Category: Cover Stories

Hit the indoor pool for fun and exercise

Who says having fun in the water has to be a summer-only activity?

Even in the dead of winter, there are several local spots to enjoy a bit of water fun indoors. We look at where to go to get in the pool for exercise, improve your swimming skills or try some surfing or boogie boarding — yes, indoors. Dig out that swimsuit and make a plan for a day in the water.

Water wonderland

Find a summertime oasis at an indoor aquatic center

By Katelyn Sahagian

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Surfing in the wintertime is no longer restricted to tropical vacations, thanks to SkyVenture NH’s aquatic attraction Surf’s Up. Laurie Greer, who co-owns the Nashua facility with her husband, Rob, said she wanted to bring year-round waves to the Granite State.

“We can do everything from knee high to a 6-foot standing barrel,” Greer said, adding that people love to come and watch the surfers as much as they surf themselves. “Kick your shoes off and bring your flip-flops. It’s … a tropical paradise.”

Surf’s Up uses a device called a SurfStream. The wave machine fills a small pool with about a foot of water, which is then propelled at a speed of about 14 miles per hour to create a variety of waves. The Greers had specialized surfboards made and gathered up boogie boards. They heated the water to 80 degrees to create their own summertime oasis.

While it seemed easy enough to get going for people who are experienced on surfboards, Greer saw that some newer surfers needed an extra hand. Now, SkyVenture offers help to the newer surfers from the staff of surf instructors.

“The program we have is called ‘surf assist,’” she said. “An instructor … will set [a visitor] up and the other will help them up on the wave. Once [the visitor is] stable, they’ll let go. They basically are your personal coach on the waves.”

Surf’s Up is the largest SurfStream in the world, measuring in at a length of 32 feet. The attraction is more than just a fun way to get out energy, Greer said — it’s also used by professional surfers and wake surfers to practice during the winter months. Pro wakesurfer Jake Caster got started using Surf’s Up as his training ground, while YouTuber and award-winning surfer Jamie “JOB” O’Brien has also used the facility.

Each session at Surf’s Up lasts 15 minutes, Greer said.

“Fifteen minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a lot,” she said. “In the ocean, you’d be lucky to get 10 seconds to catch a ride.”

While kids as young as 4 or 5 years old can go on Surf’s Up, sometimes indoor swimming fun can look a bit more like a traditional waterpark. Over at The Workout Club in Salem, there’s a kid-friendly water wonderland known as the SplashZone that’s available for use in addition to the facility’s regular lane swimming.

“We have wonderful aquatics that are broken into three segments,” said Laurie Moran, The Workout Club’s aquatics director. The segments are lane swimming, family swimming and the SplashZone, which has wade-in water activities and swim areas, water sprinklers, a mushroom-cap fountain and a 75-foot water slide. On the other side of the complex you’ll find a wade pool for toddlers and a family swimming pool for fun.

When parents and older siblings need a break from the pool fun, they can take time in the spa, a hot tub for visitors ages 16 and older. The water can get up to 104 degrees with jets to help massage sore muscles.

Moran said that the aquatics center is a place for everyone in the family to have a good time and get some energy out.

“This is a place where parents and kids can get exercise,” she said, jokingly adding, “Afterward, kids are really tuckered out, and when they’re tired they’re less work to take care of.”

Indoor water fun

This list has a selection of places that are free or offer day passes to use their facilities.

Dover public pool
9 Henry Law Ave., 516-6441, dover.nh.gov
The public pool is open daily, with different programs scheduled each day. A single day pass costs $5 for resident adults and $3 for resident children and seniors, and $7 for non-resident adults and $4 for non-resident children and seniors. There are discounted packages available for a multi-day pass. See the website for the full schedule.

Envy Sports Club
298 Queen City Ave., Manchester, 703-5303, envysportsclubs.com
The Envy Splash Lounge is not only an indoor pool but also has a cinema, music, parties, food and drinks. Kids and parents can join Envy for a live DJ at the Kids Glow Party every Saturday night from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 per person and can be purchased online.

SkyVenture NH
100 Adventure Way, Nashua, 897-0002, skyventurenh.com
SkyVenture is open Wednesday through Friday, 2 to 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pricing for Surf’s Up starts at $45 for a 15-minute session, followed by $22.50 for each additional session. Private sessions are also available — book online through their website.

The Workout Club
16 Pelham Road, Salem, 894-4800, theworkoutclub.com/salem
The SplashZone is open daily from noon to 4 p.m. The water slide will only be operational during the weekends, when a lifeguard is on duty in that area. The cost is $20 for non-members ages 13 and up and $10 for non-members.

Making a splash

Get fit in the pool, from aquatics classes to swim lessons

By Mya Blanchard and Matt Ingersoll

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Between frigid temperatures and the depths of snow, it can be hard to find ways to stay active in the dead of winter. Indoor swimming and water exercise programs are great year-round alternatives to what are traditionally warm-weather activities — and they’ve been steadily growing in popularity post-pandemic.

“There’s definitely been a good uptick in the amount of interest the last three years,” said Matthew Chabot, owner of Somerset Swim & Fitness in Nashua, which offers swimming lessons for kids and adults, in addition to aqua aerobics for its members six days a week. “To be honest, we’ve quadrupled the amount of lessons on a yearly basis that we’re doing now from what we were doing pre-Covid.”

The interest in indoor pools also grows this time of year at the Hampshire Hills Athletic Club in Milford, according to aquatics director Jasmine Bishop.

“I think after Christmastime, it’s a real big turning point, and our pools start to get busier because people are thinking of activities that they can do with their kids, or they’re thinking of different ways to cross-train when they can’t be out on the roads running or biking,” Bishop said. “A lot of people will hop in [the pool] and do PT [physical therapy] if they are trying to recover from something. … Or even if it’s icy outside, they’ll get into the water and walk, and that adds resistance and they’re still getting their steps in.”

At Hampshire Hills, one lane of a five-lane lap pool is always open to members — according to the club’s website, it’s open seven days a week throughout each day and can be reserved for swimmers up to four days in advance. Bishop added that, for adults, the club’s aquatics programs are more fitness-oriented and include everything from strength and tone workouts to those that promote proper joint and muscle alignment.

“We have an arthritis class, we have a Water in Motion [class] … and a lot of other different options, and generally those run Monday through Friday,” she said. “We have our family pool and that’s where our aqua classes run. Then we have our hot tub, which is a nice addition after you’ve been in a class or [you’ve been] swimming laps. … We see all different types of fitness levels.”

In business in the Gate City for more than two decades, Somerset Swim & Fitness is known for focusing on one-on-one private lessons for swimmers, regardless of one’s membership status with the club. It’s also one of the only spots around with a heated saltwater pool, a safer and more natural alternative, Chabot said, to one filled with chlorine. In addition to lessons, the club does offer open swimming hours to members seven days a week at various times over several hours, and there are membership rates available for open swim in the pool only. Aqua aerobics classes, meanwhile, are available and great for building strength and improving flexibility.

“All of our instructors are WSI [Water Safety Instructor, through the American Red Cross] certified. A lot of them have competitive swimming backgrounds,” Chabot said.

Lessons at the club are offered daily, and swimmers are usually guided to enroll in at least one lesson per week. A majority of swimmers, Chabot said, are kids and teens up to 15 years old, although lessons are available to all ages.

“We focus on … more of the beginner to the intermediate [swimmer],” he said. “Getting that individual, whether it’s the parent [who] wants their child to be comfortable and have those water safety skills, or if it’s an older child or an adult, then we’re basically helping them get over any fear they may have or getting them comfortable so that they feel they can swim. … Between the swim director who runs the program, or the individual instructors, they’ll more or less observe in the first session to get an idea of where the person is at.”

Group swimming lessons for kids and teens are also available at Hampshire Hills, with the next eight-week session running from March 6 through April 29. For younger swimmers, Bishop said, the benefits of enrolling in lessons range from basic water safety to building or boosting confidence.

“It’s a huge life skill that kids should know,” she said, “and then from there, you can work on fitness or you can swim for fun. Whatever you want to do, there are so many avenues that it can take you through.”

The YMCA of Greater Nashua also offers group swimming lessons, in addition to private lessons and daily guest passes for people to access the facility’s swimming pools, according to chief community relations officer Elizabeth Covino. Lessons are offered all year long, with the next program session beginning Feb. 6. At Granite YMCA, meanwhile (which includes the YMCA of Downtown Manchester, the YMCA of Concord and the YMCA Allard Center of Goffstown), day passes to use the pools are also complimentary for first-time visitors, followed by up to five paid visits.

In the Concord area, Karen Jenovese and her stepdaughter, Tyler Smirnioudis, have operated the NH Swim School for more than a decade. Both with backgrounds in competitive swimming — Smirnioudis is also a lifeguard instructor and Jenovese a swimming coach — the two developed their own methods of teaching that allow kids to progress faster and at their own pace.

