High Cool

Old World Italy meets Cannabis at Sweet Central Express

Edible Hudson Valley/Edible Westchester, Summer 2019

Story and Photographs by Damon Jacoby

Damon Jacoby wrote and photographed Handmade, his column about makers in the Hudson Valley. Primarily a photographer, Damon's writing took a lot of editing—but his reporting was amazing. Rarely did we need him to ask follow-up questions. His writing might have been rough, but as a reporter and photojournalist, his skills were spot on.

To be clear, at this point, we were writing about hemp—the non-THC containing strain of cannabis. There were several reasons why we felt that it was important to devote an issue to weed in Edible. 1) We could see that cannabis agriculture was about to change the lives of many NYS farmers. 2) We were excited about weed as a regenerative crop that can literally remove pollutants from the soil. 3) We could smell that the legalization of recreational weed was imminent. 4) We knew that recreational weed was already hitting the underground food scene. 5) We were all for reparations made to the communities unequally prosecuted under Rockefeller Drug Laws. 6) After The Porn Issue of the previous summer, we wanted to top it.

Use The Weed Issue tag below to see some of the stories in this issue.

Michael Fertucci practically has ice cream in his DNA. On May 3, 1910, Fertucci’s grandfather, Alesio Economico, immigrated to the port of New York by way of Naples, carrying with him the craft of making Neapolitan gelati. After getting his footing on these shores, Alesio opened his own ice cream parlor in the Bronx, and it thrived there for several decades before eventually closing in the 1980s.

Although Michael never met his grandfather, he has fond memories of summers spent at his grandmother’s elbow, learning Alesio’s craft in her Bronx kitchen.

Michael forged his own way in the modern American culinary world. After graduating from the CIA with degrees in both food and bakery science, he spent 12 years in the kitchens of elite hotels across the country, culminating his hotel career as the head cake decorator at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. That’s when he and his partner (now wife) decided to start a new life in Dutchess County. Drawing from his Neapolitan roots, Michael launched Sweet Central Express, a pair of wildly colored ice cream trucks that deploy all over the Hudson Valley to dish up his family’s ice cream at weddings, birthdays, and other special events.

One of Sweet Central’s most sought-after items is the hemp-flavored ice cream that Michael makes using a special blend of earthy/nutty hemp seed oil and fruity, floral cannabis terpenes. These ingredients are merely flavor agents, free of both THC and CBD. Their ice creams use locally sourced milk and, though the bases are blended in a mixer, they’re cranked by hand without high-tech ice cream machines.

Sweet Central Express @sweetcentralexpress

sweetcentralexpress.com