Year: 2024

Familia, by Lauren E. Rico

Familia, by Lauren E. Rico (Kensington, 368 pages)

I started reading Familia in a hotel room while waiting for my daughter to get ready to go to dinner – and promptly lost all desire to go out to dinner. (I mean, we went — she wasn’t about to buy “but I really like this book” as a reason not to).

Lauren E. Rico’s novel is a fast-paced story that covers a lot of bases: family, obviously, but also different cultures and how they form us, a bit of a mysterious crime, and coming to terms with a life that can change in so many significant and unexpected ways.

A DNA test brings together Gabriella and Isabella, the former young woman fully believing the results were a mistake and the latter having no doubt that they weren’t. Isabella, who has lived her whole life in Puerto Rico, used to have a sister, Marianna, and she disappeared when she was seven months old while in the care of their extremely inebriated father. Gabby, a magazine fact-checker who lives in New York City and was raised by now-deceased parents whom she loved deeply, does not believe it’s possible that the parents who raised her — Mack and Lucy — were not, perhaps, her birth parents.

Gabby embarks on a trip to Puerto Rico, for the sole purpose of writing a magazine story about what happens when DNA test results are wrong. She thinks it’s the perfect way to show her boss that she has talents beyond fact-checking and deserves a staff position as a writer.

It seemed a little unbelievable that Gabby is a fact checker — her job is literally to dig in and find facts — and yet she doesn’t make much of an effort to dig into the facts about her family history despite the DNA test results. I guess there’s that emotional component that would make it difficult to believe that your history is anything other than what you remember and what you’ve been made to believe.

As Gabby explains to Isabella, “For what you’re saying to be true, I’d have to believe Mack and Lucy would have — could have — literally stolen a baby off the street. … This isn’t about not being able to believe that I’m your sister. It’s about being able to believe that I’m not their daughter. And I just … I can’t.”

The story mainly alternates between Gabby’s and Isabella’s points of view, but there’s a whole cast of interesting characters, and Rico gives most of them at least one chapter. This means the story is tied together from all sorts of perspectives, from Alberto’s — the book opens with him, coming to on a street, baby missing — to the detectives’ on the missing-baby case. It was a really fun way to see the mystery unravel, because, of course, nearly everyone has a secret. The narrative also switches between now and “that day,” the day the baby disappeared, offering another compelling angle.

There’s the mystery, and then there’s the juxtaposition of two young women who were raised very differently and have different kinds of intelligence; Gabby is more book smart while Isabella is more street smart. Rico shows this subtly but effectively, in scenes like this one, from Isabella’s point of view, as the women walk through one of the shabbier areas of Puerto Rico.

“When Gabby takes out her phone to snap a picture, all she can see is the mural — a spray-paint reproduction of the Mona Lisa draped in a Puerto Rican flag. All I can see are the two guys standing just out of the frame, conducting a little street-side retail.”

There’s definitely a “wealthy girl from NYC vs. poor girl from San Juan” piece of the narrative, and while I personally didn’t feel like it was overdone, I think someone who is of Puerto Rican descent or is more familiar with Latino culture would likely read the representations of Puerto Rico a lot differently than I did. A lot of the descriptions shine a negative light on the people and places of Puerto Rico, mainly San Juan and la Perla, and I can’t pretend to know how accurate they are. The author does include a note at the beginning of the novel explaining her own family history and that she is trying to honor her heritage and the stories she heard from her Cuban grandfather and Puerto Rican grandmother, along with her extensive DNA connections to the island and her own experiences visiting there (which she acknowledges were from a tourist point of view).

Familia is a quick read that manages to be both fun and a bit dark, but it’s also meaningful and has a lot of heart. A-

Album Reviews 24/01/11

Nigel J. Anderson, Material Science (Redwave Recordings)

I literally had to weed through a few dozen emails from public relations people trying to push metal bands on me before I found this one, and I’m covering it simply because it’s not a metal album (trying to cut down here, folks, which is tough, because metal albums have been hitting this desk like tribbles during mating season). Having never heard of this U.K. techno DJ, I was delightedly surprised to hear a bunch of bright, bouncy but not smarmy attempts at upfitting traditional deep house; I honestly would have been all over this if it were still 2004 and I were looking for some drive-time euphoria, but either way it’s super nice. “Material Science” brings a faux-steel-drum sample to the percussive fore of its afterparty groove, and man, it really works. Unfortunately, “Going Home” follows in a more goth-industrial vein, at which point I sort of abandoned any hope that this would be the sharply focused genre exercise I’d anticipated, although the next track, “Octopus,” recalls Above & Beyond, which I’m always up for. Despite Anderson’s obvious case of ADD, I’m giving it high marks owing to the fact that all the tunes are on point. A

Nnenna Freelon and Pierce Freelon, AnceStars (Redwave Recordings)

