LIWINEDAD

  Today is the last day of our expedition to the greater Raleigh, NC area, and the day starts with a trip to the Holly Springs, NC, Farmers Market .   The market is in the classic format of being open every Saturday morning and is chocked full of small vendors with an endless array of farm and home goods.   Today three vendors caught our attention, and we have some items for taking home, but the vendors also accept online orders and ship to Long Island.   The first stop was Misty Morning Ranch for some Ostrich Jerky (Fig 01,02), but the Ranch raises and supplies all Ostrich meat products that can be ordered online and shipped directly to the house.   The next stop was the Natural Choice booth, a purveyor of fine mustards and preserves (Fig 03, 04).   Keeping the best for last, the Remedy Cocktail Company makes a wide selection of Cocktail bitters.  We picked up two bitters (Fig 05), the Aromatic Bitters (Fig 06) and the Noir Bitters (Fig 07).  The bitters paired very well with Bourbo

  While Long Island remains the perfect place to live, work, and play, we still need to venture off LI to see Jack the Grandson, Bridget (Daughter), and son-in-law Stud Muffin (Anthony).  To try something different, we explored a more traditional method of traveling by train.  The travel time to Raleigh is about the same as the drive time, around 10 hours.  We opted to take a car into the city to avoid schlepping all the luggage on the LIRR.  Our jump-off point is the new Moynihan station in the old Farley Post Office building above Penn Station.  It is a beautifully done, bright, open, grand train hall and a large lounge overlooking the great hall.  The train departed on time and arrived within 5 minutes of its scheduled time; however, the return trip ran about 2 ½ hours late.  We booked ourselves into a comfortable sleeper compartment that included meals and a private bath.  A note on the cost, it was about 45% higher than Delta First class to Raleigh and 8 hours longer.  The views w