A Flower In Winter by Forever Endeavor
A flower withers,
As a gust of wind blows,
And its once ruby red petals,
Turn brown and gold,
And one by one,
Each petal falls,
Due to the treacherous sound,
Of winter’s call. Continue reading The Winter Flora Thrives in the Hudson Valley
Every couple of months we make the trek up to the big beautiful DeCicco & Sons market in Brewster. It is a forty minute drive, which for us, who used to live in Montclair, NJ no more than 10 minutes from six great supermarkets and countless specialty shops, is a ways.
DeCicco’s has a great selection of all sorts of gourmet delights so it is worth the drive. On our latest trip we decided to check out Healy’s Corner Bar in nearby Carmel.
Healy’s is relatively new, opened in 2011, but it feels like it has been here forever, a friendly neighborhood type place that I loved growing up. Great places like this seem to have disappeared over the years as corporate chains baited diners and drinkers away with what looked like the next big thing. We have never favored corporate dining and are delighted when we find a place like this.
Hear you’ll find a full bar with a good number of beers on tap, half are rotating craft, the rest major brands. For your dining pleasure there is a nice menu of American dishes including, creative salads, enticing sandwiches, entrees called “Healy’s Signatures” with steaks, chicken dishes, fish and chips, and more. On the menu you will also find homemade Italian from “Curzio’s Kitchen” who ever that is, sounds authentic. And burgers! 12 varieties, or build your own. Last year, voted best burgers in Putnam. They are served with a choice of homemade French or sweet potato fries, potato salad, garlic mashed, cole slaw, side salad, or vegetable of the day. For those who need there are gluten free options. Eat at the bar or in one of the two dining rooms.
Served by one of the genuinely friendly bartenders I have ever met, Jason, we enjoyed some good beer and burgers. What’s on tap can be found on Beer Menus. I won’t be looking for wine here.
I devoured the special burger of the month, January, “Mac and Cheese Burger” with very tasty French fries.
Diana enjoyed the bun-less “Shroom Burger” with portobella mushrooms instead of bread. She picked the sweet potato fries, which she did not like as much as my French, said they weren’t sweet enough.
There is a happy hour and events and specials during the week, live music, more info on Healey’s web site.
Thursday is $2 Taco night, and your are invited to take the “Taco Challenge” which I understand to win you’ll have to eat more than 21. I had two, good, not the best, but a good cheap bar bite.
The bar has a lot of TV’s and I imagine Healy’s get quite crowded on major sport days.
Nothing much to look at from the outside, yet Healy’s is a friendly neighborhood place with good food and drink for reasonable prices. As it is mean to be. Lovingly owned and operated by Stacey & Ryan Healy.
Healy’s Corner Restaurant
474 Route 52
Carmel, NY 10512
(845) 306-7087
To warm my bones on a cold chilly night, I created this sumptious cocktail that brings together the fine flavors of a well crafted Hudson Valley whiskey and warmth from southern Mediterranean Spain.
This cocktail is a variation on the venerable Manhattan. The crisp deep flavors of Taconic Distillery rye, and the colorful notes of the P. Quiles Vermouth Rojo say clealy this is not your dad’s Manhattan. Stepping in to round out the drink, adding balance and another flavor element, the Lustau Amontillado dry sherry is the finishing touch to perfection.
Paul and Carol Ann Coughlin and Gerald Valenti are the exciting people who create the wonderful Founder’s Rye Whiskey, in a bow to the history of our region it is named for our “Founding Fathers.”
From the finance industry to farming was a move driven by a longing to work the land which brought the Coughlins to purchase a Duchess County farm with fertile fields and natural spring water. Here with Gerald Valenti they founded Taconic Distillery.
Distilling great whiskey is no easy feat, there are many steps which must be executed with precision, and of course the very best ingredients must be used. This rye is created to the highest standards, aged in virgin American white oak barrels it has bold, smokey, spicy, yet surprisingly smooth, flavors with a mildly sweet finish.
It is a strapping base for the vivid mouth filling flavors of Primitivo Quiles Vermouth Rojo. From the Alicante province south of Valencia on the Mediterranean sea, this aromatized and fortified wine is made with the efficacious Monastrell (Mourvedre) grape and a secret recipe of botanicals, Wonderful as an apéritif, fabulous for cocktails. Created by one of the greats of Spanish wine, Senor Don Primitivo Quile. His bodega (wine cellar not a NY convenience store) in Monovara, has existed since the 1700’s.
If you think of vermouth as awful tasting stuff stuck in the back of a cupboard or bar, you are right and wrong. Yes crappy cheap vermouth that is allowed to spoil does taste awful. But fine vermouth like this one, stored cold is a wonder to behold. There are so many fabulous Vermouths available today, just waiting for you to discover and fall in love.
These two liquors would easily make a perfect cocktail, but they were each a little too dominant. I sipped and realized that one more element was needed.
Of course it had to be of equal stature, and a fine Spanish sherry seemed like it would be just the right thing. You see like vermouth, sherry is a much maligned drink. It is not just for cooking, the better sherries are truly divine.
In the warm Andalusia region in southern Spain with coasts on the Mediterranean and Atlantic Bodegas Lustau was founded by a humble man José Ruiz-Berdejo in 1896. This winery has come to be regarded as the finest producer of sherry in the world. The Amontillado Los Arcos Solera is a dry sherry with nutty, honey flavors, crisp and delicious.
Spanish Warmth
The recipe:
1 1/2 oz Founders Rye
1 1/2 oz Primitivo Quiles Vermouth Rojo.
1/2 oz Lustau Amontillado Los Arcos Solera
Very cold spring water ice
stir well over ice, server straight up or on a large spring water ice rock.with a twist of lemon.