“A lot of other places rely on floatation devices when teaching kids how to swim … and that can make the process take a lot longer,” Smirnioudis said. “We don’t use any floatation in our swimming lessons and our class sizes are very small compared to other programs … so that really helps make a difference with our kids learning to swim.”

The school provides lessons for children and adults. When deciding which lesson to sign up for, one must consider a swimmer’s age and skill level.

Those age 6 months to 3 years old can start with parent-and-child classes. These lessons familiarize children with the water and teach them developmental skills, like swimming on their front and back, floating and going under the water. Next up is Level 1, which teaches children how to swim independently. The following levels build on these skills and teach core strokes. “Our goal is for all the kids to continue swimming until they get to our developmental swim team,” Smirnioudis said.

Where to find indoor swimming lessons and aquatics programs
Here are some local health clubs and other organizations offering either private or group swimming lessons for kids and adults, as well as some open swimming opportunities and fitness-oriented aquatics classes.

Where to find indoor swimming lessons and aquatics programs

Envy Sports Club
298 Queen City Ave., Manchester, 703-5303, envysportsclubs.com
When: Classes for kids and adults run on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at various times throughout the day, depending on the class. Aquatics programs are also available.
Cost: $169 for members and $199 for non-members, either for eight weeks with one class per week or four weeks with two classes per week. Membership rates start at $39 per month to use the pool only.

Executive Health & Sports Center
1 Highlander Way, Manchester, 668-4753, ehsc.com
When: Classes are held Sundays through Saturdays at various times, depending on the class (no classes during school vacation weeks or holiday weekends). The next session for swimming lessons runs from March 4 through April 16, with registration opening Feb. 6 at 5 a.m. Group aquatics programs, meanwhile, are available Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. and Saturday at 10 a.m.
Cost: $69 for members, and $119 for non-members for swimming lessons

Hampshire Hills Athletic Club
50 Emerson Road, Milford, 673-7123, hampshirehills.com
When: Group lessons are held weekdays from 4 to 6 p.m., and on Saturday mornings. The next eight-week session runs from March 6 through April 29, with registration due March 4 (private lessons are currently not available). One lane of a five-lane lap pool is also open to members — according to the club’s website, it’s open seven days a week throughout each day and can be reserved for swimmers up to four days in advance. Aquatics classes, meanwhile, are offered seven days a week at various times — see website for details.
Cost: Ranges from $96 to $136 for the eight-week swimming lesson program, depending on the swimmer’s membership status.

NH Swim School
96 N. State St., Concord, 724-3106, nhswimschool.com
When: Classes are offered weekly, Sunday through Saturday, depending on the class.
Registration opens Feb. 4 for the NH Swim School’s next session, which begins in March.
Cost: Ranges from $175 to $230

Peak Swim Center
45 Mountain Road, Brookline, 978-337-6717, peakswimcenter.com
When: Coached swimming sessions are available seven days a week; see website to book a time.
Cost: $90 per 45-minute coached swimming session, or $100 per 60-minute session

SafeSplash Swim School
Hosted at the Holiday Inn, 2280 Brown Ave., Manchester, 945-1844, safesplash.com
When: Classes are offered on Sundays, at various times between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.; and on Wednesdays, at various times between 4 and 7 p.m.
Cost: Ranges from $88 to $308, depending on the type of class and the length of each session.

Somerset Swim & Fitness
2 Somerset Parkway, Nashua, 595-4160, somersetsf.com
When: Private lessons are available seven days a week; call to schedule a time. In addition to lessons, the club does also offer open swimming hours to members seven days a week at various times over several hours, in addition to aqua aerobics classes. Membership rates are available for open swim in the pool only.
Cost: Membership rates vary; call for details

YMCA Allard Center of Goffstown
Granite YMCA, 116 Goffstown Back Road, Goffstown, 497-4663, graniteymca.com
When: Swimming programs are held at various dates and times throughout the week — see program brochure for the full schedule. Open swimming hours vary and can be viewed online graniteymca.com on a week-to-week basis, Monday through Saturday.
Cost: Varies, depending on the swimmer’s age and membership status. Day passes to use the pool are also complimentary for first-time visitors, followed by up to five paid visits ($10 for adults, $5 for adolescents and teens and $3 for younger kids)

YMCA of Concord
Granite YMCA, 15 N. State St., Concord, 228-9622, graniteymca.com
When: Swimming programs are held at various dates and times throughout the week — see program brochure for the full schedule. Open swimming hours vary and can be viewed online graniteymca.com on a week-to-week basis, Monday through Saturday.
Cost: Varies, depending on the swimmer’s age and membership status. Day passes to use the pool are also complimentary for first-time visitors, followed by up to five paid visits ($10 for adults, $5 for adolescents and teens and $3 for younger kids)

YMCA of Downtown Manchester
Granite YMCA, 30 Mechanic St., Manchester, 623-3558, graniteymca.com
When: Swimming programs are held at various dates and times throughout the week — see program brochure for the full schedule. Open swimming hours vary and can be viewed online graniteymca.com on a week-to-week basis, Monday through Saturday.
Cost: Varies, depending on the swimmer’s age and membership status. Day passes to use the pool are also complimentary for first-time visitors, followed by up to five paid visits ($10 for adults, $5 for adolescents and teens and $3 for younger kids)

YMCA of Greater Nashua
24 Stadium Drive, Nashua, 882-2011, nmymca.org
When: Swimming lessons are offered all year long; the next program session begins Feb. 6. Daily guest passes are also available for people to access the Y’s swimming pools. Indoor pools are located at the Nashua YMCA (24 Stadium Drive, Nashua) and the Westwood Park YMCA (90 Northwest Blvd., Nashua). Lanes are available for open swim on various days and times — the full schedule is regularly updated at nmymca.org.
Cost: Daily passes are $15 per adult and $5 per child per day.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Get fantasy and science fiction thrills and horror chills from Granite State authors

With everything from zombie apocalypses to high fantasy and futuristic concepts, the imaginations of the Granite State’s genre fiction writers are seemingly limitless. Katelyn Sahagian and Matt Ingersoll caught up with several New Hampshire-based fantasy, science fiction and horror authors to discuss their inspirations, influences and most recent projects.

Scott M. Baker

Before becoming a prolific self-published author of horror fiction, Scott Baker of Dunbarton worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 23 years. Born and raised in Everett, Mass., he lived in Virginia during most of his tenure with the CIA, along with a few stints overseas.

While working for the CIA, he developed an idea for an espionage novel about North Korea acquiring five nuclear weapons. As Baker recalls, it was initially well-received — he even had a literary agent who was ready to sell the book to a major publisher in New York City — but then the Sept. 11 attacks changed everything.

“The minute 9/11 hit, everything dried up,” Baker said. “There was no market for espionage. … About three or four days afterward, my agent called me up and said the market died.”

A few years later, Baker said, he became inspired to switch genres from espionage to horror after seeing the 2004 film Van Helsing with a close friend.

“As we were walking out of the theater, I said, ‘You know, I could write a better story than that,’ and she looked me and smiled and said, ‘Well, why don’t you?’” Baker recalls. “So that’s what got me writing in the horror genre.”

His first three books made up The Vampire Hunters trilogy, followed up by The Rotter World trilogy, a series about a zombie apocalypse. He also became inspired by his then-10-year-old daughter to write a five-volume young adult series called Shattered World, about an ill-fated scientific experiment that causes portals to open between Hell and Earth.

Currently Baker is busy working on three separate additional series, including Book 9 of a planned 10-book series called Nurse Alissa vs. The Zombies.

“It’s about a typical nurse who is just your average person,” he said. “She’s working in the ER at Mass. General and she’s at Ground Zero during a zombie outbreak, so the whole series just deals with her getting out of Boston, trying to survive and picking up friends along the way.”

He also has a spin-off series set in the same universe, titled The Chronicles of Paul; the second volume was just released in October. A third series, meanwhile — known as The Tatyana Paranormal series — is about a young graduate student who discovers she has the ability to talk to spirits. The Ghosts of the Maria Doria, released last August, follows the titular protagonist as she finds herself stranded upon a haunted cruise ship.

While Baker most often dabbles in series, he does have a few standalone novels. One of his latest is Operation Majestic, released in December 2021.

“When people ask what that book is about, I say, ‘Think Indiana Jones meets Back to the Future, with aliens,” he said. “It’s a time-traveler [novel].”

