July 2021 – Page 4

The Music Roundup 21/07/22

Local music news & events

• Big Eighties: Video killed the radio star, a cultural moment celebrated by cover band Fast Times. The quartet returns to the MTV era, complete with wild hair, angular jackets and keytar. This event, part of a community playground’s summer concert series, is for anyone who recalls a favorite VJ or couldn’t get enough of Human League, Dexy’s Midnight Runners or Loverboy — or those sad to have missed it. Thursday, July 22, 6:30 p.m., Field of Dreams, 48 Germonty Dr., Salem, facebook.com/FieldofDreamsSalemNH.

• Pickin’ picnic: A Concord Coalition to End Homelessness benefit, Bluegrass BBQ 2021 offers four rootsy acts, with a slate of victuals for omnivores like brisket, pulled pork, sausage and cowboy beans. With a name drawn from the John Prine song “Paradise,” headliner Peabody’s Coal Train is a Contoocook Valley supergroup. Paul Hubert, Whiskey Prison and Bow Junction also appear Saturday, July 24, noon, White Park, 1 White St., Concord. The show is free; pre-order food at concordhomeless.org.

• Tent music: Enjoy a scratch kitchen meal and al fresco serenading from David Corson, a singer-songwriter who’s been compared to Ray Lamontagne, Ed Sheeran and Matt Nathanson. Corson’s latest release is the single, “Did You Hear I Got Married?” The venue is a strong supporter of local music, with performers Thursday through Saturday at six locations, including their newest, recently opened in Concord. Saturday, July 24, 8 p.m., T-Bones Great American Eatery, 25 S. River Road, Bedford, tbones.com.

• Green scene: The Slakas play cover songs at a free outdoor show. The seasoned Nashua band’s set list is solidly in the classic rock era, with a mashup of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath among the highlights, though they also take on Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow” and Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle,” not to mention a lively Bee Gees/Michael Jackson medley.Tuesday, July 27, 7 p.m., (no rain date) MacGregor Park, 64 E. Broadway, Derry, theslakas.com.

At the Sofaplex 21/07/22

Fear Street: Part Three 1666 (R)

Kiana Madeira, Benjamin Flores Jr.

Also Gillian Jacobs and other people who appeared in the first two movies.

The Netflix trio of Fear Street movies wraps up with this episode that takes us all the way back to the beginnings of Shadyside and Sunnyvale, back when they were one town called Unity and a young woman named Sarah Fier was hanged for witchcraft. Deena (Madeira), the Shadyside teen battling zombie serial killers who managed to stay alive when so many other teens didn’t, attempted to put Sarah Fier to rest at the end of the last movie and was suddenly plunged back into 1666 and into the body of colonial-era Sarah. We see the past play out with many of the same actors from the previous two movies playing roles here, including, crucially, Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), Deena’s Sunnyvale girlfriend, now standing in for Hannah Miller, the pastor’s daughter and Sarah’s sweetheart.

After showing us 1666, the movie returns to 1994 for a final (or is it?) showdown.

What is the big evil creating a legacy of murder in Shadyside? It’s not just the patriarchy but that’s also not an incorrect answer. This factor, and a general “stand up against various forms of bigotry” strain running throughout, helps to give the movie some pluckiness; I was getting some real early-seasons Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes off several parts of this movie (in the best possible way). This series ended up with a pretty top-notch cast of young actors for these sorts of roles — Madeira in particular is a great Final Girl-style action hero.

I also like the overall presentation of all three films: there is decent craft in all aspects of these movies and fun soundtracks (no expense spared in the music here). And I like the three-Fridays-in-a-row release schedule. You can binge them now but you could also have made an event out of their release. I’m impressed, good on you Netflix and R.L. Stine adapters. I gave the first two movies B+; I think this fun little triple feature might just deserve an A- overall. Available on Netflix.

Gunpowder Milkshake (R)

Karen Gillan, Lena Headey.

Also Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett and Paul Giamatti.

Sam (Gillan) is a no-nonsense assassin working for crime guy Nathan (Giamatti) in this richly colored, entertainingly mannered shoot-’em-up movie.

Sam learned the business from her mom, Scarlet (Headey), who had to take off abruptly 15 years ago after angering the wrong people. For reasons that don’t quite make sense, Scarlet doesn’t leave the then-teenage Sam at the Library, a sort of professional association for lady bad-asses staffed by some lady bad-asses: Anna May (Bassett), Florence (Yeoh) and Madeleine (Gugino). But when the now young-30s-something Sam has herself killed the wrong people, she turns to the Librarians to help her dispose of some weaponry and later for some extra firepower. She also finds herself protecting the 8-year-old Emily (Chloe Coleman), who quickly starts to call herself Sam’s apprentice.

Gunpowder Milkshake feels like a very appropriate name for this movie in that it often comes across like a McFlurry or a Blizzard with bits of Guy Richie stylings and the Kill Bill movies swirled with thick ribbons of John Wick and a vaguely Carmen Sandiego outfit worn by Gillan. The result is not unpleasant. It’s a bit weird and lumpy at times, like some pretzel-fudge-cookie-dough-cinnamon concoction would be, but it’s overall affable. It’s an accessible ladies-kicking-butt-plus-slo-mos movie. It’s violent but not cruel, it has its gory moments at times but not grisly. It has the feel of a highly stylized, well-cast one-off comic book come to life. B- Available on Netflix.

Werewolves Within (R)

Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub.

You know Milana Vayntrub even if you’re thinking “who is Milana Vayntrub?” She is the woman-girl-lady of indeterminate age from the AT&T ads and when you see her here she feels at least as famous as your average sitcom star, bringing the same quirky energy from the commercials to her character here.

Vayntrub plays Cecily, the mailwoman in Beaverfield, who shows around Finn Wheeler (Richardson), the new forest ranger in what turns out to be a pretty strange small town. A man named Sam Parker (Wayne Duvall) has pitted neighbor against neighbor, husband against wife, with his offers to buy people’s land to bring his pipeline through. Cecily also fills Finn in on assorted hot Beaverfield goss — who left who for whom, who had an affair with whom and who is just a straight up weirdo.

With a big storm approaching, the town is suddenly shaken by two startling, maybe-or-maybe-not connected events: a woman’s small dog is eaten while she lets him out on a leash, the townsfolks’ generators are slashed and damaged. Add to this the dead body that Finn finds and soon everybody is holed up in Jeanine’s (Catherine Curtin) inn, trying to figure out whether the danger is outside or inside.

