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: The Making of a Farmer, Part 2

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: A couple of weeks ago, I described arriving at young adulthood in a state of profound alienation from the natural world. How did I find my way to the realization (or is

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Food

Let the Locavores Eat Cake!

Moist, sweet and laced with tart cranberries, this healthy cake staved off my winter blues by perfuming the house with its spices. It's a relative of pumpkin bread, but with the locavore edge —local butternut squash, eggs, butter, apple and regional cranberries—all widely available during the cold

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Food

AgriCulture: Sheepish Grins and Other Barnyard Metaphors

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: Having a farm does revive one’s sense of metaphorical language. While slopping the pigs I have sometimes, as I watched the disgusting activity at the trough, caught myself thinking, “You eat

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Food

AgriCulture: From the Start, at Two With Nature

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: A few weeks back, Peter wrote about his lifelong passion for growing things, one which quite naturally led to an involvement in farming. When I was casting about for a topic to

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Food

Shu Mai On My Mind

Most of us are so used to frozen or defrosted shrimp that "seasonal shrimp" sounds as oxymoronic as jumbo shrimp. But they do exist. I recently found these Maine babies at the supermarket and at Rubiner’s in Great Barrington, where they should be available for another month

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Food

AgriCulture: Remembering Daisy

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: Not all farm stories have happy endings. They may, at first, seem to, as was the case with Daisy, our poor young cow, whose harrowing birthing experience was recounted in a May

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Food

Terrapin Red Bistro

"Astonishing variety and value"

By Lisa Green

Food

A Locavore Indulgence: Oysters on the Half Shell

It's best to plan ahead with oysters. Although you can always find them in the fish department at Guido's, I like to order them through {encode="cheesemonger@verizon.net" title="Rubiner's"}. If you sign up for the Great Barrington grocer&

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Food

AgriCulture: The Inside Story on "Animal Welfare Approved"

A friend recently asked that we write something about “Animal Welfare Approved” (I’ll call it AWA), a certification that has begun to appear around the region. I had seen their certificate at Hilltown Pork, the Canaan facility where most of our cattle, lambs and pigs are slaughtered. Although I

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Food

AgriCulture: The Mysterious Impulse to Garden

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: Recently we mailed off our very ambitious vegetable seed order to Fedco and expect to wait the usual two weeks or so for delivery. Unbelievably, it is almost time to begin planting

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Food

AgriCulture: Which Chicken? The Fatty or the Funster?

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: I promised a couple of weeks ago to come back to the issue of chicken. I love the taste and texture of the plump Cornish cross chickens we raise, and attribute these

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Food

Sweet Simplicity: Black & White Truffles

These are extraordinary in their ease and simplicity — fresh local cream mingles with the best chocolate you can find. I used Belgium Callebaut chocolate with cream from Highlawn Farm, where the vista is classic New England and Jersey cows bat their long lashes. I couldn’t find local butter (but

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