Author: John Fladd

A fall pudding

Traditionally the most fall-ish dish in New England was arguably this pudding. Over the past few decades it has slipped into obscurity, but it is warm and hearty and almost requires you to wear flannel. This recipe is adapted from a collection of holiday recipes that ran in the Boston Globe on Dec. 23, 1923.

  • 1 cup (156 g) yellow cornmeal
  • “A lump of butter the size of an egg” – let’s call it ¼ cup (½ stick)
  • “1 cup molasses” – Molasses was the inexpensive sweetener of choice in New England for generations. For modern tastes it is a little bitter. Let’s go half-and-half with molasses and maple syrup: ½ cup (170 g) molasses, and ½ cup (156 g) maple syrup.
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon each ground ginger and cinnamon – alternatively, 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 quart (4 cups/908 g) milk
  • 1/3 cup chopped, crystalized ginger (around 50 g)
  • Another 2 cups (454 g) cold milk
  • 1 cup (227 g) water

The original 1923 recipe recommends cooking everything on the stovetop, then baking it in a bean pot. If you cook it in an oven-proof pot, you can cook it, then move it to the oven. I like to use a 3-gallon soup pot with a tight-fitting lid.

Preheat your oven to 275°F — the 1923 recipe recommended a “slow oven.”

In your oven-proof pot, bring the quart of milk to a boil over medium heat.

Turn the heat down to medium-low, and whisk in the cornmeal, butter, molasses/maple syrup, egg, salt and spices. (If you’re worried about the egg cooking before you can get it mixed in properly, maybe stir it in with the molasses and syrup before you add them.) Whisk continuously until the mixture comes back to a boil and thickens up, then stir in the crystalized ginger pieces.

Mix the remaining milk and the water together, then gently pour them on top of the cornmeal mixture. If you pour it over the back of a spatula, it should go on top without splashing. Your goal here is to top the pudding with a layer of liquid.

Cover the pot with a lid, and transfer it to the oven. Bake it for four hours.

After the four hours are up, remove the pot from the oven, and set it aside to cool.

You can take the lid off and look inside if you want to, but be aware that at this point the pudding is the stuff of nightmares. A hundred years ago puddings were commonly made using a process called “wheying.” A pudding would be baked covered with a layer of milk — or even cream, if you were fancy. As it baked, the dairy fats and proteins would get absorbed into the main body of the pudding, leaving a layer of whey on top. It is supposed to be there. But to modern eyes it just looks wrong. It is better for your peace of mind not to look at it until the pudding has had a chance to meditate and self-actualize.

After half an hour or so, whisk the whey back into the pudding, then serve it warm, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Featured photo. Photo by John Fladd.

A twist on a famous drink, and games

Downtown Dirty Shirley Crawl brings book series to life

Alex Pellerin, the event coordinator for Bookery in Manchester, said that while it is perfectly possible to take part in Saturday’s Dirty Shirley Bar Crawl without knowing any of the cultural references behind it, there is an actual literary theme to the event.

“There is a really popular book series called Dungeon Crawler Carl,” Pellerin said. “It’s recently exploded in popularity. ln the books there’s a cat named Princess Donut who talks, and at [a bar called] the Desperado Club she finds out she really likes Dirty Shirley Temples [very similar to the popular non-alcoholic drink Shirley Temple, with grenadine and ginger ale, but with a vigorous slug of vodka]. She eventually gets cut off from them and can only have regular Shirley Temples.”

“So we are hosting this event in conjunction with [Granite State] Comicon,” Pellerin continued, “to give folks who are going to Comicon some things to do after the event. [Comicon] will end around 5 p.m. and we want to continue the celebration and community-building. We thought it would be fun to connect people to other businesses in the area while celebrating the book series and Comiccon. We’re [organizing] a Dirty Shirley Bar Crawl to find the best Shirley Temple in what we would call The Dungeon, but really on Elm Street.”

Each of the participating bars and restaurants will serve its take on a Shirley Temple, both “dirty” and traditional. Crawl participants will have the opportunity to vote for their favorites, and the bars will earn bragging rights.

Pellerin said the Dungeon Crawler Carl series is popular with readers of all ages and interests, and the Dirty Shirley Crawl will reflect that.

“It’s 100 percent inclusive,” she said, “whether you drink or not. And we know that doing a bar crawl isn’t everybody’s thing; [ Bookery] is going to actually be staying open later. Typically we’re only open till 7 p.m., but that night we’re going to be open until 9 p.m., and in the store from 5 to 9 p.m. we’ll be doing Dungeon Crawler Carl-themed activities, games, giveaways and raffles. We’ll have a bunch of fun Dungeon Crawler Carl merch for people to purchase too. So for anyone not interested in doing the Crawl there’s still stuff going on here they can participate in, or they could do both. We’re turning this whole place into a dungeon, which will be very, very exciting.”