As the title suggests, “werewolves” soon become the most considered suspect — even if there are plenty of other people with motive for Muhr-Der and also, really, werewolves? It’s a fun little blend of locked room murder mystery and possibly-creature horror and the movie seems to play the tone just right — jokey but not aggressively so and with characters who are wacky but not insufferable. I guess you could call this movie (which is apparently based on a video game) horror but I feel like it is far more a light (well, light with some gruesome injury and death), fun comedy. B Available for rent.

Space Jam: A New Legacy

Space Jam: A New Legacy (PG)

LeBron James joins the Looney Tunes on the animated basketball court in Space Jam: A New Legacy, a pretty impressive flex by Warner Bros.

More than anything else, this movie seems crafted to remind you of all the properties under the Warner Brothers umbrella — Harry Potter, the DC superheroes, Game of Thrones, The Wizard of Oz, the Matrix movies. It’s like Warner Bros. was like “what can we do to convince people Disney doesn’t own everything?”

I should admit up front that I don’t think I’ve ever seen 1996’s Space Jam. It’s not like there’s some overarching mythology that I’m not able to plug in to but if there is some kind of nostalgia factor, I’m not going to hear the sounds at that particular frequency. (On the flip side, this movie also isn’t going to destroy my childhood memories or anything. I suppose I can catch up if I want as the original Space Jam is available on HBO Max.)

Human LeBron James lives in live-action Los Angeles with what Wikipedia calls a fictionalized version of his real family: wife Kamiyah (Sonequa Martin-Green), young daughter Xosha (Harper Lee Alexander), oldest teen basketball-star son Darius (Ceyair J. Wright) and younger teen “basketball, meh” son Dom (Cedric Joe). Dom’s thing isn’t real-world basketball but a basketball themed video game he’s constructing. Despite the impressive graphics and potential profitability of the game, LeBron just sees it as a distraction from Dom buckling down to really work on his basketball skills. Why can’t you appreciate me for me, says Dom, echoing every movie kid ever.

As if to underline just how profitable Dom’s skills could be, LeBron and son go to the Warner Bros. lot to see a presentation for Warner 3000, a plan by Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle), a try-hard attention-seeking algorithm/artificial intelligence/sentient digital being that’s making content for Warner Bros.

Al demonstrates how he can put a computer-generated version of animated LeBron in a variety of Warner Bros. intellectual properties, thus making money for everybody without LeBron ever having to physically step on set. Dom is impressed by all the tech but LeBron says hard pass to this plan that he thinks will just pull his attention away from basketball.

Because Al is very upset that nobody recognizes his contributions and hurt that LeBron made fun of his Warner 3000, he sucks Dom and LeBron into the, uhm, digital “serververse.” He tells LeBron that if he’s so keen to focus on basketball now he can — the catch being that if he doesn’t win an in-the-digital-world game against Al’s team (crafted from Dom’s game with versions of current NBA/WNBA players) he and Dom will never get out of the Warnerverse.

When Al sends LeBron off to gather his team, a now animated LeBron winds up in Tune world, where he meets Bugs Bunny (voice by Jeff Bergman). Bugs tells him that Al convinced the other Tunes to scatter to other Warner worlds and thus do Bugs and LeBron set out to find Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote and the rest to fill up the Tune Squad and take on Al’s Goon Squad.

Just in case you needed another swing through Warner’s content offerings.

Do your kids like basketball? Do they like the Looney Tunes or cartoons in general? They will probably at least tolerate A New Legacy. I kind of feel like “parents will be familiar with it, kids will at least tolerate it” and “we can pull out all of our recognizable properties” are the point and driving purpose of this movie. A summer film with this mix of marketability would probably always do well but seems like it has particular potential now, with family movies being some of the most successful sustained hits of the pandemic era (it won its first weekend in theaters, making a little less than $32 million, according to IndieWire).

If it sounds like I’m talking about this movie solely as a product it’s because it feels very much like a product. Not a bad product; A New Legacy feels like the fast-food chicken sandwich combo meal with movie tie-in bag and collectible toy that can nonetheless really hit the spot sometimes. But there’s nothing deeper there. LeBron James is, well, not an actor but he’s plenty affable and he does what the story needs him to do. The movie doesn’t do anything particularly clever with its tooniness (though there are the occasional good jokes, such as when one of the toons reminds LeBron that they’re not called the “Fundamentals Tunes” when he tells them not to do anything looney out on the court).

Space Jam: A New Legacy doesn’t feel like a classic in the making but as someone always on the lookout for “mostly attention-holding and not inappropriate for kids” entertainment (with some general messaging about trying and being yourself) this meets that standard. C+

Rated PG for some cartoon violence and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Malcolm D. Lee with a screenplay by Juel Taylor & Tony Rettenmaier & Keenan Coogler & Terence Nance and Jesse Gordon and Celeste Ballard, Space Jam: A New Legacy is an hour and 55 minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. It is available on HBO Max and in theaters.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (PG-13)

People you probably remember as “oh yeah, that girl” and “right, that guy” return for another bout of puzzle-solving and death in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, a sequel to the 2019 movie.

That fact right there might be the most shocking thing about this movie: its preceding entry was released in January 2019. That’s a mere two and a half years ago but also, like, easily a decade or two ago in terms of how far it feels from now and how much I even remember January 2019. This movie seems to know this and shows you clips of the first movie with some voiceover that basically gives you the gist: This escape room puzzle competition is actually To The Death with nameless rich people out there in the world watching and betting on the hapless “players.” Someone survives sometimes, I guess, and in one of the games (the one we in the audience saw in 2019) two people survived: Ben (Logan Miller) and Zoey (Taylor Russell), who was smart enough to kind of break through the game and save Ben from a murderous game master.

After they escaped they couldn’t get anyone to believe their story that a company called Minos was killing people for entertainment, but Zoey is still determined to find evidence that will bring that company down. She found a clue leading to New York City and eventually worked up the nerve to go there with Ben. (This is more or less where the first movie ended, with the pair planning to go to New York. In this movie, they make the trip.)

