Boston for grownups. BostonZest is your guide for enjoying a full-flavored life in an unbeatable city. We'll show you that there is life in Boston beyond the "club kids" and students.
Whether you live in Boston, plan to visit Boston, or you are moving to Boston; we'll help you locate great food, fun events, and reliable resources.
Boston is holding a series of neighborhood meetings and a Twitter Chat to talk about all aspects of Urban Agriculture. We're making the rest of this schedule of events our Friday Link.
The Twitter Chat is scheduled for Wednesday, June 19th, from Noon to 1pm with the hashtag #UrbanAgBOS and you can use that to review the conversation to date on the subject.
Do you have an Amazon Gift Certificate to use? Or do you need to buy one for a birthday or wedding gift? Remember to click over to Amazon from here to support this site!
Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.
Long before every neighborhood was setting up a farmers' market for locals, the Town of Brookline was supporting fresh and local food every Thursday afternoon in summer at the Brookline Summer Farmers' Market. It will run each Thursday from now until October 31st. Hours are from 1 pm to dusk.
Last year, a winter market was set up in the Arcade building, making this town the year-round envy of many of its neighbors.
We've told you about the joys of this market before both here and on Serious Eats. Plan a Thursday afternoon in Coolidge Corner, and you'll discover many food related joys!
Chef Seta Dakessian from Seta’s Mediterranean Foods (shown above) with Jason Tucker from Red's Best seafood at the Copley Sq. Market, suggests bringing a cooler to your farmers’ market, especially if you're buying fresh fish!
Farm & Market Tidbits...
Genevieve Stillman from Stillman Farm reports, "We are harvesting lettuce, chard, beets, arugula, mesclun, turnips, onions, strawberries, snap peas, and more. Of course, we'll have plants at the markets for the coming month too! I've been enjoying freshly snipped herbs in all my salads, as well as edible flowers."
Ben Sommer, Copley Square Farmers' Market Manager, said, "I've always liked a good dilly bean. Now I can get them at the market from our new vendor Maine Homestead! There are so few commercial picklers in New England that sell at farmers markets. I think we're really lucky to have them here with us on Tuesdays."
Peter Ward, Central Square Farmers' Market Manager said, "Great to see Chef Steve Johnson of Rendezvous - a regular at the market - back shopping this season."
In Season, Right Now!
Mushrooms, green garlic, salad mix, lettuce, arugula, radishes, beets, scallions, kolrabi, rhubarb, bok Choi, chard, snap peas, chive flowers (love those- break them up in your salads,) herbs, hot house tomatoes, and honey. Plus, you'll find annuals, herbs, and vegetable plants.
Get Some Before It's Gone!
Green garlic, garlic scrapes, pea tendrils.
Coming Soon!
Strawberries are about to star at all our markets.
Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.
Today, we turn over the BostonZest keyboard to Allison Dagger from Mass Farmers Markets so she can tell you about this year's Strawberry Dessert Festival. Take it away Allison!
Mass Farmers Markets is pleased to announce the 6th Annual Strawberry Dessert Festival – beginning Friday, June 7, 2013 through Sunday, July 7, 2013 at eateries throughout Massachusetts. Chefs and bakers at each establishment will use fresh strawberries to create strawberry dessert masterpieces not to be missed! Each eatery will donate a percentage of their sales for the dessert to Mass Farmers Markets’ (MFM) mission to promote healthy communities, healthy individuals, and healthy economies; demonstrating their commitment to local farmers markets.
Now in its sixth year, The Mass Farmers Markets Strawberry Dessert Festival was created in 2008 to highlight the local strawberry season while raising much-needed funds for Mass Farmers Markets’ mission as the only state-wide non-profit organization working to sustain and strengthen our farmers market system.
“Our Strawberry Dessert Festival is a great opportunity to support local farmers and farmers markets while enjoying the incredible taste of New England strawberries,” said Jeff Cole, Executive Director of Mass Farmers Markets (MFM). “I think this is a great way to support your local farmer beyond the farmers market!”
Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.
We had just stuffed ourselves with dosas from the nearby Dosa Factory so something light and fresh, like a lobster roll, for dinner seemed a great idea. Chris showed us his containers of fresh lobster. He catches them and his wife Carolyn picks the meat, deveins the tails, and makes it easy to make your favorite dish with their fresh lobster meat.
