Tag Archives: Upstate New York

Catskills Cocktail: Vodka Soda with Rhubarb Syrup

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Simple syrup season is here – the time where we have lilacs, forsythia and other blossoms to soak in sugar water to make floral or fruit sodas and cocktails.

My rhubarb/vodka cocktail is called a Catskills cocktail is because we have burgeoning rhubarb with very little effort on our mountaintop here in the Catskills. Alan White of Two Stones Farm told us years ago to grow what thrives in abundance on your property and swap with your neighbors. So we’ve been growing rhubarb as thick as broomsticks for years. Animals avoid the leaves because they’re poisonous and because the rhubarb itself is bitter, but the fruit provides useful nutrients and fibre. The tartness of the rhubarb pairs well with the vodka. I also like to add a sprig or two of rosemary when cooking the syrup as I think the flavors pair well. Just the soda alone – the rhubarb juice and the sparkling water together – is delicious and refreshing. You can also use the rhubarb syrup as you would a liqueur in Prosecco or Champagne. Continue reading →

Daily Catskills: 05/22/18

Continual rain until mid-afternoon, as summer falters. Overcast and dripping wet with a high of 59F.

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Daily Catskills: 05/21/18

A high of 80F and hot with the landscape lush with an extraordinary abundance of blossoms and wild flowers. Summer’s here.

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Trail Blazing

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In the midst of cabin fever the winter before last I was out in the freezing, driving rain with the dog and decided to make a trail out of an old logging road on our property. We’d been using this trail through the forest, the dog and I, for some time and, unexpectedly – because it was about -10F at the time – the urge to start a trail came over me. To this day, I’ve no idea what prompted this move, but back then I just didn’t want to go back inside. I traipsed around in the forest for a couple of hours collecting large stones with which to line the trail until I was soaking wet and my woolen gloves had numbed my hands. Over the past year, we’ve added to it by lining the trail with a branches that look like they might one day thicken like a hedgerow. Continue reading →

Daily Catskills: 05/19/18

A high of 56F with rain all day until 4.30pm. A drenched landscape shrouded in mist. Apple blossoms begin to open.

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Daily Catskills: 05/17/18

A high of 82F and sunny with hazy cloud. Dandelions attract bumble bees.

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Daily Catskills: 05/12/18

A high of 63F with continual rain with the mountains shrouded in mist and fog.

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Daily Catskills: 05/10/18

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A high of 70F with huge, scene-stealing clouds and intermittent rain showers. Humid with early evening fog descending into the valleys and rising off the Esopus. Shoots a-shooting. Buds a-budding and the maple leaves unravel first. The forest comes alive and the soft earth ejects a few ancient objects.

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Daily Catskills: 05/09/18

A high of 82F with a brilliant blue sky filled with plump clouds. Bumble bees buzzing. May flies out in force.

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Daily Catskills: 05/08/18

A high of 75F with hazy clouds and hot in the sun. Trout Lilies begin to bloom.

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Cultivating Lion’s Mane Mushroom

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I first encountered lion’s mane mushroom last August on a hiking trail. It was growing on a dead log and I took half of it home and sautéed it with scrambled eggs. It was delicious, meaty and delicately fragrant with the texture of lobster. The mushroom is a powerhouse of beneficial nutrients and is said to improve neurological function and alleviate anxiety.

After searching high and low for the rest of the summer, I never saw it again. So, I bought a grow kit from Catskills Fungi (pictured below) in December. Continue reading →

Daily Catskills: 05/07/18

A high of 70F with scudding clouds and mostly sunny with more yellow blooms arriving to keep the solitary daffodil company.

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Daily Catskills: 05/06/18

57F and raining all day. Seeds sprouting. Ramps thriving, but the memory of a long, hard winter is not yet cold. Harvesting wood to season for next year.

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Daily Catskills: 05/05/18

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64F by 10am, sunny and warm with cotton wool clouds with a high of 75F. Be careful when moving rocks. Snakes doze under warm stones.

