CiderDay2007

We get to go to so many great food-oriented events, thanks to Brian, a founding member of CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). Saturday, we were volunteer servers a the CiderDay 2007 dinner at Old Deerfield, sponsored by the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, West County Cider, CISA and Slow Food USA. Paul Correnty, author of "The Art of Cidermaking" (seen with his fiance) was the chef.

Correnty is food services manager for the school system in Harvard, Mass., so he's used to big crowds and the dinner went off without a hitch, as far as I could tell. The butternut squash-cider bisque was probably the biggest hit and there was all the hard cider you could drink. I was surprised to read in a good Q & A with him at a food service Web site that Correnty and his family moved to France when he was 14 and that it was there he got into hard cider -- drinking it with crepes at the local creperies.
Ben Clark of Clarkdale Fruit Farms, in West Deerfield, brought the apples and poured the cider.

There were apples of all kinds with names I'd never heard of before, some as big as a small pumpkin.

These are what CiderDay is all about. I saw people showing their friends bottles of what must have been classy-pricey hard cider, each one packed in its own box, at the dinner. The volunteers each got a bottle of hard cider to take home afterward.

We stepped outside before dark to witness another spectacular sunset. (Tony at In the Valley thinks they are connected to Hurricane Noel.)