Let's spend the next 26 Saturdays together!
dear shoppers, Looks like we're jumping into summer feet first. 96 degrees! Really? The market is also kicking off its summer season with a bang.
As always you can expect a FULL HOUSE tomorrow when we go back to our weekly schedule and our 8:30 a.m. starting time. It's nice that everyone wants to be here for the season opener. Not so nice trying to shoehorn everyone in. But, as one of our committee members, Nina, likes to say, "somehow we always get them all in and, somehow, there's always room for one more."
This season, in fact, we made room for a couple of new vendors I'm really excited about.
Finally we will be bringing you ICE CREAM from an old-fashioned pushcart. Ellen Sledge, a former high falutin' pastry chef (Jacques Torres, Picholine, The River Cafe) has started making custard-based ice cream in sumptuous flavors like Earl Grey, macchiato, white chocolate praline...and, of course, standards like strawberry, vanilla and chocolate. She calls her ice cream, which she will sell in pushpops, pints and half pints, Penny Lick Ice Cream, from the bygone era when a scoop or a "lick" of ice cream in a petite glass set you back a penny. What's more Ellen, a mother of three, lives in Hastings...doesn't get more local than that.
Our new goat cheese vendor, Painted Goat, however, comes all the way from Garrattsville, NY. You may have tasted cheesemaker Ilyssa Berg's cheese at the Gaia's Breath tent where they sold it in small quantities. Now we will get to enjoy Ilyssa's entire line of fresh and cave-aged cheese: these include creamy chevre with fig or pesto or garden garlic and chive as well as her chevre buttons or logs. She also carried goat ricotta and chocolate goat cheese truffles. Her father Ted will be selling for her since Garrattsville is a long commute. Please give them both Ellen and Ted a Hastings welcome.
Longtime shoppers of the market will also be happy to know that Lenny Bee, of Woodstock, famous throughout the Hudson Valley for his colorful personality and his smoked trout will be coming every other week, starting tomorrow. Chatham Brewing Co. is slated to come every week, so don't forget your growlers. The knife sharpener, who has sharpened about 90 percent of Hastings residents' knives, lawnmowers and pruning shears at this point, is cutting back to once a month. He will be here on the third Saturday of every month.
We've ordered more blue HFM T-shirts - because so many of you have asked for them. We hope to have them by the next market. I'm fond of the rosy rhubarb color myself.
And, speaking of rhubarb, here's a Martha Stewart recipe that's perfect for the season and this sweltering heat!
See you at the market!
Pascale