While investigating, they wind up in a subway car, just a totally normal mostly empty subway car with a few similarly aged people, all of whom seem to be sporting some kind of scar or visible sign of a past trauma. When that subway car comes loose from the rest of the train and goes hurtling toward an empty stretch of track, Zoey, Ben and four people (Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Carlito Olivero), who hopefully are paid up on their life insurance, pretty quickly figure out that they have all experienced a Minos game before and are now in some kind of “tournament of champions,” as one person correctly guesses/states the movie’s title. Since they all know how the game is played, they quickly get to work trying to figure out how to not die but this game is deadlier than their first outing. I think, or maybe they’re just more freaked out from the jump so it seems more intense. It also feels snappier than I remember, which I appreciate.

So, do you personally need to know the mythology of Minos and the game or can you just live in the moment? If, like Zoey, you want to know who is behind this and bring the whole system down and make them pay and yada yada yada, this is probably not your movie, in that “yada yada yada” seems to be the overall approach to the grand story here. If you can just be in the moment of each puzzle room and ride the rollercoaster that is spotting the clues and figuring out how that particular room is likely to kill one of the people who is left (and then you get the fun of guessing who that is going to be), then this movie is fine. Not thrill-a-minute but not boring, not smart but not too dumb and with a kind of silly cleverness. It’s fine, it’s adequate, it meets the basic requirements of entertainment in that you can watch it and be distracted from your immediate surroundings.

There’s nothing here that in the slightest reaches out to anybody not already inclined to go see this second of what I suspect will be at least three movies but I feel like if you liked the first Escape Room movie enough (enough to say remember that there was a first Escape Room and basically what it was about without having to look up details) this won’t disappoint you. C+

Rated PG-13 for violence, terror/peril and strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Adam Robitel with a screenplay by Will Honley and Maria Melnik & Daniel Tuck and Oren Uziel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is an hour and 28 minutes long and is distributed by Columbia Pictures. It is in theaters.

Pig (R)

Nicholas Cage wants his pig back in Pig, a movie whose basic description does not match its surprising amount of grace.

Rob (Cage) lives somewhere in the woods of Oregon, hunting truffles for a living but otherwise shutting out the rest of the world. His hunting partner is a pig who is clearly not just a working animal but his one living source of emotional connection. When two people break into his cabin, beating him and stealing his pig, the first thing Rob does when he wakes up is to start searching.

Because a busted old truck can’t take him much beyond his own property — and probably because he wants to start his search with the one other human he sees regularly — Rob calls Amir (Alex Wolff), the guy who buys his truffles. After some searching around his rural area, Rob gets a clue — the guy his pig was sold to was “from the city.” Though Amir thinks that’s not nearly enough information to go on, Rob gets Amir to drive him to Portland to search for his beloved pig.

I’ve seen at least one headline that called this movie “John Wick with a pig” and while that’s not untrue in terms of some of the themes and there are some similarities to the basic details of the plot, the movie I thought of most while watching this was First Cow. Something about the relationships between people and animals, the Pacific Northwest setting and the way food is a source of comfort, memory and commerce kept bringing me back to First Cow. That and something in the way the movie can be mournful but dryly funny, grimy (both visually and in tone) but also full of grace (again, both visually and in the way it displays people’s core emotions).

While we get a few clues about Rob pre-pignapping, it’s when Rob and Amir get to Portland that we learn Rob has A Past. I like how the movie unfolds this information — which is why I’m not getting more into it — and what the movie chooses to tell us about Rob. In the end, we don’t know his whole biography, but we do get to what kind of person Rob is. And, as much as I credit the script for this, Cage deserves a lot of the credit as well. This is a restrained but rich performance from him.

Pig has that satisfying feel of a really good short story — sure, you don’t get every answer but you get a thoroughly engrossing experience with a fully realized world and set of characters. A

Rated R for language and some violence, according to MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, Pig is an hour and 32 minutes long and distributed by Neon. It is in theaters.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (R)

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is probably well titled in that it is “a” documentary, not necessarily a definitive documentary, about the late chef turned author turned TV personality.

Though, “TV personality” doesn’t seem exactly right for Bourdain or for the legacy of his TV shows. Some of the people here argue that his shows, which changed titles and channels and eventually became Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on CNN, are doing journalism, or at least a kind of journalism. And, they say, the more he traveled, the less they were about food and the more they became about people and even the impact that traveling to new places and meeting new people has on the traveler. This feels true. I watched Bourdain’s shows on and off over the years but the ones I saw most frequently and that really stick with me are Parts Unknown, particularly the last four or so seasons, which really seemed to capture the mood of the world at the time in addition to talking about food. (All 12 seasons are available on HBO Max, which is one of the producers of this film. The show before that, No Reservations, appears to be available on Discovery+.)

Here, we get something like a biography of Bourdain, focusing on the period starting in his early 40s, when he was a working chef at Les Halles in New York City, through his fame as an author and then as the host of TV shows. The shows started as, roughly, food-themed travel but morphed into something that captured the “be a traveler, not a tourist” saying. In addition to his career (though not all of his career; I recall some Top Chef years that aren’t mentioned here) we get a look at his personal life. We see the toll the course of his career takes on two marriages, his desire to be a good father after having a daughter late in life, his love for/obsession with travel, the lingering effects of his addiction to heroin and his general life outlook that is frequently described by friends and coworkers as “dark.”

The movie does a good job showing how Bourdain found his groove as a host of his shows, how it brought out his voice and how he was able to mold the shows into something more complex than food tourism. Because this movie is so focused on his TV career, we get a lot of what went in to developing these shows and I always enjoy this kind of processy element. Bourdain comes off as a kind of artist — largely an artist of things (food, cable TV shows) that exist in the moment.

This movie definitely has a point of view. The people interviewed here are, in addition to friends, largely people connected with the production of his shows. Asia Argento, whom he had been dating at the time of his death by suicide in 2018, doesn’t give an interview and it’s been reported (all over the place but I read it in Vulture) that this was a choice that the director made. This wouldn’t matter so much except that Bourdain’s TV coworkers who speak here do not seem to like Argento and did not enjoy working with her around. The crew is self-aware enough that one of the directors realizes what he’s saying comes off as a kind of blame that is maybe not fair, but everything about Argento here is just odd in its presentation. Like elements of Bourdain’s life, it’s a situation for which there is no easy solution. It would have been odd not to mention her; it would have been odd to make the movie more about her.

As has also been widely reported, the movie uses some deepfake vocal effects to have Bourdain’s voice say things he wrote but which there is no recording of him saying out loud. This is an odd choice. Bourdain has such a distinctive writerly voice, as is evidenced by an instance of someone reading a note from him, that we don’t need some simulacrum of his voice saying the words for us to know they’re from him.

