Photo: Kamel 15/Wikimedia Commons

Abby Conway 

Aw Shucks
The North End Fish Market, Mercato del Mare, hosts oyster shucking lessons every Saturday afternoon, 1-3pm. The lessons themselves are free: only cost to you is what you shuck and eat. Boston.com has dubbed this event one of the city’s best cheap, creative dates, but heed their warning–make sure s/he isn’t allergic to shellfish before you head out! (See related food for thought in yesterday’s post, below, and Anastacia Marx de Salcedo’s guest post on kitchen knives.)

Put some Vino in your Voyage
Gordon’s Fine Wines and Liquors is hosting a VinoVoyage on May 13th. Take the Spirit of Boston, add more than 250 wines for the tasting, a buffet dinner, DJ, live jazz and…bon voyage! Continue reading →

Photo: AMagill/Flickr

Jessica Alpert

So many people in my life have food allergies. Sesame. Peanuts. Avocado. Gluten. Some are easier than others to avoid.  And these allergies don’t just cause the sniffles….they make people really, really sick: respiratory distress, cardiac irregularity, skin rashes, gastro breakdowns.   The works.

Whatever it is, it’s L-A-M-E.  For them and for their sympathetic (and social!) family and friends.

In comes a new discovery (at least for moi).  AllergyEats!  Whether your nemesis is soy or shellfish, AllergyEats gives you a way out….and a way in to restaurants who can accomodate your needs.   Just check off your allergies, type in your location, and voila.  AllergyEats also accepts reviews from the allergy-enhanced.  So make sure to share the wisdom. 

Like who knew Cambridge’s Cuchi Cuchi has a gluten-free menu?

Photo: Courtesy of Powisset Farm

Meryl LaTronica, Guest Contributor
Powisset Farm 

The word April means “crazy time” to a farmer! 

Imagine that you are about to host a dinner party for 275 of your closest friends. You would have to plan the meal, buy (or grow) the ingredients, find the right recipes, make creative place cards for everyone, organize the kitchen, get all the matching silverware, so on and so forth. Now, imagine being in that kitchen right before you start cooking. You know what you need to do—or at least you have a plan—but you don’t even know where to start there is so much to do. For me, this is close to what I feel on the farm every April. A special blend of excitement, nervousness, positive energy and hope fill my belly each day as I head out into the fields and stare down the large task that awaits me (oh, and did I mention, a dash of panic in there, too?). Continue reading →

Photo: Courtesy of Delicious Dishings

I can’t read Delicious Dishings in the morning.  Especially when I’m hungry.

Megan, DD’s blogger extraordinaire, never fails to bring us beautiful pictures and delectable menu ideas.  Plus I can always count on Megan to test-drive recipes… that intimidating-sounding tart recipe I read about in this month’s Bon Appetit?  Yup, she tried it….and she somehow made it sound doable.

In this post, Megan recaps her recent Easter Dinner with family and friends.

So here’s to bloggers who inspire us to cook!  Bravi!

Since I work on Sundays and couldn’t go home to celebrate Easter, my mom, my dad, one of my brothers, and one of my sisters and her boyfriend came up to visit me and Jeff a few weekends ago, and I made an Easter dinner for them. I also made a bunch of sweet treats to celebrate my mom’s and my sister’s birthdays.

I wanted to incorporate traditional Easter foods as well as spring foods into the meal. The main course had to be ham or lamb, sticking with the Easter theme. I ultimately went with lamb because my siblings wouldn’t eat either meat, and Jeff doesn’t like ham. (My mom came to the rescue by bringing grilled chicken and peppers for the kids. Can you believe I’m still calling my little sister, who just turned 18 last week, a kid?)   Read the rest of the post HERE

All photos: Abby Conway

 Abby Conway

Since I started interning at PRK, I have become a big fan of the health food bloggers. They always innovate, and this inspires me to branch out in the kitchen, especially when it comes to how I eat my veggies. A while back I noticed that Tina of Carrots ‘n’ Cake would not stop raving about kale chips. I had never had kale before, but I was pretty damn sure no leafy green could ever make a good substitute for potato chips.

Despite my initial stance against the idea, Tina’s recipe kept following me around, haunting me. Kinda scary. I knew kale was good for you, but still I was skeptical. Eventually, after reading the Siren calls on other blogs (KERF, Always Order Dessert, more CnC), I caved. ENOUGH! I’ll try them. Continue reading →

Photo: texturecrazy/Flickr

Abby Conway

Happy Earth Day!!
Numerous MA restaurants are offering special Earth Day dinners into next week in honor of our dear planet. Get the list from the Chefs Collaborative Earth Dinner Program. Maybe you don’t need food to celebrate (boston.com) but there will be lots of it and more in honor of Earth Day at this afternoon’s Attleboro Farms Spring Farmer’s Market.

Palate and Planet
Local chef Joanne Chang of Flour and Myers+Chang, food writer Cory Kummer of The Atlantic and national food sustainability expert Helene York are hosting a free event on May 7th at the Museum of Science that will explore the intersection of our passion for food and our desire to protect the planet. Follow the link to save a seat. They’re limited. Continue reading →

Photo of farm shrimp operations in Thailand by Matthew Thompson, Aquaculture Specialist New England Aquarium. Taken on a recent joint trip made by staff of the Aquarium and Ahold USA.

Emma Jacobs

With traditional fishing communities, and world-class crab shacks, New England has long been a hub for seafood. More recently, the New England Aquarium has taken a lead role among conservation organizations encouraging the seafood industry to think  about long-term sustainability.

The Aquarium hosts dinners with Boston’s top seafood chefs. They also began working with supermarkets to look at the items behind seafood counters.

The Aquarium and major seafood retailers make unlikely bedfellows. Public Radio Kitchen set out for some informal conversations to find out more about what their partnerships look like, and what these groups hope to gain by working in concert.

No one volunteered numbers on the program’s impact–not least because so many different pieces have been involved. Ultimately, it’s hard to know how big an impact this partnership has had so far. However, everyone involved agreed that progress in sustainable seafood will depend on those customers. The University of Rhode Island’s ‘Sustainable Seafood Initiative’ has resources you can use to get educated on eating seafood sustainably.

Photo: Flickr/Aleksey Fursov

Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, Guest Contributor
Slow Food Boston

I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that I’m a wee bit different from all the other ladies. High ring-to-index finger ratio? Check! Excessively good sense of direction? Check! Inability to determine WTH people are feeling in these photo pairs? Check! But nothing brings out my incipient case of gender identity disorder like being in the kitchen. Not for me are the gentler culinary arts—the coddling of eggs, the whisking of dressings, the folding of batter, the stirring of soup. No, what I like is knives. Continue reading →

Adam Ragusea, PRK Guest Contributor

By all accounts, the third ever Wine Riot was a riotous success. Boston’s monster wine expo is the work of The Second Glass, “your unpretentious, badass source for baller wine information.” Enjoy the postcard!

Any takers? Photo by Sarah Knight

Susan McCrory and Sarah Knight

Cupcake Camp Recap: Part I

There were LOTS of campers lining up last night to eat cupcakes at P.A.’s Lounge in Somerville. Buzzing, happy and, mostly, expectant. The line ate up the sidewalk outside of Cupcake Camp, 2- to 3-people deep, for most of the evening. Wait time? Everyone we asked said, “Oh, about an hour.” Continue reading →