Christmas in December?!

Oh boy. Here we are, wrapping presents for the kiddies and drinking beer. Again. It seemed like just last year that these moments were upon us. I have decided to bring headcheese that is cooking on the woodstove at home to my grandma's for Christmas dinner. Ummm. Maybe I can shape it into the shape of a spiral ham. Or not. So, it seems like it is time to start "christmas" shopping, and I appear to be able to do most of it right in my own home. Garlic for dad, beets for sister, do you think that the children will appreciate the rutabagas? We at Wild Hive wish you all a safe and happy holidays. Thank you for a wonderful year.

Dinner at the Hive

Well, well, well. Here some of you are. Eating. Meeting. Teaching. Learning. We had a dinner at the Hive last night, the first in our new series of events in which we hope to see many of you at. Next Friday we will be showing a movie and serving desserts and beverages. Contact us at the bakery if you are looking for details. Then, in January, we will be having a soup social, which is in essence a bottomless bowl of soup, shared by as many people as we can squeeze in. There will be many different soups, of varying creativity. I will post more details as the evening evolves, but I just find so much romance and depth in the idea of sharing in the same pot of soup with strangers, friends, neighbors, farmers, fermenters, teachers, writers, bakers, servers, thinkers, moms, dads, kids, uncles, goodness, I just want to share in some damn soup, with my extended community. Thank you to all who came last night, and thank you to all who would have if they could have. There will be more tables shared in the future.

Events at Wild Hive

So, we at Wild Hive are finally back in the saddle, and ready to bring educational events to you, the public, our community, our family and our friends. Really, those things tend to meld together. This Friday night we will be hosting a dinner in conjunction with Slow Foods Hudson Valley, and in honor of Terra Madre day. It is also a platform for us to present some new projects by members of the growing sustainable agriculture community of the Hudson Valley. Over a delicious local foods dinner, meeting new people and learning about foods, and the future of food security...what better way to spend a chilly December night? If you are looking for more info about the dinner, please email Amy at the bakery. wildhivefarmbakery@gmail.com The following Friday we will be screening a food based movie, Fresh, and having dessert and a roundtable discussion. I am including a picture here of some broccoli that I harvested yesterday, as I spent my day harvesting snow touched vegetables to serve you all this week. I might add, that there are some spicy braising greens in the store that you should all rush down here for. Well, maybe you should not rush, since there is sleet and snow between here and there, but you should carefully make your way here...Maybe on skis?

Thank You Thanksgiving

Oh Boy! The feast was almost unreasonable. We had all the standards, and all the non-standards. From the turkey from Mike, at Thunderhill farm, who we got to dine with to the venison roast with wild mushrooms and red wine that I cooked in the woodstove, to the tempeh that Nick and I made with soybeans and sunflower seeds and then he cooked up with some ginger and garlic and spice. Tonight we are going to try our hand at making black bean tempeh. I'll let you know how it comes out. So I am including some photos of thanksgiving, which was celebrated at the Germantown Community Farm and CSA. There were many folks there, from many places, all convening together to eat, drink, sing, share, and did I mention eat? Everywhere I turned there was another happy, well fed face. Send me an email and let me know what was special about your Thanksgiving.

A day of projects

Well, well...Give a girl a day, and production occurs! I am sorry to have not seen you all at the cafe yesterday, but action had to be taken. It was a day filled with planning for the upcoming maple season, pressing apples, racking and making wines, lilac, apricot, gooseberry, and dandelion all needed attention. Then on to sauerkraut. This was my day, intermittently filled with cauliflower tacos, and poached eggs, sweet grits, and sauteed greens. I am both enthused and exhausted just thinking about it! An event worth sharing is coming up tomorrow night...It is a seed saving event, sponsored by the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, and it is Thursday evening from 7-9pm at the Unitarian Fellowship of Poughkeepsie at 67 S. Randolph rd. Come and bring seeds to share and make friends. The menu is looking pretty good for the weekend so far. I'll keep you posted about the cheesy yellow grits of my mind...