All of Scott M. Baker’s novels are self-published. For more details on Baker’s work or to purchase an autographed copy of one of his books, visit scottmbakerauthor.blogspot.com or search for him on Amazon. You can also join his Facebook group, “Scott Baker’s Realm of Zombies, Monsters and the Paranormal,” or follow him on Instagram @scottmbakerwriter or on Twitter @vampire_hunters. Baker is one of several local writers who will attend the New England Author Expo’s Authors at the Vineyard event at Zorvino Vineyards (226 Main St., Sandown) on Sunday, Feb. 26, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission to that event is free.

— Matt Ingersoll

Gregory Bastianelli

Some of Gregory Bastianelli’s earliest memories involved watching Creature Double Feature on Saturday afternoons around the age of 6. He first read the short stories of Ray Bradbury — whose 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes is one of his all-time favorite books — before diving into the works of acclaimed horror writers such as Richard Matheson and Stephen King.

“I think I wrote my first short story when I was 11 years old, and then I just kept writing stories all the time,” said Bastianelli, a University of New Hampshire graduate and a native of Dover. “Pretty bad ones, but they were fun, and that’s how I sort of was cutting my teeth. … Another book that [had] a big influence on me when I was in junior high was Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I remember reading that and just being so moved and so terrified by it.”

Prior to publishing his first novel, Bastianelli lived in New York City, where he worked as a copy editor for a company that published law books. Returning to the Granite State at the end of the 1980s, he worked for Foster’s Daily Democrat as a copy editor and writer.

“Two of the highlights of my career were … getting to do an interview with Alice Cooper, who I was a big fan of, and then also interviewing Bruce Campbell. Anyone who knows horror knows Bruce Campbell — king of the B-movies.”

While working at Foster’s, Bastianelli published a few short stories in some obscure horror magazines. Through a contest, he finally found a publisher in 2011 for his debut novel, Jokers Club, a project he had been working on and off on for more than two decades.

“Before the contest ended, I got a call from the publisher and he said that, regardless of how it did in the contest, he wanted to publish it. I was just thrilled,” Bastianelli said. “It did end up winning second place in the contest, but the fact that he reached out to me and said that he was interested in publishing, it was a dream come true.”

Since then Bastianelli has moved on to a larger publishing company, Flame Tree Press, out of London, England. In January 2020 he released Snowball, a novel about a group of motorists who are stranded on a New Hampshire highway in the middle of a blizzard on Christmas Eve. His latest title, Shadow Flicker, was published in March 2022.

“Shadow Flicker is about an insurance investigator who goes to an island off the coasts of Maine to interview some residents … who are complaining about some wind turbines, believing that they cause some ill effects,” he said. “In the course of his investigation, he stumbles upon something even darker going on on this island, and he gets sucked into a phenomenon that is beyond anything that he could realize.”

Bastianelli called Snowball a “straight-out horror novel.” Shadow Flicker, on the other hand, has been referred to by some as horror and others as a science fiction or speculative mystery.

Bastianelli is a regular participant in speculative fiction writers’ conventions like NECON in Lowell, Mass., in July. He has also attended StokerCon, put on by the Horror Writers Association, and the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival, held in October in Haverhill, Mass.

“One of the things that I’ve learned from going to a lot of these conventions and events is that … a lot of these authors that you grew up loving, they love to hear that you talk about their books and that you enjoy their writing,” he said. “That’s what they do it for.”

Gregory Bastianelli’s latest novel, Shadow Flicker, is available through Flame Tree Press (flametreepress.com). Learn more about Bastianelli and his works by visiting gregorybastianelli.com, which provides links to various ways to purchase his books. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter, or purchase his books online through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

— Matt Ingersoll

Justin Bell

While most authors jump from subject to subject in the same genre, Justin Bell takes a much different approach. His writing is specifically in the post-apocalyptic subgenre, which focuses on what happens to humanity after a catastrophic event.

For example, the series Bell just finished writing focused on what would happen if the world became too radioactive for humans to survive above ground.

Bell started his writing career by working for a handful of different independent publishing houses, gravitating toward the post-apocalyptic subgenre the whole time. When he was picked up by his current publishing house, Muonic Press, he got the chance to shine.

Muonic, Bell said, exclusively publishes post-apocalyptic science fiction, and on top of that, the company is one of most-read publishers for the subgenre on Amazon. Bell saw a drastic increase in readership, he said.

His books get millions of reads a year, averaging between 12 million and 15 million. He said one year during the pandemic his page reads was up to 20 million.

“It’s amazing,” Bell said. “I was a struggling author independently published. I started in 2014 with middling success and exposure. … Later in 2018 I’m getting hundreds of pre-orders per book and it’s been life-changing.”

Bell said he just completed his most recent book series in June 2022, and a collection of the six-book series dropped in November. Now he’s putting all his efforts into his new novel series, After the Fall, with the first novel coming on Feb. 3, and a new book coming monthly after that.

Bell said that he’ll continue writing post-apocalyptic stories for as long as the subject remains interesting to him and inspires him with different ideas. His favorite part of the subgenre isn’t the disasters and chaos but the resilience of the characters thrown into those situations. To him — and his readers — it becomes a story of the human spirit and of hope.

“What’s great about these books is you’re putting [characters] through different situations but seeing, in spite of odds, that they persevere,” Bell said. “They find a light in the darkness and that’s what I like most about them.”

Visit Justin Bell’s website at justinbellauthor.com to learn more about his works, which are available through Amazon and its products Kindle and Audible. All of his works are published by Muonic Press. To learn more about Muonic Press, visit their website at muonic.com.

— Katelyn Sahagian

David D’Amico

David D’Amico grew up with a love of writing. He said that when he was young he always had story ideas floating around in his head. It wasn’t until his twin brother announced he would be a writer that D’Amico decided to take up the craft as well.

“All my life I was the one with the stories,” D’Amico said, jokingly adding that he “couldn’t let [my twin] become the writer.”

D’Amico has won numerous awards for his science fiction short stories, including winning Writers of the Future in 2011. His stories have been published in popular science fiction magazines, including Analog. While his stories are typically around 5,000 words, he said that it’s become enough space for him to get a good grasp on his storytelling abilities.

Typically, when writing a story, D’Amico finds it much more important to focus on the characters than the world that he’s built for each story. He said that character studies are better received by publishers and readers.

“I write majoritively straight sci-fi, slightly in the future, a little bit like The Twilight Zone,” D’Amico said. “I’m heavy on characters, and it’s not epic quests, usually.”

Right now D’Amico is working on publishing collections of his stories, called “Through Machine Eyes,” which are illustrated through an artificial intelligence art program. Two have already been published, and he hopes to put out more in the new year.

Even this early in the new year D’Amico has sold one of his short stories. He said that he’ll sell approximately a dozen over the course of 2023, depending on the process. Some of his stories can be as short as 42 words long, but he prefers a bit more length to establish context.

In addition to submitting his short stories to different magazines and working on his AI project, D’Amico is working on completing his first full-length novel. He said that he’s begun several but wants to really stick to it this year.

D’Amico has learned over the years that writing isn’t just a career, it’s a passion. To him, readers can tell when authors aren’t happy writing, and that is the most important part of the craft.

“Write what you like,” he said. “Enjoy it. Don’t worry about the other stuff until after the draft is done.”

For more information about David D’Amico, or to read his short stories and purchase a copy of his anthologies, visit his website at dadamico.com. His second anthology of stories Through Machine Eyes: Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories Illustrated by AI Intelligence, Volume Two was a self published title.

— Katelyn Sahagian

Elaine Isaak

Fantasy steeped in real history is what Elaine Isaak’s writing is all about. She strives for a level of realism in her work, tying archaeology to magic, and adding a fantastical element to history.

“My author brand is knowledge-inspired fiction,” Isaak said. “I find ideas by reading nonfiction or doing museum visits [about] something that excites and inspires me.”

Isaak said that binding her love for history and art with her writing has been one of the best things that has ever happened to her. Her novels will take something like an obscure medieval clock and turn it into a doomsday device the protagonist must find a way to stop, as in her most recent novel.

While she primarily writes fantasy novels, Isaak is exploring new territories with her upcoming young adult sci-fi series about space dragons, the first book of which is set to be released on Feb. 7.

The series was written for her son, who she said loves robots and dragons, and she wanted to find a way to combine the two. She got the idea when another writer mentioned doing the same for their child.

“I didn’t want it to be fantastical dragons,” Isaak said, explaining her reasoning for choosing a sci-fi approach to traditionally fantasy creatures. “I thought, if they’re not fantasy and those tropes, then they’re probably aliens.”

She’s taking her research-forward approach of writing to this genre too, looking at how some animals communicate non-verbally. One inspiration she mentioned was learning that elephants use the vibrations from their footfalls to communicate across miles. Another is looking at animals like dolphins and platypuses that have electroreceptors that give them the ability to sense their prey underwater.

