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Go flying high with some fun and funky, food and drink and dessert, at The Taste of the Hot Air Affair in Hudson on Saturday, to kick off the 35th annual hot air ballooning event to be held on Feb. 2-4. With operatic and timelessly classic, classical-based music by Jenny DeLoux while you dine. (And see now added, the New Year’s Day dilemma.)

Winter can be wonderful for winning over your taste buds.
As in the Taste of the Hot Air Affair, tantalizing for your tongue with many types of food, which is one of a whirl of kickoff events to the annual Hudson winter ballooning extravaganza, to be held on Saturday evening, Jan. 27.
Enjoy many spirits, cheese, wine, beer samplings and sweets at this, a stellar by-product of the entire early-February affair — as event sponsors and event partners of The Hudson Hot Air Affair have offerings that include distillery, vineyard wine and craft beer products, and also candy, nut, cookie, bakery, ice cream and creamery items — and also eat an Italian buffet meal while at the tasting event. Hey, as far as that buffet meal, we come from a community where there are the old Italians and their ethnic-based eats of North Hudson, and such eateries, so we know such stuff.
The tasting event is sponsored by the Hudson Lions Club and the venue holding it is the White Eagle Golf Club, so there may be white sauce amidst the white snow for the winter ballooning and its various winter-oriented accompanying events. The golf club is just north, a bit into the Great White North, of Hudson itself at — theme here? — 316 White Eagle Trail.
There are also wine-pull fundraisers — you don’t see that every day — and a silent auction and live auction.
Music is provided by the beautiful Jenny DeLoux, who you can turn to for various vocal-based tunes you can even see in numerous varieties longtime on YubeTube that are jazzy and hair-tossing, or operatic and classical, and symphonic and orchestral, and include love songs. Her voice has been called “strong yet subtle.” The Hot Air Affair’s title theme in this, its 35th year, is Rockin’ With The Coldies, so this treatment is fitting.
Tickets are $50 per person, for the tasting event that runs from 6-9:30 p.m. See HudsonHotAirAffair.com for tickets and details.

— Also on Jan. 27, it’s the annual one block fun run or is it walk, as now is clarified. Aside, or just behind, those quick and quirky llama mascots, with spit or some sprite in their step. But they weren’t fast enough to book this into their schedules a bit earlier in January, which is more typical. While their Lakefront Park site has melted, for charity, creating a likely un-ice — but damp, so don’t slip, if you’ve had those couple of Bloody Mary’s that usually preceed the trek, since after all, you don’t have the hoofs of llamas — dike road. The run/walk/stroll occurs at high noon, so even an aging Clint Eastwood might be able to hobble through it. But he rides horses not llamas. However, Clint could be in like Flint, since he is used to much-more-vast desert expanses, even though if you continue down the dike road past the event’s turnaround point, you go about a half-mile.
On Jan. 30 is a high school trivia night at Hudson Tap, and they ask you to bet on it. Or get it on. Or get in on it. Or all three. Taking this quiz starts at 6 p.m., just enough time after the school day to hit the library first and bone up on your facts. —

In undoing some past and unrelated doings, there were a pair that expired on Dec. 31, but then still were touted, at least in the following day or two.
There is a rotating electronic ad on a Hudson Tap bathroom wall — eye-high in front of the guy’s urinal — that listed a discount expiring on New Year’s Eve, but the offer still was up on New Year’s Day, hours after saying goodbye to the old year, or maybe a bit beyond that time. So nothing changes, apparently, on New Year’s Day.
The same time pattern was seen on the sandwich board for the Sub House, hawking its December dill-based special, in both pickle and seasoning.
Now there follows a promoted “resolution buster” creation, maybe not prompted by the lemon pepper, but rather the hearty beer cheese sauce, to put to rest what you vowed during that champagne toast at the very beginning of the month.
The half-year before, two seasons back, there was on such a sign an ad on special(s) that had teamed hot peppers, sauerkraut, BBQ sauce, pineapple and more, such as meat and cheese. Hot on the tip of your tongue in a more-and-more these days, heated summer. North Hudson Pepperfest also will please, come August.
So, when going Italian, smolder your taste buds instead, during the winter, at the Taste of the Hot Air Affair.

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