Hudson Valley Garlic Festival at Saugerties, or All Hail the Stinking Rose!

For the first time in several years,  my son and I  were able to attend the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties NY as guests rather than workers.  While he was a scout, we were obligated to work the event as it was the troop's  best fundraiser.   Now 15 and no longer into scouting, we could attend as guests, and I must say it was very relaxing!

  We arrived before 12 noon, knowing how crowded it gets.   First we made a loop around the booths and exhibits, seeing what was available.  Basically, you are here to eat.  There are sections of craft booths and a children's play area, but make no joke about it, this is all about the food and how many ways you can work garlic into it.

  If you ever wondered how many different ways you can ingest garlic, well,  there are quite a few.  This man in white will encourage you to do garlic shots !

I am not sure exactly what this entails, as the little glasses looked like cloudy vodka to me, but these people decided to go for it.  Maybe they really wanted that sticker that the man in white was tempting them with...

I decided to pass on the shots, maybe next year, and then I saw this :

Garlic ice cream !  Yes, this was going to be the year to finally brave up and try this.  I ordered myself a cup and when the worker asked how many spoons we needed, the bemused look on my son's face said it all,  one spoon was all we needed !  So I  sat down and dug into this -

You can't see it that clearly in the picture, but this was vanilla ice cream with finely chopped bits of garlic in it, large enough that you could see them.  You could definitely taste garlic, but there was no trace of bitterness and after a few spoonfuls,  the fear wears off and you eat it with enthusiasm !  It sounds crazy, but the garlic bits become like candy and I loved it and would not hesitate to eat it again !

We continued to cruise down the food alley, my son enjoying a soft garlic pretzel and me snagging some of Ric Orlando's blackened green beans at the New World Home Cooking booth.  Ric is our local Chopped Champion and such a friendly, personable guy.  Seeing my son's Ramones shirt, he shared some memories of seeing the Ramones at Toad's Place in New Haven, and of feeding one of the Ramones,  Joey I think, at the restaurant.  He is a great chef and a down-to-earth guy, more about Ric later.

We continued our food journey, getting some of the kettle corn that my son loves, and me picking up a crab cake along the way.  There was a long line for either a crab cake or coconut shrimp, it was a hard choice but the crab cake called out to me.

I opted to go sans bun, and the cake was very good, nice and crispy on top but soft and with a respectable amount of crab inside.  It was a nice chunky cake with visible chunks of onion and that was just fine with me...

The last thing on my agenda was to stop by the lecture/demo tent, as I noticed that Ric Orlando was doing a garlic cooking demo at 1:45 pm.  We got there very early, while the previous lecturer was still on.  As he finished, we noticed that not many people left, but we were able to get a couple seats in the last row.   Ric was focussing on black garlic, something that I had never seen or tasted.  His first dish was a risotto, using the black garlic and finished with truffle oil and cheeses.  He passed around some black garlic so that we could touch and see it, quite interesting with the texture of black licorice.

While the risotto cooked, he constructed a salad of sliced strawberries, chopped tomatoes, chopped black garlic and fresh basil leaves.   This was dressed with balsamic vinegar and fresh ground black pepper, plus any salt/sugar necessary to adjust the seasoning.  The one thing that he emphasized throughout the demo was that you should season as you go along, he likes to make sure that you develop layers of flavor, not just throw salt and pepper in at the end to just sit on top of the dish.

The demo was set up with a slanted mirror over the workspace, to help everyone get a better view of what was going on, especially appreciated by us back-row folks.

We all got to have a shot glass of risotto and the salad, both really delicious.  I am a sucker for risotto anyway, and this one was very good, creamy and rich tasting...  The salad was delightful and you could really taste the black garlic, it almost had a anise or licorice flavor to it, quite refreshing !   I have made strawberries with balsamic and black pepper before, but I never thought to add tomatoes and/or garlic, thank you, Ric !