Isaak said that she wanted the series to make people think about what communication and culture are, and what it would look like in aliens wildly different from humans, as well as planets different from Earth. She said the most important thing she can do with her books is create a world her readers can enjoy, one that sparks their own imagination.

“A work isn’t complete until there’s a reader,” Isaak said. “[Books are] a collaboration between me and my words and the reader opening their imagination to the world and characters I’m creating.”

To learn more about Elaine Isaak’s work, visit elaineisaak.com. Her most recent work, Drakemaster (written under the pen name EC Ambrose) was published by Guardbridge Books. Her novels are available online at Amazon and wherever books are sold.

— Katelyn Sahagian

Troy Osgood

Building imaginative worlds is only one aspect of Troy Osgood’s writing. He creates worlds within worlds, choosing to use video games to trap his characters in alternate realities. He likes the diversity this allows him, bringing fantasy and sci-fi together.

One of his most recently completed book series, Sky Realms Online, follows this almost exactly. He said the plot is about a popular online virtual reality video game that sucks in some of the players. The players have to navigate the world of floating islands held together by magic and defeat boss battles and quests, all while trying to figure out how to escape the game.

“I want to write adventures and entertaining stories that people want to read more of,” Osgood said.

Sky Realms Online was completed last November, followed by the completion of a similar saga with fewer fantasy elements called Battlegrounds Online — the final book in that series was released in December.

His next series, Connective System, will be a bit different. Instead of characters being sucked into the games they’re playing, a game will “hack” the world, giving humans superpowers and special abilities. Osgood said the story will fit more in with the post-apocalyptic subgenre of science fiction.

“They’ll have to rebuild their world with superhuman powers,” he said, adding that he plans to release the first in the series in either March or April.

While Osgood’s more adult books focus on the sci-fi worlds of being trapped in video games, or video games affecting the outside world, his books for younger readers are more steeped in the fantasy genre. He just finished writing a series called The Viral Rose Sprite, and he hopes to get more young reader fantasy out in the coming year.

“You can get away with a lot more stuff,” Osgood said about his fantasy writing. “As long as your magic rules make sense, anything goes. You can have a lot of fun and just go crazy.”

To learn more about Troy Osgood’s writing, visit ossywrites.wordpress.com. His books, (print, e-edition, and audio) can be purchased at Amazon. His most recent book, Onyxgate, was published by Aethon Books.

— Katelyn Sahagian

Chris Philbrook

While Chris Philbrook’s books will almost always have a science fiction or fantasy base to them, he likes to tie them to thriller and horror tropes as well.

“I got my big break with post-apocalyptic, so where horror and science fiction meet,” Philbrook said. “I’ve written urban fantasy, too. I tend to gravitate toward horror themes. I like having characters meandering into places where they are stressed out by situations and given the chance to rise up or succumb.”

His most recent novel, Ghosts, is the 13th in the Adrian’s Undead Diary series, released last Halloween. The series follows Adrian as he tries to reunite the dead and help their souls move on. Philbrook said he wasn’t sure how long the series would continue, but he started it back in 2010 and people have seemed to really enjoy it.

Philbrook is currently working on both the 14th volume of Adrian’s Undead Diary and the third book in The Darkness of Diggory Finch series. Right now, he doesn’t have a concrete publishing date for either book, but is aiming for the spring for Adrian’s Undead Diary and the summer for The Darkness of Diggory Finch.

The Darkness of Diggory Finch series is cosmic horror set in the woodland border of New Hampshire and Vermont. The main character, Diggory Finch, finds himself inheriting land at the border, and once he moves there he finds out that nothing is as it seems.

“The series is [Diggory Finch] dealing with the locals and [figuring] out what the deal with his family is,” Philbrook said, adding that there are twists and turns, like cults and “monsters and bears and weirdos, oh my.”

Philbrook said that most of his inspiration for writing comes from living in the Granite State. Although he has lived in Boston and Arkansas and has traveled across the country promoting his novels, Philbrook said there is something special about living and writing in New Hampshire.

“It’s a neat place to be a writer,” he said. “New Hampshire is a cool nexus of culture and location that isn’t very common in America.”

Find information about Chris Philbrook’s upcoming books at thechrisphilbrook.com. His works can be purchased online at Amazon, but Philbrook would love for his readers to support independent book shops by ordering his books through them. His most recent book, Ghosts, was self-published.

— Katelyn Sahagian

Jeremy Robinson

It takes a lot of effort to create one world for a book or series to take place in, but Jeremy Robinson decided that just one world wasn’t enough. His 80 books take place in something he calls the Infinite Timeline, a multiverse that existed long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Readers have tried making a map of how all 80 books are connected,” Robinson said. “It’s fun for me and it’s fun for the readers as well.”

Robinson said most of his novels could be read as stand-alone books. He said the only thing that stays the same for some of the books is that they will feature the same characters. His most recent publication, Khaos, blends Greek mythology with the science fiction world he’s built.

The next book after Khaos will be called Singularity, which will be coming out on March 21. Robinson said that Singularity will officially tie the whole universe together.

Due to his extensive catalog of work, Robinson has amassed a large following across the country. He’s been a New York Times bestselling author and the No. 1 bestselling author on Audible. He’s even had people in Texas host a “Robinson Con,” a convention to discuss and enjoy the books he’s put out over the years.

Robinson gained popularity because of his skill with the subgenre called creature features, where monsters are the star of the show. He said he strives to make his books interesting to all readers, and interesting to write, by making the plot get increasingly strange.

“It’s probably that I’m ADHD and, for me to write, [the stories] have to get progressively weirder to hold my own attention,” Robinson said. “I start with real science and then I get to go crazy.”

His favorite creature that he’s created is called Nemesis, a kaiju that spawns out of different New Hampshire locations and destroys Boston. Robinson said he’s working on Nemesis Wages of Sin, a reboot of his original series that featured Nemesis, called Project Nemesis, and hopes for it to come out sometime in 2023.

The book will be written in conjunction with a television show that Sony is producing about the first book. Robinson said he feels fortunate to have had all these opportunities for his writing.

To keep track of Jeremy Robinson’s upcoming projects, visit his website bewareofmonsters.com. Robinson’s books can be purchased online or from local bookstores. His most recent book, Khaos, was published by Breakneck Media.

— Katelyn Sahagian

Tony Tremblay

Tony Tremblay’s lifelong love of horror started when he was around the age of 9 or 10, reading, of all things, the Old Testament of the Bible.

“Those stories were scary as heck, and they left a lasting impression on me,” said Tremblay, a longtime resident of Goffstown. “As I grew older I started to look at some of the horror authors that were out there at the time, and really enjoyed what I was reading. … I thought maybe I could try to write something on my own, but just never got around to doing it.”

About 15 years ago, at the encouragement of a colleague, Tremblay joined a writers’ group at his local library, which helped him learn all of the fundamentals of how to write fiction.

“My first stories were horrible. But I learned fast and I started getting stories published in anthologies and websites and magazines,” he said. “The writers’ group helped me tremendously.”

Tremblay published his first book of short stories, The Seeds of Nightmares, about a decade ago through Crossroad Press. His latest work — 2022’s Do Not Weep for Me, available through Haverhill House Publishing — is a follow up to The Moore House, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in 2018 for “Best First Novel.”

“Bram Stoker, of course, is like the Oscars of the horror industry, and I couldn’t be prouder,” he said. “It was a great honor.”

Both novels are set in the same universe and deal heavily with the macabre side of religion. The Moore House in particular, he said, has been compared by many to the 1971 novel The Exorcist.

“All the action happens in Goffstown, so if you’re a Manchester or a Goffstown resident, you’ll see all the familiar sites in there, [like] the bridge downtown, the popcorn stand and all that stuff,” Tremblay said. “So that’s a lot of fun for the local people.”

While reading The Moore House first is not necessary to enjoy Do Not Weep for Me, Tremblay said it absolutely does make the experience “more fun.”

“Both of them are very fast reads,” he said. “I’ve had people write to me, [saying] they’re on airplanes and they didn’t want the flight to end because they wanted to finish the book. It’s that thrilling, and that’s what I was trying to write.”

Tremblay said he hopes to complete his next novel by Halloween, and he also has a new novella and a new short story in the works for later this year. Throughout the year, he participates in regional conventions alongside many other names in horror fiction. He even has co-produced one in Manchester, known as NoCon, which has been on hold since the pandemic.

“I’ve read thousands of books, and what’s kind of neat is that now I’m the one that’s selling them and going to these conventions and speaking on the panels,” Tremblay said. “If you asked me if that would ever happen, I would’ve laughed in your face back then. But it just proves that anybody can do it. You just have to buckle down and learn.”

