Food + Booze
Seeing Clearly Now
On the Saturday night before Obama's inauguration, over 100 people showed up at the Red Barn at Hampshire College to celebrate the new presidential regime and dance to a band known as the No-Nos. The event was hosted by several farms, including Brookfield, an...
The Magic Skewer
Cafe Lebanon1390 Main St., Springfield(413) 737-7373Open Mon.-Thu. 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m.,Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.Lunch $9-$16; dinner entrees $17-$27.Lebanese food makes me flip, so I was thrilled to hear encouraging reviews of Cafe Lebanon. After a late evening at...
Locavore: Check This Aussie Out!
Barramundi!Although this may sound like the barbaric yawp of a winter surfer, it's actually the name of the Australian hunting fish, native to the waters of Southeast Asia and now being farmed in Turners Falls. Several years ago, Hampshire College grad and...
At Table: With a Grain of Salt
Fireworks73 Main Street, Brattleboro(802) 254-2073Open Sun.-Wed. 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m.,Thu.-Sat. 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m.Entrees $9-$16.A generic storefront usually makes me nervous, warning of equally generic food. But on stepping inside Fireworks, I was surprised by a stylish...
Locavore: Talking Turkey
Local turkeys sold out this year up in Wendell. At over $3 a pound, it's hard to believe that fowl such as this would be in such high demand. But there's a reason to pay top dollar and there's a reason you're eating Butterball. Tom, a turkey from...
Locavore: A Slice of Nice
Ever hear the quote, "Pizza is a lot like sex. When it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's still pretty good"? That dictum was put to the test during a pizza contest between four local eateries. The quote is sometimes attributed to...
Locavore: Let Them Eat Cookies
"Doing without" was a way of life during the long shortages of World War II. In his collection of essays, One Man's Meat, E.B. White wrote: "…Every day I shall use the milk of the previous day, never taking advantage of the opportunity to...
A Passion for Breakfast
Elmer's Store396 Main St., Ashfield(413) 628-4003Open Mon.-Thu. 7 a.m.-6 p.m., Fri. 7 a.m.-9 p.m.,Sat. and Sun. 8 a.m.-5 p.m.Breakfast $1.25-$9.95It took peak foliage and an invitation to a friend's farm in Conway to get me up to Elmer's Store in Ashfield....
Locavore: A Salad Bar Grows in Holyoke
"We've got the proteins here—tuna, cottage cheese—and fruit," said the man with the toque (chef's hat), Ralph Webb. Webb is the head of the culinary department at Dean Technical High School in Holyoke. With a team of lunch ladies and...
Eating Upcountry
Stillwaters Restaurant1745 Rte. 2, East Charlemont(413) 625-6200Mon.-Thu. 5 p.m.-8:30 p.m., takeout and delivery only; Fri.-Sat. 5 p.m.-9 p.m.; Sun. 7:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m., 5 p.m.-8 p.m.Entrees $7-$15. On a beautiful, bright fall afternoon, I ventured up into the...
Locavore: Gleaning for a New America
A week before Thanksgiving, over 20,000 people descended on a farm in Colorado. In response to the farm's owners' offer to give away post-harvest root vegetables, cars clogged the tiny streets leading up to the property. Reportedly the farm and its employees...
The Essence of France
Bistro Les Gras25 West Street, Northampton(413) 320-4666Tue.-Thu. 5 p.m.-9 p.m.Fri.-Sat. 5 p.m.-10 p.m.Sunday brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m.Entrees $12-$26Bistro Les Gras has been calling my name since it first opened its doors this past spring. Ever since spending a summer in...
A Locavore Holiday
On the first day of Christmas my CSA gave to mea big fat, massive celeriac…Overheard at the Beans and Screens coffee place in Hadley, where two women were sitting at a small table (one of them, "the friend," was bent over a laptop):Woman:? So I'm...
At Table: Flavors of Indian Summer
Lattitude1338 Memorial Ave.West Springfield(413) 241-8887Entrees $10-$24Hours: 11-10 Mon.-Thu., 11-11 Fri.-Sat. How we managed to forget that the Big E was in full swing in West Springfield the night we decided to go to Lattitude is beyond me. Stuck in traffic for 20...
Locavore Toasts the New Year
Sometimes the concept of the 100-mile footprint—eating or drinking nothing produced farther away than 100 miles—has to be kicked to the curb. New Year's Eve is one of those times. But for those of us who have thoughtfully canned, put up and frozen a...
Yes, Chef!
In restaurants, the line is where the action is. Working the line is reserved for the talented and the desperate. After I interrogated the new chef at the Deerfield Inn on his local food buying practices (foraged mushrooms from a guy named Roger, barramundi fish from...
Locavore: Home (Fries) for the Holidays
Another food writer and I were reviewing a breakfast place for his publication. The food was … food. It has gotten to the point that if I don't make it, or if I don't know who made it, I don't care about that food. If I don't know who grew it, it...
Food Comes Home
In the 1970s, when Advocate founders Geoff Robinson and Chris Austin sat on stacks of their new publication for want of furniture, the only local food they could get their hands on (apart from the broccoli Geoff proudly grew himself) was perhaps a bushel of apples...