These things get in the way of what is often a funny and puffery-eschewing documentary that calls nonsense on some of the “foodie bad boy” stuff and also offers an interesting examination of his work.

The documentary isn’t perfect but I suppose that fits — Bourdain wasn’t perfect. And there’s something very affecting about the way the movie talks about his death and his mental health and how his friends and longtime coworkers wrestle with it.

Ultimately, the movie made me want to revisit Bourdain’s work, maybe check out some of the books I haven’t read over the years. He was a massive talent and the movie offers a bittersweet reminder of this. B+

Rated R for language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Morgan Neville, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is an hour and 59 minutes long and distributed by Focus Features. It is currently in theaters and, according to a July 18 story on The Hollywood Reporter website, it will be available on VOD in a few weeks and later be broadcast on CNN and stream on HBO Max.

Featured photo: Space Jam: A New Legacy

FILM

Venues

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester;
151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua;
150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square
24 Calef Highway, Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• Hotel Transylvania (PG, 2012) a “Little Lunch Date” screening at Chunky’s in Manchester, Nashua & Pelham on Wednesday, July 21, at 11:30 a.m. Reserve tickets in advance with $5 food vouchers. The screening is kid-friendly, with lights dimmed slightly, according to the website.

• Grease(PG, 1978) a senior showing on Thursday, July 22, at 11:30 a.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester, Nashua and Pelham. Admission free but reserve tickets in advance with $5 food vouchers.

• 21+ Scratch Ticket Bingo on Thursday, July 22, at 7 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester and Nashua. Admission costs $10.

• The Sandlot 21+ trivia night at Chunky’s in Manchester on Thursday, July 22, at 7:30 p.m. Admission costs $5, which is a food voucher.

• Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain(R, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 12:30, 3:30 & 6:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres.

• Pig (R, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 12:30, 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.

• I Carry You With Me (R, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 4 & 7 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.

• Summer of Soul (PG-13, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 1 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.

• 21+ “Life’s a DRAG” Show on Saturday, July 24, at 9 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester. Tickets cost $25.

• Branded a Bandit (1924) andThe Iron Rider (1926) silent film Westerns with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, July 25, 2 p.m., at Wilton Town Hall Theatres. Screenings are free but a $10 donation per person is suggested.

• Jaws screening and kitchen takeover with Chef Keith Sarasin of The Farmers Dinner on Sunday, July 25, at 7 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester. The dinner costs $65 (plus tax and tip). Vegetarian option and a wine pairing option are also available. Buy tickets in advance online.

• The Goonies (PG, 1985) at the O’neil Cinema in Epping on Monday, July 26, and Wednesday, July 28, at 10 a.m. Tickets $2 for kids ages 11 and under and $3 for ages 13 and up. A $5 popcorn and drink combo is also for sale.

• High School Musical 2 (TV-G, 2007) screening on Wednesday, July 28, 7 p.m. at the Rex Theatre to benefit the Palace Youth Theatre. Tickets cost $12.

• Jaws 21+ trivia night at Chunky’s in Manchester on Thursday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m. Admission costs $5, which is a food voucher.

• Jungle Cruise (PG-13, 2021) a sensory friendly flix screening, with sound lowered and lights up, on Saturday, July 31, 10 a.m. at O’neil Cinema in Epping.

• The Wizard of Oz (1939) at the O’neil Cinema in Epping on Monday, Aug. 2, and Wednesday, Aug. 4, at 10 a.m. Tickets $2 for kids ages 11 and under and $3 for ages 13 and up. A $5 popcorn and drink combo is also for sale.

Noise, by Daniel Kahneman

Noise, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein (Little, Brown Spark, 398 pages)

Five years ago, writing in Harvard Business Review, the esteemed psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman joined with a few other enviably smart people to discuss the concept of noise: not the kind your neighbors make while you’re trying to sleep, but the kind that clouds judgments, sometimes to devastating effect.

This kind of noise, as Kahneman describes it, is the wide variance in outcomes that we might think should be similar but instead are all over the map. One of the most obvious examples of this is in criminal justice, where one person might get a 20-year sentence for a crime, while another gets five years and community service. That makes the criminal justice system particularly noisy, in Kahneman terms.

But even if you don’t plan on going to jail, noise in human judgment probably affects you, as people such as doctors and loan officers also have wide discretion in their decisions. It’s not just unusual — it’s unnervingly common— for physicians to offer different diagnoses a few weeks apart when researchers present them with the exact same case.

And completely unrelated things such as whether people have eaten recently and whether their sports team won over the weekend can affect the decisions they make.

It’s an important subject and one worthy of consideration, more so if you’re in a noisy profession or at the mercy of one. And so fans of Kahneman, whose 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow was universally lauded, might be excited to delve into his latest, Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment, written with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein. Unfortunately, most of us would be better off just reading the Harvard Business Review article from 2016, which lays out the principles of noise without causing the reader unnecessary pain.

Noise is a scholarly book written for a scholarly audience that is at the forefront of the literary conversation only because Thinking, Fast and Slow was so well-received. Had this manuscript fallen into the hands of a publisher who knew nothing of the authors or their past credits, it would have been cut in half or, equally likely, still languish in the slush pile.

To their credit, the authors did try to simplify their subject for a mass audience. Or at least one of them did. You never know, with three authors, who is writing at any given point, and Noise is erratic in its understandability. You might say the book itself is noisy.

Some chapters read like AP psychology, others like an Ivy League dissertation. (Example: “You may have noticed that the decomposition of system noise into level noise and pattern noise follows the same logic as the error equation in the previous chapter, which decomposed error into bias and noise.”) Not that they didn’t give us warning. In the opening to the book, the authors suggest some readers might want to skip the first four parts of the book (there are six) and go straight to Part 5, essentially skipping half the book.

But people who do that will miss some of the book’s interesting content, including how the free-throw averages of NBA players have the wide variability of noise despite the hoop always being 10 feet away and the ball always weighing 22 ounces. That’s because the players are susceptible to the same lottery-like forces that we are in our daily lives. We are not the same people that we were 10 years ago, or even 10 minutes ago, because of variables such as mood, stress and fatigue. So decisions in ordinary life can be noisy as well, although they can rarely be documented as such.

