Thanks SO much, I actually picked up a bird from Dickson's today. They said they are amish, no hormones, cage free. The bird was pulled out of the oven about 15 mins ago and my hubby's about to carve it up.

Will be back with reviews...

Thanks SO much everyone! Looks like I'll take a pass on a Weds visit and pop by Friday or Saturday morning.

Hi, can anyone speak to the quality of any of these vendors?

Wednesdays at Union Square
Arcadian Pastures

Fridays at Union Square
Fazio Farm
Flying Pigs Farm
Grazin' Angus Acres (June-Oct they have chicken)

Saturdays at Union Square
Flying Pigs Farm
Grazin' Angus Acres (June-Oct they have chicken)
Quattro's Game Farm
Violet Hill

Planning on buying a chicken this week and hoping some of you can chime in beyond violet hill and flying pig.

Hi, have friends staying at the Ace hotel.

Looking for a spot with drinks, reasonable-ish in price ($10-$20 entrees) and can seat 9.

Breslin looked promising until I read all of the reviews of poor service and they don't take reservations...

Any other suggestions?

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The Breslin
20 W 29th St, New York, NY 10001

Thanks to all for the great advice. I assume it was a combo of both issues. Yesterday morning I woke up and there was a TON of hooch on the starter, I poured half of the starter out, gave it a feeding with a higher ratio of flour to water and substituted some of the flour I was using with a dark rye to give it a kick start. This morning, no hooch but no real movement. I gave the starter a vigorous stir and low and behold finally some bubbling within the body of the starter and it started to rise a bit today!

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks to everyone as it looks like my starter is back on track and probably a few days away from workable.

Ah ok, that might be the issue then...yes, almost every day I've had a layer of hooch.

Will tweak the proportions of flour and water next time it's fed.

Thank you!

Got it, thanks. It's my first starter so I don't know what to expect other than the basics...bubbles, hooch, doubling in size, cheezy, yeasty, beery smells.

So tomorrow morning, do I just stir the hooch back in?

Thanks for all the feedback. I think my questions right now are because I started the starter from scratch just over a week ago and some think I am feeding too often, how frequently do I need to feed it?

Like I said, I still haven't gotten it to the point where it rises yet after a feeding although it just reeks of beer.

Stir more? Feed less? More patience?

I just need to get it to the point where the starter can finally live in the fridge and I can give it weekly feedings rather than it being so high maintenance right now.

No funky colors. It just has a *very* strong beer smell. So much so I miss the yeasty smell.

Can you advise on how often and how much to feed at this point?

Also, it's producing hooch which I assumed meant it needed to continue to be fed until it at least started increasing in size/volume.

As I said it's not increasing at all and it's my understanding that until this bad boy can double in volume it won't be able to raise a loaf.

I started my sourdough starter about 10 days ago...about 3 days in the temp dropped in NY and slowed down the process for about that long (but I continued to feed it).

Two days after it warmed up, it smelled really nice and yeasty when I'd feed it.

The past couple of days it's really reeked of beer. Man it smells crazy beery.

Mildly bubbly at the top but hasn't gotten frothy yet.

I know these smells are normal but taking out the cold days, I am about 8 days in and my big concern is it hasn't gotten to the point where it increases in size...at all. That combined with the really intense beer smell is making me wonder if something hasn't started going amok.

I feed it once daily, 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of water.

Any feedback on this?