Locavore: Inventory
In the world of the locavore, one who eats food within a small footprint (100 miles, give or take) of one's home, counting becomes compulsive. Like a prairie woman feeding her family on a scratch farm in Wyoming or the protagonist of Franny and Zooey enumerating...
Locavore: Woodstock with Really, Really Good Food
The first Free Harvest Supper had 80 people in attendance. This year over 750 showed up for what turned out to be Woodstock with excellent food. This early August phenomenon in Greenfield's town center represents a twist on a new restaurant trend. Farm dinners or...
Wine Tasting: A Primer
Wine tastings aren't just a matter of walking around tasting and spitting. When faced with tables and tables of wine offered for free by smiling vintners, some of us might race from Malbec to Pinot to Bordeaux with the abandon of a kid at the Big E. But there is...
Locavore: Cooler Than Twitter
This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs."—Woody...
Locavore: Give Wheat a Chance
This month and until they run out, the folks at Hungry Ghost Bakery in Northampton are handing out packets of seed. "It's Red Fife," says owner Jonathan Stevens who, along with partner Cheryl Maffey, is continuing his quest to get wheat grown in the...
Locavore: Stalking the Wild Leek
Ramps are back! (Although this table hawking wild leeks is at the Union Square Green Market in New York City.) The well-worn sign features ramps for $2.50 a bunch. This sign is a lesson on how best to prepare these garlicky delicacies. For example, if you squint real...
Locavore: Pig Pile
A couple of weeks ago, while Mexico suffered multiple fatalities due to what was being referred to as "swine flu" (also known as "H1N1"), I visited a pig farm in the Berkshires to do a story and got chased off the place. The 36-year-old farmer,...
Locavore: What Our Ancestors Ate
Mark Kurlansky wrote Salt: A World History; 1968: The Year that Rocked the World; and Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. His latest effort is a compendium of essays on regional food written by real people in real time. Food of a Younger Land is a...
Prayer Flags in Paradise
Nothing concentrates the mind like gardening. In 1996, when Ricky Baruc and Deb Habib came upon a clearing in the woods near the Quabbin reservoir, they saw healthy soil where there was none.The new alchemist alum gathered their knowledge to become one with the land...
Locavore: Field to Table
Today, eating locally is a trend. But with the global supply of fossil fuels diminishing, and the widespread use of destructive agricultural practices increasing, our future depends on the availability of regional foods. At Tabellas Restaurant we are committed to...
Locavore: Foaming From the Bucket
The famous and near-famous are different from you and me. Take their farmers' markets, for example. In the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, just next to CBS studios, a former dairy farm became a farmers' market 75 years ago whe an oil magnate saw potential at...
Slaughterhouse Sustainability
For more than three years, Whole Foods has been operating a loan program to small farms that are interested in expansion. It is a national program; the loans are for an average of $42,000 and the interest rate can typically be around 6 percent. Only two such loans...
Summer Blockbuster: Food Nerds Fight Back
The movie Food, Inc., produced by Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, is recommended as a film to bring kids to, not just because it reveals the brutality behind seemingly innocent Chicken McNuggets, but because it is an object lesson on...
Locavore: Farm to Table, Part Four
Chez Albert is a French restaurant in Amherst where it is nearly impossible to get a table on the weekend. The atmosphere is classic bistro—very laid back, yet very accurate in the rendering of French food. On any given night, regulars can be seen in the dusky...A Locavore's Dilemma
My niece, a practical 21-year-old, is home for a few days before returning to graduate school. Her degree will be in forensic accounting. She says to me, "Hey, have you heard of Penn and Teller?" "Yes," I respond. This can't be good, I think....
Locavore: Fast Food From the Slow Lane
In Franklin County, where small-scale farmers are keeping it in the family by selling locally through farmers' markets and directly to restaurants, a man in Millers Falls is doing business on a national basis.Chef Myron Becker of Myron's Fast Foods sells his...
Locavore: Action on Her Mind
Jill Richardson has action on the brain. As a blogger for La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board, she makes the recommendations of an activist. In her new book, Recipe for America, she goes undercover at Whole Foods as...
Setback for Sustainability
In Northampton, Green Street Cafe is being evicted from its place of business by Smith College. Green Street Cafe, an earnest, passionately French restaurant with the best risotto in town, had a handshake deal with Smith College for years. Parties, lunches, seminars...
Locavore: Urban Food Warriors
A Hampshire College grad, Emma Brewster, has put together a compendium of recipes in a bilingual baedecker to Puerto Rican and American cuisine. There is something to be said for eating Spanish food in summer and that something centers on the controversial herb,...
Farm to Table, Part Two
On a sunny day in May, a man emerges from a field in Sunderland and walks up the hill to a farm house. At his back are people hovering over early beds of greens and in the distance is Mt. Sugarloaf. He is wearing a starched shirt, tails out, and shades his eyes in the...
Locavore: Farm to Table, Part Three
"We're lucky to have this girl," says the new head chef at trendy Allium Restaurant in Great Barrington. Michael Pancheri is referring to a woman who heads up a farm just down the road in Egremont. After doing documentaries about farm life, Laura Meister...
