NYC

Where excellence is ordinary.

People come here to live their dreams.

I’m dan, Welcome to IKnowTheCow.com.  

iKnowTheCow is about Real Food, how it is produced, harvested, processed, stored, transported, prepared and EATen.

iKnowTheCow arranges travel and personalized Adventure Tours to unique food & historical, and popular destinations in New York City and around the world. Learn and experience the culture that produces these foods and experiences, enjoy both. Think Agrotourismo and Eco-tourism. Meet and talk with the producers and sample foods, fresh at the original source. See firsthand how those products are farmed, processed and produced. Custom Itinerary Adventure Tours can be found in the PRODUCTS menu.

iKnowThe Cow hosts Moo Meets Olive Oil Tastings with the worlds best award winning Extra Virgin Olive Oils with a International Culinary Institute certifed Olive Oil sommelier. Enjoy a personalized tasting for you and your companions in the PRODUCTS menu.

iKnowTheCow hosts Moo Meets for Traditional Balsamic Vinegar / Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale  DOP tastings. One of the worlds most expensive and exciting foods. Enjoy a personalized tasting, for you and your companions in the PRODUCTS menu.

iKnowTheCow prepares unique meals. Do Not Eat Alone at our Moo Meet gatherings, or we can bring those foods to your home, bbq, or picnic. Join a tasting, or schedule one just for you and your companions in the PRODUCTS menu.

It’s sad that so many people in the USA don’t know what real food tastes like. At iKnowTheCow my mission is to change that one or two people at a time.

This site is advertising-free. I don’t want unknown chemicals in my food supply, i don’t want unknown advertising impacting the content i provide to you. If you buy a product from the Moo Market we receive a fee from the vendor under their affiliate program.

I am a foodie.

How to identify a foodie

1. A foodie is passionate and cares about the food they eat what’s in it and where it comes from, its source.
2.  A foodie knows how food is created, produced, stored, transported, prepared, served and eaten. 
3. A foodie WILL TRAVEL to get an authentic experience and the freshest food at its source and its cultural place in a society.
4. A foodie engages the entire experience.
5. A foodie loves to eat real food.

I have been a foodie since I was a little kid.

I ate homemade pizza for breakfast every morning for years as a child.  I helped make that pizza from scratch from professional chefs and Italian nannies.

My ‘surrogate’ mothers were fantastic cooks and chefs.  When I called for my friends quite often I ended up in the kitchen cooking with their mothers.

• Vivian was a professional chef
• Ann was born, raised and immigrated from southern Italy and was a Southern Italian food purist.
• Mary was a professional chef from Poland – Christian objector holocaust survivor as a child.
• Mrs Boccito was born, raised and immigrated from Northern Italy.
•  Dag was my best friends mother – born, raised Southern Italian immigrant who taught me processes.
• Diane, my mother, who was a smart, adventurous and fearless cook and very much a foodie.

Passion

A life full of passion is fulfilling.  I’m passionate about sharing great experiences.  My favorite experiences are real.  They tend to happen around food, history, cultural, travel and sailing.  These elements represent corners of the blanket that cover my life, keeps me warm and nurtures me.  iKnowTheCow is a vehicle to facilitate sharing unique experiences.  Experiences that money can’t buy.

Sourcing

Hardly any of us know where our food comes from, how it’s made or the history of how it was created.

I share my real experiences with food, where it comes from, how food is produced, transported, stored and cooked, served, celebrated and enjoyed.  I travel around the world to find and experience the culture, history, production and visceral experience of eating real food in the place it was created and produced.  Then I share it here with you.  If you’re interested iKnowTheCow is a vehicle where i can arrange for you to travel and or get and try these foods and experiences.

Travel

The Italians call it “Agritourismo”, I think of it as Eco-Tourism.  When I travel, I believe in cooking and living like a local, no matter where I go.  I’m an olive oil Sommelier.  I visit olive groves, farms and  pursue argo/eco tourism.  Culture, history, travel and food are inexorably entwined, playing in that web is fulfilling.

In my travels i kept visiting olive groves and producers and was so intrigued that I attended an intensive set of classes at the International Culinary Center and became a Certified Olive Oil Sommelier.  I will happily share my experience and assist you to choose the perfect olive oils to eat healthily and augment your food.

iKnowTheCow is based in New York City

I am a native New Yorker, a certifed olive oil sommelier, a foodie, a sailor, a world traveler, a Chief Technical Officer of a computer consultancy and a retired Adjunct Associate Professor of Information Technology from NYU.

I live on a small island off the east coast of North America. While we are part of the United States, we identify more with Europe than the mainland. My Island, Manhattan, was called Manahata by Native Americans. Manhattan and the western edge of the next island to the east (“The Island” of Long) plus Staten Island and The Bronx (aka Da’ Bronxx) comprise “The City of New York”. Manhattan is referred to simply as “The City” <–notice the capitalization, this is extremely important. on the planet there is only ONE “The City“.

We have more jews than Tel-aviv, more greeks than Athens, more Irish than Dublin, more than 800 languages are spoken here.

New York City predates the United States by several hundred years. On my island we live like people did 100 years ago. You don’t need a car, some New Yorkers don’t even have a drivers licence. There is sufficient density of population here to support small specialty shops. That density also creates a super competitive atmosphere. We don’t have supermarkets or superstores, they don’t really thrive. On my island, excellence is ordinary and expected. We go to the butcher for meat, the cheesemonger, and Pizza was invented here, comes in countless forms and is elevated to a religion and art form.

Speaking of art forms, like many small towns we have a street called ‘Broadway’, we go to theater there. We have a modest opera house, ballet, symphony and several great halls. Indeed NYC is a destination for people who are motivated to live out their dreams. Many do, and we natives get to discover, nurture, share, enjoy and live out their dreams with them. As Ric Burns states in his Epic video series, “New York, NY”, “The quintessential New Yorker comes from somewhere else.”

Many people think of New York City as a large faceless GOTHAM CITY. While it is true, that you can be anonymous in a crowd of tens of thousands, what New York city really is a tightly bound mosaic of small neighborhoods. You can change neighborhoods here by crossing the street, and you can feel it when it happens. We New Yorkers can often tell which neighborhood someone is from from their micro-dialect, the use of a word or idiomatic phrase.

Please watch Johnny T’s tourist guide primer.

AND

The 15 most common tourist mistakes.

Enjoy the New York Islands!

Dan Scolnick