Trucked down from Maine every week, this seems to be the closest you can get to fresh lobster in Brooklyn short of boarding a ship out of Montauk. Located on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, just behind the storefront are two tanks full of crustaceans. 
These two are between 1.5 and 1.75 pounds. 
Final product:
Working from the premise that framing is too expensive and homemade things are always better, my brother fashioned the above frame from a rough-cut piece of cherry wood in his wood shop. The stain is only polyurethane, the rest is natural redness. The next step was having a piece of glass cut, 12.5 x 12.5. After a few phone calls, I found this place in the east village. 
The staff were very helpful, and the glass only cost $6. Don't let the Rottweiler "Tyson", placidly pacing the shop, keep you away.
AAA Glass Plus, Inc.
528 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10009
212-995-1635
Six months in new york and I have finally found a way to procure whole grain, local bread without an extra plastic bag every time. Sold both at the Union Square Green Market (where they'll bag the bread in a reused bag) and at a local grocery on Court Street Gourmet Fresh (although not listed as a retailer on the website), this is a wholesome (whole food) bread without the chemical crap. At $4.59 a loaf ($4.75 at their Union Square stall - still haven't figured out why it should be more expensive) it's not cheap, but when you consider that any sandwich usually costs more, it's worth it. Plus it's healthy and tastes good. From the site it sounds like the grain is locally sourced. Win, win, win, win, win.
The block.
It reminded me of another snow-covered new york street .
Uncovering the snowblower revealed a raccoon nest. These are either his tracks or those of one of the feral cats that frequent the front garden.
The digging out has already begun.
It's easy to pick pounds and pounds of apples and not know what to do with all of them. An apple a day doesn't even dent the surplus that results from a day picking apples upstate. So, we peeled and sliced up the mostly Green Delicious apples and boiled them in a pot with water and cinnamon. A little lemon keeps them from browning too much. 
Once they're cooked to a soggy mush, run the apples through a food grinder.
The result is a lot of applesauce. This is only about half the jars that were added to our freezer. So far the apple sauce has served as a complement to chicken pot pie and a marinade for pork cooked in the oven. There is plenty left.
Not too far off the Taconic Parkway, Clifton Corners is barely a corner. The old country store is a quaint restaurant with micro-milled flour and local produce for sale up front. There's a case full of baked goods. 
The menu is varied and difficult to choose from - everything looks good. The place was busy and we waited 10 minutes for a table during the lunch hour. There was fresh brewed iced tea. The squash soup was perfect with a wholesome bread on the side. The hardiness of the bread made for excellent French toast.Living in NYC makes this view noteworthy.
I've always focused on the smell of the outdoors, especially those times of year when change is evident, spring and fall. Apple picking journeys offer fall colors and scents. It didn't take long to gather 36 pounds of apples, mostly green delicious.
Meadowbrook Farm has the apple orchards, friendly staff, and barn full of other goods: vegetables, preserves, and homemade doughnuts. It seems that homemade donuts are part of the playbook for family run U-pick apple orchards. There were even goats and chickens. The Farm is in Wappinger Falls, northeast of Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County.
Meadowbrook Farm
29 Old Myers Corners Road
Wappingers Falls, NY 12590
845-297-3002