Tony Tremblay’s latest novel, Do Not Weep for Me, is available through Twisted Publishing, an imprint of Haverhill House Publishing (haverhillhouse.com). Find out more about Tremblay’s work by visiting tonytremblayauthor.com. You can also find him on Facebook or purchase his books online through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

–Matt Ingersoll

Featured photo: It came from NH

New York style versus Montreal, everything versus asiago, and all the other variations that go into the perfect bagel

Remzi Kahya was only about 10 years old when, in 1996, his father, Ismail, opened Bagel Cafe on Hanover Street in Manchester.

Ismail had moved to the United States from Turkey several years earlier. Through a referral from a family friend, he got a job in New York making bagels. It was in Long Island, Kahya said, where his dad learned the ins and outs of the bagel business from a Jewish family who at the time had a small chain of shops in the New York area.

The knowledge and experience he gathered there would be passed down to his son — but, as Kahya recalls, not right away.

“I watched him. He didn’t let me make anything for a long time. I think it was probably like high school [when] I got to play around with the dough,” Kahya said. “I’ve been pretty much in that store ever since. … I went off to college, did other stuff, but I’ve been making bagels with dad pretty much since then.”

Throughout his college career, Kahya said, he never ruled out the possibility of continuing to work in the family business. In 2011 he opened a second Bagel Cafe on Second Street in the Queen City, eventually moving that to its current spot in Bedford in 2013. By September 2021 they had a third shop, this time in Nashua, called Simit Cafe (named for the Turkish word for a bagel-like bread). This all as the original Bagel Cafe continues its run of more than 25 years.

At around 3,000 square feet, Simit Cafe was the largest of the three storefronts, and this had originally inspired Kahya to introduce more of a full-service cafe concept with additional items. But because the bagels and bagel sandwiches have been far and away the most popular, he said the decision was recently made to rebrand the business as a third Bagel Cafe.

For many local bagel businesses like the Kahyas’, most roads lead back to New York or New Jersey. Take Bob Weygant of Rolleyholers in Exeter as another example — a home baker since his mother taught him at the age of 6, he would move to New Hampshire from New Jersey in the mid-2000s.

“When I moved up here, I missed bagels desperately,” Weygant said. “We used to go back and forth to New Jersey, bring up bagels … and freeze them. … And I got to the point when I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to learn how to make bagels. I know it’s a tremendous process, but hey, let’s go for it.’”

Weygant started selling his own home-baked bagels as a hobby in 2016 before making the transition to a commercial kitchen a few years later. By late December 2020 he would quit his day job with the goal of opening his own brick-and-mortar spot in the new year. Rolleyholers indeed arrived the following June.

Sheryl Tedford of Northfield — who grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, just outside of New York City — also recalls frequently traveling south for bagels.
“We’d go down to New York and New Jersey, come back with like three dozen bagels and put them in the freezer,” said Tedford, who started Bagels From NH as a “pandemic business” in 2020 following her retirement. “We didn’t like any of the bagels you could buy in bags because they just weren’t what we were used to.”

On a whim, Tedford decided to try her hand at making her own and was pleased at how well they came out. She started selling them, eventually becoming a staple at local summer farmers markets in communities like Canterbury and Franklin. Next, she’ll be in Danbury on Feb. 4.

Styles and preferences

Brett Fleckner recalls a proposal made by his stepfather, Robert Frank, who had an established background in the restaurant business.

“He thought we should do either pasta or bagels, and I just went along for the ride,” said Fleckner, whose family has owned and operated Bagel Alley in Nashua since 1989. “He felt that those were two things that would always continue. And, I mean, he was right. Bagels worked.”

More than three decades later, Bagel Alley has become something of an institution in the Gate City, known for its enormous bagels, thicker than your fist and made fresh every morning.

“I get up at 3:30 [a.m.] every day and I come in by 4:30, and if it’s not me it’s my nephew Zachary, and then my sister is here six, seven days a week,” Fleckner said. “That’s what it takes. There’s no shortcuts.”

Bagel Alley has several wholesale accounts in southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts. Less than a mile away is What A Bagel, another shop known for making its own bagels fresh every morning, in addition to made-to-order bagel sandwiches.

“Almost all of my bagels are what you would call New York-style,” said owner Chris Weier, a Marine Corps veteran and Nashua native who took over the shop in 2019. “They are all hand-rolled, boiled bagels. … A traditional New York-style bagel is going to be very dense and very chewy.”

At Bagel Cafe, Kahya said, his are more of a take on the traditional New York style.

“We like to steam our bagels,” he said. “We do a lot of sandwiches and I just think, personally, [steaming] the bagel makes it better for making a sandwich. You still have the crust that you want, but it’s not too hard. … I think it’s better than a New York bagel.”

At Rolleyholers, Weygant said he considers his bagels to be akin to New York or New Jersey styles.

“From my definition, a New York style is slightly larger. They have a tougher crust on the outside. … The New Jersey style is going to be a little softer on the outside … and they are slightly smaller at about four and a half ounces,” Weygant said. “But I mean, it really kind of comes down to your recipe and methods. … We’re kettle boiling and using a specific set of ingredients … [and] the amount of time that the bagel is spent in the kettle, the amount of time that they spend in the oven, the temperature at which they’re baking — all of that is going to play a part in what the real result is.”

What A Bagel also offers a few flavors of what Weier referred to as Montreal-style bagels. “Those bagels involve eggs,” he said. “So once you bring eggs into any baking process, you end up with a much softer, fluffier product. Easy to chew, if you think of, say, a brioche bread.”

Kahya said Montreal-style bagels are also traditionally known for being baked with honey-sweetened water in a wood-fired oven.

“I’ve eaten them in Montreal, but I like the New York style and the ones we do better,” he said, adding that the terms can be subjective.

Rolling in the dough

Bagels start with a flour- and water-based dough mixture that must be proofed, or left to rest, over a period of time, just like any yeasted bread.

“One of the significant factors of what makes a bagel a bagel is the hydration of the dough,” Weier said. “The amount of water that’s in the dough is lower than any other bread product that exists.”

Doughs for Weier’s bagels are hand-rolled anywhere from a day or two to a week ahead of time, depending on the batch, before they’re allowed to proof in the cooler.

“When you see those little air pockets inside the bread, that’s what the yeast is doing, is it will rise,” he said. “The longer you can get away with proofing it, the better. We try to stretch it out as many days as possible, because the longer it proofs, the more flavor comes out in the bagel.”

After the dough has finished proofing is where you’ll see bagels either boiled or steamed, depending on where you go. Sometimes they’re formed into their ring shape by hand from a long, thin piece of the dough, or other times a bagel machine will perform that function.

“At all three of our locations, we have a bagel machine, a mixer and bakers there, so we’re making them at all three,” Kahya said. “We usually do [them] in 50 pound and 100 pound flour batches. The machine has … a former and a divider. So the divider takes slabs of dough and cuts them into perfect amounts, and then it goes through a former and it comes out like a perfect circle.”

Kahya noted that, when it comes to flavors, all of the seeded options can be created starting with a plain bagel dough. The more intricate bagel flavors — think jalapeno cheddar, spinach or French toast — have additional ingredients in the dough and thus must be done in separate batches.

Some bagels at Rolleyholers start with a dough that’s formed by hand, while others use the bagel machine, which Weygant affectionately refers to as “Steve.”

“He’s got to have a name, because he’s our No. 1 employee of the month every year,” Weygant joked. “We did 84,000 bagels last year, all because of him.”

Through extensive practice and trial-and-error, Weygant said he eventually found a “sweet spot” in the water temperature when it comes to kettle-boiling his bagels.

“What you put in that kettle and the temperature of the water … is everything to the final product. If it’s too high or you put it in for too long, you’re going to get garbage,” he said. “We also differentiate ourselves by seeding them on both sides afterward.”

When bagels are ready to be baked, Kahya said this step only takes around 15 minutes, though it may depend on the amount they’re baking at one time.

Weygant pointed out that bagels do not have a long lifespan, which is why they’re baked fresh daily, and multiple times a day at that.

“Bagels begin to degrade the moment they leave the oven, but they do freeze well,” he said. “That said, the only freezer a bagel should ever live in is your own. We never freeze bagels. … So, instead of kettling and baking all of our bagels all at once first thing in the morning, we do it throughout the day so that you get maximum flavor. You get the best possible product, because all of these bagels are only minutes old rather than hours old.”

“Everything” you want

Plain used to be far and away the most popular flavor at Bagel Alley, Fleckner said — that is, until around 10 years ago, when the everything bagel took over.

“Eighty percent of the people that come in here, if they get a bunch of them, everything [bagels are] in that mix,” he said. “It’s amazing how many pans of everything [bagels] we go through compared to everything else.”

The exact ingredients of what you’ll find on an everything bagel may vary slightly.

