Cyclists extraordinaire

Meet Tim and Flavia, from Boston. They decided to explore the Shawangunk Ridge, cycling first to High Falls, then on to New Paltz over the ridge via Rosendale, with a well-earned rest at the Waterstreet Market. Having been told in the cycle shop there that there was no way they could go back up using the steep route with 3 gear bikes, they did it anyway! From the top of the ridge, they found a great way down through the Mohonk Preserve, taking in the 'Million Dollar View' at Spring Farm Trailhead, and then later using the railtrail that goes from High Falls right up to our house. They had a fantastic time and recommend this route to anyone with mountain or hybrid bikes......and maybe a few more than 3 gears!

New ways, old ways

What could be more traditional than freshly baked bread for breakfast? Most mornings we include this now, and it's making everyone very happy indeed ..... but this is not traditionally made bread.

It's a new way of baking that's been around a couple of years, that doesn't require kneading. A wet dough is mixed with enough ingredients for at least four pound loaves, and is then left a couple of hours to rise before being placed in the fridge, where it can be left for up to two weeks. Every time you want to bake, you scoop out a portion, shape it briefly, and leave it for a while before baking. That's it!

The recipes we're using right now come from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg MD. Zoe trained at our very own Culinary Institute of America, 30 minutes away in Hyde Park. Check out Zoe's website! Our favorites right now are Betsy's Seeded Oat Bread (above) and the 100% Whole Wheat and Flaxseed Bread. Certianly the tastiest way of getting your Omega-3s. Yum.

Sunset at Ashokan

Nothing much to add really... just wanted to share the view. The Ashokan reservoir with the Catskill Mountains, about 5 miles from here.

Music, sweet music

Patti Lupone stayed with us this month, together with her team, for the Bellayre music festival. It was great, such a treat for us. We got to go to the concert and enjoy her fabulous company, and she got to relax a little despite her hectic schedule. 'Coulda, woulda, shoulda' was a great showcase for all her talents, and we're looking forward to her returning to the festival next year.

See Patti's 'Ramblings from the Road' if you want to get a sense of her larger-than-life warm-hearted, fun-loving, passionate persona......and take a look at this video of her at the 2008 Tony awards to see her give her all and wow the crowds......This weekend you can catch her celebrating Sondheim's 80th birthday with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. We love you Patti!

Back home, Steve Reich is in town this weekend! That's to say, he's 20 minutes down the road in West Hurley by Woodstock, at the historic Maverick concert hall, celebrating the 40th anniversary of his seminal work Drumming (1970). Steve Reich and Musicians will be joined by NEXUS and So Percussion to perform this and other seminal works from the 70s, as well as Nagoya Marimbas (1994).

Ebelskiver or Poffertjes?

Nadia writes:

We found a cast iron pan at a market in Red Hook two years ago. I always wondered what it was, and then saw the Danish filled-pancake pan in a Williams-Sonoma catalogue, and realised it was for making Ebelskiver, a kind of baked donut you make on the stove top. Although ours has hearts, it's the same size and has the same seven deep wells. This was exciting, I researched the recipes and had a lot of fun experimenting with fillings (fruit, chocolate, nutella)......but, at the end of the day, they were all too 'doughy'. The light, whipped egg white texture was wonderful, but the taste wasn't quite right.

So, seeing as we're a Dutch house, I tried Poffertjes, a traditional Dutch meal. The authentic pans for Poffertjes have smaller wells and more of them, but I decided my pan would do just fine. They're a yeasted buckwheat pancake mix, traditionally served with strawberries and whipped cream, and dusted with powdered sugar. No filling, just very puffy. They taste really good. And today I wondered, do I dare make Poffertjes with a filling.....?

........After a hard evening's recipe testing, Sam and I can confirm that Poffertjes do indeed work with fillings, specifically, two Ghirardelli's 60% bittersweet chocolate drops. We think we might have next Valentine's Day breakfast sorted. It will, of course, take much more recipe testing between now and then to get it just right........

New Trailways Website

So you want to know how to get from the Port Authority in New York City, to the Trailways bus terminal in Kingston, NY (a couple of miles away from our house - so we can come and pick you up) and thus get here without a car? At last there is a simple website with the answer.

Fresh Local Flowers

We like to have fresh local flowers around the house every day, sometimes homegrown, sometimes from local farms and florists. Nadia picked up the beauties in the top photograph this afternoon from Gill's Farm Stand on Hurley Mountain Road, about one mile from here, where they were grown. The exotics in the lower photograph may not have been grown quite so locally, but they are from our favorite local florists, Green Cottage in nearby High Falls. You can see the Green Cottage video here.

Wildlife In Our Garden

Here are two Pileated Woodpeckers we saw in our garden today. The young one was learning to find food, ably demonstrated by its parent, who had found a lot of bugs in one of the large sugar maple trees at the front of our house. They left quite a mess of wood on the lawn. Hopefully the tree doesn't mind......a lot of bushes and trees are stressed right now, due to lack of rain, so we're actually hoping there'll be thunderstorms soon! These birds were breathtaking to watch, with the tree just a couple of yards away from our breakfast room.

Stone House Day

Yes - it's that time of year again. Next Saturday, July 10th is Stone House Day here in Hurley, New York. For more information go here. Come and visit our historic village!

Fireworks

There are floral fireworks in our garden at this time of year - like these delicate Hollyhocks, reminding us of cottage gardens back in England (we are both from the UK). The Hollyhocks are doing very well this year and some are reaching enormous proportions!

Also fresh from our garden - blackcurrants and whitecurrants, as seen here in Nadia's "black and white cheesecake". We've picked 10 lbs of blackcurrants from just four bushes, which equals about twenty pounds of jam...hard to believe they were just four small sticks in the ground two years ago when we planted them.

