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Kick-ass ice-cream

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Where: The Bent Spoon, Princeton, NJ Who: Gabrielle Carbone and Matt Errico

Why: Its their 10 year Anniversary this week! Go get some ice-cream.

I am not sure if we have mentioned that we used to live in Santa Fe, NM, and Sicily, and New York, and, yes!, in Brooklyn too. But we have landed here in NJ. Many people would, (and do), ask why? It is too long of story to get into but what is important is that we are happy, we are near family and we can get really good, really fresh ingredients that we love to cook with.

Plus we can find other people (like the Bent Spoon people) who also like to make incredibly good things with the best ingredients. Lucky us! And there is none of that Brooklyn hipper-than-thou attitude (we have our own sort of attitude to deal with in Jersey, thank you very much!)

On another note, this portrait of Gabrielle is one of my favorites that I made in the last few months. Sort of Patti Smith meets artisanal ice-cream.

 

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The Farm Dinner at Stockton Market

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The season is just starting to turn—the mornings are crisp, the afternoon sun slants a little lower, our slippers are back in rotation—so it was the perfect week for Ian Knauer and Geraldine Campbell to host a harvest dinner at the Stockton Farm Market. Ian, one of Kate’s old cohorts from Gourmet, is hoping to open a cooking school soon, and the dinner was an introduction to all that is good and Ian. We volunteered to help out for the evening (and licked some plates clean behind the scenes). Favorite tastes: Ian’s gorgeous pain d’epi smeared with bacon butter (for real!) and the pure and simple salt-roasted beet puree. On our way out, we nabbed a few hunks of that crusty bread and ate it this morning with homemade Nutella and marmalade. Bring it, autumn! ian storyboard