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Daily Catskills: 04/30/18

36F at 8am, snowing heavily, with the mountains shrouded in the thick fog of our profound resignation. We live in the mountains and, consequently, get all the weather. We catch all precipitation however cold it may be. The budding maple leaves that have been reddening the bare, umber brush like a light rash are covered once again in white powder for most of the day. Locals say that the weather was always like this and that back in the day, there was nothing planted before Memorial Day. Plus, of course, water is life. Keep it flowing.

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Daily Catskills: 04/29/18

A high of 45F and overcast, with icy rain, a flurry of snow, the occasional flash of late afternoon rain and mist settling in the mountains. The leaves of the Trout Lily spring up over the forest floor like spring’s green army.

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Daily Catskills: 04/28/18

A sunny morning filled with hope and enthusiasm, with a high of 65F by afternoon, followed by late afternoon showers and more gloom with brief flashes of sunshine. A vivid, beautiful sunset chased by mist sinking enigmatically into the valleys at dusk.

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Daily Catskills: 04/26/18

A high of 55F, dull and overcast with yesterday’s rain lingering on leaves like jewels.

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Daily Catskills: 04/25/18

A high of 55F, humid, misty with continual rain. Rushing rivers.

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Daily Catskills: 04/24/18

60F on the peaks at 9am, wisps of cloud floating in a wash of blue, and breezy, with varied birdsong. A high of 67F and hot in the sun. 100F in the greenhouse.

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Daily Catskills: 04/16/18

An overnight storm: house-rattling winds and freezing snow melting to slush in the morning. Rain mixed with hail begins mid-morning and becomes torrential with very high winds until mid-afternoon. A late afternoon high of 47F as fog hugs the mountains.

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Monday’s Radio Show

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On Monday’s radio show (April 16th) at 9am on WIOX, my guest will be Leslie T. Sharpe, editor and educator, author of The Quarry Fox and other Critters of the Wild Catskills.

Copyright © The Overlook Press

Leslie gave a remarkable speech at the Catskill Center on Saturday entitled “John Burroughs and H.D. Thoreau: The Roots of American Nature Writing” that transported the audience back in time with a teen-aged Washington Irving he sailed up the Hudson; described Thomas Cole as he painted the Catskills; showed us how John Burroughs forthrightly traipsed through dense hemlock forests.

Leslie, a member of PEN America, began her writing career at Farrar, Straus & Giroux and has been an editorial consultant, specializing in literary nonfiction (especially memoir, creative nonfiction, biography and cultural criticism), literary fiction (novels and short stories) and poetry. She has been Adjunct Associate Professor of Writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she taught in the undergraduate and graduate (MFA) writing programs for twenty years. Join us as we talk about her life as a naturalist, why she wrote her memoir and what’s so special about the quarry fox.

Daily Catskills: 03/04/18

A high of 36F, overcast with a glimmering cloud and gloomy. Snow hangs heavily in the pine trees, cracking off branches and breaking trunks in half.

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Daily Catskills: 02/22/18

A high of 34F with crunchy snow underfoot and an afternoon snow storm that dumped several inches of powder. Yesterday laundry day. Today not so much.

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Daily Catskills: 02/21/18

An even more balmy day after yesterday’s high of 62F. Humid and cloudy with lunchtime sunshine, a strong breeze and a high of 74F. Laundry weather for one day.

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Daily Catskills: 02/05/18

A high of 26F with thick layer of overnight snow balanced perfectly on every branch, nook and cranny. Another flurry of snow mid-morning but clear for the rest of the day.

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Daily Catskills: 02/03/18

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A high of 24F, with bright sunshine and mostly clear skies.

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Daily Catskills: 01/12/18

Overnight, gusty, house-creaking, tree-waving winds continue into morning, with rain melting the last of the snow, and bright despite being overcast. A lush landscape of brunette tones is revealed, and the landscape welcomes a drenching before the ice storm. A balmy 61F. T-shirt weather. Flood warning. The carbon sink (compost piles) gets a thorough soaking.

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Daily Catskills: 01/11/18

A high of 52F, gloomy all day with the occasional whip of wind and a chorus of tinkling as the snow drips from high places. An anonymous critter’s regular commute back and forth from a large cave into the hemlock stand melts slowly to reveal a trail of crushed ash leaves.