“For instance,” Pellerin said, “we’ll have a High Rollers Roulette Wheel, which is a classic in the Desperado Club, where people can win different prizes — or maybe not win some prizes — based on what the wheel gives you. We’re going to have a photo booth, There will be some voting activities for readers’ favorite book, and we’ll build a ‘Mob’, which is like building monsters that people get to collaborate on. It’s going to be really fun. We’re really excited.”you’re satisfied, but there can always be a little bit more satisfaction.”

Dirty Shirley Bar Crawl
When: Saturday, Sept. 19, from 5 to 9 p.m.
Where: along Elm Street in downtown Manchester. A statement from Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) reads, “While we anticipate that most participants will visit locations individually, a larger group will depart from the bookstore at 6 p.m. following a specific route. Below is the complete list of participating bars, with the locations on the main group route being underlined/bolded.”
Diz’s
Stashbox
Without
The Shaskeen
Boards & Brews
Bad Brgr
Strange Brew
Thirsty Moose
Shoppers
Industry East
Hop Knot
Critical Mass Coffee
Manchester Distillery

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Good times at Glendi

Giant Greek food fest is a labor of love

Each fall St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Manchester hosts Glendi, a Greek food festival that has come to be one of the most important food events of the year for its fans. This year Glendi will start on Friday, Sept. 18, and run through Sunday, Sept. 20. This is the Festival’s 47th year.

George Skaperdas is Glendi’s director. “It is the biggest single fundraising event for St. George,” he said.

“Glendi means ‘good time,’ though there really isn’t an English word that translates the word,” Skaperdas said. “It includes hospitality and giving, friendship, you know … I want to say being nice, but I know that that sounds so corny. But there you go. It’s about giving back and ‘here’s what we do,’ ‘here’s what we’re all about,’ it’s about our culture, our heritage. Sure, it has to do with the church and all that, but there are plenty of church fairs all over the place, but there’s only one Glendi and that’s us.”

In practical terms, Skaperdas said, that boils down to food. A lot of food.

“There’s almost 3,000 pounds of lamb this year,” he said. “And another thousand pounds’ worth of chicken. Then of course you have the gyros, the combination of pork and lamb and beef, and putting it inside the pita bread with the tzatziki, the cucumber and garlic dressing. If you start walking around our campus, our grounds, on Thursday morning at 7 o’clock in the morning, you’re going to start smelling baking lamb because they’re going to start preparing over a ton of lamb shanks on Thursday morning to have them ready for when we open Friday at 11 a.m.”

Lamb shanks come from the shin area of a sheep. Because they are made of hard-working muscles, they have a lot of flavor but also need to be cooked “low and slow” for a very long time to make them tender, so the team at Glendi starts them in ovens inside a day before they go on the grill, Skaperdas said.

“They’re baked and then they’re braised, first,” he said. “Our Greek word for grandfather is Papou. We use ‘Papou’s secret sauce.’ I can’t tell you what’s in it, but if you want to help us in the kitchen we’ll tell you how it’s made.

In addition to the lamb and the chicken and everything else from the grill, there are other stations around the festival with different Greek foods. There are sit-down meals under the big tent, but there are stations where visitors can double down on particular dishes, Skaperdas said.

“You know, our sweets,” he said. “The pastries, the baklava, the galaktoboureko, which is a Greek custard dish with phyllo dough, the koulourakia, which are the baked butter cookies.”

Skaperdas pointed out that months of planning and hundreds of volunteer hours go into pulling off a festival of this size.

“It needs to be talked about how thankful my co-chairs and I are for the hundreds of hours that the volunteers put into this,” he said. “The planning for this started in February and it continues right up until we unlock the doors. This is strictly the work of volunteers; it’s a labor of love. We’re not just about bringing our culture and our heritage, and our food and our hospitality to Manchester and surrounding areas. We do this because we love to.”

“My favorite tagline,” Skaperdas said, is, ‘You know when you’re done eating, but give it a couple of minutes and then eat some more’ — just until you’re satisfied, but there can always be a little bit more satisfaction.”