Back at Union Square!

So, I know you have all been waiting...since I speak with many of you on the phone each week about it, and we are coming back to Union Square this coming Saturday. We hope to continue there right on until Christmas. Tomorrow, Amanda and Matt will be there together, selling the cinnamon biscuits and raisin walnut multigrain you all know and love. Tonight here on the homestead, we at Wild Hive Cafe are open late for the first time. Until 7. We want to continue to do this, but we need you to come in and let us know that this is what you are looking for. And that we have saved you, because you have unexpected guests coming that you haven't seen in a long time, and you don't have any Sprout Creek cheeses to serve them, or heavy cream for the pie's whipped cream, or salad...or so many other things that we are stocking fresh here. The vegetable of the month here is now PARSNIPS. You want them, we have them, come and get them. They are fresh, sweet, organic, local, and lets not forget...CUTE! Parsnip pie, parsnip soup, parsnips sauteed in butter and garlic, maple roasted parsnips, mashed parsnips, a parsnip smoothie, or send me your very own parsnip recipe for me to try at the bakery. So check out our weekend's menu, and come by and eat, or say hi. To view the menu in a reasonable size, right click on it, and hit open link in new tab.

Posting todays specials, hot off the press

So I am posting up today's specials menu, as I am working on this weekends menu. A life of menus, I'll tell you. Sprout Creek cheese is back in the fridge for you to share with friends this holiday season, we have an order form ready for thanksgiving meals, and Gray Horse Farm still has plenty of turkeys for sale to complete the table. Stop in. I'll be here.

Biscuits and Gravy this weekend at the Hive

Well, I have made the menu for this weekend. I need feedback about if this is helpful. Just right click on the menu, and hit open link in new tab. You will see, that back by popular demand for the weekend is biscuits and sausage gravy. Come one, come all. So, right now at the store we have beautiful rutabegas, for you to stock up on and pack away for the winter. I am reconstructing my "root cellar" tonight. I have enough food to feed a lot of people this winter. I hope that we can have some events this winter in which I can show off my makeshift root cellar and then cook beets, turnips, carrots...
Today was the day for our Thanksgiving order list to come out. It is hot. Come down and get one or send me an email and I'll send you a copy. We will have soup, salad, stuffing, roasted veggies, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin and apple pies. Everything you will need to impress the 'rents or the in-laws. Get your orders in. Let us make things for you. Gobble, gobble.

Halloween from the hive

So, we went out for Halloween. Myself, the black trumpet, Sam, the blighted tomato, and the kids, Lydia the piggie, Levi the skeleton, and Iris, as Laura Ingalls Wilder. We stopped by Tom and Ethels to show off our costumes, and then we were off to Tivoli, for some down home trick or treating. We had fun!.. and then I dropped the kids off at their new home in Germantown, at the Germantown farm and CSA. There we looked over all of the candy, and promptly stashed it away and broke into our Wild Hive goodies. Oh lemon squares. Oh black trumpets. Oh little piggies. Oh November!

You turkey!