Cheers! Enjoy!
Taconic Founder’s Rye can be found at many better liquor stores in the area.
Primitivo Quiles Vermouth Rojo was found at the exceptional Suburban Wines in Yorktown Heights.
The Lustau Amontillado Los Arcos Solera we found at the excellent Artisan Wine Shop in Beacon.
As we wonder about the year ahead. Contemplating what great and dreadful events we may witness, taking a moment to celebrate the present is always good, to share a libation and not necessarily the alcoholic type.
You see a libation is a ritualistic pouring of liquid. It may be a toast, a long celebrated tradition, featuring rich glasses of beer, wine or spirits.
However, the roots of this practice, of libation or oblation, came from the pouring of liquids as offerings to the deities found in many religious ancient and contemporary. Very often this was wine, but also olive oil, in India I am told they used the refined butter called ghee, each poured from exotic vessels like a patera. Like this one from the Byzantine era. Spilled onto an altar or the earth.
I’ve read that in East Asia, the reverent seek to detach themselves from surrounding bad karmic energy by pouring an offering of rice into a running stream. How about a river?
That being said we do enjoy a proper toast, with libations of the alcoholic kind.
There is quite a long history to this practice, it is an ancient tradition reports Rebecca Rupp writing for National Geographic in an article “Cheers: Celebration Drinking Is an Ancient Tradition” where she says. “No one knows exactly when alcohol first entered the human diet—chances are it was a serendipitous prehistoric stumble on fermented fruit—but clearly we took to it like ducks to water.” Read More
We enjoy these “Toasts Proposed during the Revolutionary War” posted by Susan F. Craft after an event for the launch of her novel, The Chamomile. Which started with: “George Washington attended a Public Dinner at Frances Tavern on Pearl Street in New York where he would propose 13 Toasts with Hot Butter’d Rum.” and ended with
“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” – Ben Franklin Read More
Our own toast is this:
May the Year Ahead Be Great
Flow Everlasting with Surprising and Foreseeable Events
May We Relish and Be Grateful for Every Moment
Share with Others our Bounty
Cheers!
Of course there are many ways to accompany this toast with a suitable drink. Check Them Out Here
We like our coffee strong, dark is our roast of choice. It yields those shiny beans that look so fresh and appealing.
There are a many great coffee roasters in the Hudson Valley, we do like Tas Cafe in Beacon and others. But, these beautiful beans come from Adams Fairacre market in Wappinger Falls. They are organic Peruvian beans roasted to perfection. To get this glorious coffee you have to ask. It is not out in the main dispensing tubes at the coffee counter.
If you like a dark roast too, ask for Adam’s Organic Peruvian Dark Roast. It is a wonderful coffee as is there Sumatra.
The glistening dark color comes from the roasting process, after the “second crack” that comes as the coffee expands after 15 in the roasting process cracks the shell and releases the coffee oils. At this point it is called “Full City” a medium roast. After 16 minutes it turns to gold a Dark Roast. Or “High Roast Italian, French, New Orleans, European, Continental and Viennese, it’s common enough to have been claimed by half of Europe.” Everything You Need to Know About the Roasting Process
Of course we buy the beans whole, and grind before brewing in a French Press. That is the way to start the day!
What better way to begin a happy Sunday brunch than a sprightly bloody mary! They have a few to choose from here, I opted for the grilled cheese and bacon.
Purdy’s Farmer and the Fish, is a restaurant that has come up often when we’ve asked new acquaintances here to name some favorites. Taking their advise we joined friends here for a delightful meal. Continue reading Brunch at Purdy’s Farmer and the Fish
I must apologize, for goofing off, not writing in weeks. The excuses are easy, the holidays, work demands, all that. But it is really this. As Earnest Hemingway once said “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” Not that I mind. Frankly I am a hermit by nature. Give me some good books, some wine, a comfortable chair, some things to eat, a view of the river and I am set for days. Ask my wife.
But , sometimes, the lonely life, leads to writer’s laziness, I won’t dare to say block because it is not nearly that severe. There has been no shortage of content, the last month has been filled with tons of activities, family, friends, holiday festivities. Lots of stories to tell.
Nevertheless, as a writer you can wonder, is anyone even reading? Does any one care? Why bother? Then something happens.
Yesterday, Neal Santelmann, Cold Spring resident, writer himself, with Hawkins International Public Relations, and member of the fabulous local band Laminated Menu, approached Diana in Foodtown yesterday. Saying “your her” from Hudson Valley Pleasures, “you changed the name to InTheHV.Com.” He paid us some very nice compliments and from a fellow writer that means a lot.
So off we go into a new year, inspired and writing again! Thanks Neal!
We both, Diana and I, found these eggs on Facebook as friends, mutual and distinct, raved about their delicious flavor and crafty presentation. Said they were the best!
I was skeptical, we have been enjoying a lot of good eggs this year all gently hatched at the wholesome farms about the valley. We’ve had white eggs, green and brown, but these present a wider rainbow of colors.
They are from Cat Rock Egg Farm in Garrison NY, and as the hand signed letter that comes with your first box of eggs describes, these are from “pet hens raised with love & attention at our free to muck about home “yolkette” says farmer Lydia. Continue reading Yes They Are the Best Eggs We’ve Ever Tasted
A toast and cheers to you, wishing you a very wonderful 2016.
It is hard to believe it has been almost a year, four wonderful seasons here in the Hudson Valley. We have met so many great people and had so many great times in all the wonderful places we have explored around our wonderful Hudson River Valley.
Looking forward to another great year and wish the same for you.
Peter and Diana
