Outstanding in the Field

So last Saturday night we attended an "Outstanding in the Field" dinner. It was FABULOUS! And all because we saw a piece about the artist, Jim Deneven on CBS Sunday Morning way back in January. Turns out that many of those who attended the fabulous feast at the Grieg Farm in Red Hook watched the exact same piece. I know because I asked lots of people how they found out about the dinner.

Here's a picture of Jim Deneven (above, left) and Norman Grieg (above, right) during a "tour" of the farm.

And here we all are drinking Hudson Valley champagne and eating Gigi Market "skizzas" under a tree on the farm. You can't see it but off to the right there's a table that served as a bar.

The evening was special-so special that I even ate chicken (for the first time in over 20 years!) from Northwind Farm in Tivoli New York. It was listed on the menu as "poussin" - I looked this up in Wikipedia and learned that most of us would call this a Cornish game hen. Who cares-I never remember chicken tasting like this! And the farmer, Richard Biezynski, told me what vegetarian means in Indian - "poor hunter!"

I laughed but I must say that hormone free, grass fed, organic chicken might be enough to make me eat chicken again.

And in the "six degrees of separation" category among the 120 people there were two who know a colleague of mine at Pace. We sat with Sioux and her husband Pieter and the four hours of eating flew by! This photo was taken late in the evening; the "kitchen" is set up in the background, and you can almost see the table setting. What you can't see, unfortunately, is the moon, which was rising behind us. What a great way to spend our 25th anniversary!