So what to do about this problem? Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein have some solutions. One is to adopt the social-science concept known as the “wisdom of crowds.” Researchers have shown that while individuals may not be great at guessing things, whether the number of gumballs in a glass bowl or the number of airports in the U.S., as a group we come close, when researchers combine individual guesses into an average or mean. Taking the average of four independent judgments can reduce noise by half, the authors write.

Outside a social-science lab, the best way to leverage this finding in our daily life is to get other people’s opinions (independent ones, not people with the proverbial dog in the fight) and make a decision that best represents the mean. If you don’t have time or inclination to consult others, social science has another solution: create an “inner crowd” by coming up with your own best guess, and then basically challenging your own decision: Assume your first decision is wrong and consider why. Then make a different decision, based on these reasons. Often, the best decision will lie in the space between your first and second choices.

That’s one strategy in creating a personal form of “decision hygiene,” which the authors suggest. But they write about a nebulous topic and concede that it’s nearly impossible to know how good decision hygiene helps. “Correcting a well-identified bias may at least give you a tangible sense of achieving something. But the procedures that reduce noise will not. They will, statistically, prevent many errors. Yet you will never know which errors. Noise is an invisible enemy, and preventing the assault of an invisible enemy can yield only an invisible victory.”

Like Kahneman’s previous work, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 2002, the theories put forth in Noise will be considered groundbreaking and this book will likely win awards that have nothing to do with its readability. Outside the academy, it’s a hard row to hoe, but there’s value in skimming. C

Book Notes

The 2020 Olympic Games, postponed because of the pandemic, kick off this weekend, but don’t feel too sorry for the athletes competing a year late and without spectators.

Things could be worse, and in fact have been, as you will learn in Total Olympics by Jeremy Fuchs (Workman, 336 pages), who promises to reveal “every obscure, hilarious, dramatic and inspiring tale worth knowing.”

The worst in recent memory has to be the 1972 Olympics, the year of the Munich massacre. But in terms of sheer hassle and inconvenience for the athletes, consider 1948, when London finally got around to holding the 1944 games (canceled because of the war). The city was so spent and countries were so broke that this was dubbed the “Austerity Games” with athletes making their own uniforms and bringing their own food. But they pulled it off and let it be known that a Dutch mother of two won four gold medals in track and field and became known internationally as “the Flying Housewife.” It looks to be an entertaining read between commercials.

For a narrower look, specific to track-and-field athletes, check out The Fastest Men on Earth by Neil Duncanson (Welbeck, 384 pages). It’s a new paperback that tells the stories of 25 Olympic sprinters, including superstar Usain Bolt.

Also worth a look: Olympic Pride, American Prejudice by Deborah Riley Draper and Travis Thrasher (Atria, 400 pages), billed as “the untold story of 18 African Americans who defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.” The hardcover edition came out last year; a paperback will be issued in September.

And for those of you with zero interest in the Olympics, celebrated science writer Sam Kean has a new book out this month. The Icepick Surgeon (Little, Brown and Co., 369 pages) is an entertaining, if deeply disturbing, look at rogue scientists throughout the ages. An introductory quote by Dr. Thomas Rivers sets it up nicely: “All I can say is, it’s against the law to do many things, but the law winks when a reputable man wants to do a scientific experiment.”

Books

Author events

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents Count the Ways. Toadstool Bookstore, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Sat., July 24, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 924-3543.

• GIGI GEORGES Author presents Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America. Toadstool Bookstore, Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St., Route 101A, Nashua. Sat., July 24, 2 to 4 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JESS KIMBALL Author presents My Pseudo-College Experience. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., July 27, 6 to 7 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• CATHLEEN ELLE Author presents Shattered Together. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Thurs., July 29, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail slamfreeordie@gmail.com or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

Featured photo: Noise.

Album Reviews 21/07/22

Simon Moullier Trio, Countdown (Fresh Sound New Talent Records)

Set of recitations of jazz classics from one of the hottest vibraphonists around, whether or not there’s supposed to be such a thing. To laypeople that means xylophone, but there actually is a difference: the bars of a xylophone are made of wood, whereas a vibraphone uses aluminum bars. You’re probably assuming these are old people playing this stuff, but nope, they look like any trio of twee nerds you’d immediately picture, which means that the vibes are still alive whether you want them or not. As any snobby jazzophile knows by now, my only go-to reference for vibes is Lionel Hampton, but I do like jazz classics (Coltrane’s “Nature Boy” and two Monk songs are here), which these guys treat in fine style. The trio thrums along agreeably, not trying anything funny; the effect is hypnotic, and despite the all-acoustic instrumentation, it does feel electronic. Best bit: Someone (I assume Moullier) often absently scats accompaniment with his voice in very sedating fashion (Charlie Parker’s “The Song Is You” most prominently). A — Eric W. Saeger

Falkner Evans, Invisible Words (Consolidated Artists Records)

Solo outing from the New York City-based jazz pianist, formerly of the Western swing band Asleep At The Wheel and a third cousin to author William Faulkner. The lonely zen of even being involved in the jazz world in the first place is distilled to its very essence here; the record is wholly dedicated to Evans’ wife, Linda, who died by suicide last year. Having been in a relationship for 16 years now, this isn’t pleasant for me to cover; I can vividly imagine what it was like for Evans in the aftermath, fleeing the couple’s Greenwich Village flat to re-gather his life at a relative’s house in Auburn, Mass. He might not have touched a piano again to date, but the relative had a beater in the basement, and suddenly there were three songs, and then a personal covenant, a record he had to complete. Needless to say, gentle, deeply thoughtful soliloquies comprise this album, capturing times spent together at their favorite library; etchings of her very image in sound. God, life is short, isn’t it? A+

PLAYLIST

• The July 23 new-CD-release day approacheth, and with it will come albums, one or two of which are made by artists you actually care about, while the rest will come from bands and singers whom you hope get eaten by Godzilla. I am in that same boat with you, praying for Godzilla, and meanwhile practicing my medieval-knight-speak by using words like “approacheth,” because I figure hey, if ’90s music can make a comeback, so can talking like King Arthur, right? OK, kids, let’s have you all sit down with your Archer lunch boxes and Coco Puffs-flavored vape-pens and have a look at this week’s reading of the cultural obituary column, which we’ll begin with a puzzled sideways glance at Downhill From Everywhere, the new album from ancient arena-pop artifact Jackson Browne! You of course know Browne from giant dentist-office hits like “Runnin’ On Empty,” “Rock Me On The Water,” and the absolutely detestable “Doctor My Eyes,” which is usually only heard at children’s dentist’s offices, because a 1997 Harvard study proved that the song’s sleepy, astonishingly unmelodic refrain was shown to coax 5-year-olds into abandoning any notion of escaping the waiting room and running away to become train-robbers. Like so many other hyper-privileged rock stars, Browne is a former Los Angeles Father of the Year, having dumped his second wife for Daryl Hannah, who once played a one-eyed psychopath in a movie that takes six hours to watch. But what of Downhill From Everywhere? I don’t know, but the title track has music on it, a mixture of Rolling Stones and Steely Dan, with lyrics that are basically a checklist of things Rob Reiner tweets to his parasocial public, such as that we need oceans for some reason and all that stuff. It’s totally woke, guys, it really is.

