Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Festivals This Weekend

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for round 2 of the festivals, these are all this weekend. I keep thinking I'm going to do a comprehensive post of everything in October, but it would just be such a looong list, feels like the whole month is a party! I'm not sure how I'm going to hit all of these, but I'm definitely going to try, and it helps that 3 of the 4 are all centered around the waterfront. The local food fest especially should be worth checking out: free admission, easy to get to, and the weather is supposed to be nice on Saturday.
If you guys know of anything going on this weekend that I've missed - put it in the comments, I'd love to know!

Summer Shack Chowder Cook Off - On Spectacle Island in the Harbor, chowder makers come and compete for the title of the best New England Chowder. Take the ferry from Long Wharf (near the Aquarium) and enjoy the cool fall weather with a bowl (or two or three or four) of warm, yummy, chowder.

Harpoon October Fest - At their Boston brewery, this is a slightly updated version of the traditional Oktoberfest. But still with  the great beer, food, and some Germanic-esque music. Don't try to drive, parking will be impossible and you'll be drunk at the end anyway. Take the red line to South Station and walk across the bridge or take the shuttle they'll have. This fest goes on Friday night October 1st (doors close at 9:30 I think so don't show up late!) and all day on Saturday October 2nd.
Boston Local Food Festival - Great food from the Boston area is going to be along the Fort Point Channel next to the Children's Museum on Saturday October 2nd, all day. Lots of local restaurants, chefs, farms, everybody that has anything to do with food, it should be awesome. Looks like Saturday is going to be the perfect day to hang out along the waterfront.
Damariscotta Pumpkinfest and Regatta - Southern Maine gets all pumpkin-ed out starting on Sunday October 3rd and going all the way until October 11th. There's a pumpkin contest (biggest wins), pumpkin boat regatta, pumpkin baking contest, along with lots of music, scary stories and tons more.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Festival of Festivals

I feel like there are about a million festivals going on in the next few weeks. Plenty of them are about food, but not all. Here are the ones this weekend, I promise, next week I'll put up a list of all the other ones coming up, hopefully with a little bit more advanced notice. Post a comment if you know of another festival coming up that I haven't mentioned, the more partying the merrier!
I can't make it to all of these, but oh how I wish I could. So let me live vicariously through you: go, have a great time, take some pictures, and post them up here for me to drool over. 



Fluff Fest - In Union Sq. in Somerville, where, appropriately enough, fluff was invented. There are fluff-themed activities all over the place and all kinds of specials at the restaurants in the square made with fluff, and don't forget the live music and the fluff baking contest. I had such an awesome time at this festival last year, just hanging out at the outdoor seating that The Independent puts out and drinking their fluff martini.

River Festival - Along the Mystic River by Assembly Square, this is an all around family festival. Music, food, games, and even fireworks. I've never been to this one before, and I think it's being put on by the developers of the new Assembly Square complex, but hey, there's nothing wrong with fireworks over a river. And it's definitely a good thing for bringing some life down along the Mystic, it's a great, beautiful river that gets ignored all too often.

Orchard Beach Autumn Celebration - In the Old Orchard Beach town Memorial Park. It's a little drive north of town, but totally worth it. The leaves are starting to turn, and Old Orchard Beach is a great little beach town. You can even take the Amtrak Downeaster to get there if you'd like. There's a parade, pizza competition, petting zoo, lobster bake on the beach, flea market, craft fair, dancing, music, all kinds of great stuff.

Phantom Gourmet Food Fest - Restaurants from around Boston and the country come to Landsdowne St. next door to Fenway and serve up lots of food. Your ticket gets you food, but not booze so bring some cash for that.


Beantown Jazz Festival - On Columbus Ave starting at Mass Ave, Berklee helps to put on this great outdoor jazz festival. Tons of very good jazz, fun kid-type outdoor activities, and even some food.  

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Perfect Fall Sunday

Had a wonderful, lazy fall Sunday today. I'm really appreciating it partly because I just graduated from school this past May and after 20+ years (I'm counting pre-college in there too) of fall being about back to school and homework, I can finally just appreciate the season. Woke up, without any particular plans, decided to go get Turkish breakfast with my friend, and then E and I went for a drive and wine tasting. On the way home, we stopped at a beach and hung out on the sand for a bit, enjoyed the view.
Which brings me to the topics of the day: Turkish food (especially breakfast), and wine tasting.

