All in Hudson Valley History
No eatery in the village of Croton competedwith the Croton Dinner it because it offered 24 hour service and great affordable American cuisine.
In writing my first food history book Hog and Hominy, I interviewed my father Fred Opie Jr. Out of that conversation came a story about an ice cream related job he had as a boy growing up in the Hudson Valley’s Village of North Tarrytown (later renamed Sleepy Hollow) in New York. My father’s description of the job he had helping the town’s ice man make deliveries reminds me of an ice cream production and preservation system unknown to his two grandchildren.
July is national ice cream month and we are doing a related series. I grew up in Westchester County in the 1960s through the early 1980s consuming lots of Carvel Ice Cream. But I never knew much about the founder of the company, Greek immigrant Tom Carvel. Born in Athens, Greece 1906, Carvel migrated with his family to New York City in 1910
