Fall 2021 Publisher’s Letter
Photo: Michael Piazza
After what surely will register as one of the hottest, wettest and most uncomfortably humid summers in recent memory, I’m ready for a crisp and brilliant fall. My favorite meteorologist, WBUR’s Dave Epstein, says we’re in for a seasonable September and it couldn’t come soon enough; our weeks at the beach were a pleasant respite, but now this late-August heat is getting stale.
Fall is magical in Massachusetts. I want to visit cideries and pumpkin patches, climb a mountain, walk in the woods, braise meat and gorge on hot cider doughnuts straight from the bag. COVID be damned, I’m getting out to see more of my home state: outdoor festivals, beer gardens and corn mazes. It’s time to explore.
So that’s what I hope you’ll do with this issue—read it and escape a little, either through our pages or in real life. How about a trip to the North Shore? We asked sisters Kara and Marni Powers to put together their ideal Cape Ann fall weekend and and they really delivered. Follow their itinerary for a busy three days exploring one of eastern Massachusetts’ most beloved coastlines, or take it easy as a series of day trips instead.
Once you dig in, you’ll see we covered a lot of ground this season—a lot of farmland, to be exact. Alison Arnett interviewed flower farmers all over the state and Margaret LeRoux visited a flour farm in Central MA (whose wheat crop, incidentally, did not love that hot, wet summer; I’m crossing my fingers that autumn will dry it out). Tara Taft spoke with eight local organizations growing produce in fields and home gardens to donate fresh, healthy food to the state’s overburdened food pantries, proving that people in MA are looking out for one another when they need it most. Alex Tzelnic, a self-proclaimed chili head, sought out the spice at two farms growing heirloom chili peppers, then spoke with a restaurant chef making his own signature hot sauce. And Winton Pitcoff, director of the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative, offered us his second op-ed, this time advocating for saving farmland from development and for funding programs that assist new and old farmers alike.
Our Fall crop of Edible Food Finds are an eclectic group of entrepreneurs and food producers. Deb Kaneb brought us to a vegan fast-soul food joint in Allston with a community-driven mission. Andrea Pyenson took us to Andover for farm-to-table fare in a multi-purpose restaurant/café with a charcuterie bar and a living wall. Xana Turner-Owens checked out some Hot Dates (the sweet-and-spicy snacky kind) and Jackie Cain peered into the new smokehouse of a well-known Gloucester seafood company. Emily Gowdey-Backus profiled a popular natural foods market in Leominster and Jolivia Barros introduced us to a granola company touting a healthy treat with eye-catching graphics and a giveback philosophy.
You’ll surely visit an apple orchard or two this fall; it’s practically required. Claudia Catalano’s here to assist with your haul: Her recipe set featuring apple cider— sweet, sour and hard, too— will enhance all your fall cooking and add a little sweetness to your kitchen. In the third installment of her year-long cocktail arc, Kyisha Davenport gets personal: Her four delectable drinks embody who she is and where she comes from. Mix one up and think about what home means to you. And in an homage to “new” New England cooking, reflecting our diverse, multicultural community of home cooks, Karishma Pradhan created a decadent seafood feast using all the flavors of her parents’ native Maharashtra adorned with local fish and shellfish. If you’ve never experimented with ingredients like these in your home cooking, Karishma’s recipes are a great place to start.
It’s no secret that restaurants have had a hard go of it over the past 18 months; we’ve lost hundreds since the initial shutdown and many more are hanging on by a thread. In a heartwarming story of perseverance, dedication and nimble thinking, Jackie Cain profiled eight families in the business together, finding their way through new concepts and locations, passing knowledge—and hard-to-come-by infrastructure—from one generation to the next.
And finally, our intrepid reporter Nina Livingstone spent her summer tracking down the five mayoral candidates to ask them about their food policy and vision for an inclusive and well-nourished City. Before press time we’d managed to catch up with four of them, and while the race will have narrowed to two by the time this issue’s in your hands, we can’t wait to see all of these policies enacted come January.
But until then, I’ll do my best to enjoy the outdoors as much as I can before the first frost—New England is so glorious in the autumn. The wilderness awaits.
Peace,
Sarah Blackburn