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Daily Catskills: 12/17/17

A high of 28F and overcast with a glassy, grey sky. Thick snow on the peaks.

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Daily Catskills: 11/09/17

A frosty morning in the 20s and clear skies, rising to 43F by mid-afternoon, overcast and moody.

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Daily Catskills: 11/03/17

A 55F high, humid and overcast with scattered showers. The landscape turns to thatch. Only the green of the fading grass remains.

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Local Elections & Proposals on the Ballot: November 7th

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Local elections take place next week here in Delaware County, Upstate New York, Tuesday November 7th. Here’s a list of all the offices on the ballot.

There are also three propositions, or “Proposals”, on the reverse side of the ballot that are easy to miss. It’s also difficult to find information on these proposals, even if you don’t have three jobs. Flip over the ballot and vote on these proposals which are, in brief, the following:

1. New York State should have a Constitutional Convention. This is proposed because in the NYS Constitution its required that every twenty years we should have a Constitutional Convention, so there is a public vote required.

2. A public official found guilty of a felony should be stripped of their pension (if that has a direct and actual relationship to the performance of the public officer’s existing duties).

3. Constitutional Amendment that would create a modest land bank for Catskill (and Adirondack) community health and safety projects involving roads crossing the Forest Preserve. Basically, this will allow local communities to use forest land to re-build their infrastructure, like for example, a bridge that washed away, if they can prove that the land on which the bridge was on, is not viable. Right now it takes years to get permission to re-build a bridge if the land underneath it has been washed away by flooding and the proposed land is in the forest preserve because the forest preserve is protected. The proposal proposes to make it easier for communities to rebuild with one simple amendment.

The Catskill Center supports this amendment. Read their blog post about it.

Go to the Delaware County website to read all three propositions in full.

Daily Catskills: 10/30/17

Last night’s rain storm turns dangerous with blustery winds downing trees, causing power failures and fast-moving rivers, ending abruptly by afternoon. A high of 50F and late afternoon sunshine. Update: snow reported on the peaks.

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Daily Catskills: 10/27/17

60F with a mix of sun and cloud and a cooling breeze.

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Daily Catskills: 10/23/17

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Warm, windy and humid with a moody, overcast dusk and a dip in temperatures. The last of fall is brassy, with dull copper tones, dashes of burnt orange and sienna in the half-empty brush. Apples hang in abundance on bare trees like winter ornaments: a forgotten, wild harvest.

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Cosmik Ice-Cream

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Innovation continues unabated here in the Catskills with the introduction of freeze-dried ice-cream. We’ve already recently heard about the new 100% electric vehicle designed and built here and now we have astronautical edibles. Continue reading →

Daily Catskills: 10/12/17

A chilly morning, with the day’s high at 60F, breezy with hazy cloud.

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Daily Catskills: 10/03/17

A clear, frosty morning, rising to a high of 67F. Initial muted dashes of red amidst the yellowing. Fall has yet to show its true colors.

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Daily Catskills: 10/02/17

After an overnight frost dissolving into a misty morning, 70F by mid-afternoon and sunny.

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Daily Catskills: 09/28/17

58F by 6.30am, balmy with clear skies and sunrise ushering in dappled cloud. 65F by mid-afternoon.

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Daily Catskills: 09/27/17

60F by 7am with fog receding quickly into the valley. Balmy autumn mornings. Update: another 90F scorcher. Bikini weather.

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Daily Catskills: 09/21/17

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An 80F high, humid and bright despite hazy clouds, with a faint breeze.

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Daily Catskills: 09/18/17

Another balmy morning at 65F with the blazing sun chasing fog into the valleys. A high of 82F, hot in the sun with a cool breeze, like summer wants another chance.

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Daily Catskills: 09/04/17

Hot, sunny with faint whispers of cloud and a high of 75F. A glorious Labor Day.

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Daily Catskills: 09/02/17

A morning of warming sun smothered by clouds late afternoon with a 70F high. A chilly harvest.

