Many foods signify the coming of spring, but local spring lamb holds a savory place all its own. We profess to eat by the seasons, but in this era of year-round availability, it’s really palate memory and stubborn localness that determine apples for autumn and strawberries for June. Following that guideline, lamb is for spring, […]
massachusetts
Need some new ideas for Easter table settings? Here’s how to create simple yet elegant place settings and centerpieces for your Easter table. Spring at last! And in the spirit of the season, I love decorating my dining room table for Easter with fresh and unusual designs. Several great ideas came to me as I […]
Yankee
Antiques: Chelsea Clocks
To hear my punctual mother tell it, I was born two weeks early and that was the last time I was early for anything. A skillful procrastinator, I seem powerless to change. I hear the tick of the clock and I rage against that machine. But even as I curse the swing of the pendulum, […]
Massachusetts
Russian Icon Museum | Gallery in Clinton, MA
Gordon Lankton’s first Russian icon, a c. 1850 image of St. Nicholas, hangs in a dark corner of the lowest level of his museum. He found it lying in the dust at a Russian flea market in 1990 and bought it for $25. He doesn’t think it’s a very good one anymore, and he’s not […]
Massachusetts
Restaurant Review: The Lyceum
When I was in high school, the kids who took French class were treated to a special end-of-year lunch at a restaurant housed inside a historic 19th-century lecture hall in Salem, Massachusetts. While dining at The Lyceum, we had to speak only in French and at least try les cuisses de grenouilles (frogs’ legs). We […]
Magazine
Early Spring | Mary’s Farm
At this time of year, when the ice is disappearing from the ponds and some fields are greening up, patches of snow or ice stay along the edges of shaded roads and in the north corners of fields. They’re a shock of white in a spring landscape. Sometimes, if it’s a warm day, I think […]
In this day and age when religious extremism threatens us both at home and abroad, it is both proper and necessary to be reminded that, at their benevolent hearts, most of the world’s religions say pretty much the same thing about the human condition. All religions are manifestations of a human will to believe in […]
History
February, a Month of Questions
Welcome to the February 2010 edition of “Jud’s New England Journal,” the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, editor-in-chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, New Hampshire. To most of us, the month of February means Washington’s birthday (celebrated this year on the 15th, although he was born on the 22nd), Valentine’s […]
Yankee
Chicken Pie Recipe Revealed!
At the very end of my book, Saturday Beans and Sunday Suppers: Kitchen Stories from Mary’s Farm, I make reference to a chicken pie that I like to make on cold winter evenings, such as it will be tonight. Ever since, I have been chastened by readers who lamented I did not include the recipe. […]
Magazine
Robert B. Parker 2003 Interview
Yankee Classic from October 2003 Robert B. Parker has set novels in Los Angeles, in Ireland, in the Wild West, and in the capitals of Europe. But the setting he always returns to is greater Boston, home to his best known character, the wisecracking, Shakespeare-quoting, gun-toting private eye named Spenser, who first appeared 30 years […]
Welcome to the January 2010 edition of “Jud’s New England Journal,” the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, editor-in-chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, New Hampshire. Some things in our past just never seem to get settled … Some years ago, there began a running debate among Yankee subscribers on the […]
Yankee
Out of This World
For 20 years the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, mounted annual exhibitions that took the pulse of new art in New England. In 2010, the museum is cutting back its eagerly awaited launching pad show to every two years, but the first DeCordova Biennial (January 23 to April 11) looks to be […]