Strawberry Fields Forever
This time of year in the Valley, people from every walk of life are combing the fields for strawberries. For some, it's tough on the back. For others, it's an all-you-can eat orgy. If a cache of strawberries happens to make it home to your house, here are a...
Locavore: Farm to Table
"It took me a lot of time to find a place like this," says chef Casey Douglas, gesturing across the field, basket in one hand, clippers in the other. As a professional chef in the area where he has worked since the early '90s, Douglas has been trying to...
Locavore: 100-Mile Thanksgiving in Ashfield
Elmer's General Store in Ashfield is all things to some people. Last week, Senator Kerry's staff saw fit to cross the worn threshold of the combination store/restaurant to find out "what the people want," according to an in-store announcement. If...
Hunger Summit at Mass Mutual
At the Mass Mutual Center in Springfield, a New York author and political activist stood up in front of a crowd of around 150 people to speak his mind about the state of hunger in the U.S. and the state of things in the Valley. Joel Berg, formerly an official of the...
Food: Having It His Way
At the junction of curving roadways, Zach Gorham’s restaurant, Eclipse—now less than a year old—looks out onto Northampton’s Main Street. Eclipse stands at the bend where Main Street angles toward Smith College, providing a clear view of both...
The Locavore Lunch
Harvest is the arc and the aggregate of food in the Valley. Suddenly the summer food spectrum is spread before you. Even with a blight on tomatoes and potatoes (and a very bad season for tobacco leaves due to wetness, lack of sun and cool temperatures), we are rich in...
Drink: A Certain Cider
Once upon a time, in some foreign pub I can’t remember, I drank a cider that haunts me until this day. It was a hard cider, but it looked more like a beer. A cloud of yeast and fruity bacteria made the drink too dense for me to see through, and it had an...
From the Locavore Journal
I picked up two 50-pound bags of spring wheat from Allen at Lazy Acres farm in Hadley. I was sent by Jonathan at Hungry Ghost Bakery in Northampton. My job was to fetch wheat berries from last year's wheat-growing experiment and bring them back to the bakers. For...
Farewell to Food Bank Farm
Mr. Heartbreak, the New Man, come to farm a crazy land…—John Berryman, The Dream Songs The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts has announced that the Food Bank Farm will be no more. The reasons are more complicated than "it was a tough couple of years...
Locavore: Farewell to Food Bank Farm, Part 2
Several weeks ago it was announced that the Food Bank Farm CSA in Hadley, which sold farm shares to consumers and supplied produce to the Food Bank Farm of Western Massachusetts, is closing after almost 20 years. Locavore spoke with Andrew Morehouse, executive...
Yolks on Me
I opened the door of the henhouse, let the birds out to scratch around in their run, and went about the daily chore of collecting eggs. I reached into each of the laying boxes and removed the eggs, many of which were still warm.That's when I saw it. My eyes...
Food: Thanksgiving, Before and After
Driving back to the office after lunch a few days before Thanksgiving, a fresh bag of organic chicken feed in the back of my truck, I snapped on the radio and tuned into the Thom Hartman Show—for my money, the very best talk show on radio.Hartman, a brilliant...
All in the Broth
I don't claim to be much more than a passable cook. I can make some tasty meals and, if it's any indication of latent talent, I don't need to follow a recipe most of the time. Still, I spend little time honing my skills. But for a glance at an occasional...
A Plate of Simple Pleasures
It seems like every Mexican restaurant on the planet bills itself "authentic." Maybe most of them really are authentic, if by that you mean possessing yellow walls and serving Corona.But really, truly authentic? That slippery term can be interpreted many...No Double Dipping
Rain lashed the bus as it began its final descent into Geneva. In the distance, lights along the near shore of Lake Geneva blinked and smeared with each stroke of the windshield wipers. As bad as the weather was, at least it had finally stopped snowing. The trip from...
JD's Turnip Grits
Deep in the darkest reaches of my basement, something daunting lurks: a wheelbarrow load of winter vegetables. Carrots glint in the glow of a bare bulb and alien-esque celeriac lurks on a nearby table. They all lie in wait, demanding to be sauteed. It's enough to...
Locavore: Get a Mule
James Howard Kunstler, author of World Made by Hand and The Long Emergency, is an unlikely prophet, but a prophet he is. Two weeks ago on a Sunday night, fans lined up in front of the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington, where his name glowed in old-fashioned marquee...
Enjoy Your Mango
Last year I gave a speech on Indian food at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. and mentioned that I used garlic in my mustard-fish curry. An older lady approached me afterward, very upset. She had never heard of garlic being used in mustard-fish curry. How dare I...
Locavore: Beyond Tater Tots
There has been quite a lot of talk about health care reform. Now the ugly truth about what is actually making us sick is lumbering into view.Author and food oracle Michael Pollan recently stated, "The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in...
Dining: Cheeseburgers in Paradise
My eight-year-old daughter looked up from her menu and demanded for the millionth time in her life, "Daddy, what's your favorite food?"She knew the answer, just as she knows my favorite color, favorite animal, favorite movie, favorite sport. And she knew...E-Edition
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