Weekend Highlights: Hudson Valley Edition

After working all of last week in NYC, I was lucky enough to train it up the Hudson River to spend the weekend with my good (great!) friends. I love the area around Beacon (where the Dia has a museum) and New Hamburg both because Virginia and Dan live there, but also because of the ratio of trees to development in the area—it definitely errs on the side of trees.

Plus, summer along the river is lovely, as was enjoying their garden and CSA loot (even as I was pining for my own suddenly ripe heirloom tomatoes). Here are some of the highlights of how we spent the weekend.

The flowers, hollyhocks and zinnias (which totally scream summer), are in their garden, which was really fun to see since I was last there during the winter. It made me realize that I definitely want more brightly colored flowers in my yard, and that I want to loosen up our highly organized flower beds (that were there when we bought our house).

We went for a sunset picnic hike and for another long walk and got to take in views like this one.

We stopped into a few stores along Main Street in Beacon like the absolutely adorable Clay Wood & Cotton—where I picked up more goodies from Leah Duncan—and Crust, a just-opened bakery with fantastic foccacia.

And we made a lot of food for a family picnic on Sunday including Cherry Nectarine Crisp (based very loosely on this recipe—my crisps are almost always impromptu), Pulled Pork, and this Zucchini Slaw that is seriously my new summer salad staple. It was light and refreshing and a brilliant way to use up veggie excess. There were also cookies, three other salads and a multitude of appetizers to round out the offerings.

Virginia and I have thrown many parties together and we make a great team in the kitchen so I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to help pull the food together. Plus, it gave us plenty of time to talk about my wedding plans (including starting an inspiration board that is about 75% complete) which was a serious bonus.