One of the slings or arrows I suffer on a yearly basis comes around this time of year, when all the public relations goblins request that I vote for one of their artists in the next Grammy Awards, not that I’m part of the cabal who has any say in all that; if I indeed were some sort of cog in the Grammy machine, I probably wouldn’t vote for any modern artist, just 80-year-old Al Jolson compilation albums. But this one’s interesting at least, a mother-son duo who are up for the Best Children’s Album Grammy, so, just for the heck of it, I listened to it and am dutifully reporting and blah blah blah. Lyrically it’s based on “the spirit world,” i.e. ancestors, in particular Nnenna’s husband (and Pierce’s father) the late Phil Freelon, the architect of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History. The title track is a lilting/bouncing number combining Afrobeat with Spyro Gyra, a pleasant thing altogether. Most of the rest is hip-hop-tinged urbanity suitable for Sesame Street audiences or feel-good moments in general. A

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• OK, wake up, everyone, we are back to a somewhat normal-sized slate of stuff for our next general-issue CD release Friday, on Jan. 12! Look at this, though, sad-face emoji, there are no new albums made by artists and bands I can make fun of, no Neil Young album, no Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson album, not even an album from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which is weird, because they’ve been putting out new albums every two weeks for the last few years, I can’t believe this. So I am forced to do research and perform random acts of journalistic investigation for your entertainment, so why don’t we start with The Vaccines, whose new album, Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations, is fast approaching! Ack, this doesn’t bode well, fam, the aggregate Metacritic score is already 62 percent and the album isn’t even out yet, which means that a lot of people have either pirated it or they’re just trolls, so why don’t I go check out this album and make your minds up for you, that’d be great. The band is an indie band from West London in the U.K., and their hobbies include playing with other bands on stage. They’ve had guest spots with Lyle Preslar of Minor Threat, Ryan Jarman of the Cribs, members of Savages and Paul Thomson of Franz Ferdinand, and, wait, in 2013 they performed in Florida as John Fogerty’s backing band, making them honorary Creedence Clearwater Revival dudes or something! And yadda yadda, let’s go listen to “Love To Walk Away,” a song from this new album, and hey, wait a minute, I don’t mind this at all! It’s kind of no-wave-ish, in other words loud and dumb, bordering on bands like Black Lips or even Half Japanese as far as sloppy sound engineering. There’s on-the-phone patch on the vocals, too. It’s a winner, let’s go see if the next album will disappoint me, eh wot, chaps and chapettes?

• I always question the motives of bands that start out playing one genre of music and then move on to a totally different thing, like how Pantera started out as a Whitesnake band or whatever and then became Megadeth, or like how The Horrors made the greatest album of all time and then decided to become completely worthless overall, never forget! Bring Me the Horizon are another such — you know, thingamajig, like, they started out as a deathcore band and now they’re regarded as something completely different, sort of along the lines of Imagine Dragons and such. The band’s new album, POST HUMAN: NeX Gen, includes a song titled “Code Mistake” that’s sort of Imagine Dragons-like but there’s a lot of yelling and stomping, you know, like Slipknot, but less well-behaved. It’s OK I suppose.

• Marika Hackman is a British singer who’s put out two albums of cover songs, and when she’s not doing that she’s sounding a lot like a disaffected 1980s pop diva, for example on her biggest song, “I’m Not Where You Are” from 2019. Not saying it’s bad, but it’s a bit opportunistic if you ask me. Her new album, Big Sigh, drops this Friday, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it at the moment, but regardless, the new single, “Slime,” reminds me of M83 a bit, which is more relevant than refrying ’80s-pop, at least in my opinion; as always, your mileage may vary, a scenario that’s out of my control.

• Finally we have Kali Uchis, an American singer from a Colombian family. Orquídeas is her second Latin-language album and fourth one overall; it features the single “No Lay Hay,” a bubble-pop type thing with an understated deep-house vibe. I found it sublimely acceptable.

Rubber Ducky

On Jan. 10, 1992, the Greek container ship Ever Laurel ran into rough weather in the North Pacific, a couple of days out from Tacoma. At some point a stack of six shipping containers snapped its chains and plunged overboard into the Pacific Ocean.

This kind of accident isn’t common but it’s also not unheard of. On average around 1,500 shipping containers are lost at sea each year. This is a tiny percentage of the estimated 500 million containers in use, but also nothing to shrug at.

What made this particular accident noteworthy is that one of the containers was filled with 28,000 bath toys, including 7,200 yellow rubber duckies.

Over the next several years the toys were carried north by ocean currents, eventually traveling through the Northwest Passage north of Canada, and dispersed by other currents around the world. Even now some of these toys are still washing up in unexpected places. They have been found as far away as the United Kingdom, Australia and Chile. Now that there is less Arctic sea ice than ever, some plastic ducks, turtles and beavers are being released to a new generation of beach-combers.

