What’s in the jar?In the mood to cook a delicious meal but don’t want to prepare a savory tomato sauce from scratch? Look on your local gourmet grocery shelf for a jar of Valicenti Organico Red Gravy.I recently visited Dave Valicenti, owner of Valicenti Organico Farm in Hollis, to see where this jar of aromatic heaven is produced. Dave returned…
You are invited to gather for coffee and much, much more. The Republic Café reminds me of a Seattle village café or a neighborhood eatery in Europe. Comfortable. Simple. Local.The hardwood floors are dark and worn. Hanging white lights recall forgotten schoolrooms. The 18-seat bar is soda fountain grey marble. You can eat at the bar as I did, at…
A welcoming aroma of bubbling hot cheese and seasonal herbs greeted us as we entered the cozy old tavern room at the recently reopened Fitzwilliam Inn. My husband and I chose a table near the room’s centerpiece — a gigantic brick fireplace that has warmed travelers for 200 years. The restaurant, christened The Thistle and the Crown, and inn were…
Angel cake is a great way to use up fresh egg whites.Spring is a beautiful time of year in New England. Easter is a big part of that, offering all of us new beginnings, growth and hope. When I was a child Easter was my favorite holiday. It was a new day and it also meant summer was on the…
The point of patienceThe first question you have to ask is — how do you ever get all those glass dots so perfectly placed?Kristina Logan, a Portsmouth glass bead maker of international acclaim, says, “It’s about slowing down. Through controlled breathing you can find a better connection to your hands. It is very repetitive, but not frustrating — I find…
There’s a bevy of beauty options that are easy on your wallet — and your bodyIf the very rich are different from the rest of us, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed, advances in cosmetic surgery might help lead us all to a patch of common ground. There was a time, after all, when having facelifts and “work” done to…
The lessons of winter led to a final exam.When I returned to my native New Hampshire after seven years in Chicago, I foolishly remembered it being less snowy here than it is there. But it was only a few days into winter when I looked out the window and saw just a tiny corner of my traction-challenged Honda Prelude; the…
Two sides of the state’s population boom.If “New Hampshire” and “Population Growth” had a Facebook relationship status it would be “It’s Complicated.” For decades New Hampshire has been one of the fastest-growing states in the country: The current population of 1.3 million is nearly double what it was in 1970.Population growth statistics are not just for census geeks. These numbers…
Years ago we published a story about one of our nation’s founding fathers, a country doctor from New Hampshire named Josiah Bartlett. Bartlett rose from humble origins to study medicine, moved to Kingston and set up a successful practice.But when his loyalty to the British Crown was replaced by revolutionary zeal, his house was mysteriously torched. That crisis kept him…
A Keene man went to a N.H. mountaintop for inspiration and found his life’s work.“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”— William FaulknerThe William Faulkner quote above is one…