• Mega Bog is Erin Birgy, a Pacific Northwest avant-pop chick who’s been compared to Bowie, Tim Buckley, Sea And Cake, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and a few dozen others. Not sure why she isn’t also compared to Ludwig von Beethoven and whatever, mallard duck calls, you know, anything that makes sounds, but that’s what happens when music critics have no idea what they’re doing and resort to babbling incoherent, obfuscatory crazyspeak, all just so that readers will think they’re in good hands. Whatever, let’s go see if “Station To Station,” the single from her new album, Life and Another, is awesome or awful. Huh, it’s a formula that involves Kate Bush, ’90s-Nintendo-techno and trip-hop, I guess. It sort of — OK, it sucks, is what it does. Anyhow.

• Everyone gather around, it’s mega-old folk-rock mollusk David Crosby. For Free is his new album, and I think everyone reading this should help make the album’s title come true by not buying it and allowing the “record company” to toss the 10 copies they actually manufactured into the dumpster (no way am I previewing any of those dumb songs, so don’t give me those droopy doggie eyes. Nuh uh.).

• Our parting shot this week is California skate-punk band Descendents, with 9th & Walnut, their eighth full-length. “Nightage” is a fine-enough Ramones-style song. Sorry, what? Yes, it took them 50 years to release eight albums. Ahem.

Retro Playlist

Ten years ago this week, room-temperature-IQ Wilco-wannabe TV-dramedy-backgrounders Fountains of Wayne release their fifth nice obedient album Sky Full of Holes. Since you forgot about it three seconds after you read it, I’ll remind you that I said the single “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart,” “is a typical example of this easily forgotten outfit’s nonsense, because it sounds like a few extras from Scrubs playing Rock Band to an old Oasis B-side.” Mind you, that was my trying to be as kind as possible, so keep that in mind if you’re going to drag me on social media.

Wait, I take that back; I’m keen on any reason for quitting social media forever and communicating by fax, so do have at it.

But that album wasn’t the big news that week. There were two feature reviews, the first being Days To Recall, from Justin Hines, who was at the time a staple on PBS pledge drives. He was born with Larsen Syndrome, and he’s still around, making music that’s “honky-soulful in the manner of Amos Lee or Jeff Buckley,” his voice no more technically remarkable than your average American Idol fifth runner-up, but he’s pretty special when he rocks out with his “obedient, gospel-tinged blues-rock.”

The other marquee contestant was Australian singer Abbe May, whose Design Desire LP didn’t fare so well. Falsely “touted this as a White Stripes-style blues-rock assault,” it probably would have rated a lot higher if the engineer hadn’t given the impression that he’d just “woken up from an all-nighter with Salem.” It received a rare C+ grade from me (I rarely ever rate things that low, because my mission isn’t to destroy struggling artists), mostly because the reverb on her voice sounded absolutely awful.

So take note, local bands, either produce your records yourself or hire an engineer who isn’t a complete twit.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Kings of wine

Comparing two red wines from Tuscany

“Montepulciano of every wine is king,” said the founder of modern experimental biology, Francesco Redi, in 1685, after tasting 500 types of wines. You may remember from high school biology that Redi, the Italian physician, demonstrated that maggots resulted not from spontaneous generation but from eggs laid by flies. Perhaps as important to Redi’s celebrity as a scientist is his judgment of wine. A native of Tuscany, and later residing in Florence, where his most notable scientific achievements were made, Redi had access to the same great wines from Tuscany that we enjoy today.

The sangiovese grape is the varietal that goes into the making of fine classic Chiantis, brunello di Montalcino, and vino nobile di Montepulciano. (Brunello is the alias given to the sangiovese grape.) The sangiovese grape is grown throughout much of Italy, with an estimated 250,000 acres and more planted to it. However, when planted in the southern region of Tuscany, the grape shines to produce a wine that is ready to drink early but becomes full-bodied after cellar aging.

Our first wine, Cantina Del Redi 2015 Toscana Sangiovese Pleos (originally priced at the New Hampshire State Liquor & Wine Outlets at $42.99, reduced to $20.99), is from a winery in the town of Montepulciano, 25 miles southeast of Sienna. As the label states, the wine is made from 100 percent sangiovese grapes. The alcohol content is 14 percent. The Pleos, as described on the website, “is born of the need to bring to your tables all the taste of the purest and most fresh sangiovese of our lands. It wants to be a fun wine, with scents of purple and crispy black cherry. Light but rich in history.” This vintage was awarded a score of 91 points by James Suckling, former Senior Editor and European Bureau Chief of Wine Spectator and regarded as one of the most influential wine critics. The color is intense with a slight burnt sienna red, in the depth of the glass thinning to an orange rim. It holds up to the website’s suggestion of rich dark cherry, both to the nose and to the tongue with some added spice, along with a little chewiness, ending in a long, dry, slightly acidic finish. This wine is not a sipping wine but needs to be paired to food. It can be enjoyed with white- or red-sauced pasta, marinated beef, or Mexican dishes. As the label states, this is a rosso from Montepulciano, and as such has an aging requirement of only six months in oak (as compared to the minimum of two years for our next wine); however, this wine is a great bargain and can be enjoyed for another five years, if cellared.