Glendi
Where: St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 650 Hanover St., Manchester, 622-9113
When: Friday, Sept. 18, through Sunday, Sept. 20. Open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Enjoy food, dancing, live music (Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.), vendors selling Greek items, raffles and more, according to the Cathedral’s website.
More: stgeorgenh.org/activities/glendi

Featured photo: Pastries prepped for Glendi. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/09/17

• Cookie news: The Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains, the local sales force during the upcoming Girl Scout cookie season, announced two new cookies for sale, according to a Sept. 8 release. Patch Pals, developed with BARK, is the Girl Scouts’ first cookies specifically for dogs, the release said. Girl Scout Sparkables, developed with Partake, is described as a “crunchy oatmeal cookie [that] features chocolate chips and is dotted with colorful sprinkles” and is gluten-free, nut-free and vegan and “designed to avoid the nine major food allergens,” the release said. Cookie season runs Jan. 1 to March 14, 2027, and will feature the two new cookies for sale online only. Attendees at the Saturday, Oct. 3, Expo at the NH Sportsplex in Bedford will be able to taste the Girl Scout Sparkables, the release said. See girlscoutsgwm.org.

• Beer by the river: The 2026 Manchester BrewFest will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. in Arms Park (10 Arms St., Manchester) on Saturday, Sept. 19. Expect vendors, live entertainment, and excellent beer enthusiastically served. VIP tickets are $60, general admission tickets are $50, and designated driver tickets are $20. Visit manchesterbrewfest.com.

• Tailgating in Concord: Arts Alley (20 S. Main St., Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com) is bringing New England football to its Courtyard this season with courtyard watch parties beginning Sunday, Sept. 20, from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Cheer on the Patriots on a big screen. There will be lawn games and heaters. Food and drink will be available from the Rose and Rye Diner. All ages are welcome. Visit artsalleyconcordnh.com/event/courtyard-tailgate.

• Pie festival in Milton: On Saturday, Sept. 19, the New Hampshire Farm Museum (1305 White Mountain Hwy., Milton, 652-7840, nhfarmmuseum.org) will hold its 18th Annual Pie Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. According to the Museum’s website, “Our judges will be ready to sample pies and award prizes in a variety of categories. The public is also invited to sample pies from local bakeries and vote for the people’s choice for best professional baker.” Admission is $15 per person, free for pie-makers, and $5 for children under 12. Visit nhfarmmuseum.org/event/great-nh-pie-festival.

• Cookie decorating in the Gate City: Local Street Eats (112 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 402-4435, local-streeteats.com) will host a Fall Cookie Decorating Night Tuesday, Sept. 22, from 6 to 8 p.m. Led by “Cookie Queen” Katie Soleau of Posy Cottage Cookies, it will be a night of cozy, creative, sugar-coated fun. Tickets are $35 each, all supplies included. Visit local-streeteats.com/events/cookie-decorating-night.

• Coffee cupping in Derry: The Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry, 432-6140, derrypl.org) will host a coffee-cupping workshop Wednesday, Sept. 23, from 6 to 7 p.m. Presenter Rob Fitzgibbon will give you a look at where coffee comes from, how it is made, and its history. There will be coffee samples for tasting, and guidance on what to look for in coffee, from aroma to taste. This workshop is free of charge, but participants must register online.

• Farm fun: Moulton Farm, 18 Quarry Road in Meredith, will hold Mack-a-Palooza — in honor of MacKenzie “Mack” McNamara and to benefit the Mack MacNamara Scholarship for Inter-Lakes High School or Moultonborough Academy students — on Friday, Sept. 18, 5 to 7 p.m. The event will also kick off corn maze season. “Local food and beverage companies, including local breweries, will be set up throughout the farm’s four acre corn maze giving out samples of their products the evening before the corn maze opens to the public. Food trucks, music, and a huge inflatable obstacle course will also be part of the festive event,” according to a press release. “Moulton Farm’s corn maze will be open 7 days a week starting at 8 am from September 19 through November 1,” the release said. Purchase tickets and find corn maze information at MoultonFarm.com.

A world of food and music

Concord Multicultural Festival celebrates the community

Concord will hold its annual Multicultural Festival on Sunday, Sept. 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Keach Park, on Newton Avenue.

“It’s an annual festival with food and music and art and activities and community,” said organizer Jessica Livingston. “We come together every year to celebrate all of the different cultures [in the Concord community]. And when I say all, I mean all of the different cultures, not just the newer ones. We come together to celebrate everybody’s culture and share with each other through everybody’s favorite universal things: food, music and art.”

Livingston said one of the throughlines of the Festival, something that ties everything together, is the music.

“We have a whole lineup of music, like we always do,” she said, “but it changes. Sindy [Chown], our performance coordinator, is really great at keeping all of the favorites while also bringing in new types of performances. We get access to all different types of music and performances and dance from all over the world.”

