Food

Revisiting the Connecticut Dairy Bar and Farm Diner

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 […]

Food

Behind the Scenes: A TV Shoot

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.  […]

New England

Historic Snows Bring End to New England Foliage Season

Two feet of snow in falling October has brought about a bit of an abrupt end to the foliage season, but after one of the more atypical foliage seasons in years, I guess little would have surprised me. The season began with an over hundred year rainstorm, so why not end it with an over hundred year snowstorm. […]

Vermont

Maple Season in New England

High pressure had drifted over central Vermont, and with it temperatures had climbed steadily from the teens overnight up past freezing and into the 40s. David “Tig” Tillinghast, had driven out that mid-April morning and checked the sugar bush in Strafford–212 acres of leased land, 1,050 taps–and found the sap running like crazy. The season […]

Magazine

O’Rourke’s Diner, Middletown, Connecticut

On a hill above the western bank of the Connecticut River, down past the charming brick and brownstone buildings of Middletown’s historic Main Street, sits an incongruous shiny silver-and-glass building, with an old-fashioned neon sign overhead proclaiming “O’Rourke’s Diner.” This eatery has been a town institution since 1941, when John J. O’Rourke purchased the building. […]

Yankee

Community Supports Farm After Accident

In April 2006, at the start of the planting season, John Augustin had a tractor accident. It was the kind of hazard that goes with the occupation, the fear that farmers around big machinery live with every day and acknowledge without saying. It happened in an instant, in the time it takes a rotor-tiller attachment […]

Magazine

DeCordova’s Boston Biennial

  Back in 1987, the then-DeCordova and Dana Museum and Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, mounted New England Now: Contemporary Art from Six States, a truly authoritative regional survey of the sort that New England needs. The DeCordova became the New England regional hub for new art under curator Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, but, now renamed DeCordova […]

New England

Best New England Romantic Inns

With so many candidates for the best New England romantic inns, we offer a short list of cozy spots that are sure to thaw hands and hearts.

Magazine

Helmet Hair Competition

No Matter How Bad Your Hair Day, There’s Always Someone Like This … Few things in nature are more intimidating than the greasy, tangled mane of a New Englander after he takes off his ski helmet. In an effort to promote ski safety, Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow, Vermont, launched an annual competition three years […]

Magazine

Wovel | Shovel Snow the Easy Way

Snow Shoveling Has Never Been So Easy No, it won’t actually remove the snow for you–you still have to get out of bed for that. But the Snow Wolf (formerly the Wovel), made by the New Canaan, Connecticut, company Nootools, won’t have you reaching for the Advil the way you used to, either. In fact, […]

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