Our second wine, Lunadoro 2015 Vino Nobile Di Montepulciano (originally priced at the New Hampshire State Liquor & Wine Outlets at $44.99, reduced to $18.99), is sometimes called the big brother to the rosso. Also made from sangiovese grapes, it is aged for a minimum of 24 months in oak barrels, not so much to add flavor as for the slow maturation the barrels provide. The barrels are larger than traditional barrique and thus have less surface area in relation to volume, to avoid the vanilla or toast notes found in wine. While not enjoying the same cache as the Brunello noted above, it does carry the moniker of “nobile,” as the wine was once the wine of popes and nobles. After a short decline of quality in the mid-20th century, it has rebounded as the lesser grapes of this region are now slated for the rosso, sampled above, improving the quality and status of the vino nobile.

The color is maroon red, and will take on a subtle brick orange tint as it ages. To the nose it also has cherry notes with some plum, generated by the aging. To the tongue, the cherry stays on with a light tannic leather finish. Because of the aging, and its acidity, it is a wine suitable for cellaring, as it can improve with a decade or even two in your wine cellar. This “big brother of the two” can be sipped, or thoroughly enjoyed with a grilled steak.

It was extremely interesting and informative to taste and compare these two wines, coming from the same hilltop town in the same region noted for its exceptional quality of red wine. It is well worth conducting your own test and comparing the two. Take the test!

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Rose N. Hibiscus

All flowers supposedly carry symbolic meanings, but some are more emotionally fraught than others.

When I was a child, my mother told me that our elderly neighbor was sick and that we should probably send her some flowers.

Me: “How about lilies? Those are pretty.”

Mom: “Honey, those represent Death.”

Me: “So, no?”

Even if you don’t buy into the whole symbolism of flowers thing, it still permeates our culture. If you showed up for a blind date and they brought you a dozen long-stemmed red roses, you’d start looking for escape routes.

My dad is a carnation man. Growing up, anybody, any occasion, I could pretty much expect him to give a bunch of red and white carnations. They lasted forever, smelled good and didn’t carry too many expectations. Me — I’m an alstroemeria guy. They are pretty, don’t make anybody nervous and are pretty much bullet-proof; stick them in some water, and they’ll outlast the sour cream in your refrigerator. The downside is that they don’t have much of a smell.

Why flowers smell so good is a bit of a mystery. I mean, we know why they smell good — to attract bees, hummingbirds and chorus girls — but nobody has ever been able to figure out how to breed reliably fragrant roses, for instance. The intersection of botany and human chemoreceptors is a complicated and mysterious dance.

Nowhere more so than in a cocktail.

Scientists estimate that somewhere around 80 percent of everything we eat is actually based on what it smells like. If you’re holding a shmancy party and want to serve a cheese board, experts will tell you to take the cheese out of the fridge an hour or so before you actually want to serve it, so that the volatile chemicals in the cheese loosen up and become easier to smell, and thus, taste. This is one of the reasons why so many cocktail recipes call for you to chill a cocktail so thoroughly — as your drink warms up, the flavor will evolve as the esters float up into the back of your palate.

That gets tricky, though, when you are basing your cocktail on floral smells. Rose water or lavender pull you into a dangerous standoff — too little, and your drink won’t taste like much of anything. One drop too much, and you’re dealing with the little decorative soaps in your grandmother’s bathroom.

This drink depends on that. Your first sip or two should be extremely cold. The taste should be crisp and a little gin-forward. As it warms up — and, not for nothin’ that’s why glasses have stems; to slow down the warming process — it will start to smell more perfumy and floral. The taste will match the color; it will start to taste pink.

Rose N. Hibiscus

2 ounces gin (For this, I used Collective Arts Rhubarb and Hibiscus Gin, which a friend who distributes gin in New Hampshire gave me, because it is gently hibiscus-y, but pretty much any gin will work, though it will add its own stamp onto the finished drink.)
1 ounce hibiscus syrup (see below)
1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/3 oz. amaretto
5 drops rose water

Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake until very cold.
Strain into a martini glass.

Why this strange combination works so well:

The botanical backnotes in the gin play well with the rose water. Roses play well with almonds — in this case, the amaretto. Almonds and lemons go together extremely well. Lemon, in its turn, is a classic pairing with gin. The hibiscus makes it pink. If you like your drink a little crisper, pour small amounts of it into your glass at a time, and drink it extremely cold. If you want a little more of the flowers, pour it all in one go and let the perfume develop as you drink it.

Much like carnations and alstroemeria, this is delicious to share with somebody without making anything weird between you. All it says is, “I like spending time with you.”

Hibiscus Syrup

5 ounces water
5 ounces sugar
1/3 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/3 ounce dried hibiscus blossoms

Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring often.
Let the simple syrup boil for 10 to 15 seconds to make certain the sugar is completely dissolved.
Remove from heat. Add lemon juice and hibiscus blossoms.
Cover and steep for 30 minutes.
Strain and bottle. Keep indefinitely in your refrigerator.

A Market in Manchester carries dried hibiscus and they can also be found online. Rose water is available in most supermarkets and can usually be found in the international foods aisle.

Featured photo: Rose N. Hibiscus. Photo by John Fladd.

Blueberry crisp bars

It’s berry season in New Hampshire, which means it’s time to get some fruit and start baking! Growing up with wild blueberries in my backyard, this fruit was always part of my summer. Blueberry muffins, pancakes and crisps were made regularly this time of year.

You might notice that I didn’t mention blueberry pies. There may have been one or two, but I am not a fan of pie. Call me odd, but I find pie crust to be boring. I would much rather enjoy my blueberries in a different format.

After years of making blueberry crisp, I decided to see if I could transform that recipe from a “serve it in a bowl” dessert to something that might need only a plate or napkin. Thus, I have this recipe for blueberry crisp bars.

These bars have that same sweet and crumbly topping of oats and brown sugar for the base as well. That means you’re getting two layers of oat-y goodness filled with sweet and jammy blueberries.

Two important notes on the ingredients for this recipe. The blueberries need to be fresh. If you use frozen, there will be extra liquid, which will make the bars soggy. Although the blueberries need to be fresh, the lemon juice can come out of the bottle. You need a little tartness but not a ton of flavor, so you can skip buying and juicing lemons.

Michele Pesula Kuegler has been thinking about food her entire life. Since 2007, the New Hampshire native has been sharing these food thoughts and recipes at her blog, Think Tasty. Visit thinktasty.com to find more of her recipes.