As I’m sure you’re aware, National Rubber Ducky Day is this weekend. You are probably still in the process of getting rid of other holiday ornaments, and haven’t had time to shop for rubber ducks, but if you’re feeling a little spent, gray and empty with the start of a new year, it’s probably worth raising a glass to our plastic yellow friends and reflecting on the fact that things could always be worse. You could spend 30 years, bobbing and smiling, through Arctic Sea ice.

Rubber Ducky Cocktail

  • 1½ ounces Midori melon liqueur
  • 1½ ounces 99 Peaches peach schnapps
  • 2½ ounces fresh watermelon juice (see below)
  • ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

Open your laptop, and place it on the counter next to you.

Open YouTube, and search for Hampenberg DuckToy Vocal Club Mix.

Turn your volume up to an unconscionable level and press play. This will be the perfect background music for mixing this drink. You’re ready now.

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.

Shake enthusiastically.

Pour, including ice, into a rocks glass.

Sip, vibing seamlessly — or, if you are like me, shuffling awkwardly — to the rubber ducky club mix playing on your computer.

This is a shockingly fun cocktail. The melon juice and the melon liqueur obviously go well together. The peach schnapps provides a floral fruitiness. By itself watermelon juice is surprisingly flat, but the acid from a jolt of lime juice brings it to life. This doesn’t exactly taste like bubble gum, but it also doesn’t not taste like gum of some sort. At first glance this might seem flighty and low-octane — and that may be true of the Midori — but the 99 Peaches actually clocks in at 99 proof, so this is not a drink to take for granted. Like a rubber ducky lost at sea, it might take you to unexpected places.

Watermelon Juice

Buy a one-quart container of pre-cubed watermelon at your supermarket. You aren’t going to be laying this out on a fruit plate or pairing with a nice prosciutto, so it’s OK to cut a corner during this process.

Pour the contents of the container into your blender and blend thoroughly. If you notice a seed or two, don’t panic; your blender will take care of things. If you have an over-powered, overly enthusiastic blender like mine, he will probably look on any seeds as a challenge.

Using a fine-mesh strainer, strain off the watermelon pulp. Leave everything in the strainer for half an hour or so, to let the components say goodbye to each other.

This should net you about 12 ounces of juice. If you want to drink it as juice, add the juice of half a lime to de-flatten it (see above).

Featured photo: Rubber Ducky Cocktail. Photo by John Fladd.

In the kitchen with Cara Karpinski

When Cara Karpinski moved to New Hampshire in 2020, she discovered that her new job was no longer being offered due to the pandemic. Needing to find a new way to provide for her family, she realized her true passion was for dogs. Being a dog-mom of four, she decided to create Barkalicious, a gourmet preservative-free dog treat business made with eggs from her own chickens, with the belief that all dogs should to be “treat”ed with love.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

My must-have kitchen item is my KitchenAid mixer. I use it every day to combine my ingredients for the dog treats. I think it may be time to upgrade to a commercial version [of a] KitchenAid.

What is your favorite local eatery?

Currently, my favorite place for a romantic dinner is Buckley’s Great Steaks in Merrimack. For a more casual meal I enjoy the Coach Stop in Londonderry as well as Backyard Brewery on the Manchester/Londonderry line.

Name a celebrity you would like to see purchasing your dog treats.

It is hard to pick just one celebrity I would like to see purchase my dog treats, but the ones that come to mind are from HGTV. Tarek and Heather El Moussa from Flip or Flop, or Jonathan Knight from Farmhouse Fixer. I would say Taylor Swift, but I think she just has cats.

What is the most popular item on your menu?

Our most popular menu item is our bacon cheeseburger sticks. They are a little bit crunchier than our soft treats, but it has bacon on it, so how can it not be good!

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

The biggest food trend in New Hampshire right now is maybe pho. I had it for the first time a few weeks ago and it was fantastic. I am not really a hip [or] trendy foodie, but I do love all kinds of food.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

My favorite thing to cook at home is anything from scratch. I enjoy watching my family eat the meals I have prepared. It gives me great satisfaction when they love my hard work in the kitchen. The best meals I have made recently: beef stroganoff, chicken noodle soup and brisket.

Brisket
From the kitchen of Cara Karpinski

4-pound (or so) brisket
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, cut
1 onion, chopped
3 or 4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 or 3 boxes pre-made beef stock or broth
salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika

Season both sides of meat with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika. Heat canola oil in a pan and sear both sides of meat for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from the pan.
Add onions, mushrooms and garlic to pan and lower heat. Cook until onions are translucent.
Add ½ cup water to scrape any solids in the pan. Return the brisket to the pan.
Cover meat with beef broth and simmer. Cook until tender (at least 6 hours).
Remove brisket and let cool.
Slice against grain. (I use a meat slicer to get very thin slices of meat.) You can also cut by hand.
Let the liquid in the pan cool to about room temperature as well as the brisket. Once cooled, add the meat back into the pan with the liquid and put in the refrigerator overnight.
About 3 hours before you want to have dinner, put the pot with the liquid and brisket back onto the stove and slowly warm. This meal goes very well with homemade mashed potatoes and carrots

Featured photo: Katie Pope of Confections by Kate. Courtesy photo.

