All Good Bakers Cold Cucumber Soup

I'm off dogsitting in North Adams, MA again, and my husband was sweet enough to send me off with some tasty items from All Good Bakers. It is a loaf of sourdough and some cold cucumber soup. Now I am a huge cold soup fan. But this cucumber soup is something else. I think what makes it so unique is the possible presence of hot peppers. I would guess it also has black pepper, carrots (?), and scallions. This soup is amazing, like a mouthful of how it feels to walk into a cold movie theater from a sweltering, dusty asphalt parking lot. It is completely refreshing, and yet a bit unexpected with the scallions and peppers. The bread is great too. It is moist on the inside, with a fabulous crust, and a fully developed sourdough flavor. I liked their wheat loaf too. They are just so talented, and we are lucky to have them around in our community.

As a side note, we went on vacation to the Finger Lakes a couple weeks ago. We drove through a lot of upstate NY towns, and had some good dinners in Rochester (The Old Toad) and Syracuse (Pastabilities). I kept grabbing the tourist brochures wherever we went, and I wondered how living in Albany, Rochester, and Syracuse might be different. Everyone we've known who has lived in Syracuse hasn't been too keen on it (they say it is spread out - there isn't much there), but they have a zoo! We don't have a zoo, how bad can it be? Sure, the economy hasn't been that great in the Rochester area since the invention of the digital camera (Kodak is based there), but there is some great history, architecture, and music there. But really, you can't get a sense of what it would be like to live in a place as a tourist. I think it is really what is going on in the neighborhoods that improves life for the residents. Do people feel a sense of community? Do they talk to each other? Do they care about what happens in their city? My only point is that All Good Bakers is the type of place that improves life in the city. It is unique, everything tastes amazing, and they are the kind of people who will let me know if, in fact, there are carrots in that soup.