As for the real fireworks: - you can start the July 4th weekend early by enjoying a firework display at the Rondout waterfront in nearby Kingston, NY, this Sunday June 27th. The street festival starts at 4pm and includes live music - the fireworks start at 9.30pm.

This weekend visit Clearwater's Great Hudson River Revival, Croton Point Park, Croton-on-Hudson, NY. Steve Earle, Shawn Colvin, David Broberg Quartet, Pete Seeger, Joan Osborne, Buckwheat Zydeco, Subdudes, Keller Williams, Railroad Earth, Donna The Buffalo. 7 Stages with live music and performance artists!

Timo Weiland

The very talented Mr Timo Weiland came to stay last weekend. We've only just discovered his website, and it is the very coolest thing on earth, which you absolutely must see. Timo is also the perfect gentleman, in that he will turn around and drive back to return a room key, even if he is half-way home. Thank you very much Timo, and please come back soon!

Timefest!

This coming weekend June 5th and 6th, the Timefest comes to Kingston, with re-enactments of Dutch colonial history, boats, food samplings, walking tours, art competitions, music and dance, and free tours of the Senate house museum in the historical uptown area on both days.

The uptown Kingston farmers market on Saturday morning will be even more lively than usual with its own special events. Transportation - the 'history jitney' - will be provided to the many other events midtown, and downtown by the Rondout riverfront. Not to be missed! (Dawn and Rob, is that you in the photo?)

Top Chef

Guess who the gentleman on the left is, staying with us last weekend with his lovely partner? If you're in LA visit his new restaurant The Gorbals , which sounds amazing. Don't know what he thought of our breakfast, but he finished everything and asked us how we made our green tomato chutney, which has to be a good sign.......

For those of you who've told us you follow our blog, apologies for the recent lack of entries. We've been busy. The Art of Painting has a new bathroom, the garden has a new herbaceous border and fruit trees, The Girl with the Pearl Earring room has a TV/DVD (which you can discretely hide in a 19th century trunk if that's too modern for you), and the second kitchen (the one with the cauldron and the beehive oven) is being limewashed. As well as that, a first floor room is getting its original 17th century jambless fireplace restored. We'll share photos soon.......just as soon as we get a moment.....

A Special Day

We're beginning to realise that we are part of a very small and select group of 18th Century Dutch barns and houses dotted up and down the Hudson Valley that people crave as wedding venues or as places for their families to stay. It was charming to see these two at Marisa and Jon's wedding last Fall walking through our herb garden. The house and grounds seem to be a natural venue for wedding photography.

Conserving The Fireback

This is the fireback in our front room fireplace - recently restored using a special wax. It is probably mid-eighteenth century. It could be from the Netherlands, but could also have been made in America. Firebacks were very common in Colonial fireplaces, increasing the efficiency of the fire by reflecting the heat back into the room.

Ours seems to depict the king of the gods, Zeus, in an angry mood, gathering clouds and throwing thunderbolts. In Greek mythology, Zeus didn't want humans to have fire, so Prometheus stole it and gave it to them so that they could keep warm and cook, and defend themselves from animals.

On the left you can see two eagles. Eagles are associated with Zeus but might also refer to the way that, in his fury, he tied Prometheus up and had eagles peck his liver out, because Prometheus seemed to value friendship with humans more than reverence for the king of the gods. Being immortal himself, Prometheus' liver continually grew back only to be pecked out again and again........but he was eventually rescued.......In Aeschylus's play 'Prometheus Bound', this myth is used to portray how friendship is morally superior to tyranny.

We think it's an interesting connection, fire and friendship - after all, an open hearth fire evokes feelings of companionship and warmth.....and better to muse on that than worry about being struck by thunderbolts!

The Walkway Over The Hudson

Here is the view yesterday of the Mid-Hudson Bridge, with freshly forming ice in the Hudson River, as seen from the new Walkway Over The Hudson State Park. Even on a gray winter's day the view is spectacular. The Walkway, once the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, is well worth a visit....... As the New York Times reported on Oct 6, 2009:

"the latest example of the new kinds of infrastructure for tourism and recreation that are reshaping the Hudson Valley."

Adrien Grenier and The Honey Brothers

Adrien Grenier, star of the hit comedy HBO series Entourage , and The Honey Brothers stayed at The Stone House for 10 days recently while working on their new record with Grammy award winning producer Malcolm Burn in his Kingston, NY, studio. Adrien is the drummer for the band. Andrew Vladeck and D.S. Posner are standing next to the beehive oven outside the house. Check out their music!

Opening the Beehive Oven

Our friend Jim came round to dinner last night and persuaded us to open up the beehive oven.....it was exciting, and didn't take too long. First the bricks blocking the front of the oven came out, and then we swept out about 3 bucket-fulls of old ash and mortar. The oven is about 4 feet deep! The flue is just above the opening, and peering up we could see how it joined the chimney.

There was more, though - just infront of the oven there's supposed to be a chute into which you sweep the ashes (after the fire has burnt itself out and made the oven warm, before you place the bread etc. inside for baking).....This chute slopes down to the right, so that when you sweep the ashes into it, they are deposited into the main firebox, at ground level. Bricks had to be removed at the top and bottom of this chute, but inbetween them was just loose dirt, river stones and rubbish, including some silk stockings and bits of newspaper dated 1934! Now all we need to do is repair the chimney, repair the inside of the oven, and find an oven door. This requires someone small enough and willing enough to crawl inside.........any volunteers?

The Stone House In The Fall

Some of the trees here have now lost their leaves. But this just opens up the views.