“If you go to the supermarket, there’s probably going to be two or three types in the seasoning aisle that call it an everything topping,” Weier said, “but generally speaking, you’re going to have garlic, onion, poppy, sometimes oat, sometimes sea salt. Generally it’s all the seeds that you would see on the various other bagels, just all combined onto one.”

What A Bagel, he said, will churn out anywhere from 18 different flavors of bagels to as many as 22 flavors on the weekend, from plain and everything to jalapeno cheddar, Asiago, cinnamon sugar, chocolate chip, maple cinnamon French toast and even a rainbow-colored bagel. Fleckner, meanwhile, said Bagel Alley will offer pumpkin-flavored bagels in the fall and green bagels for St. Patrick’s Day in addition to their regular lineup of around 16 flavors.

Asked about the different bagel flavors he can produce, Weygant said the total number is “immeasurable,” with endless possible combinations.

“There’s the ‘Big Seven,’ which is going to be plain, everything, sesame, poppy, onion, garlic and salt. Those are the core flavors that every bagel shop should have,” he said. “[But] I can do bespoke custom bagels for everybody that have more or less anything in them.”

Recently, for example, Weygant made a small, limited batch of Almond Joy bagels.

“It’s a traditional bagel dough, but what I did was I rolled ingredients into the dough by hand,” he said. “Basically it creates sort of like a tube on the inside of the dough, and it was filled with chocolate chips, sugar, coconut and pralined almonds.”

Schmears, eggs and lox

To many of us, a nice toasted bagel just isn’t in the cards without a spread of some cream cheese — or, if you prefer, a schmear.

“When you get a bagel in Jersey or New York, it is loaded with cream cheese. I mean, it’s really front and center,” Bob Weygant of Rolleyholers in Exeter said. “Not everybody wants that much, and so we’ll size people up and give them the option on how much they want.”

Weygant said his shop will typically carry about seven or eight types of cream cheese at any given time, from plain, chive and veggie to other options like maple nut. He’ll make blueberry or strawberry cream cheese when those fruits are in season, and he’ll roast his own garlic for a fresh garlic and herb-flavored spread. He’s even done a sun-dried tomato and pesto cream cheese.

“Right now, I’m actually trying to figure out what the January, February, sort of late winter or mid-winter flavors are going to be,” he said. “I’m leaning toward things like banana, pineapple, vanilla [or] coconut. Just lighter flavors to play with.”

At What A Bagel in Nashua, owner Chris Weier said about eight variations of cream cheese are typically in stock at any given time, from plain and strawberry to cinnamon raisin walnut, bacon and scallion, chive and jalapeno. Bagel sandwiches are also a big deal at his shop — there’s a good selection of variations on the egg sandwich for breakfast, all of which are made to order.

Another traditional add-on to a bagel is known as lox — derived from the Yiddish word “laks,” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary — or filleted pieces of brined, sometimes smoked, salmon. Weygant said you’ll most commonly also see lox accompanied by cream cheese, capers, red onions and thinly sliced tomatoes in a bagel sandwich.

“In my mind, the best bagel for lox is either a pumpernickel or rye, or a marble. That’s a traditional Jewish meal right there,” he said. “But as long as it’s savory, it will work well. I wouldn’t put it together with a sweet bagel of any kind.”

Bialys

Similar in size and shape to a bagel, a bialy is a traditional delicacy with Polish Jewish roots. But unlike bagels, bialys are simply baked, never boiled. An impression is made in the center of the dough, and will most often contain an onion and poppy seed mixture inside.

“It’s kind of like a cross between an English muffin and a bagel,” said Sheryl Tedford of Bagels From NH, a Northfield-based homestead business that also offers bialys. “You toast it like a bagel and eat it like a bagel, [with] cream cheese or butter or whatever you want to put on it.”

Bialys, she said, get their name from the Polish city of Bialystok, where they were first made.

“When you toast it, it’s actually a little crunchier, more like an English muffin. It’s crispier,” she said. “I do an overnight rise on that one, so it rises for 12 to 15 hours at a time, and it’s a much, much wetter dough, so it’s really sticky … and it’s baked quickly at a higher temperature.”

Bob Chertoff of The Bread Peddler, based in Sanbornton, grew up in a Jewish household outside of New York City, where bialys were commonplace. Today they’re a part of his regular lineup of products, which also includes various types of Eastern European breads. You can find him at Seacoast Eat Local’s winter farmers markets on Saturdays in Stratham and Rollinsford. During the spring and summer, he also participates in the Concord Farmers Market on Capitol Street.

“Traditional flavoring for a bialy is caramelized sweet onions mixed with poppy seeds,” Chertoff said. “[It’s] also made at times with garlic or other spices, but I only make the traditional.”

Where to get New Hampshire-made bagels

Here’s a list of local shops, restaurants and homestead businesses that make their own bagels from scratch. Did we miss any that aren’t on this list? Let us know at [email protected].

Agora Bagels
633-0286, Find them on Facebook @aggiesbagels
Paying homage to the traditional New York-style bagel, Agora Bagels is the project of Vassilios Palaskas of Milford, offering a variety of flavors of handcrafted artisan bagels, from plain, everything or cinnamon to French toast and Fruity Pebbles. Call or send a message through Facebook to place bagel orders for pickup on Friday, Jan. 27, at Murphy’s Diner (516 Elm St., Manchester). The cost is $13 per half-dozen and $25 per dozen. The diner will also be officially selling the bagels thereafter as a staple, Palaskas said.

Almolu’s
2 Cooper Hill Road, Northwood, 608-1072, find them on Facebook @almolusbakery
Almolu’s opened in Northwood in May 2021, getting its name by combining the first names of owner Nat Ewing’s three daughters, Alice, Molly and Lucy. The shop is known for its hand-rolled bagels, of which Ewing said there are around 15 regular flavors in addition to some seasonal specials. Almolu’s also blends more than a half-dozen flavors of its own cream cheese.

Bagel Alley
1 Eldridge St., Nashua, 882-9343, find them on Facebook
A stone’s throw from Main Street in downtown Nashua, Bagel Alley has been owned and operated by the same family for more than three decades. Robert Frank and his stepson, Brett Fleckner of Westford, Mass., purchased the shop back in 1989. Bagel Alley makes all of its own bagels from scratch every day, featuring a lineup of about 16 flavors in addition to several kinds of cream cheese and a wide variety of bagel breakfast and lunch sandwiches. The shop also has several wholesale accounts across southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts.

Bagel Cafe
373 Hanover St., Manchester, 647-2233; 19 S. River Road, Bedford, 644-5555; 262 Amherst St., Suite A, Nashua (formerly Simit Cafe), 204-5141; bagelcafenh.com
In 1996 Ismail Kahya opened the first Bagel Cafe on Hanover Street in Manchester, which he continues to operate today. A second Bagel Cafe opened on Second Street in the Queen City in 2011 before moving to its current spot in Bedford two years later. In September 2021, Kahya’s son Remzi opened Simit Cafe on Amherst Street in Nashua (now also known as Bagel Cafe following a recent rebranding). All three locations are open seven days a week and produce their own hand-crafted bagels every day. Depending on which shop you visit, there’s usually 10 to 12 different flavors alongside a full menu of bagel breakfast sandwiches and several types of cream cheese.

The Bagel Mill Cafe & Bakery
145 Grove St. Ext., Peterborough, 924-0887, bagelmillnh.com
Since 1996 this Monadnock shop has been baking bagels and pastries fresh every morning. More than two dozen flavors are available, and with several toppings and spreads to choose from, the combinations are endless.

Bagels From NH
bagelsfromnh.com, find them on Facebook @bagelsfromnh
Sheryl Tedford of Northfield started Bagels From NH, what she called a “pandemic business,” in 2020 after retiring from her regular full-time job. She makes her own New York-style bagels in a variety of flavors, from everything and sesame to raisin and Asiago cheese, in addition to bialys, which she described as a cross between a bagel and an English muffin. Find her next at the Danbury Winter Market on Saturday, Feb. 4, from 9 a.m. to noon, at the Grange Hall (15 North Road, Danbury). During the summer months Tedford has participated in farmers markets in Canterbury, Gilmanton, Franklin and Wilmot.

Bagels Plus
2988 White Mountain Hwy., North Conway, 356-7400, bagels.plus
Located just a few minutes’ drive from the center of North Conway, this shop makes its own bagels fresh daily, featuring a lineup of nearly two dozen flavors in addition to various cream cheese and bagel sandwiches.

The Bakeshop on Kelley Street
171 Kelley St., Manchester, 624-3500, thebakeshoponkelleystreet.com
This West Side shop makes its own bagels in several flavors, from traditional options like plain and everything to Asiago, garlic onion and jalapeno cheddar. Bagels can also be ordered as breakfast and lunch sandwiches.

