After Bob and I finished our visit to the FDR Library and Museum, we headed into Poughkeepsie to walk on the Walkway over the Hudson. This parallels the Mid-Hudson Bridge that we drove over to get into Poughkeepsie and then onto Hyde Park. The Walkway over the Hudson, formerly the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, is the world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge. It is a steel cantilever bridge spanning the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie, NY, on the east bank and Highland, NY, on the west. The bridge is 212’ above the Hudson River, and is 1.3 miles long.
as well as the towns of Poughkeepsie and Highland.
and the Catskill Mountains in the distance
on the south side of the bridge
After the bridge,we picked up dinner from a local grocery store to take back to our room and then headed across the street to the Culinary Institute of America for our 2:30 tasting and tour. We have visited their two campuses in California, but this is the original and has trained many of the famous chefs in America— Anthony Bourdain, Amanda Siegfried, Geoffrey Zakarian, Cat Cora, Rocco DiSpirito, etc,
We actually started the 90 minute tour in a classroom, watching a couple of short videos about the history of the CIA and some of their alumni. Following that, we did a 20 minute tasting exercise to help us taste like a chef and understand just how much your sense of smell adds to the flavor of food as well as how salt, acid, spice, and sugar can add complexity or change the flavors of food.
holding your nose and then letting go.
Step 2, eat 1/2 a plain grape,
then with each of the different seasonings
by themselves and all together.
It was very interesting to really focus on the different flavors.
Finally, we had our tour which took us to each of their different restaurants and some of the classrooms. No photos of students allowed.
Saturday we will head to Needham, Massachusetts, where we will begin our next housesit on Sunday.
Peckish Travels 