While hot dog rolls are traditional, we stopped by the Hi-Rise Bread Company table and grabbed some of their hamburger rolls. They offered lots of surface for piling on the lobster.
The lobster included big pieces of claw and tail, so step one was cutting those into bite size bits.
Notice that we are not mixing anything into our lobster rolls. We lightly toasted the buns, spread the tiniest bit of melted butter on the bottom half, and then piled on the lobster meat.
With the lobster ready to fall off the sides, Penny dripped a bit of melted butter onto the meat ...
... just enough to give it a golden glow. And, as you can see in the top photo, we each had a wedge of lemon and small dish of melted butter to adjust our lobster roll to our own taste.
Thanks, Chris and Carolyn! You did most of the work and we had two heaping lobster rolls plus leftovers.
Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.
With the Central Square Farmers' Market (Mondays, Noon to 6 pm, map to the location), we combine errands and fun. We can buy fresh, local food at the market and ethnic food elsewhere in the square. We also see some of the area's finest chef's shopping at this location.
We are also big fans of Hi-Rise Bread Company. Their presence at this market saves a trip across the city to their Concord Avenue or Harvard Square locations.
Friends shopping with us indulged in a tasting of a full range of maple syrup grades from Nutting Farm and bought a jar of maple cream. That cream has also made a hit with Ed's sweet tooth.
Hutchins Farm is certified organic and had lettuce on their stand that looked like a work of art.
These turnips from Parker Farm make a great raw addition to seasonal salads.
More bread (Ed's favorite farmers' market shopping) was available from Hearth Artisan Bread from Plymouth.
Tomorrow we'll tell you about our the lobster roll supper we had with lobster from Chis Manning from C & C Lobster & Fish.
Make sure you stop by the manager's tent and say hello to Market Manager Peter Ward. He's always on top of what's in the market, what's coming up next, and what you should get before it's gone for the season.
Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.
One of our walks this week took us to the Prudential Center where we picked up a few items for our supper from the specialty food vendors. The Prudential Center Farmers' Market is open on the Bolyston Street side of the complex from 11 am to 6 pm each Thursday.
We'd been missing the pretzels, and pretzel rolls from swissbäkers. We know they have a new shop on Western Avenue in Allston, but we haven't made it there yet! We'll add it to one of our Watertown runs. For now, it's great to have them back in the city at the Prudential and Dewey Square markets.
We enjoyed our pretzels with cheese and zingy pepper jelly from Stir It Up. We took our cue from the sample they were offering and their famous savory cheesecake torte baked with a glaze of their pepper jelly (below). Think about picking up one of these the next time you need party food.
In addition to chilled goat cheese with a dollop of "sweet heat" (as they call it), we also warmed some brie and spread the lime pepper jelly on that. It was a big hit!
This market will be another source for fresh-from-the-boat fish this summer with Cape Cod Fish Share on hand.
While we do occasionally visit the Coolidge Corner shop for a When Pigs Fly bread fix, it's good to have them back in the neighborhood on Thursdays!
We also stopped by the Copley Square Farmers' Market on Friday and picked a great dinner from the vendors there including a fine fillet from Red's Best seafood. Looks like it will be a summer of healthy eating!
A special thank you to Dave Gilson from The Herb Lyceum for bringing some chervil clippings to town to share with cooks like Penny. She sprinked rouchly chopped chervil leaves on that moist flakey fish before serving it. Perfect!
In Season Right Now!
We also saw: mushrooms, swiss chard, spinach, green garlic, salad mix, lettuce, arugula, lots of annuals, herbs, and vegetable plants, hot house tomatoes, scallions, and cucumbers.
Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.
The Copley Square Farmers' Market opened on Tuesday and we were there gathering fresh food and taking photos to report to our BostonZest readers.
This market is a meeting place for the surrounding communities. We ran into friends and neighbors and enjoyed catching up with them and the vendors we've come to know over the years.
Atlas Farm had a great selection of greens. We have an Atlas Market Share and picked up romaine lettuce and baby arugula. They hope to have asparagus and strawberries perhaps as early as Friday's Copley Market.
There were plenty of prepared foods, baked goods, and lunch options at the market. And, of course, each new market will bring more fresh food harvested by local farms.
Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.