Big Dave’s Bagels & Deli
1130 Eastman Road, North Conway, 356-3283, bigdavesbagels.com
Before opening his shop in New Hampshire’s Mount Washington Valley in 2010, Dave Hausman learned how to make bagels in New York while working under Arthur Goldberg, whose sons have continued his legacy in several shops across the city’s metro area. In 1989 Hausman opened Monroe Bagels & Deli in Monroe, New York, which he operated for nearly two decades. Bagels at his North Conway shop are scratch-made with a variety of flavors to choose from.

Blue Loon Bakery
12 Lovering Lane, New London, 526-2892, blueloonbakery.com
This New London bakeshop opened in June 2018 in the site of a 19th-century barn and farmhouse. Bagels are hand-rolled from scratch and include flavors like plain, everything, sesame, Asiago and cinnamon raisin, and the option to add butter, cream cheese or peanut butter, as well as on several breakfast and lunch sandwiches.

Brown’s Bagel Shop
80 Main St., Newmarket, 292-5988, brownsbagelshop.com
Family-owned and -operated, Brown’s makes its own bagels from scratch daily, featuring a variety of flavors like plain, everything, pumpernickel, spinach, French toast and jalapeno cheddar, alongside several types of cream cheese and egg and bagel sandwiches.

Flight Coffee Co.
209 Route 101 West, Bedford, 836-6228, flightcoffeeco.com
Flight Coffee Co., which opened in its current space in June 2021, is known for making all its baked items from scratch daily, including its bagels, with flavors like plain, everything, Asiago and rosemary sea salt.

Loxsmith Bagel Co.
1B Wall St., Windham, 507-6105; 11 Main St., Dover, 507-6100; loxsmithbagelco.com
With two locations in New Hampshire and a third in Saco, Maine, Loxsmith Bagel Co. is known for making its own bagels fresh every day, featuring a variety of flavors in addition to specialty and build-your-own bagel options.

Rolleyholers
92 Portsmouth Ave., Suite 2, Exeter, 580-4460, rolleyholers.com
Rolleyholers, which opened in June 2021, is known for churning out hundreds of bagels a day, and you never know what flavor of dough or cream cheese spread owner Bob Weygant may think of next. There are classics like sesame, cinnamon raisin and everything, but also Asiago, blueberry and jalapeno cheddar. As for the spreads, Rolleyholers has dabbled in everything from plain, chive and veggie to pizza, sun-dried tomato and basil, and even a Dutch apple pie cream cheese.

What A Bagel
24 E. Hollis St., Nashua, 809-4466, what-a-bagel.com
Lifelong Nashua native and Marine Corps veteran Chris Weier took over this East Hollis Street shop in 2019. What A Bagel makes its own hand-rolled bagels from scratch daily, producing around 18 flavors during the week and upwards of about 22 flavors on the weekends. Nearly all of them, Weier said, are akin to a traditional New York-style, while a couple of flavors closely resemble Montreal-style bagels, which he said traditionally contain egg. What A Bagel is also known for its breakfast and lunch bagel sandwiches, which are always made to order.

Wicked Sweet Cakes and Treats
2370 Route 114, Bradford, 938-2663, wickedsweetcakesandtreats.com
Homemade bagels are baked fresh every Saturday morning at this Bradford shop, according to its website, and are available to order as is or on an egg sandwich.

Winnipesaukee Bay Gulls
118 Whittier Hwy., Moultonborough, 253-3177; 18 Weirs Road, Gilford, 527-8051; winnipesaukeebaygulls.com
Bagels here are baked continuously throughout the day. Flavors include everything from the classics — plain, poppy, sesame and everything — to others like cinnamon sugar, Parmesan and cracked wheat.

The Works Cafe
42 N. Main St., Concord, 226-1827, workscafe.com
Downtown Concord is just one of several Works Cafe locations you’ll find across New Hampshire (Keene, Durham and Portsmouth), Massachusetts (Amherst), Vermont (Brattleboro and Manchester), Maine (Portland) and New York state (Latham). Traditional New York-style bagels are boiled and baked in small batches daily and are available with a variety of flavored spreads or egg sandwiches to choose from.

Featured photo: A bagel sandwich from What A Bagel in Nashua. Courtesy photo.

Looking to try something new?

Here are 39 ideas for arts, crafts, outdoor activities and more to help you break out of your routine and find a new source of fun or rediscover a forgotten passion.

• Get hooked on fishing. On Saturday, Jan. 21, you can give fishing a try without getting a license during Free Fishing Day. Two days a year (the third Saturday in January and the first Saturday in June) New Hampshire Fish and Game invites state residents and nonresidents to fish in any inland water or saltwater throughout the state without a fishing license. Visit wildlife.state.nh.us/fishing for everything you need to get started, including maps of fishing locations, fishing season dates, a guide to local fish species and how to bait them, and more. If you want to keep fishing all year long, you can buy a fishing license online at nhfishandgame.com.

• Finally learn how to knit. While knitting can seem intimidating to beginners picking up the needles, the instructors at Elegant Ewe (75 S. Main St., Unit 1, Concord) are offering knitting classes to all levels. Classes range from specific projects to learning specialized stitches and fixing mistakes. The instructors also offer private classes for knitters looking for one-on-one time. The classes vary in price, as well as days and times. Visit elegantewe.com for more information about the classes offered.

• Or expand your fiber arts knowledge with crochet, rug making and more. Yarn and Fiber (14 East Broadway, Derry) isn’t just a yarn store; it also offers lessons in topics such as spinning wool into yarn and casting on for beginner knitters. The shop has an even less formal way of learning for beginners and experts alike, with a lounge area in the store where employees encourage crafters to bring projects and hang out with like-minded individuals. Classes meet on a rotation, and some require signing up in advance. Visit yarnandfiber.com

• Make works of art that keep you warm. Learn how to make quilts with the New Hampshire Modern Quilting Guild at one of their meetings. The guild, which takes a fresh approach to old-fashioned guilds, has challenges for square patterns, charity quilt making and more. The next meeting is on Friday, Feb. 10, at 7 p.m.; email [email protected] for location details and to attend as a guest. The first meeting is free to attend as a guest; subsequent meetings cost $5. If you wish to become a member, dues are $65 and can be paid at nhmqg.org.

• Get into opera. The Music Hall (131 Congress St. in Portsmouth) explains the art with Opera Connection, where the Hall screens recordings of famous operas and holds a beginner-friendly conversation about the music and story. The discussions are led by opera writer and producer Dennis Neil Kleinman. The next opera being screened is Fedora by Umberto Giordano on Saturday, Jan. 14, at 11:30 a.m. Tickets cost $15 and can be bought in advance at themusichall.org. The operas themselves, broadcasts from The Metropolitan Opera, also screen via the Capitol Center for the Arts at the Bank of New Hampshire Stage (16 S. Main St. in Concord), as is the case with Fedora (also screening Saturday, Jan. 14, with doors opening at 12:30 p.m.). See ccanh.com.

• Expand your movie and TV horizons. Positive Street Art (48 Bridge St., Nashua) is hosting a series of movies followed by creative painting sessions. The series, called “Inspired By,” will show a movie about Jackson Pollock, an American abstract expressionism painter, at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 27. The tickets to the movie showing are free, and the artistic session afterward costs $30. To learn more about this event or to reserve a spot, visit positivestreetart.org.

Watch movies from the early days of film at silent film screenings at Wilton Town Hall Theatre on Main Street in downtown Wilton. The films, which screen every couple of weeks, feature live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, who presents silent films and plays music at area theaters including the Rex Theatre in Manchester and the Flying Monkey in Plymouth (see silentfilmlivemusic.blogspot.com). Next up at Wilton, Safety Last (1923), a Harold Lloyd comedy, screening on Sunday, Jan. 15, at 2 p.m. Admission is free; $10 donation per person is encouraged.

Get caught up on the most recent episodes of the most popular anime at Double Midnight Comics (252 Willow St., Manchester) on Monday nights. The anime watch partyat the comic shop shows episodes that the crowd chooses that night, with all shows being streamed on the Japanese animation streaming service Crunchyroll. Entry is free and the streaming begins at 7 p.m.

• Draw. Learn how to draw your favorite animal at the Currier Museum of Art (150 Ash St. in Manchester) with Drawing Fundamentals, an adult class that will teach the basics and rules of drawing realistic animal portraits. The four-week class, which starts on Thursday, Jan. 26, is taught by local artist Robin Deary. Deary will walk students through forming the body of animals, creating visual textures and other artistic methods to capture the likenesses. There is a full list of materials available online at currier.org, as well as a link to registration for the class and information about other classes offered. The cost for the class is $200 and there are slots available for nonmembers.