There aren't many authentic Turkish breakfasts to get around Boston. There are a few (5 or 6 I think?) Turkish restaurants around, of varying quality, but they don't all do authentic Turkish breakfast. For those of you that have never experienced the joy of a turkish breakfast, it's something like a charcuterie plate, a cheese plate, and fresh salad all in one. There are usually at least two kinds of cheese, olives, cucumber, tomato, a couple kinds of jam, honey, fresh bread, sucuk (Turkish spiced beef sausage, pronounced suh-juk), and often a hard boiled egg. All that washed down with a perfect cup of tea in a little glass turkish tea cup. Of course, none of this is to be gobbled down, the idea is to sit back, relax, sip your tea, and eat a little bit of everything, a little bit at a time. So here are, in my opinion, the two best places to get Turkish breakfast around Boston,  one on each side of the Charles. 
Cafe Mangal - In Wellesley Square, (conveniently located even for public transit people on the commuter rail) this restaurant serves a Turkish/ Mediterranean influenced menu, great sandwiches for lunch. At night, they are more of a high-end restaurant with high quality, perfectly prepared, amazing food. And in the morning on the weekends, they do authentic Turkish breakfast and their beautiful dining room is the perfect place to sit back, sip your tea, relax, and enjoy.


Istanbul'lu - In Teele Sq. (a really short walk from Davis) just opened this summer, but the chef has lots of experience and it shows. The food is wonderful, and atmosphere is great, and they serve really amazingly good homestyle Turkish food all day. Their "Plate of Turkish Mornings" is the quintessential Turkish breakfast. If you've never had Turkish food before, or only tried it once or twice, come to this place and get hooked. Great quality food, wonderful spices (not hot unless you want it, don't worry), and low prices. The location they're in seems to be cursed (every place that's been there for the past 7+ years, has closed within 2 years) so please, go check them out and break the curse on this spot, they deserve to stay!

E and I have made a habit of wine tasting, especially when we travel. It's a lot of fun, and we've even managed to learn a little bit about wine along the way. Not  that we're snobs, but it's fun to find interesting little wineries and get to taste great wine. We almost always buy a bottle, bring it home and pop it open on a special occasion. 
Coastal Vineyards - Today we went to this tiny little winery. It's brand new, they just started retail wine sales this year. Owned by a couple, they have great wines and a beautiful vineyard. We had a great time tasting, chatting about wine, and bought a bottle of the "Red Wave", a Merlot-Cab Franc blend. I love that they grow all their own grapes, which is actually pretty rare, lots of wineries grow a few grapes but also buy grapes from other places to blend it. It's hard work for a winery to grow all their own grapes, but it totally paid off for these guys. Their Chardonnay is wonderful too, as is their Gewurztraminer.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Shopping

One thing I love about being from (or mostly from) the Boston area is that I know all kinds of little shops to get specific things. Usually, I much prefer to buy things from stores owned by people rather than corporate conglomerates, especially when it comes to food.

Of course, I will be sharing those places as I go along on this blog, and here are a couple more:

Christina's - They have some of the best ice cream in the entire Boston metro area. Try their seasonal flavors, they have all kinds of great varieties. Mexican Chocolate, a chocolate ice cream with a hint of chili pepper is their specialty, and it's amazing. 
And even better, they have a spice/ dry goods shop next door. They have great prices on all sorts of dried beans, mushrooms, spices, peppers, rice, and some hard to find baking ingredients as well. Spices that you can't find anywhere else, Christina's has. The spice shop closes way earlier than the ice cream side, so be forewarned.


McKinnon's - For meat, there is no more high quality, affordable place. They have almost all cuts of beef, pork, and chicken, a decent selection of lamb fresh. I mean, where else can you great filet mignon for $7 a pound? And hangar steak! No one carries hangar steak and it is a great, flavorful cut. Frozen they have duck, turkey usually around Thanksgiving, and all kinds of less common cuts of meat. 
Their deli selection is also great: all kinds of salami, cheese, good potato salad, pepper relish, the works. I wouldn't jump on the fish here (it's not bad, but I'm picky about fish), and I also freely admit, it's not all grass-fed, organic meat. If you want those things, there are better places.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

5771

Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy, sweet new year. Tonight is the beginning of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year celebration. One tradition to celebrate the new year is to dip an apple in honey. The past couple of years I've been making sure to buy the apples and honey from my local farmer's market. The apples taste a million times better and so does the honey. And there's something special about knowing where what I'm eating comes from and that it's encouraging people that work so hard to keep healthy, tasty, local food available. 