For many festivalgoers the main draw is the food.

“We have commercial food vendors, food trucks, like most festivals do,” Livingston said, “but we also open [the festival] up to community members to share their food and sell their food.” She said that by partnering with the New Hampshire Food Bank, the Festival makes it fairly straightforward for community cooks to sell their food and still meet food licensing and safety regulations. “Our community cooks will go down there [to the New Hampshire Food Bank commercial kitchen] and cook and prep all of their food. It’s this big production that everybody loves. The cooks get to work in this great beautiful state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and work with the cooks from the Food Bank. There are chefs there, but then there’s also people working and training for some of their culinary programs. It’s a great experience for everybody, including the volunteers. I had a volunteer tell me one year that we should start charging for experience. It’s like a VIP kind of access to how food is made, but also you get to try the foods before they’re served.”

“We have a lot of community cooks this year,” Livingstone continued, “which is wonderful. We have a Jamaican food vendor this year; we’ve never had Jamaican food there before, other than some of the vendors do sort of Caribbean-style food, but this person is from Jamaica. We have the usual Nepali favorites like samosas [South Asian fried dumplings] and the roti [a laminated Indian flat bread]. And we have food from the Middle East and just a whole array of different types of food. People are definitely going to want to come with an appetite.”

Livingstone said that this year, even more than in previous years, the arts will play a big role in the Multicultural Festival.

“One sad thing,” she said, “is that we used to have the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts work with us and, as you know, [that agency] has all but closed, which is very sad for the whole state for so many reasons. But it was always great to work with them, because they were able to sponsor some of the traditional artists who continue to practice traditional crafts and making, like basket weaving and things like that. We have artists who will come and sell their work. We have, of course, [Iraqi painter] Saad Hindal, who is a gem in our community. He will be selling his paintings. We also have other artist-vendors who will be selling their handmade products — either handmade, specific cultural products or immigrant-owned creative businesses.”

Concord Multicultural Festival
When: Sunday, Sept. 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Keach Park in Concord Heights
More: concordnhmulticulturalfestival.org

Featured photo: Multicultural Festival. Courtesy photo.

A is for Apple

An alphabetical look at the tasty fall foods of nh

Fall is a great time for food in New Hampshire. With so many tasty things to eat this season, we decided to take an A to Z tour of some of autumn’s delights, both traditional and unexpected.

A is for Apples

“It seems like anything with a ‘crisp’ in it is hot right now,” Cameron Hardy said. Hardy is the owner of Brookdale Fruit Farms in Hollis. He said apple enthusiasts are constantly on the lookout for new varieties of apples, and this is the best time of the year to search them out. “People like to try different ones,” he said. “Evercrisp, for example, is a cross between a Honeycrisp and a Fuji. You get some of the strengths from both apples. But just being able to get out with the family and actually pick from the tree is a great experience. We’re always trying to stay ahead of the time. You can’t pivot overnight into new varieties, so a lot of it takes a couple years of planning until [our trees] are fruit bearing, and then we can open them to the public. [We have] Cosmic Crisp, Crimson Crisp, Evercrisp, and that Ludacrisp actually has a juicy fruit-style, like the gum flavor to it. It’s got really cool pineapple, red grape, strawberry tones in it. It’s a cool tasting apple.”

Brookdale Fruit Farm (41 Broad St., Hollis, 465-2240, brookdalefruitfarm.com)

B is for Beaujolais Nouveau

“The French label their wines by the region [where they are made] as opposed to the variety of grape,” said Emma Stetson, the owner of Wine on Main in Concord. “Beaujolais is a region famous for red gamay wines.” She noted that every year Beaujolais fans eagerly wait for something called “Beaujolais Nouveau,” which has not been aged. “It’s completely fresh and untouched,” she said. “They harvest the grapes, bottle it right away and send it out so it’s very fruit-forward and fresh and it’s meant to be the debut of the vintage. It’s a big deal; everybody waits for it to come out the third week of November.”

Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com)

Each year the Franco-American Centre holds a formal gala to celebrate the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau. John Tousignant, the Centre’s executive director, said Beaujolais is a good way to celebrate New Hampshire’s French heritage. “France has a long history with wine as an integral part of the culture,” he said, “and this provides an opportunity to celebrate the culture through a gala evening of wine and fine food.”

The 2026 Beaujolais Nouveau Gala will take place on Saturday, Nov. 21, from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., at the Stonebridge Country Club in Goffstown. Visit facnh.com/event-details/2026-beaujolais-nouveau-benefit-gala.

