Few New England seasons are sweeter than the apple harvest. Celebrate with favorite apple recipes like apple pie and homemade cider doughnuts.
cake
Gardens
Soil Enhancement: Composting
Learn about the difference between “hot” and “cold” methods of composting. Composting is a method of recycling naturally decomposing matter. Ingredients, size of the pile, local weather conditions, and your maintenance habits will affect the outcome. Note that shredded leaves, chipped wood, and chopped food scraps generally decompose more quickly than whole or large pieces. […]
I’m haunted by a pickle. The kitchen shelves glimmer with jars of homemade preserves after a summer’s worth of gardening, harvesting, and putting up. Clove-scented beets glow deep garnet, and the cauliflower sparkles crystalline, bejeweled with tiny bright-red–and lethally hot–Thai peppers. Zucchini pickles stack up right next to the oven-roasted tomato sauce. Strawberry and wild-blueberry […]
Few places incorporate my love of New England, tradition, and baking like the King Arthur Flour Company in Norwich, Vermont. I recently spent two days there as a participant in their first official “Blog and Bake” retreat, and I left feeling reassured that bakers everywhere are, and will continue to be, well supplied and supported […]
Here’s a fresh take on the traditional cake (and a lovely way to start someone’s birthday): a blueberry pancake cake for breakfast that’s frosted with whipped cream. I dreamed this confection up in honor of my son’s third birthday, which is today. We’ll be having a party with friends, family, and assorted preschoolers on Saturday, […]
Connecticut
Connecticut’s Best Local Secrets 2011
BEST ART ON A HILL Sculpture Barn, New Fairfield Dynamic in feeling, diverse in media, this atelier’s contemporary works reside in natural spaces both inside and out. The changing exhibit gallery was once owned by Louise Nevelson’s son. 3 Milltown Road. 203-746-6101; sculpturebarn.com BEST PEACEFUL RETREAT St. Edmund’s retreat, Enders Island, Mystic This retreat house […]
New Hampshire
New Hampshire Best Bargains 2011
THE LONG VIEW Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway, Lincoln It takes only 10 minutes and 13 bucks to climb aboard the 80-passenger car and reach the 4,080-foot summit, where–if the weather holds–you can see four states and into southeastern Canada. 603-823-8800; cannonmt.com READ ALL ABOUT IT Used Book Superstore, Salem & Nashua Summer readers, rejoice! Paperbacks […]
Food
Introductions
Hello Yankee readers! Since this is my first blog entry, I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. Or reintroduce myself. If you’ve subscribed to the magazine for a while, you may have noticed my name in these pages before. I was Yankee‘s food editor from 2002 until 2005, when I left to spend […]
Magazine
J. D. Salinger’s Last Supper
On any given Saturday night, just about anywhere in New England, volunteers put on a supper in a church hall or basement. It’s a fundraising ritual almost as old as the country, started by women’s auxiliary groups during the years after the Revolution, as towns and states gradually abandoned the practice of using levies to […]
Here’s something different: There was no multitiered wedding cake at the last reception we attended. The bride was Kate, daughter of our friends Meg and Gerry, and she opted for fancy cupcakes instead. Her mother and sister decided that those lovely little treats would look great on special china, so they crafted a variety of […]
Here’s a life list of 75 essential things for anyone who loves New England, native and visitor alike. How many have you done?
The Right Stuff First you need good sand. (For the Hampton competition, Grady trucks in 300 tons of it.) To find out what you’re working with, head to the water’s edge, pick up a handful of sand, and form a ball. “If you can hold it sideways between your thumb and middle finger and it […]