From her table to yours

Farmers market vendor opens shop selling meals and baked goods

While opening her own bakery wasn’t her original career plan, the universe had other ideas for Chelsea Annett, the owner of Table, a Concord bakery offering cookies, cakes, soups, chicken pot pie and more freshly made items made from locally grown ingredients.

“This business really chose me versus me choosing it,” she said. “It just felt like something [that] had to be pursued and brought to fruition.”

Annett’s journey with baking started as she learned more about the local food system and seasonal ingredients from farmers at farmers markets.

“I started developing relationships with the farmers there and being curious about the things that people were growing and making, and having conversations about how to use them in food and really just becoming curious on my own about what I could make with those things,” she said. “I think that [seasonal ingredients] are the most fresh, they have the most flavor, [and] I think that supporting our local farmers is critical to environmental protection and … the future of food.”

A natural caretaker and a self-taught baker and cook, Annett enjoyed cooking for her loved ones as a way to care for others and make them feel good. After experiencing burnout and going through major life changes, she left her 14-year career in special education to focus on bringing her passion for baking from her own table to those of others.

“It never really felt like it could fully take off as a career because I don’t have professional training, I didn’t go to culinary school, I taught myself how to do everything,” she said. “There was probably a little bit of imposter syndrome that I was dealing with thinking that I wasn’t good enough to make it into a career.”

She began in 2019 by selling products wholesale and at the Canterbury and then Concord farmers markets. For the past few years Annett would travel to a commercial kitchen in Derry to do her baking, as Concord’s homestead food licensing rules prevented her from selling food made in her own kitchen. After looking for her own space, she found her current location in Concord, which she started working out of in June and opened for retail in November, and where her client base continues to support her.

“I’m extremely grateful I have beautiful, loyal customers that have sort of been with me from the beginning,” Annett said. “They’ve been waiting and waiting for me to have a place … and they are great about telling their friends and bringing people in. I think I’m lucky that the product tends to speak for itself.”

Table
Where: 55 N. Main St., Suite B, Concord
Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
More info: tablenh.com

The Weekly Dish 24/01/11

News from the local food scene

• Cookie decorating: Decorate winter-themed cookies at Station 101 (193 Union Square, Milford) on Tuesday, Jan. 23, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. with Kate Saleau from Posy Cottage Cookies. For additional charge, Station 101 offers beer, beverages and snacks, and all necessary supplies will be provided for you to take home a box of six to seven cookies. Tickets are $70 and can be purchased on eventbrite.com.

• Willy Wonka wine dinner: Enjoy a four-course Willy Wonka-inspired dinner and wine pairing at LaBelle Winery’s (14 Route 111, Derry) Vineyard Ballroom on Saturday, Jan. 27, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tomato, basil and smoked Gouda bisque will be paired with a fizzy lifting drink for the first course, followed by baby green beans, shaved Brussels sprouts, roasted squash, cranberries, farro, herbs and honey rosemary balsamic for the second course with LaBelle Rose. The entree will include LaBelle Red Wine braised short ribs with whipped potato, roasted herbed carrots and demi glace paired with LaBelle Malbec, and blueberry crumble cheesecake with red wine blueberry jam and streusel crumble paired with blueberry pie martini for dessert. Tickets are $85 and can be purchased at labellewinery.com.

• 17th annual Chocolate Madness Wine Pairing Dinner: Zorvino Vineyards (226 Main St., Sandown) hosts its 17th annual Chocolate Madness Wine Pairing Dinner on Thursday, Feb. 1, starting at 6:30 p.m. with a cocktail hour and dinner at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $85 and can be purchased via eventbrite.

• Wines of Italy: From the Vine to Wine hosts The Wonderful Wines of Italy at Stroll Café & Wine Bar in Portsmouth (15 Portwalk Place) on Thursday, Feb. 1, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. led by wine expert Anne Arnold. Tickets range from $50 to $65 on eventbrite.

• Farm to table tasting: Enjoy a farm-to-table tasting hosted by Restoration Acres Farm at Black Swan Inn (354 W. Main St., Tilton) on Saturday, Feb. 3, from 4:30 to 8 p.m. featuring food from local farmers and artisans, wine and mead sampling from Hermit woods winery and live music by Audrey Drake. Tickets are $85 and can be purchased via eventbrite.

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