Food

Discover the best food, farms, and dining in the Hudson Valley, Berkshires, and Litchfield Hills. Rural Intelligence shares local restaurant reviews, seasonal recipes, and stories celebrating regional flavor.

Food

AgriCulture: Food Politics

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: You know you’re living in agitated times when the usual torrent of year-end charitable solicitations in your in-box is dwarfed by a tsunami of political entreaties, beseeching you to

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Food

AgriCulture: Self Sufficent To a Point

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: Thanksgiving is over and gone but not in my thoughts. I keep returning to this matter of self-sufficiency or, as it is reframed these days, the size of our footprint.

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Food

AgriCulture: What's in a Gizzard? A Pretty Surprise

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: Our Thanksgiving marathon begins early—very early—on Monday of that week. We’ve found that the easiest, least traumatic time to get the birds onto the truck is while

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Food

Food Shopping: Pies That Hit a High Note

By Kathryn Matthews How did Debra Every, a former opera singer and bond trader, sneak back onto center stage—and into the limelight? By baking pies. Lots of them. And winning fans. Lots of them. At Me-Oh-My Pie Shop & Café in the village of Red Hook on a sunny

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Food

AgriCulture: Turkey vs turkey

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: I don’t know how my life has come to oscillate between “Turkey” and “turkey” (one capitalized, the other not) but lately somehow it has. All summer, with my travel

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Food

AgriCulture: Buttoning Up But Not Shutting Down for Winter

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: We're feeling the restorative effects of a balmy late fall weekend. After a nasty beginning of last week, with hail and high winds that had our newly shorn

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Food

Holiday Farmers Markets for Thanksgiving Cooks

Last year, Berkshire Grown, the organization that facilitates the farm-to-table movement held its first pre-Thanksgiving farmers' markets simulateneously in Great Barrington and Williamstown. They proved to be unqualified successes—merry happenings where you could purchase local ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner and catch up with friends at the dawn of

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Food

Just in Time for the Turkey: Hudson-Chatham's Baco Noir

By Christopher Matthews Mention “Baco Noir”, and what comes to mind? A men’s cologne? Dark chocolate from Madagascar? Or an award-winning wine grape in the Hudson Valley (HV)? The answer is the latter, a French-American hybrid grape that grows well here in the Valley. In fact, back in August,

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Food

AgriCulture: Naughty on the Hoof; Great on the Plate

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: People often say when they are trying to describe something difficult or impossible that, “It’s just like herding cats.” Well, we could one-up that and say, “Like herding pigs”

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Food

AgriCulture: Taking a Long, Last Look at Our Flock

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: We are at that point in the season when we must begin to adjust our relationship to the turkeys from keepers of the flock to harvesters of the crop. Obviously,

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Food

Antique Apples: Montgomery Place Orchards’ Pie Contest

By Kathryn Matthews Double crust or crumb top? A lard, shortening or butter crust? Wolf River, Ananas Reinette, or Hudson’s Golden Gem? These were among the tough decisions that contestants in Montgomery Place Orchards’ sixth annual apple pie contest had to make. Not to mention: a panel of pie

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Food

Vickie Lieb’s 2010 Blue Ribbon Double-Crust Apple Pie

by Kathryn Matthews Lieb says her prize-winning double crust apple pie is based on an old Pillsbury recipe that she has modified through the years. For the crust: 3 cups flour 2 sticks butter 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup water Combine flour, butter and salt until pea-sized clumps

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