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Foraging: Lion’s Mane

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There are several reasons to get excited about Lion’s Mane. First of all, it’s arrestingly beautiful, and when you spot it in the forest it appears to be luminous, as if a beam of light is shining through the forest canopy directly onto it. Lion’s Mane cascades over a log like a dreamy waterfall, frozen in time, with it’s milky stalactites. It’s also called the pom-pom mushroom for the obvious reason.

Second, it can’t really be mistaken for anything else. Some guides tell you to compare it to the poisonous yellow-tipped coral because when Lion’s Mane gets old the tips turn yellow, but the coral grows upwards. Even as a novice mushroom hunter though, I was pretty certain that what I had found (pictured above) was the real thing and that thought was backed up by two others more experienced than I am. (I have just eaten it, so if it’s not, it was nice knowing you.)

Furthermore, you can cultivate Lion’s Mane and it is widely said to have medicinal benefits, like Shitake and Reishi. Experts say that it improves neurological function and alleviates anxiety.

On top of that, it’s utterly delicious, tasting (raw) like a more meaty, fragrant, cooked lobster, with exactly the same texture.

If you’re looking to eat less seafood, you can buy kits to cultivate this exquisite delicacy and grow it yourself. Once you’ve tasted it, it’ll seem like a no-brainer. This mushroom is about 20% protein.

To prepare it, I sliced off the top part that had a lot of forest debris in it. Then broke off about five clumps of the tendrils and washed them thoroughly. (You never know what animal might have peed on it.) Then I separated the tendrils until I had what looked like about almost a cup of loose lobster meat and sweat it in butter. Then I added three beaten eggs and scrambled the mixture. You can see a piece of raw mushroom top left (below).

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Daily Catskills: 08/29/17

A chilly morning, with a high of 59F and overcast with afternoon rain. Summer’s got the blues.

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Daily Catskills: 08/28/17

A high of 72F and overcast with periods of sunshine. Crisp overnight lows and chilly mornings.

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Daily Catskills: 08/27/17

After another overnight low of 45F, a high of 74F and sunny with wispy cloud. Hot in the sun; cool in the shade.

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Daily Catskills: 08/26/17

Another high in the low 70s, warm and sunny. Monarchs munch the milkweed.

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A Pit Stop at The Forsyth

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When you have frequent summer guests to your rural home, who come from far and wide, Exit 19 in Kingston on Route 87 is a good pit stop for travelers who are hungry, tired or cranky from the long drive. Stylish, comfortable B&Bs are popping up all over this city, which offers some excellent attractions.

I popped into The Forsyth, a charming and elegant B&B in the historic Rondout area of Kingston, for a look around with owner Tamara. Her friend Allison cooked me a crispy-bottomed, fried, runny, local egg, which I mopped up with a date scone and washed down with a cup of Earl Grey. Local eggs are vividly yellow, sweet and creamy. Rondout, in the city’s waterfront area, has a sophisticated vibe and is walkable with historic landmarks, public art, antique stores and restaurants. The Stockade District, just a brief taxi-ride away from the waterfront, has bars and clubs that will suit your house guests from NYC who need their noisy friday night before they settle in for a country weekend. Continue reading →

Daily Catskills: 08/14/17

A chilly start: 58F at 8am, rising to 75F by mid-afternoon and soupy with clouds like churning milk.

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Daily Catskills: 08/12/17

A sunny morning, despite big, bossy clouds. 78F by mid-afternoon with a cool breeze through the trees. A lovely day with some evening sprinkles.

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A Summer Party in Halcottsville

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On Saturday August 12th at 4pm, Ella’s Mercantile is having a summer party in Halcottsville, a favorite haunt of mine. It’s an exquisitely picturesque haven on a large boating lake, through which the historic railroad (DURR) runs. It’s postcard perfect. I’ve taken watercolor classes there; participated in a plein air painting group (with or without attendant goats); interviewed the reverends of the church for a local publication; exhibited my prints in The Grange and tasted tea with a friend. You can stay at Susan’s Pleasant Pheasant Farm and kayak on Lake Wawaka. There’s even a fledgling Shakespeare Company in the works. The whole village is arguably one of the Catskills most beautiful places. Continue reading →