Farmer's markets are going to be around until November, so stop by and enjoy the fall harvest, it's one of the best times to get produce in New England! Check out this link to find a market near you: http://www.massfarmersmarkets.org/


My personal favorites: 
Mondays in Central Sq - great asian greens selection
Tuesdays and Friday in Copley Sq - The flower stand sometimes has fresh ginger. And Sienna Farms has really interesting varieties of veggies.
Wednesdays in Davis Sq - Convenient location, sometimes in the fall they have fresh oysters, asian greens are here too.
Saturdays in Union Sq - Tons of stands, more mushrooms than any other market. And a lot of times there's some interesting event going on during or after the market.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

An Indian Restaurant in Every Square

Last night, Me, E and our good friend decided to go get Indian for dinner. Of course this started the conversation of which Indian restaurant to go to.

I'm a big fan of saying that there's an Indian restaurant in every square in Cambridge and in most of them in Boston and Somerville. That said, not all of them are equal and some are better for one dish or atmosphere, etc. Following is my go-to list of Indian places with a couple brief comments about each. They're in order from cheapest to most expensive. Click on the name of the restaurant to go to their website.

Punjabi Dhaba - Great food, more authentic and more variety on their menu than most, and cheap. I highly recommend the chaat. Be warned though, they are cash only (ATM is across the street), they don't serve alcohol, and it's mostly a takeout place with a few tables upstairs.

Dosa Factory - The latest name for the place in the back of Shalimar. Another mostly takeout place with a few tables, they do take cards but they dont serve alcohol. They not only have very good dosa, they also have kathi rolls (ask for them without the rice), and pretty often have goat of some sort - yum!

Passage to India - I started eating at this place when I lived in Porter Sq in high school. They've remodeled the dining room since then but the owners are the same and they serve the same great food for really reasonable prices. This is a sit down restaurant, they serve liquor, and it's a mostly casual atmosphere, and there's parking in the back if you need it. Try the Lamb kebab, under the "healthy grilled" section of the menu- it's served on a sizzling plate and cooked perfectly.

Diva - Atmosphere here is second only to the food. You want to take your date here, and if you're lucky you can sit outside with a hookah in nice weather. Their drinks are great here, the standard Indian menu is perfectly cooked (be sure to tell them how spicy you want it), and as an extra bonus, the Indian style tapas are inventive and yummy.

Kashmir - Owned by the same group (One World Cuisine) as Diva, this is another place to take a date, and on Newbury, lots of outdoor seating lets you people watch. Everything on the menu is good, I honestly have never had a bad dish here. Be sure to order the naan, it's really good, particularly the Peshwari and Keema.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Lobster Party

This coming weekend is going to be our 4th annual "BYOL" (Bring Your Own Lobster) party. Over the years it's evolved into more of a we'll get your lobster and you pay us back type arrangement, but the idea is still the same. A bunch of our friends all get together in the back yard and eat a lot of lobster, and corn and potatoes, and we say goodbye to summer. It's one of those things I love about our life, these traditions we've created, they're really fun.
Part of the reason that we end up buying the lobster for everyone is that I have a lobster guy. Not as cheap as some chain supermarket lobsters that have been sitting in a tank for God knows how long; but then, I would much rather buy from someone I know, and who I can count on to have quality seafood. I speak of course, of Louie's Alive and Kicking Lobsters.


Louie is a great guy, and I've been buying lobsters from him since I was in high school. Though they don't always have the biggest variety of other kinds of seafood, they generally have a reasonable selection. They do always have lobster, and all of their seafood is very fresh, mostly caught locally, and very fair prices. They're supposed to be open Monday - Saturday from 11-6 and Sundays from 11-3 but sometimes they close early, so call ahead if it's close to closing time.
If you live on the Boston side and you don't want to cross over to Cambridge, you can also get damn good lobster from James Hook , but really, Louie's is worth the trip.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Wine!

I'm updating from my phone so this is gonna be short, but anyway:

A friend sent me a text today asking the name of the white wine we had at the engagement party, and since I shared it with him I figured I should share it with you.
 

The wine is a vinho verde made by Casal Garcia,
they sell it for cheap at Prospect Liquors, and for slightly less cheap at SavMor.

It's a really great crisp, lightly sparkling, slightly citrusy white wine. Get it nice and chilled and it's perfect for drinking on a hot day like today. And the $5 price tag (at Prospect) doesn't hurt either.