C is for Conchas

Sept. 16 is Mexican Independence Day, and according to Socorro Gonzalez, the owner of the Tex Mex Bakery in Nashua, there is probably no food more Mexican than conchas, a sweet, round bread served at breakfast throughout Mexico. “It has to be on the table every morning,” she said. “Everyone expects it. I made some conchas two weeks ago for a wedding. So instead of cake they made the centerpieces with conchas.” It made everybody think of home, she said.

Tex Mex Bakery (92 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 417-6857, facebook.com/texmexbakerynh)

D is for cider Doughnuts

Cider doughnuts are as much a part of apple season as apples themselves. Samantha Pitarys from Sunnycrest Farm in Londonderry said most customers see them as an essential part of visiting the orchard each fall. “It’s actually a popular item for us all year long,” she said. “We run them hot, especially during apple picking season, Saturday and Sunday, if we have enough staff. We offer them warm in the morning and then we also bake enough off to let them cool and wrap … to have in the store.” She said the farm’s fresh cider makes their doughnuts a step above traditional cake doughnuts. “We use apple cider for a nice batter with cinnamon and different sugars…”

Sunnycrest Farm (59 High Range Road, Londonderry, 432-7753, sunnycrestfarmnh.com)

E is for Espresso

There is a particular breed of coffee enthusiasts who wait impatiently all year for pumpkin spice season. According to Rachel Ormond, the owner of The Cure Cafe in New Boston, pumpkin spice is the tip of the fall coffee drink iceberg. “Right now we have a sea salt maple latte, which is espresso brewed over sea salt, and then we have a maple cold-foam made with pure maple syrup, and then we have a pumpkin cream cold brew, which is a cold brew with a cold foam that has pumpkin, vanilla, and cinnamon on top. Our core flavors are pumpkin spice, pumpkin pie, brown butter toffee, and caramel apple butter, but we will be playing with those flavors and doing different variations. People get the most excited about the fall flavors, because it’s kind of like a new chapter is coming, which I think makes people really happy.”

The Cure Cafe (8 Mill St., New Boston, 741-5016, curellc.toast.site)

F is for Fried Fair Food

Matt Reed is one of the brothers who run Brothers Concessions. They sell the fair-food-iest of fair foods at county and state fairs in the area. Reed said fried Oreos might be nature’s most perfect food. “I’ve been frying Oreos for almost 25 years now,” he said, “and I think that if you’re going to the Fair you’re not going to get kale or salad. And fried Oreos are so delicious. We [fry] double stuffed Oreos — we figure it’s cheating if you’re not going to go all the way.” But fried Oreos are just the beginning, Reed said. “We specialize in fried novelties. So we do fried Oreos, but we do Twinkies, which is my personal favorite, fried ice cream, funnel cakes for the faint at heart, and fried PBJ sandwiches.” That’s before he and his brother even start in on frying candy bars.

Brothers Concessions will be at this year’s Deerfield Fair at the Deerfield Fair Grounds, 34 Stage Road, Deerfield, Thursday, Oct. 1, through Sunday, Oct. 4, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., except on Sunday, when the Fair will close at 7 p.m.

G is for Grilled steak tips

We think of grilling as a summer activity, but according to Taylor Iantile from The Steak Out Butcher Shop this is the time of the year when serious backyard grillers start playing with adventurous flavors. “Our peach-bourbon steak tips started as a kind of an experiment,” he said. “We used that originally on our chicken, and now it’s one of our main originals. It really just takes off this time of year. We blend up the peaches fresh and then we use mixtures of our barbecue sauces. It’s definitely a good early fall way to cook steak; it caramelizes really well on the grill.”

The Steak Out (118 Daniel Plummer Road, Goffstown, 518-8965, facebook.com/TheSteakOut2)

H is for Hard cider

From colonial times until Prohibition in the 1930s, hard cider was the drink of the people in New England. It has seen a huge resurgence over the past 20 years. Gould Hill Farm in Contoocook is one of the new wave of cideries in New Hampshire. Tim Basset, the owner of Gould Hill Farm, wrote in an email that using the farm’s own apples allows him to customize each batch. “Our cider is made in small batches so we can get great flavors. We have some single varietals made from just one type of apple and some great heirloom ciders, which have unique tastes.”

Gould Hill Farm (656 Gould Hill Road, Contoocook, 746-3811, gouldhillfarm.com)

I is for pumpkin Ice Cream

“We’ve already started serving our fall flavors,” said Keely Gallagher of Richardson Farm Ice Cream in Boscawen. This year we have Apple Crisp, Cranberry Harvest, Pumpkin, and Pumkin-Oreo. We’ll keep those until as close to Thanksgiving as possible.”

