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By TINKY WEISBLAT

I’m currently reading a wonderful new book by local food writer Claire Hopley, “Eating in Leverett, 1774-2024.” It will be the topic of this column in a couple of weeks.In it, Hopley outlines what people in Leverett (and in greater New England as...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Growing up spending summers down the road from composer, conductor, and teacher Alice Parker in Hawley, I didn’t know how lucky I was. I assumed everyone attended festive pot-luck parties at which grownups and children alike dressed in costume, ate...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Sometimes it’s impossible not to follow trends. Lately, I have seen recipes popping up all over the place for Atlantic Beach Pie. I met this pie first in the New York Times. It has also graced Southern Living magazine, NPR, and Forbes magazine, not to...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jennifer Rich told me that she was overwhelmed with cucumbers. The recent rain had inspired her cucumber vines to produce enormous amounts of fruit. I mentioned that if she got desperate, I could always be counted on...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

I have never met Preston Browning, although I imagine many of this paper’s readers have. A resident of Ashfield, he is a retired professor of English with a wide variety of interests and a resonant social conscience. He has written poetry, a memoir, a...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Jonathan Stevens of Hungry Ghost Bread in Northampton has much to celebrate. The bakery he owns and runs with his domestic and business partner, Cheryl Maffei, marked its 20th birthday this spring. His “Hungry Ghost Bread Book” (Chelsea Green, 208...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

I seem to write a lot of memorial columns these days. Fortunately, I’m not yet of an age where my own generation is dying a lot. My parents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ generation seems to be meeting the grim reaper with regularity these days, however.I’m...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Some food holidays are annoying. National Cheese Doodle Day (March 5) seems superfluous. If you’re the sort of person who eats those unnaturally orange snacks, you don’t need a holiday to remind you to consume them. Ditto National Glazed Doughnut Day...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

My love for food is rooted in tradition and family — so it can take me a while to catch on to current trends in Foodie Land. I have thus only just discovered the smash burger.Smash burgers are the current chic descendant of the hamburger, a dish that...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Grief is a universal human emotion. We all lose people we love, particularly as we grow older. Rebecca Daniels of Turners Falls recalls the loss of her husband, and the strategies she used for dealing with that loss, in “That Day and What Came After:...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Cheese has always been my favorite food category. If I had to choose between it and chocolate, I’d choose cheese (and I adore chocolate). Nevertheless, I was unfamiliar with pimiento cheese for much of my life.When I was in my early 20s I moved to...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Hot weather hit us this year even before the official inauguration of summer on June 20. My house was designed to maximize sunlight in our New England winters. Consequently, it gets very warm in the summer months.When the warm temperatures arrive, I...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

The Tired Telegrapher’s Terribly Tall Traveler’s Taleby Alden Dreyerprivately published160 pages, $19Alden Dreyer has lived in Shelburne for decades and is the chair of the board of the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum. As his autobiographical book...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

A couple of decades ago (maybe longer!), I took a recipe-writing class from Nancy Baggett. Nancy is an accomplished teacher, recipe developer, and cookbook author who specializes in baking. She was calm and thorough, and I learned a lot from her.We...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

David Comstock grew up in Charlemont and started his career as a chef in that town. He began as a dishwasher at the now defunct Charlemont Inn and took to restaurant life, eventually attending the New England Culinary Institute.Back in Charlemont...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

I have always had a fondness for what the late cookbook editor and writer Judith Jones called “nursery foods,” simple dishes that appeal to the child in all of us.One of my favorite such foods is grilled cheese. When my teeth sink into the crispy...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

This article was originally slated as a book review. The book I was going to review, “Food Margins” by Cathy Stanton of Wendell, cried out to be moved to the Food & Farms page, however. Instead of reviewing the book, then, I interviewed the author and...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Fran Bates is busy. She and her husband Mike are entrepreneurs on New Athol Road in Orange with three businesses to date. The most recent is Over the Top Bakery.The pair didn’t start out to run a bakery, Bates told me. They leased the property because...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

My favorite season of the year is here. Asparagus and rhubarb tend to ripen in New England at about the same time, and they have arrived. I’ll talk more about asparagus soon. Meanwhile, I’m savoring rhubarb as much as I can.I try to learn something...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

For weeks, friends have been telling me how much they love Le Peacock in Shelburne Falls. I finally got there on a recent afternoon … and the place lived up to the hype.Le Peacock is located beneath 10 Bridge Street in Shelburne Falls. The restaurant...