By this time, my son and I were full, hot, tired and ready to head home.  We came home with a couple of goodies.

Perhaps the best thing that we came home with are good memories of some great food, great people, and a nice day spent between mother and son ...

Yeah, I can see you !

Time for some nonsense, people !

I know that no one really wants to hear about work, but I  have a kind of unique job that provides some moments of, well,  absurdity that should be documented.

I am a personal teller, kind of an odd name for someone who is nowhere near the person she is waiting on. Not to worry, it will all become clear...

I  work at a local credit union, the only one in the country to offer a 24/7 personal teller system.  Yes, I said 24/7.  Yes, you can come to our credit union at 3 am and you can talk to a live person and cash your paycheck.  You can even come in on Sunday and we will be there.  We are staffed continuously except for Christmas Day and Thanksgiving Day.  Not so fun for us, but pretty convenient for our members.

 I am part of  a pool of people who wait on members remotely, through a personal teller machine that is capable of two-way audio and visual communication.  This machine looks a lot like an ATM, but if you press the "start" button you quickly will  see that this is no ATM...

In fact, some unsuspecting people get so flustered that they just back up and run away, because when they hit that button one of us appears on the screen and tries to talk to them !  This happened much more when we first started the operation, but it is still pretty funny to see grown people back away and pretend that they never touched this machine.  Some are  just speechless and stare at you, not sure what to make of this craziness.

So I sit in my cubicle and talk to random people all day, from 6 different branches, helping them with their banking needs.  I get to wear a rather annoyingly heavy headset  that is not cordless, so I am tethered to my station for most of the day.  Don't even ask what this does to my hair.  I have gotten pretty good at seeing how far my leash will let me roam, but that is basically only to the neighboring cubicles. I am still getting used to looking at the webcam when speaking to the member, rather than looking at their image on my screen.  We are on camera nearly all day, but there are no makeup people in sight...

We are unique as tellers in that we wait on people in different towns and even counties, so you get to see a lot of regional differences.  The members from the wealthier communities do more deposits, deal less with cash and more with checks.  Occasionally have a bit of a condescending attitude, too.  They get annoyed when they have to show their ID,  shouldn't everyone already KNOW who they are ?
The people from the less wealthy communities deal mostly with cash and spend more of their time paying loans and withdrawing money, if at all possible...  They like to send other people to pay their loans,  kind of interesting.

So what kind of questions do I get asked?  Am I an avatar ?  Seriously, why would anyone create an avatar of a 50 year old woman wearing glasses?  I  mean really, people.  The  other popular question is "Can you see me too ?"   Well, I  just asked you to place your photo ID on our scanner so I  can verify who you are, so yeah, I  can see you.  I can even see your boyfriend lurking on the side, or your wife standing behind you telling you what to do !  And no, I  am not inside the machine, does that really make any sense ?

Communicating with people about their money can be amusing in itself.  Many people come to us and declare that they are cashing their check, but what they really mean is that they are depositing it and getting some money back.  Some are depositing to their "checkings," not really sure how this became plural...   One enterprising young man  comes in to "direct deposit his check."  Who needs electronic banking when you can do it yourself ?

Also, the phrase "a lot of money" means very different things to different people.  Usually when people say this, they mean maybe a few hundred, nothing really astonishing.  The people that are dealing with thousands have no need for "a lot of money."  I especially like the people who need the balance on their account, in the multiple  thousands, only to take out $40.  Like that $40 bucks is really going to break  them...

Then there are the jokes.
"Can I help you with anything else ?" say I.
"Well, if you have the winning lotto numbers that would be great !"
If I had the winning lotto numbers, why would I  be sitting here ?

or
"Wow, if this thing is 24/7, you must drink a lot of coffee !"
Sigh.

or
"If you have any extra hundreds, that would be okay !"
No, that would not be okay,  I  would rather keep my job.

Such is the life of the "personal teller."