Richardson Farm (170 Water St., Boscawen, 796-2788)

J is for Jalapeño cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches

Peter Kress, the owner of and head cheese-maker at Swallow Ridge Farm in New Boston, said a really good cheddar cheese with jalapeños is ideally suited to a grilled cheese sandwich. “It adds a major flavor to the grilled cheese,” he said. “Our cheddar cheese melts very nicely and then the peppers add a nice little spice to it when you’re eating it. Most cheddars made with jalapeños are a jack-type cheese. We like doing it with cheddar because we feel that the cheddar mellows out the spiciness of the jalapeño. A lot of people like our jalapeño cheddar because it’s not biting; there’s no big spice surprise there. Both flavors mellow each other out, which makes for a really nice, smooth, nice melting cheese.”

Swallow Ridge Farm (170 South Hill Road, New Boston, 325-0477, swallowridgefarm.com)

K is for Kimbap and Kimchee

Susan Chung owns 603 Meal Prep and does the hard part of cooking Korean dishes for her customers. “Kimbap and kimchi are available,” she said. “Every Wednesday afternoon. I actually have a Kimbap VIP list that I keep. Every Tuesday or Wednesday morning I send out a group text of everyone included on the list, and they can pick up their kimbap every Wednesday afternoon. We also source a cucumber kimchi that is available.”

603 Meal Prep (603mealprep.com)

L is for Loukoumades

One of the most popular foods at any Greek food festival is loukoumades. “They are little fried dough balls that everybody waits in line for,” George Skaperdas, the organizer of the Glendi Food Festival. They are a dish that Greek families don’t usually make at home, so everybody looks forward to them at festivals, he said. “They are a lot of hard work, but so fun! They are similar to a fried dough ball with different toppings — honey, syrup, cinnamon, powdered sugar. They’re probably an inch in diameter, 2 inches in diameter. They are served warm, of course. Everybody loves their warm apple cider doughnuts, but you haven’t lived until you’ve had warm loukoumades. You could call them the nectar of the gods, and I won’t disagree with you.”

Glendi, the annual celebration of Greek food and culture at St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral (650 Hanover St., Manchester, stgeorgenh.org/activities/glendi, 622-9113), will run Friday, Sept. 18, through Sunday, Sept. 20, and will be open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday.

M is for Mongolian

Sophia Ruiz is a bartender at 815 Cocktails & Provisions in Manchester, where the bar staff is encouraged to add new drinks to its menu, if they have been carefully thought out. She began by filling a cocktail shaker with ice. “This is a housemade rhubarb vodka,” she said, measuring and pouring a bright red spirit into the shaker. “We probably won’t make it again this year,” she said, “so I wanted to make the most of it…. Now, this also gets our homemade coconut milk cream, which gives this a slight play on a White Russian. So it has the rhubarb vodka, vanilla, a little bit of Baileys, the cream of coconut, and a float of chai tea.” She briefly shook the mixture in her cocktail shaker, then strained it into a rocks glass with one very large ice cube, and drizzled the chai over the back of a spoon, to float in a layer at the top of the cocktail. She garnished it with a cinnamon stick and a slice of lemon peel. “Originally, my first few versions of this had lemon juice,” she said, “which tasted delicious but made the coconut cream clump up, which is why the Baileys is here.”

“Anyway,” Ruiz said, presenting her fall cocktail with a flourish, “I call this The Mongolian.”

815 Cocktails & Provisions (815 Elm St., Manchester, 782-8086, 815nh.com)

N is for NH Pink Boots

On its website, Concord Craft Brewing describes NH Pink Boots as a “Hoppy golden ale” that is “5.2% ABV [Alcohol by Volume], 8 IBU [International Bitterness Units]” and says, “This edition of our rotating hop series is about celebrating women in the craft beer industry. Each year members of the Pink Boots Society work … to put together a special blend of hops.” $3 per pound of hops sold is donated to the Pink Boots Society, the website said. The Pink Boots Society works to “assist, inspire and encourage women and non-binary individuals” in the brewing industry, according to pinkbootssociety.org.

Concord Craft Brewing (117 Storrs St., Concord, 856-7625, concordcraftbrewing.com)

O is for Oktoberfest

Other than coming out in the fall, what makes an Oktoberfest beer different from other beers?

