Cooking at The Bakery yesterday I realized it was really mid summer. Almost everything in the case had locally grown ingredients. Sesame String Beans, Broccoli Crunch Salad, Sauteed Summer Squash, Cucumber Salad, local Lettuce in all our sandwiches, the Eggplant I was grilling for our Purple People Eater Sandwich, the Basil in the Sun Dried Tomato Pesto. Next week Kale Caesar Salad and soon we'll have real homegrown tomatoes for all our sandwiches and salads. For dessert the case is full of local blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and rhubarb.
Much of our produce is grown and cared for by Jerry Nuzzo. Jerry is retired from a lifetime of owning Chez Joey, the iconic New Paltz pizza restaurant. Way before all of us discovered "local produce" Jerry was already growing his own tomatoes, eggplants, basil, parsley, zucchini, broccoli, peppers, and lettuce for his restaurant. If you ordered an eggplant parm hero at Chez Joey in the summer you were getting an eggplant that Jerry grew. Even the pizza sauce was made from tomatoes that he grew and canned for the restaurant. He didn't do it to follow a trend. He's Italian and he lived in the country and that's how his father did it before him.
Jerry is well into his 70's now, but he still grows his fruit and vegetables and that is what your getting at The Bakery. He even grows the flowers that go out on the tables.