BostonZest

Our Favorite May 2015 Activities and Events

May is one of those months when we like to get out and enjoy our city and perhaps schedule a few day trips or short getaways to places around the area. After this winter, we have worked to get our assignments ahead and will now take some time off to enjoy spring. 

We already gave you the lowdown on What's happening around Boston in May 2015. That post puts the month into a planning perspective for you. This one is about our faves.

When if comes to events, we tend to enjoy the quieter side of the happenings roster. Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum on May 10th is more our style. It is the only day you are allowed to picnic on the grounds and they now have a small fleet of food trucks available for the event. 

Food Truck Season

Speaking of food trucks, by May it's normally warm enough to dine al fresco and that means we can do more food truck sampling. The city seems to have lost interest in supporting this great aspect of Boston. So rather than recommend you use the city's site, we suggest you depend on Steve Leibowitz's site, Hub Food Trucks.

One of our favorite food truck spots is near the fountain at the Christian Science Plaza. It's listed as Belvidere on the schedules. In addition to more trucks and more choices, it has great seating for eating and fun people watching. Here's a link to the Hub Food Trucks schedule.

Community Gardens

It's planting and sprucing up season at community gardens throughout the area. We always plan a walk and photo shoot in the Fenway Victory Gardens in May. Here are some scenes from a past walk. From the Boston Natural Areas Network, here's a community garden locator.

For Other Tastes

Over on TripAdvisor's Boston Forum, Penny starts a monthly conversation on what's happening in Boston. The local volunteers who answer questions for visitors and share information among themselves add their favorites to that discussion. If you prefer big organized events, sports, and celebrity events to our quieter tastes, you may find great ideas at this link.

What's your favorite pastime or event in May? 

Add your thoughts in the comments below. Tweet them to @BostonZest or send us an email and we'll add your suggestions to this post as an update.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012-2014 Penny & Ed Cherubino  

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Tenoch Mexican Restaurants & Food Truck

Tenoch Mexican is adding a bit of south of the border flair to the food options in the North End/Waterfront neighborhood with their new 3 Lewis Street, Boston location. (map)

The menu lets you build your own meal with options for platos, tacos, tortas, burritos, quesadillas all with your choice of fillings including a vegetable option. Plus more wonderful choices from enchiladas to tamale. A sample menu is here. But, there was much more on offer at the North End location.

For lunch, we decided on a plato of carnitas, salsas, beans, and rice along with ...

three tacos filled with lamb in barbacoa sauce. (Ours were sans cilantro. You can have them add as much as you like.)

With Christopher Columbus Park so close, we opted for a bit of waterfront dining on a gorgeous spring day. You might choose a table on the Greenway or a seat along the Boston HarborWalk.

There's a Tenoch Food Truck, Too!

Photo by Matt Conti from the most wonderful hyperlocal resource NorthEndWaterfront.com

Tenoch Móvil is on the road around Boston, Cambridge, and Burlington as of this date. You can get updates on the current schedule on twitter @TenochMexican.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2014 Penny & Ed Cherubino, and Matt Conti for the Tenoch Móvil with permission of NorthEndWaterfron.com.

Clarendon Street Food Truck Move

The food truck parking spot that was located on Clarendon Street (between Newbury and Boylston) has shifted across Boylston Street next to Trinity Church.

This is probably a good move since it's closer to Copley Square's benches, lawns, and fountain for dining spots. We highly recommend this general area for visitors who would like to try a few trucks. There are three parking spaces surrounding Copley Square with up to five trucks at busy times.

Here is the city's food truck link.

In addition to this spot, you'll also find as many as three trucks right behind the Copley Fairmont Hotel on Trinity Place and one truck on the Boylston Street side of the Boston Public Library near the MBTA station.

We highly recommend a visit to Steve Leibowitz's Hub Food Truck site for the most complete and up-to-date coverage of the area food truck scene. 

Here's a link to our Food Truck/Street Food coverage.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2014 Penny Cherubino  

Vesta Mobile Wood-Fired Pizza at the Wayland Winter Farmers' Market

We could smell pizza from the moment we opened the car doors in the parking lot of the Wayland Winter Farmers' Market at Russell's Garden Center.