According to Aaron Share, co-owner and head brewer at To Share Brewing in Manchester, “typically, an Oktoberfest beer is either a marzen or a ‘fest’ beer style. It’s just a particular style that is made typically in Munich. They usually brew the beer in the spring and let it lager all year round. [Lagering is the process of storing beer at near-freezing temperatures for several weeks or months after fermentation, to clarify and smooth out its flavor.] And so Oktoberfest is the celebration where they tap that beer. Oktoberfest actually runs through September, not usually in October. When we first opened we weren’t [making] strict lagers. So we did an altbier for our Oktoberfest, and it was so popular that we can’t change that anymore. It’s like a hybrid lager ale. So you use an ale yeast instead of a lager yeast, but you will ferment it like a lager, [at] colder temperatures, and then you let it sit for a lot longer than you would an ale before you package it and release it.”

To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com) will host its seventh annual Oktoberfest on Saturday, Sept. 26, starting at 1 p.m.

P is for Pot pie

Caroline Arend, the owner of Caroline’s Fine Food and The Pot Pie Bar in Manchester, contends that a pot pie is the perfect fall food. “It’s one dish all composed together,” she said, “and people are back at school, there are activities, people have sports, and a lot of families want to sit down and have a nice meal together. They don’t want to get fast food or takeout, and it’s just like a good family-style hearty homemade comfort food.”

Not surprisingly, Arend recommended serving one of her own pot pies.

“It’s homemade and it’s warm and it’s comforting,” she said. “You just take it from the freezer and put it into the oven. And it’s like having some, you know, your grandma in your kitchen, but she’s not there making your pie.” Everything under the crust is homemade and all natural, she said.

Caroline’s Fine Food (649 Mast Road, Goffstown, 404-6500, carolinesfood.com)

The Pot Pie Bar (649 Mast Road, Manchester, 432-1927, thepotpiebar.com)

Q is for Quinoa, where you least expect it

Caleb Kippin, from Loon Chocolate, described Loon’s Maple Crunch Bar: “It’s a 50 percent milk chocolate, with maple sugar, cinnamon sugar, and puffed quinoa on the back. Most crunch bars will have puffed rice, but we went with the puffed quinoa to avoid some compounds in rice that people might be sensitive to.”

Loon Chocolate (195 McGregor St., No. 121, Manchester, 932-8887, loonchocolate.com)

R is for Ramen

Fall is the start of soup season, and according to Jason Paige, the owner of Go! Go! 88, a ramen food truck, there is no soup more appropriate for fall than ramen. “I would say the fall is the best time just because it’s cooled off and it’s perfect for a blazing hot ramen that’s coming at you. I think most people are just used to having something heartier and something hot as things cool down. I’m totally good with ramen in the summertime too, but especially curries and some of the hotter ramen really fit with the fall vibe and the fall flavors. Right now we’ve got five different ramen, mostly [based] on either miso bases or shoyu. The plan is to have a few core ramen and then test out different [recipes] and rotate them in.”

Go! Go! 88 Ramen (thegogo88.com)

S is for Sweater Weather Pie

According to Lauren Klein, owner of Slightly Crooked Pies in Manchester, her Sweater Weather is the first seasonal pie to make an appearance this year. “It’s actually the first award-winning pie that Slightly Crooked Pies made,” she said. “It is an apple pie with pear in it. And for the spices we keep it really simple with a little bit of cinnamon and just a touch of cardamom. That cardamom gives it a very warm, comforting feeling like you’re being hugged by your piece of pie, but it also, because of its floral notes, brings out the fruitiest fruit quality of the apple and the pears. We also braid the crust top so that it mimics a cable-knit sweater.”

Slightly Crooked Pies (1209 Elm St., Manchester, 661-4575, slightlycrookedpies.com)

T is for chicken Tenders

One of Manchester’s cultural icons is the chicken tender. Residents are so passionately fond of them that in July 2023 Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig officially declared the city the “Chicken Tender Capital of the World.” The New Hampshire Fisher Cats, which wrapped up their season last weekend, fielded teams on Tuesdays throughout baseball season as The Manchester Chicken Tenders, with tender-themed uniforms and even an occasional appearance by a tender-costumed mascot. Chris Jarrod, the broadcast and media manager for the Fisher Cats, said this was a very good year for The Tenders. “This year we added our third different [chicken tender] identity,” he said, “the Manchester Chicken Tenders, the original identity, with the Buffalo Tenders and the Coconut Tenders in our back pocket. The team always loves the Manchester Chicken Tenders jerseys. We wear them every Tuesday for Tender Tuesdays.”

