When Carmine Samperi opened his Trattoria Italiana restaurant on Windermere Ave. he was inspired to do more for the community, so he began bringing his Italian-style bagels and other breads for visitors to the weekly Lakeside Farmers Market, on Saturdays from 9AM-1PM at Winstanley Park on Windermere Ave., across from the Chase Bank in Greenwood Lake, NY.
“The bagels are just something we are providing for the community. We thought that there was a need and realized that we could offer something that we’ve been doing for something like 50 years and so this is a no brainer,” said Carmine. Their restaurant is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week and features southern Italian cuisine specialties, like homemade fresh pastas and homemade sauces; it’s all about freshness and quality, really. It’s about providing the community with something different than what’s been here.”
The Lakeside Farmers Market vendors include a wide variety of freshly-harvested produce, fruit from local orchards, poultry products, fresh eggs, cheese, local honey, grass-fed beef, pastured pork and lamb, and a unique group of other purveyors who offer prepared foods and baked goods, fresh-cut flowers, soy-based candles, homemade soaps, and other items.
Rose+Thorne owner, Isabella Rose, is a maker of soy wax scented candles. “Our ingredients in all the candles are just pure soy wax and then there’s just a little bit of fragrance oil in it but there’s nothing else in it. There’s a cotton wick so there’s no lead in that as well,” described Isabella. One of her fragrant candles includes rose coconut and pink sugar. They are more expensive to make (a bit more expensive than the paraffin wax candle) but it’s just a lot easier on the human body. “Chain store brands could contain a lot of toxins that could trigger headaches or nausea; so I take a lot of pride in these candles being very clean and beneficial when using them.”
If you’re a fan of homemade sourdough bread be sure to stop by and visit with Megan Leyden, owner of “Flower and Dough” a small-scale flower farm with a passion for “sharing the art that nature provides us and giving back to the land we live and grow on.” She specializes in local, sustainably-grown flowers and homemade sourdough bread that contains incredible ornate designs in the crust of the bread, created deftly with a thin layer of flour and sharp decorative tools before the bread is baked in the oven.
This past Saturday, Ermin Siljkovic of Orange County Solid Waste, joined Grow Local Greenwood Lake and Master Gardener, Jim Hall, to answer questions about home composting, recycling, and gardening. Visitors who stopped by and signed up to the market’s mailing list received a FREE convenient countertop compost collection bin.
The Lakeside Farmers Market, https://VillageofGreenwoodLake.org/lakleside-farmers-market, is a weekly robust market that is of great value to the vendors and non-profits participating as well as to consumers who are interested in providing a healthy and nutritious menu for their meals at home. The market allows consumers to have a face-to-face conversation with the producers (farmers, ranchers, orchard growers, and other vendors) about where their food comes from, how it’s grown, when it’s harvested, and how to prepare it.
Photo credit: Peter Lyons Hall