Signs led the way to the gloriously copper clad Vesta Mobile Wood-FIred Pizza oven and it's surrounding pizza preparation area.

Pizza was definitely going to be our choice for lunch.

This one is a market special. On the Vesta Facebook page they said, "The Beetza is Back!.. on the menu that is ...featuring oven roasted Winter Moon Roots Beets from Hadley MA."

Check out the rest of the menu from last week. Our choice was the Margherita, since we think this is the best test of a pizza makers art. 

Here's our lunch sliced into six pieces with fresh basil added at the last moment.  

We took it back inside since the always warm and welcoming Peg Mallett from Russell's had pointed out the tables they had provided throughout the greenhouses for shoppers to enjoy all the lunch options available at this delightful farmers' market.

(In case you missed it, more about the market part of our visit here.)

Three of us shared the pizza and it scored big thumbs up all around. Penny will be following Vesta to watch for places where we might enjoy their great preparations again. They will be at the Wayland Market each Saturday through March 15th. 

One more reason to take a ride to Wayland on Saturdays. 

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 Details:

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2014 Penny & Ed Cherubino  

Everyone Will Be Buzzing about Edible Boston's Fall 2013 Issue

Buzzing because the Fall 2013 issue of Edible Boston shines its spotlight on bees and beekeepers.

Features this time introduce you to: people who curate and sell honey, beekeepers, recipes that celebrate honey, urban beekeeping, restaurant beekeeping, why bees are important to us, and even "From Bees to Beer."

And, of course, there are a few more topics covered and enough resource lists to make this copy a keeper.

And, as always, the writing is from uber talented people like Brian Samuels and Leigh Belanger. The photography of Creative Director Michael Piazza is a visual class for anyone who loves to photograph people and food. Even the letter from publisher Ilene Bezahler is something I look forward to reading.  

This month, she asks an imporant question, "Might the valuable lessons we've learned from the Local Food Movement be translated into more of our daily interactions?"

Yes, Ilene, perhaps they can – as long as we have people like you pose these questions.

How do you support the remarkably talented team at Edible Boston?

May I suggest that you:

• Let their sponsors know you saw them in the magazine.
• Grab an extra copy and get it to someone else who cares about supporting the local food movement. (Here's where you'll find copies of Edible Boston)
• If you have a blog, twitter account, or facebook page, write about Edible Boston and link to them.
• Follow them on twitter, retweet their tweets.
• Like them on Facebook.
• Spread the word about this great asset to our community.
• And, to be sure you never miss an issue, you can become an Edible Boston Member over on their website!

You can also buy the Edible cookbook – Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods or find more local food in The Boston Homegrown Cookbook.

  

Details:

Words: Penny Cherubino
Artwork: Courtesy of Edible Boston

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.

Wednesday Lunch, Food Trucks at Belvidere Street

We love great choices and right now, on Wednesdays from 11 am to 3 pm, you can line up for Bon Me, Boston's Baddest Burger & Sandwich Co., or Roxy's Gourmet Grilled Cheese on Belvidere Street near the intersection of Huntington Avenue. (map)

Here are a set of recent menus with Bon Me at the top, Roxy on the right, and Boston's Baddest Burger on the left. (Click on the collage for a larger view.)

Belvidere Street has become one of our favorite food truck locations. First, there's a regular roster of great rolling kitchens moving in and out of the three parking spaces near the Christian Science fountain. With three trucks on hand, you have lots of choices and it's easy to gather a group of friends and make a lot of them happy.

And, this setting also offers lots of seating for diners and is a prime spot for people watching. You can choose shade or sun and the wind may bring a cooling mist from the Christian Science fountain. The big bonus is that the entire area is signed as "No Smoking!"

Choice is a wonderful thing! What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?

Click here for all our Food Truck/Street Food coverage.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2013 Penny & Ed Cherubino  

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.

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Farmers' Market Lobster Rolls: Lobster Roll Chronicles

On our recent visit to the Central Square Farmers' Market, we were happy to meet Chris Manning of C & C Lobsters and Fish. Chris is a lobsterman from Hull who is bringing fresh seafood to Cambridge each Monday!

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. 

What's on your Food Lover's Shopping List? Shop Amazon for all your kitchen & dining needs and support this site!

Details:

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2013 Penny & Ed Cherubino 

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.