“I’ve been coming here for 50 years!” my dad announces as we sit in the back dining room of The Student Prince in Springfield. The waiter smiles. I’m sure it’s not the first time he has heard that. Looking around, I see a crowd that my grandmother, Rose, would have described in her northern Italian […]
Amy Traverso
Gardens
How to Plant a Strawberry Pot
Most of us have a list of garden projects we’d like to tackle one of these days. Mine include putting in a small berry patch, some raised vegetable beds, a rose arch, a grape arbor, and wisteria vines. We live near the city, so some of these ambitions are clearly outsized. But I did cross […]
My son turned four recently and since the chosen theme was “robot,” we were busy coming up with a good way to design the cake. I love playing with cakes and gingerbread houses. We’ve done a stripped-down gingerbread Guggenheim, a Lightning McQueen Cake, and a gingerbread Boston brownstone. You can see that I don’t have […]
If you’ve ever found yourself in a restaurant-rich neighborhood in Boston—the South End, say, or Beacon Hill—chances are you’ve seen a white Sid Wainer truck making a produce or specialty foods delivery to the back door of some bistro or another. The company, which began with a little horse-drawn produce wagon in New Bedford in […]
Massachusetts
Spring in the Vineyard
I drove down to Westport, Massachusetts today to visit with Bill Russell at Westport Rivers Winery for an upcoming Yankee story. We’ve just awarded them a “Best of New England” award for their wine tastings and I’m a big fan of their products, especially the sparkling wines. It was fun to see the vineyards in […]
Not to sound too provincial, but when something really big and exciting happens to you in New York, the significance and excitement seem magnified by a thousand. On Monday night, my book, The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, won big: an award for the Best American/Regional Cookbook from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. It was the […]
Today I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of sophomores at the John O’Bryant school in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. Their teacher, Ian Doreian, contacted me several weeks back to say that his students were going to do a special workshop on food writing and would I like to come in and discuss what […]
Woodstock is such a favorite destination for Yankee staffers that when we decided to do an Explore New England piece on the town, things got a little competitive. But then it occurred to us: This is such a major New England vacation hub, why not send two staffers there and tackle it from different angles. […]
I was in my hometown of Windsor, Connecticut recently and I had the kind of craving that goes beyond food and deep into nostalgia. And in sharing this remembrance of things past, I’m hoping to get some help from any locals or restaurant historians who might know something about the breed of restaurants that I’ve […]
Homes
Remake a Hanging Lantern
In our March/April issue, we profiled a group of talented folks that we call “The Fixers,” the people who know how to restore your antique quilt or your grandmother’s china or the vintage electric stove you picked up at Brimfield. While researching the story, I spent an afternoon with Seth Barrett, proprietor of Village Green […]
I was out of my kitchen today and into the studio of WSFB, Hartford’s CBS affiliate. The station has a great local news magazine show, Better Connecticut, and I’ve made a few appearances since December. Those two crazy kids in the photo are Scot Haney and Kara Sundlun, the show’s hosts. I think they’re fantastic. […]
At the risk of turning into a Portlandia cliché, I’m really fond of birds’ nests as a decorative motif. Exhibit A: this ring, purchased at a shop in, ahem, Portland (Maine, not Oregon). The symbolism may be heavy-handed, but nests do make me feel happy and cozy. Fortunately, the marketplace agrees with me. Any vaguely […]