Migliorelli Farm—a Heavensent for Hudson
In 1933, when Angelo Migliorelli emigrated from the Lazio region of Italy to New York City, he brought along some broccoli raab seeds, which he soon planted on land he acquired in the Bronx. He and his son Rocco farmed and peddled vegetables there until the mid-1960s, when Rocco was forced to sell to the developers of Co-op City. Undaunted, he moved Migliorelli Farm north to Tivoli in Dutchess County. Thirty years later, in 1998, Ken Migliorelli, Rocco’s son, sold the development rights to his famiily’s farm to Scenic Hudson, with a conservation easement that allows it to remain farmland forever. Today, the Migliorellis grow more than 130 varieties of fruits and vegetables there, including the same strain of broccoli raab Angelo carried with him when he crossed the pond. Migliorelli Farm provides fresh fruit and produce to over 30 fresh markets a week both locally and in New York City. As their website says, “We grow it, we pick it, and we sell it, and it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Now, once again, the Migliorellis have extended their reach to include a smallish produce and grocery store on the corner of 3rd and Warren Streets In Hudson. “I’ve always fished for an indoor market,” says Mercedes Wallner, Ken Migliorelli’s long-time partner in life and work. “But there’s too much else going on in Dutchess. We have our own farmstands, and there’s Adams. Besides, it would be way more expensive there.”
So they picked Hudson. “I didn’t really know Hudson,” she says. “But I wanted to do it where there was a real need. I didn’t realize how much need there was.”
Wallner says she’s amazed by the reception the store has received, most enthusiastic, not surprisingly, “from the people who live within walking distance. Some come in two or three times a day,” she says. “Once to pick up a yogurt, then they’ll drop by later to see if any new prepared foods have come in. They ask for recipes. I encourage them to try different greens. If somebody keeps buying kale or spinach, I get them to try bok choy.”
In addition to every known cooking green, the store presently features an exhaustive range of root crops, salad greens, tomatoes (including heirlooms), and the last of the season’s sweet corn. With winter approaching, however, that will soon change. “We have apples all year, pears into the winter, our own donuts. We have a root cellar, and greenhouses; still, we will have to buy some stuff—salad greens, organic hothouse tomatoes— from other farms. It’s a whole other thing, buying greens from someone else. It’s going to be hard to keep the prices down.”
Presently, the prices at Migliorelli seem to compare favorably to those at the supermarket chains. “I went to Price Chopper,” Wallner says. “Apples were $1.25 per pound; ours are $1.00, and we picked them that morning. Their pears are $1.39 a pound, ours are $1.20.”
One upside of a waning growing season: Wallner will have time to focus on turning the store into the mini-Adams/Whole Foods of her dreams. “We’re putting in a freezer so we can carry free-range meats and poultry, we’re going to have a grain dispenser for cous-cous and rice.” And they will also ramp up their range of prepared foods, which already include roasted chickens from The Red Barn, as well as pot pies, fish cakes, and stews from Eat Good Food, another local resource.
“I have a dream of collecting everything for a dinner in one stop,” she says. “You can do that, going from vendor to vendor, at the Union Square Greenmarket.” Before the winter is out, Wallner is determined that she and everyone else in Hudson will be able to do that here, as well.
Migliorelli Farm
302 Warren Street, Hudson; 518.828.3277
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/27/09 at 04:01 PM • Permalink
The Sweet William’s Smell of Success
Sweet William’s Bakery is no longer the worst-kept secret in Falls Village, CT. For the past two and a half years, Jason Young has baked cookies during the week for his wholesale accounts (including Guido’s and the Berkshire Co-op Market) and officially opened only on Saturdays to sell his layer cakes, tea breads, cheesecakes and decadent cream scones. “I make the scones with heavy cream and butter,” he says, which helps explain why they sold out every week in Falls Village.
Now, Young is baking scones Thursday through Sunday at his new shop on Main Street in Salisbury, CT, which was a failed ice cream parlor before his lighting-fast, two-month gut renovation. “People keep walking in and asking if we will have ice cream cones and the answer is no,” he says with his impish grin. “We do have ice cream sandwiches made with our cookies and SoCo ice cream—chocolate chip with vanilla bean ice cream, almond with coffee ice cream, and ginger molasses with ginger ice cream. I think two cookies and a scoop of ice cream for $3.25 is a bargain.”
Raised on a farm in Iowa, Young came east a decade ago to work in the arts after a stint as the box office manager for the Minnesota Opera. “I interviewed at the Roundabout Theatre and New York CIty Opera but I could not afford to live in New York City on the salaries,” he says. “So I got a job at Merrill Lynch. I was the assistant to 12 litigators. I did their archiving and filing. It was awful.” He kept looking for jobs in the arts and one day while Googling he found an ad for a box office manager at Barrington Stage Company. He got the job, arriving in Sheffield, MA for the very first time in the summer of 2003. “I had never been to this part of the world and I fell in love immediately with the Berkshires and northwestern Connecticut,” he says.
After the summer, he returned to Merrill Lynch (and enrolled in night and weekend pastry classes at the Institute of Culinary Education), but he yearned for the country. When he returned to Barrington Stage for the summer of 2004, he decided to stay in the Berkshires permanently. He took a job as a baker’s assistant, bought a condo in Housatonic, MA, and then had his kitchen certified so he could bake commercially from home. He debuted his line of Sweet William’s cookies (his middle name is William) at the Berkshire Botanical Garden‘s annual Harvest Festival in 2004. “The ginger cookies were a huge hit,” he says. “I sold out of everything I’d made for the entire weekend the first day. I went out and bought all the molasses I could find in Great Barrington and stayed up all night to bake more ginger cookies.” (The ginger cookies have become his signature and best-selling item.)
He soon outgrew his home kitchen and rented space from Guido’s in Pittsfield, where he started supplying all the desserts for Berger’s Specialty Foods. It was a great set up until he decided to move in with his boyfriend, John Phillips, who happened to live in Falls Village. “It was just too far away to commute every day,” he says. Young found a small space for rent tucked behind Falls Village’s quiet Main Street where he could install a commercial kitchen. “I planned to do wholesale only,” he recalls, but the residents of Falls Village had other ideas. “People just started showing up!” he says. “And they wanted more than cookies.” They wanted birthday cakes and tarts for holidays, and he reconfigured the space for retail. He expanded his assortment to include the Royal Warrant-worthy scones, delectable cheesecakes, cupcakes, brownies, and candied nuts. “The residents of Falls Village really liked the idea of a bakery in town and they have been incredibly supportive.”
Nevertheless, he knew he needed a more visible location to grow his business and when the space in Salisbury became available he jumped at the opportunity. (He plans to use the Falls Village space for its original purpose—wholesale cookie baking.) In his sunny new shop with walls he painted the color of cookie dough, he has a refrigerated display case for his layer cakes, which have cream cheese or buttercream frostings. “We make everything from scratch with fresh, whole ingredients,” he says. “We will do special orders for any occasion, but we won’t do fondant flowers and we won’t screenprint your dog’s face on a cake. Everything we do is simple, handmade, and old-fashioned.”
Sweet William’s Bakery
19 Main Street, Salisbury CT; 860.435.8889
Thursday - Saturday 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.; Sunday 8:30 a.m. - 2 p.m