Manchester’s most famous chicken tenders come from the Puritan Backroom Restaurant (245 Hooksett Road, Manchester, 669-6890, puritanbackroom.com), where they were reputedly invented in 1974. Some passionate chicken tender enthusiasts champion the ones from Goldenrod Restaurant (1681 Candia Road, Manchester, 623-9469, goldenrodrestaurant.com).

U is for tropical drinks with

little paper Umbrellas in them, for when you need a return to summer vibes

Mary Beth Carcellino is the owner of CodeX, a speakeasy in Nashua. She has had a rough summer. She said that more than anything she needs a series of tropical cocktails with little paper umbrellas. “Fortunately that’s something we do very well,” she said. “I’d say, for me, an umbrella drink is like vacation or beachside mode. If I see an umbrella, I feel like I am on a tropical vacation. After the summer I’ve had, I need that. If someone tries to talk to me, I can just be like, ‘Hey! I’m on vacation!’”

CodeX B.A.R. (29 Main St., Nashua) specializes in craft cocktails, with or without umbrellas.

V is for Vegan chili on a baked potato

According to Lauren LeFevvre, co-owner of The Potato Concept in Manchester, you’d have to search very carefully to find a better fall food than one of their chili-topped potatoes. “Potatoes are the perfect food year-round,” Lauren said, “but fall is comfort food time and so something hot and something hearty like a baked potato and chili, chock-full of beans and fresh vegetables, made fresh on the daily, is fantastic.We make it in small batches in-house, each morning ” She said they are relatively conservative when it comes to the spiciness of their chili. “We keep it moderately spicy,” she said. “We like it to be palatable for everybody. You can always add spice to your plate, but you can’t necessarily take it away. So it’s like a medium.”

The Potato Concept (119A Hanover St., Manchester, 667-0714, thepotatoconcept.com)

W is for Wienie Weekend

According to Jimmy Purcell of the Candia Road Brewing Co. in Manchester, the staff’s favorite time of the year is Wienie Weekend. “It is a kind of celebration of the release of our Vienna lager,” he said. “We take our food menu away and replace it with 20 to 24 different styles of hot dogs. It’s all kinds of wacky combinations and fun things that you wouldn’t really expect to see on a hot dog. We try to keep it entertaining, interesting, tasty, of course, and it’s always a blast every single year. As of right now, when it will happen is kind of up in the air. We have to wait for the beer to be ready, which takes about eight weeks from starting point.” He said to expect it sometime at the end of October. “We can maybe do like a Halloweenie Weekend if the timing is right, so that gives us another month to brainstorm new hot dogs.”

Candia Road Brewing Co. (840 Candia Road, Manchester, 935-8123, candiaroadbrewingco.com)

X is for eXtra eXtra large

At Sal’s Pizza in Manchester the philosophy is that if you’re going to have a large pizza you should probably go all in. Ed is a shift-leader at Sal’s. “It’s 19 inches [in diameter],” he said. “That can probably feed five or six people, but it depends on how hungry they are. It’s really good; you should try it.”

Sal’s Pizza (296 S. Willow St., Manchester, 623-6565, and 2 Lenox Road, Derry, 425-2626, sals.com)

Y is for Yankee pot roast

At this time of the year, one of the most satisfying memory-laden dishes is an old-fashioned yankee pot roast. On its menu, The Circle Restaurant in Epsom describes its pot roast as “tender, slow-cooked, braised beef.” According to Morgan, from The Circle, “It’s a tender pot roast topped with gravy, and it comes with two sides. It’s really popular.”

Country Cook’n At The Circle Restaurant (935 Suncook Valley Highway South, Epsom, 736-8169, countrycooknrestaurants.com)

Z is for Zinfandel

According to Al Fulchino, owner of Fulchino Vineyard in Hollis, as the weather gets cooler and the food people eat gets heartier, the light white and rosé wines of the summer give way to more full-bodied reds, like zinfandel. “We make three of them, actually,” he said. “Zinfandels are a family tradition. Zinfandel was my grandfather’s favorite wine, so we started with that back in around 1981 or ’82. We make a dry, a semi-dry, and then we do another one that goes through a special aging process and we run it through four different wine barrels to get different characteristics. That one is called Fulcinius, which is just a Latin name from literally 2,000 years ago.” (According to Google Translate, it’s from the Latin term for “forked,” presumably describing particular grapevines.) Fulchino said it is hearty enough to stand up to the flavors of the fall. “It’s perfect for cold weather,” he said, “[with] pasta dishes or veal Parmesan. You know what? You can have it with a pizza. We age most of ours on French oak.”

Fulchino Vineyard (187 Pine Hill Road, Hollis, 438-5984, fulchinovineyard.com).

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