Scrumptious End to NYBG's Edible Garden Programming

This shot of Lidia Bastianich (right) was taken through a tree from pretty far away

because I didn't want to wait on line for the book signing... Creepy, huh?

As we told you on Friday, the New York Botanical Garden held their Finale Festival to close out the Edible Gardening programming that's been running all summer long. We were able to stop by yesterday (Sunday) to check it out. We got there a little later than we wanted due to Pearl pulling a surprisingly long nap on us (she has an uncanny ability to detect when we have plans and then snoozes like she's been drinking for 8 hours straight), so unfortunately we missed Lidia Bastianich's cooking demo. We did get to see her from a distance as she was doing her book signing (picture above), but we couldn't get too close because girlfriend had a lot of NYBG security protecting her!

Beer, wine, and food tastings were set up along the Conservatory

So onto the complimentary tastings we went... there was a booth set up with wine samples from the Finger Lakes region in New York, as well as two Manhattan Beer Distributor tents offering samples of Palm Ale, Mother's Milk, Ithaca Apricot Wheat, Southampton Double White, and Blue Moon. There were also a few different food options, including nuts, granola, plantain chips, and whole wheat dumplings. Apparently there was also goat cheese ice cream, but it must have been gone by the time we arrived. Clearly most of my time was spend loitering near the wine and beer tents trying to think of intelligent observations to share about the samples to mask the fact that I really just wanted to get some more free hootch.

Food Network's Daisy Martinez about to present her cooking demo

After that we caught a cooking demo presented by Food Network's Daisy Martinez. I've gotta say, Daisy was the least impressive part of the day. She was a little too focused on delivering one liners to really provide any meaningful explanations about the dish she was working on (arroz con pollo... yawn). She even messed up and referred to NYBG as the Brooklyn Botanical Garden... come on now, Daisy!

Clearly we are not frequently awarded press passes because we blatantly misuse them...

All in all I'd have to say this was one of the best events we've ever attended at NYBG. It was extremely well run and the programming was spread out so that even latecomers still had a chance to enjoy themselves. Bravo NYBG! Now we sit tight and look forward to Kiku autumn events, which begin October 17th.

~ErLu