Today, everyone at the bakery seemed to think that I was nuts. After a no sleep night, helping my sister move, and then picking up a friend at the train station, you would think that I would have been spent, but there I was, bright and early, designing a menu for today, and a new one for tommorow. Guess what I made...Okay, I'll tell you. Lasagna. This lasagna was not typical, as it has polenta instead of noodles, the house made fresh cheese is spiked with cinnamon and sage, the fillings are rutebega greens with onions, and winter squash, and the darned thing weighed at least sixty pounds. It looks great, smells great, and I would be willing to bet that when I finalize tomorrows menu, in the morning, I can make it sound great. Come by, and eat it. I'll try it in the morning, as I bet it tastes grrreat! I got news today that Uphill farm, one of our local vendors, will be selling goat, which I am excited about. Look forward to goat pot pies. As Thanksgiving is coming upon us, let me put this out there...Not all of us are great and strange chefs, so let us cook something traditional and something strange for your thanksgiving table. Maybe not as strange as the cream of breakfast radish soup that I made the other day, (also on the menu this weekend). But nonetheless, exciting. By the end of next week we will be taking orders for holiday dishes, and we will also have a couple of extra thanksgiving turkeys. Come ask for an order form, or something similar. Also, a decision has been made. We will be open on Thanksgiving day, until noon. That is to enable you all to pick up whatever you may have ordered or forgot to order, but on the following day, marking the one year anniversary of Wild Hive Cafe being open, we will be closed. Closed. Can you believe it? If you know that you will be needing cream puffs, or challah, or our company, come ahead of time, because I will be at home, stoking the woodstove, and petting my lovely dogs, and plotting the next menu. See you at the bakery.

Friends in the hudson valley!

This is my friend Ethel. She has provided us with a number of the ingredients for your meals, along with her partner, Tom. They are both incredibly talented. They have harvested things for us and maintained their quality of being silly. Very silly. You could only hope to run into them in the cafe, and learn from them. I must admit to being very lucky, to even know these people, these friends, who will grow for me the hottest of peppers, the purplest of cauliflower, the most beautiful of garlic, and harvest the freshest of kale. Lucky, and excited!

Cold? Strike a match to that woodstove!

So, I am moving...It may not sound drastic, as it is only a quarter of a mile away from the cabin that I have maintained for years, but it is for me. I will now have electricity. Granted, only a little, but a little electricity is a lot compared with none. Plumbing...well, I will have a sink. A sink! Of my very own. Who would like a glass of water? Well, let me get that for you, from my SINK. I have firewood. Maintaining the hours I do, I am not sure that the house will be very warm, although I won't tell my dogs that, but I am prepared, in case someone tells me that I need not come to work for a couple of days, and I can stay home and enjoy the extreme amounts of food that I have preserved for...myself? for the winter. I have a terrible habit of maintaining enough food for a family of 15, and forgetting that I live alone, and really, no one is coming for dinner. My chickens have slowed down laying, and the veggies have all but stopped producing, so I can try to catch up with the recent abundance. Carrots and radishes, here i come! And the rutebegas, I dream only of you.

Craziness

Well, well, well, today. I must say, everyone was patient and lovely while we were grossly understaffed to have 100% full house for over eight hours. We were running minus 33 percent, but we ran strong, and truly had a good time, like we ALWAYS do. It seems that everything was delicious, which makes me proud as your waitress, and also as the chef. I am sure that that seems unconventional, but the small business that is Wild Hive requires some multi-tasking. I feel very lucky to have such awesome farmers that bring us their freshest foods, and such awesome line cooks to make evreything hot and beautiful for your order, and such an awesome Don who lets me create whatever strange thing that pops into my mind. So, the sunchoke salad turned out to be a real hit! We will make more, and run it all this week, using sunchokes from Ethel and Tom, who brought us a new sign this week, depicting a very "hot" lady loaf of bread. You must come se, or this week I will post a picture for those of you who are far away. Now I must rest, as tomorrow is the ideal day to hunt my glorious mushrooms. With the intense Saturday rains, and the reasonable temperatures, I feel as though the Hudson Valley surely is going to offer us some fungi for the menu this week...Even though I am exhausted, the excitement keeps me up, as I am reading my mushroom fiels guides, and dreaming up the strange things that you will all eat this coming week. Sunchoke...?...

Got some other local to spare?

Again, I think of food. Now, I am going to visit my father in the down time that we at Wild Hive are planning this January...to make you all want us even more, and I am also going to eat my way through New Orleans on my way there. I am currently planning a trip to go and try to learn some other traditional dishes of Puerto Rico, and of course, eat a couple of mangoes. Come by the bakery and talk mofungo or pastellone with me anytime! Viva la plaintain...

