Photo: bigbrowneyez/Flickr

LOCAL BITES

To Party, to Market
Attleboro Farms is throwing a Preview Party November 6th from 6-9pm to kick off the winter market season and raise funds for Downtown Associates of North Attleborough, Neighbors Helping Neighbors and the MA Federation of Farmers Markets. There will be bites from local restaurants, wine and beer tastings, music and winter market vendors. Tickets are $20 each or $35 a pair. Call David Scanlan at (508) 409-1534 for the low down.

Killing Two Birds
There’s not one but two restaurant weeks in New England starting today. Till November 8th, enjoy three-course dinners for just $25 or $35 in Provincetown. But, not so fast, there will also be discounted dining in Portsmouth and the Seacoast through November 13th. So many options!

Easy as Pie
Community Servings’ Thanksgiving bake sale Pie in the Sky is going on now through November 20th to help benefit their home-delivered meals program for the critically ill. One $25 pie equals yumminess for you and a week’s worth of food for a client. Click here to order a pie or make a donation, or call (617) 522-7777 to learn what else you can do to help out.

The Gift of Gobble
Donate just $13 to the Greater Boston Food Bank through November 24th to buy a hefty Thanksgiving turkey for an in-need family in Massachusetts. GBFB is hoping to exceed this year’s goal of 40,000 distributed turkeys. That’s a lotta gobble.

The Last Supper
The New England Aquarium will be hosting their final Celebrate Seafood Dinner of the 2010 season on November 9th. It’s an evening of eco-friendly dining, with award-winning Chef Richard Garcia manning the ship and serving up a three-course sustainable seafood meal plus wine pairings. Tickets are $65 for members and $75 for non-members. Call (617) 973-5206 for more information.

(Supper) Clubbing
The Culinary Guild of New England is taking its Supper Club to Lala Rokh on Beacon Hill November 9th for some Azerbaijanian flavors. Register here.

Old School Cooking
It’s the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Hynes Convention Center November 12th-14th, featuring rare collectibles like cookbooks dating back to the early 1800s. There will be a lecture by Michael Suarez on the history of the book from before the Gutenberg Bible till now. And if you’ve got any dusty books lying around, come in for a free appraisal the 14th. Tickets and more information here.

It’s 5 O’clock Somewhere
Join up-and-comers in the Boston food scene at the CGNE’s 5 o’clock Club at Morton’s Back Bay November 17th from 5:30-7:30pm. $5 gets you plenty of appetizers and discounted cocktails, and of course the chance to network amongst fellow foodies. Register online.

NATIONAL TREATS

The French Take Shortcuts, Too
Dorie Greenspan’s new cookbook, Around My French Table, gives French cooking an American spin. The author is by no means a phony–she’s had a 30-year relationship with French culture and food. But Greenspan shares with NPR that it’s OK to add frozen peas to hachis Parmentier, the French version of shepherd’s pie. Just don’t announce it at the dinner table.

Forgiving Rings
NYC food blog, One Hungry Mama, offered up a healthy alternative to onion rings: Squash Rings. Take advantage of the fall vegetable and add a little creativity to your meal.

Throughout the Berkshires, you’ll notice that the best restaurants and markets brew coffee roasted by Barrington Coffee, a small local company in Lee, MA. My favorite, an artisanal blend called Barrington Gold Espresso Blend, is dark and chocolaty – but they have a huge variety of select origin roasts, blends and espressos. Gregg Charbonneau and Barth Anderson, Barrington’s co-founders and co-owners, are passionate professionals when it comes to selecting beans from around the world and roasting them to perfection. Attention to detail and artistry are the keys to Barrington Coffee – everyone in this singularly focused company works to produce coffees that bring out the best of the beans. It’s a state-of-the-art operation with passionate owners and staff.

We recently featured Barrington Coffee at Berkshire Food Journal because we admire the care Gregg and Barth take with every step of their operation, from selecting the beans from farms they know well to respecting the unique character of the beans they’re roasting and shipping the roasted coffee immediately so it’s fresh. Here’s their story.

Photo: tina negus/Flickr

Week II: Eggs
(Here’s the backstory to Sarah’s “Foray” series)

Eggs can do a lot more than just breakfast, and until this week’s lesson at CSCA, I hadn’t been utilizing their full potential. I had barely ventured beyond omelets, scrambled, or Sunny Side Up (and I’ll bet I’m not the only one).

At the beginning of class we were given a packet of how-to’s and recipes: how to coddle an egg, how to make mayonnaise, etc. After a short lecture on egg safety (which sounds silly, but did you know you should crack an egg on a flat surface, like a countertop, rather than on the side of a bowl? This is to prevent any bacteria that may be on the shell from getting inside the egg), we split up to work individually on our own dishes. Continue reading →

Coffee Roasting at Terroir (Photo: Susanna Bolle)

Boston has never had a reputation as much of a coffee town–at least not one on par with coffee meccas like Seattle or Portland, Oregon. But all that’s changing.

Over the past two years a half dozen new cafés and coffee shops have opened in and around town, offering well-pulled espressos, delicately frothed cappuccinos and coffees brewed specially by the cup. It’s serious business, where coffee making is approached with the reverence of high art and the rigor of hard science.

Two local specialty roasters are at the forefront of this coffee cultural revolution: Acton’s Terroir and Arlington’s Barismo. Both roasters offer an assortment of absolutely beautiful coffees, and both have an almost evangelical commitment to improving the quality of coffee from sourcing the best beans from around the world to testing and developing the best brewing methods. Continue reading →