- By Jim & Mary Sullivan
- Around Town
The weekend of the 18th -20th we played host to Jim’s older brother, Jerwry and a young man, named Mike, from the Buffalo area, who was in town to chase after young athletic women and whistle at them; he’s a soccer referee and they actually paid him quite well to do that all day Sunday for a women’s tournament in Cortland. Jerry has spent much of his adult life training and certifying soccer officials in the western half of NY State and Mike was happy to be his driver in return for a place to stay and Mary’s home made pumpkin pie.
Mike qualifies as a first class foodie; he’ll try just about anything, so Jim’s grilled chicken, marinated in Ithaca Nut Brown beer with some olive oil, soy sauce, and spices, plus gravy over the cauliflower, carrot, potato and squash “veggie mash” didn’t phase him a bit. What amazed him was the size of our Farmer’s Market in Ithaca and the variety of food and crafts as well as people. He went home with foccacia from a wood fired oven, organic cilantro, corn and fresh apples. He didn’t realize, until we stopped at Mr. Wade’s honey stand, that honey comes in flavors like “Fall Wildflower” and “Buck Wheat”, but after having them dripped on separate fingers from the “taster” he added small jars of each kind for his parents to try. He’s still under 21, so he had to take our word for Bellwether’s apple and black current hard cider, “Black Magic”, that we first tasted and got to name a few years ago, but we brought some home for Jerry.
Sunday, Mike was invited to stay and officiate at the finals until 5pm so we took Jerry to the 22nd annual Harvest Festival at Six Mile Creek Winery. We were fortunate that the winery provided well for handicapped access since Jerry has one prosthetic leg and gets around slowly with a cane. We were able to drive down and park right at the tent by the gorgeous pond so he could enjoy the music, the fountain and the people on one the best days of the season. The “Six Mile Creek Boys”, not named for the winery, had a pleasant mix of Country/Western/Folk that we all enjoyed, especially since you could understand every word they sang and it was all appropriate for a family audience!!
While we expected a wine tasting, we were excited by the variety of other booths, including the Ithaca Beer Company, Cayuga Lake Creamery, Ithaca Bakery, as well as goat cheese fudge and Chili sauce. Mary got a beautiful face painting job from Cami, an artist who does this professionally for local events and private parties. She started a small fad among some of the more daring mature women, while Jim sampled both the new vintage Cabernet Franc and the Ithaca Beer Co. “Porter”. You can’t beat the Creamery’s ice cream, or any of their sorbet made from local wines, so we are always happy when Jeff brings the cart to an event and we don’t have to travel up Rt. 89 for it. (It is totally worth the trip, by the way, for the excellent variety of homemade flavors, generous scoops, and friendly service.) We even tried the goat cheese fudge and we were pleasantly surprised that it didn’t taste or smell like goat cheese. The tent was rounded out with crafts, photography, jewelry and even an adoption site for the SPA!
Mike was waiting to take Jerry back to Buffalo by the time we got home and we headed off in the other direction to Albany for a few days. They’ll be back soon , I’m sure; they have to return the pie plate for a refill.
While Jim worked in Albany three days last week , Mary slid over the Green Mountains with her childhood friend, Lois, to drop in on an Ithaca friend who was babysitting her grandchildren in Keene, NH. Any excuse, no matter how convoluted, to go home to Jaffrey , NH, in leaf season is good and Albany is almost exactly half way there. They were rewarded with perfect weather, blazing colors in the swamps and high places, and still enough green for contrast. The break to stretch comes just our side of Bennington, VT at the Vermont Confectionary, home to glass jars of all sorts of candy from our childhood , good VT cheese cut to order, ice cream and maple syrup. While Mary has grown to love the equally good, though slightly different, Finger Lakes equivalents, foodies like her crave variety and entice us to travel with choice samples and photos of things like the 60, almost life size, decorated moose statues that are currently on display for Bennington’s “Moose Fest”.
Back home in Lansing the weather started to look like rain by Sunday, so Jim worked to finish his “aqueduct” to collect the rain water from our roof gutters and divert it to the pond 70 feet away, but the weekend wasn’t all work. Friday evening we went to Trelaven Winery in King Ferry for the last Friday night music of the season. With Chris running between the tasting room and serving perfectly done chicken with Lansing’s own Bob Baker /Cornell sauce, we shared a picnic table with family and friends of the band called “Common Taters”. The blend of traditional Irish, Folk, Blues and anything else they felt like singing was so much fun that the good size audience demanded an extra half hour even as the moon rose and the temperature dropped to 50 degrees. They even took a request from a woman named Shannon, who joined them for the song: it takes skilled musicians to be comfortable with that situation but the combination worked very well, to everyone’s credit. The wine here is generally dry and the new releases are definitely worth the trip to sample. They will have a Harvest Fest with several contests involving potatoes so check their website for the weekend of Oct. 10&11.
Jim with Eric Becker (left)
Saturday we had a chance to follow our friends Carol and Ole’s recommendation for one of the most unusual and out of the way places to eat in the area: the Niles Gourmet Country Market and Bistro for a wine tasting with Dill’s Run Winery followed by dinner. The Bistro is in a large log cabin designed and built by Lansing native Eric Becker and his wife, Sandie, who does the excellent job of preparing home made truly gourmet pasta, soups and desserts. We tried pumpkin/apple/pear soup, borsht, lobster ravioli (visible pieces of lobster, no filler), and elk burger before sharing the apple blackberry crisp but we will be back for the elk meatballs and elk steak that Cherl and Bill had when they joined us after the rather informal tasting also attended by a good sized party from Syracuse. It is worth the 30 minute ride from Lansing through Moravia just to see the variety of food available at the market, but you’ll want to stay to eat at the Bistro once you meet Sandie and see her kitchen with its wood stove and outdoor brick oven!!
The log cabin was the perfect setting for tasting the country wine produced by Dill’s Run. Most folks don’t even try to make wine from local varieties like Concord grapes. In fact, the “expert” vintner Bill was set to partner with by Cornell didn’t even want to talk to him after Bill told him what he wanted to do, but Bill pressed on, armed with experience making elderberry wine “as a kid’ and a paper from Cornell Cooperative Extension! With that said, you’d expect that’s what you’d get if you crossed a would-be Moonshiner with a vintner, and Bill is all of that and more; his wines are down home and go surprisingly well with Sandie’s gourmet Italian inspired cooking and the relaxed wood smoke atmosphere. Mary does not usually like dry wine, but the “Spring Mist” that smells like pure grape juice but tastes like a decent dry wine caught her off guard. Dill’s Run is licensed as a “Farm Winery” which means they can use only NY State grapes and other fruit and their quantities are also limited. They’re having a Harvest Festival at Dills Run in Springport, past Aurora on Oct. 17&18 with music from the “Two Foot Short Band” providing music to stomp your grapes by, face painting, and other family attractions. Judging from the three hour dinner conversation we had with Bill, Cherl, Eric and Sandie, this is not an event for wine snobs, but it’s on our list of definite possibilities for that weekend..
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