All right. Fine. The Sox have turned in for the season, my backyard patch of basil is dead, and the wool coats have come out of hiding. We’re deep into fall already. While some of us at Chowder are still sipping rose, I’m ready to get on with it.

And that means one thing: I’m thinking turkey. (more…)

I’m ready to move to Hardwick, VT, after reading today’s story in the Times about how its savvy community of farmers, restaurateurs, and entrepreneurs are turning this corner of northern Vermont into a sort of innovation laboratory—and reviving the local economy in the process. A great reminder that eating local really can make a difference.

Hardwick is home to one of my favorite quirky little New England gems: Perennial Pleasures, a gardening shop and nursery where British native Judith Kane serves traditional English tea in the lush gardens, where chickens roam around pecking at the grass. (more…)

Two good reasons why you should be glad to be living in Boston this week (aside from the fact that it’s been, what, five days since the last thunderstorm?):

1) Yesterday marked the opening of Ana Sortun and Maureen Kilpatrick’s long-awaited bakery/cafe Sofra (the name in both Turkish and Arabic, signifies a picnic or a sort of communal table) on the Cambridge/Belmont/Watertown line.

The concept had us from the start: The same Greek/Turkish/Lebanese flavors of Sortun’s award-winning Oleana (where Kilpatrick—also a repeat winner—is pastry chef), only with a more casual spin. And maybe less trouble nabbing a table?

Fat chance. (more…)

Ever since Al Gore made An Inconvenient Truth, it feels like every day is Earth Day. We’ve been better about recycling, have tested out the green lifestyle, and think a little more about where our food comes from.

Just in time for today’s celebration of the planet, the Bon Appetit Management Company has developed the Low Carbon Diet Calculator to make it easier to eat green.

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Persephone, the recently opened Michael Leviton restaurant in Fort Point Channel, puts its eco-friendly values at the center of its sales pitch. “None of our fish is from further away than the Chesapeake Bay,” the restaurant’s website reads, “and our beef, lamb, and veal all come from New England or Southern Canadian farms.”

I love to see this kind of commitment in a restaurant. It takes time and effort to piece together a local network of distributors, rather than simply ordering from a mega-distributor. And there are so many good reasons to do it: the quality and freshness of the product, the opportunity to support local farmers, the reduced environmental impact. Isn’t it better for the environment, after all, to buy ingredients from nearby farms, given that the makings of the average American dinner must be trucked about 1500 miles from their source to your table, according to a 2001 Iowa State University study?

Well, it’s not quite so simple, as an interesting story on CNN.com today points out.

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