The amazing paw paw

So, has anyone out there ever had a paw paw? My friends Tom and Ethel introduced me to them last year, and I must say, well, I didn't really know what to say. This is a picture of a paw paw fruit, which grows on trees, and yes, it does grow quite well here in the Hudson Valley. I would go as far as to say that you should all rush out and get your paw paw trees in the ground. The fruit is similar to a strange combination of a papaya, a banana, and an avocado. It tastes quite tropical, and besides the obvious paw paw creme brulee, the only other thing I have used it for is to wow people. (Creme brulee is my long time specialty, although I try to save it for only very special occasions now.) This was not the best year for the fruit, with the bees struggling to pollinate anything with the strange weather...Go bees! I will try to have some paw paws in the store, if only for sampling, and also, will be transplanting some babies for the future, so that I can share this custardy fruit with all. That all aside, I came up with some great menu ideas today, like chicken and star shaped polenta with creamy sauteed poblano pepper strips and blue potatoes, and a fresh ham is marinating in garlic, apple cider and roasted tomatillo salsa as we "speak". As the season dwindles down with the abundance of veggies that we just started to get used to, I urge you all to embrace the upcoming foods. Fall is exciting, as we start to get creative with radishes, turnips, beets, rutebegas, beans, carrots, grains, potatoes, greenhouse greens, and many little surprises that we have managed to find time to store away. It will be a very pesto winter! See you at the store soon, and keep on mushroom hunting...it is near the end!

Oh, and for Lisa, let me know if I have figured out the title thing. Thanks!

Kale and eggs, and I thanked the chicken that laid them, Ashley and Ben who grew the kale, Ethel and Tom who grew the garlic, Chris who prepared the meal, Don who provided the cozy space, and if I have forgotten you here, I have not really forgotten you at all. I spend much of my time thankful for all who have dedicated their time to providing clean, fair food. Come by the bakery and I'll serve some up.

Now we are transitioning from watermelons to watermelon radishes, from summer salads to roasting squashes. The ovens are coming on and I am going to post a recipe tomorrow for a simple roasted dish with...mushrooms. Stay tuned.

Well, there she is, one of those maitakes that we will be cooking up. I am working on the menu for the weekend now, and I will try to post it to the website, although I have not figured out that skill yet...We will be at the Union Square market tomorrow, and for a limited time, so if you can't make it up to the store, go see Erika!

Another day, another maitake

So, that was eventful. All I was doing was making deliveries of flour, and picking up some veggies and cheese, or so it would seem. Any good mushroom hunter or wild forager knows that multitasking is key...especially in certain seasons, for instance, in February, my eyes would have been on the road. But, for goodness sakes, mushrooms rarely grow in the road. I was fortunate enough today to have spotted several pounds of maitake, my third such score in a week. As I drove on my deliveries, I dreamt about how to best prepare them for you, the hungry public. It seems that I have settled on a lunch special, of our fresh spelt fettuccine, tossed with creme fraiche, and topped with sauteed maitakes. This simple dish will showcase the earthy flavor that only mushrooms contain. As I mentioned to a lovely gentleman earlier tonight at Local 111, mushrooms taste like earth, and if it was any good sauteing dirt up in butter, we would, but I don't reccomend it, so we settle for mushrooms. Let me remind everyone about the Fall Festival happening at Hawthorne Valley Farm, where they make that damn good beet kvass. We will be there at the farmers market in some capacity or other, but I will be at the bakery, cooking up those maitake mushrooms...see you there!

A Monday of mushroom hunting

Can you believe that this beautiful specimen is poisonous? I came across it while foraging for mushrooms this Monday. (And I also came across some awesome mushrooms.) It turns out that the most delicious foods that can appear on your plate are found in the wild. I am on my way out right now to hopefully discover some delicious foods. I will write later to let you know what I find, and what you will find on our menu this week. Work up your appetite.