Blueberry crisp bars
Makes 16

2½ cups fresh blueberries
⅓ cup granulated sugar
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
½ Tablespoon lemon juice
1 cup all-purpose flour
⅔ cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
10 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
1¼ cups old-fashioned oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line an 8×8 pan with parchment paper, and coat with nonstick spray. Set aside.
Place the blueberries in a medium bowl.
Sprinkle the sugar and cornstarch over the blueberries; toss to coat.
Add lemon juice and stir to combine; set aside.
Combine the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.
Add the cubed butter to the flour mixture.
Use a pastry blender, two forks, or your fingers, and cut the butter into the mixture until it resembles small peas.
Add oatmeal to the flour mixture, and stir well to combine.
Press approximately 1¾ cups of the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan.
Spread the blueberry mixture on top of the crust.
Sprinkle remaining crust mixture evenly on top of the blueberries and press lightly.
Bake for 45 minutes uncovered.
Cover with foil and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes or until a knife in the center shows only blueberry juice and no raw dough.
Remove from the oven and cool on a baking rack..

Photo: Blueberry crisp bars. Courtesy photo.

Kayley Bowen

Kayley Bowen of Bedford is the owner of O’Regan Breads (oreganbreads@gmail.com, visit facebook.com/oreganbreads or follow on Instagram @backtothegrindstone), a homestead business she launched in March that offers various sourdough bread loaves, pancake mixes and other products using freshly milled grains. Bowen is also the assistant garden manager of the Educational Farm at Joppa Hill in Bedford, where she got her start baking bread loaves for their farmstand and where you can purchase them. She’ll also be at the Pelham Farmers Market, held outside the First Congregational Church of Pelham (3 Main St.) on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Aug. 21.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

Definitely my digital scale.

What would you have for your last meal?

A cheeseburger, probably medium rare, with Swiss, provolone and mozzarella cheese, mushrooms and lettuce.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

Blake’s [Creamery] in Manchester.

What celebrity would you like to see trying one of your breads?

Jennifer Aniston.

What is your favorite bread that you make?

The honey butter and oat sourdough. It’s a sweet bread, so you don’t even notice that it’s 45 percent whole grain. It’s just delicious.

What is the biggest food trend in New Hampshire right now?

Foraged foods are a big trend now. People want to know more about how to pick their food and how to get things like fiddleheads and ramps from farmers markets and farm stands.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

In the fall, I like squash soup. In the summer, I’d say a really good summer salad with olive oil and balsamic dressing.

Sourdough croutons
From the kitchen of Kayley Bowen of O’Regan Breads in Bedford

½ pound day-old sourdough bread, chopped into ½-inch pieces
½ cup olive oil
6 cloves or 1 head of garlic, minced
Fresh rosemary, thyme and oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium-low heat for two minutes, then add the minced garlic and herbs. Keep the olive oil mixture over medium-low heat for another three to five minutes, making sure the garlic doesn’t get brown. Drain the olive oil into a coffee mug or microwavable cup. Lay out the chunks of bread on a baking sheet lined with foil. When the oil has cooled, drizzle over the bread and use your hands to gently toss the chunks. Sprinkle salt and pepper over everything and toss again. Make sure all of the bread chunks are in a single layer on your pan. If they aren’t, you can split them up for two batches, but be sure not to put two trays in the oven at once. Place the tray on the top rack, close the oven and set it to 375 degrees. When the oven reaches 375, turn the heat down as low as it can go. Take out your croutons, toss them with a spatula or spoon and put them on the lowest rack. Leave the oven door ajar and wait for about five more minutes. You can always let them cool, taste test a few, then put them back on the top rack at 375 for a minute or so to get the edges even crunchier.

Featured photo: Kayley Bowen

The Weekly Dish 21/07/22

News from the local food scene

• Ripe and ready: It’speak blueberry pickingseason, and several local farms are continuing to welcome customers for pick-your-own blueberries. Most will produce blueberry varieties through July and into early to mid-August, depending on the weather conditions to come. Apple Hill Farm in Concord, for example, grows 15 blueberry varieties throughout the season and is open for picking six days a week, while in Strafford, the 7-acre Berrybogg Farm is now in its 45th season offering nine varieties of blueberries over a period of roughly six weeks. For a list of blueberry farms in southern New Hampshire offering pick-your-own, along with a few recipes using local blueberries, visit hippopress.com and scroll down to the July 15 issue’s E-Edition — the story begins on page 22, and the listings are on page 23.

• Barbecue and bluegrass: The Concord Coalition to End Homelessness will hold its picnic-style Bluegrass BBQ fundraiser at White Park (1 White St., Concord) on Saturday, July 24, from noon to 5 p.m. The event will feature a barbecue feast with multiple food items to choose from, as well as an afternoon of live music and plenty of outdoor space to bring your own chairs or blankets. Meal options range from $10 to $35 and will include a grilled hot dog with chips and a drink; a pulled pork sandwich meal with beans, coleslaw and pickled red onions; a “pit master special” with pulled pork, sausage, Texas-style brisket and sides; and a gourmet garden burger vegetarian meal. Donations are also being accepted, with proceeds benefiting the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness. The rain date will be July 25. Visit concordhomeless.org.

• Tastes of Haiti: Pre-orders are available now for the next monthly Haitian dinner from Ansanm, a series brought to you by owner and executive chef Chris Viaud of Greenleaf and Culture in Milford, along with his family. Viaud and his parents, siblings and wife all work together to create a menu of authentic Haitian dishes each month. This month’s items will include griot (marinated pork) and poule nan sós (stewed chicken in creole sauce), each available in servings of one, two or four, with sides of rice, plantains or pikliz, a spicy vegetable slaw of carrots, cabbage, onions and peppers. Other options are braised salmon, beef or mushroom and vegetable pate, pineapple upside down cake, and diri djon djon, a black mushroom rice dish popular in Haiti. Order now by visiting toasttab.com/greenleaf/v3. Pickups will be available at Greenleaf (54 Nashua St., Milford) on Sunday, July 25, beginning at 4 p.m.

• IPA adventure: The New Hampshire Brewers Association has teamed up with more than two dozen local craft breweries for a collaboration IPA release and beer trail, featuring new individual IPA recipes for beer lovers to check out now through the end of September. Release dates will vary by location but multiple Granite State communities are represented — participating breweries hail from Derry, Londonderry, Manchester, Nashua and across both the Seacoast and Monadnock regions of the state. Beer lovers who visit 18 or more breweries on the list will be entered for a chance to win a prize package. The full list can be viewed on the Brewers Association’s Facebook page @nhbrewers.

Month: July 2021