The organic garden provides as many seasonal ingredients as possible. Our Catskill growing season is short but once Lip’s brother, Jim, created the raised beds and the squash patch, it’s been going like gangbusters.

Lip was doing all the cooking for the first few years. (Those of you who have been here since the beginning will remember the relentless quiche…) and still makes the Sunday Brunch: blueberry pancakes, waffles, Catskill Mountain maple syrup, scrambled eggs (fresh from the HH hens), and BACON. Unless there is a special request for more, this is the only meat served during retreats. How can you have pancakes without bacon?!

The heavens smiled three years ago when Annie Kunjappy came to cook for a visiting teacher’s retreat. She makes the best you-would-never-know-it-is-vegan food EVER. I would like to kidnap her and have her living at HH for the whole season but she also teaches at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts (Need a chef for a lesson or special occasion? (anniekunjappy@yahoo.com) so she works her magic as often as she can up in the mountains.

In the Summer of ’08 I was blessed with a new assistant, Lisa King, who not only looks exactly like Edie Falco but was an organic farmer AND ran several restaurant kitchens in Oneonta. Lisa is the one who remembers to dress the salads with edible flowers and when to the harvest the edamame for cocktail hour. She made an oatmeal dish for the wedding party that was spectacular and now people demand it be on the table for brunch. And she’s a yogini!