• Make comics. New Hampshire-based cartoonist and educator Marek Bennett teaches comics workshops, which you can find out about at his website, marekbennett.com, where he also has videos with comics-making and drawing tutorials. Bennett spoke with Angie Sykeny in the Jan. 5 issue of the Hippo about his newest book, The Civil War Diary of Freeman Colby Vol. 3, which is on sale Jan. 25. Find the e-edition of last week’s issue at hippopress.com; the Q&A with Bennett is on page 6.

• Make stuff with added dimension. Port City Makerspace (68 Morning St., Portsmouth) offers an Intro to 3D Printing workshop on the second Wednesday of every month, from 6 to 9 p.m. Participants learn the basics of taking a design or idea and turning it into a 3D model using two different types of programs, and how to print the model using a 3D printer. The cost is $25 for Makerspace members and $45 for nonmembers. Register online at portcitymakerspace.com.

• Find your old camera and put it to use. Expand your photography knowledge and skill with the Manchester Camera Club, a group of amateur photographers who meet up to view and critique each other’s work and host workshops to help each other grow. The meetings for the club are currently done virtually over Zoom, and the group meets twice a month. The next meeting is a critique meeting with an “anything goes” segment, a “color in winter” segment and a “running water” segment. Sign up for a slot at manchestercameraclubnh.wordpress.com.

• Get your start working in clay. Explore pottery at Time to Clay (228 Daniel Webster Hwy., Nashua) with assorted projects and classes beginning in January. The next class available is Clay Handprints, where parents can capture the handprint or footprint of their little one. The studio will complete the clay casting with a personalized painting. One casting costs $35. The event will be on Tuesday, Jan. 24, and Wednesday, Jan. 25, with timed slots available from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Visit timetoclay.com.

• Take clay to the next level. Kimball Jenkins (266 N. Main St. in Concord; kimballjenkins.com, 225-3932) is offering “Beginner Wheel Throwing with Meadows Madsen” Fridays 6 to 8 p.m. starting Friday, Jan. 13, and running through March 17. “Students practice using the potter’s wheel and begin throwing basic forms such as bowls and mugs,” according to the website. The cost of the class starts at $355 and includes clay and tools (though a set of tools and additional clay are available for purchase).

• Make art with glass. Create some light-changing artwork at Studio 550 (550 Elm St., Manchester) with the stained glass class. The class will run for 10 weeks and will introduce people to ways to work with glass, and techniques needed to make the artwork. Students will make everything from a small suncatcher to windows for their home. Classes start and run on different days and at different times. Each class is two hours long and the full session costs $270. Visit 550arts.com for more information or to sign up.

• Make your jewelry just how you want it. The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen offers an ongoing open-enrollment Fundamentals of Making Jewelry class at SRS Studio (35 Howard St., Wilton). The class, open to adults and teens age 14 and up, covers the basic techniques of jewelry making using wire and sheet in copper and silver and how to pierce, solder and finish metals. It consists of six two-hour sessions that can be taken on Thursday, Friday or Saturday. The cost is $240 for tuition, plus $50 to $90 for materials, depending on the type of jewelry made. Participants can expect to complete four to five projects. Visit nashua.nhcrafts.org/classes.

• Start writing and then take your writing to an audience. The New Hampshire Writers’ Project is hosting writers’ night out, an informal gathering for amateur and professional writers to get critique, feedback and encouragement from other writers in their area. The event is also a space to discuss where and how to submit work for publication, and what writers are currently reading. The monthly event is held across southern New Hampshire. While most groups have already met for their January session, there are ways to contact the organizers on the website nhwritersproject.org.

• Get in the reading habit and find some new books. The Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester) has monthly book club meetings on the third Thursday of each month, with the next one on Thursday, Jan. 19, at 6 p.m. The book for this month’s meeting is The Paris Apartment, a mystery where Jess, a woman who needs a fresh start, asks her half-brother if she can crash on his couch in Paris, to which he agrees. When Jess reaches Paris and her brother is missing, she has to dig into his life to unravel the mystery of his disappearance. Join the club at bookerymht.com.

• Become a local history buff. New Hampshire Humanities hosts free public programs throughout the state year-round on a wide variety of specialized topics. Some upcoming programs include “12,000 Years Ago in the Granite State,” exploring the native Abenaki people’s role in the history of the Monadnock region, on Thursday, Jan. 19, at 6:30 p.m. at Nesmith Library (8 Fellows Road, Windham); “African American Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire During the American Revolution,” held virtually on Wednesday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m; and “New Hampshire’s Long Love-Hate Relationship with its Agricultural Fairs,” held virtually on Wednesday, Feb. 1, at 7 p.m. Visit nhhumanities.org/programs/upcoming to see New Hampshire Humanities’ full schedule of programming.

• Dust off your French language skills. The Franco-American Centre, a nonprofit based in Manchester, is offering a special Traveler’s French virtual class series for adults, geared toward novice visitors to a predominantly French-speaking country. A variety of themes will be discussed in class, including everything from how to check in to a hotel to ordering at a restaurant and navigating local public transportation, among other activities. New classes start on Saturday, Jan. 21, and continue every week from 10 a.m. to noon through Feb. 18. See facnh.com to register (all are welcome regardless of your membership status with FAC).

• Understand wine. Become your own wine sommelier during an upcoming five-week wine course at WineNot Boutique (25 Main St., Nashua), which begins on Thursday, Jan. 19, and continues every Thursday at 6 p.m. through Feb. 16. Facilitated by WineNot owner and wine educator Svetlana Yanushkevich, the first two-hour class will teach you how to “taste wine like a pro” by going over basic vocabulary necessary for exploring wine to the fullest. Called “Sommelier’s Secrets,” the second class, on Jan. 26, will explore how to discern different smells and flavors in wines, while the following class, on Feb. 2, will feature tastings of six wine varietals from different regions around the world. Compare “Old World” and “New World” grape varietals on Feb. 9, and learn all about wine and food pairing do’s and don’ts during the final class on Feb. 16. The cost is $200 per person for all five classes, and includes samples of wine and fine cheeses, salami and chocolate. Visit winenotboutique.com.

• Discover mixology. Tuscan Market (9 Via Toscana, Salem) on Tuesday, Jan. 24, at 6 p.m. will hold a class for beginner mixologists (or those just looking to impress their friends at their next social gathering). This class led by Tuscan Brands beverage director Luis Betancur will go over how to craft two seasonal cocktails. All who participate will have the opportunity to snack on some desserts from Tuscan Market. If you can’t make this class, there’s another one scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 4, at 6 p.m. The cost is $45 for the Jan. 24 class and $50 for the Feb. 4 class. Visit tuscanbrands.com.

• Make artful food. Charcuterie board-building classes are hosted by the team at 603 Charcuterie. You’re given everything from the ingredients to the tools and walked through step by step to make your own “Instagram-worthy” charcuterie board, as coined by 603 Charcuterie’s Theresa Zwart. From start to finish, each class typically takes about an hour and a half to two hours and, depending on where it’s held, might include a glass of beer or wine per participant. You even get to take the board home at the end of the class. A full schedule of upcoming classes, mostly at area breweries and wineries, is available to view at 603charcuterie.com (next up is on Sunday, Jan. 22, at Pipe Dream Brewing in Londonderry) — click on the date you want to attend to register.

• Up your bread game. Learn the art of challah braiding during a special virtual class being offered by Cheryl Holbert of Nomad Bakery in Derry on Sunday, Jan. 22, at 1 p.m. She’ll walk participants step-by-step through the process of making this popular Jewish artisan bread, including how to prepare and shape the dough, which makes all the difference in the overall braiding process. The two-and-a-half-hour class will cover three ways to braid four strands total, and Holbert will also share various tips for glazing, finishing and baking these challah loaves consistently. The class is $60 per person and is open to all baking levels — it will also include printable versions of Holbert’s signature and water challah recipes and lots of opportunities to ask her questions. Visit nomadbakery.com.

• Expand your cooking skills. Learn how to cook Italian specialties at one of the upcoming Winemaker’s Kitchen cooking classes at LaBelle Winery in Amherst (345 Route 101) and Derry (14 Route 111). Sessions are to take place in Derry on Thursday, Jan. 19, and in Amherst on Wednesday, Jan. 25, from 6 to 7 p.m. Classes cost $35 per person. See labellewinery.com. Or make your “eat better” resolutions more international with an introduction to the Mediterranean diet being offered by The Culinary Playground (16 Manning St., Derry) either on Thursday, Jan. 26, from 1 to 3 p.m., or on Sunday, Feb. 26, from 4 to 6 p.m. Led by The Culinary Playground’s registered dietitian culinary instructor, the class will cover the many health benefits of the Mediterranean diet while also exploring knife and cooking skills. The cost is $80 per person and pre-registration is required — see culinary-playground.com.

• Broaden your love of chocolate. Journey into the world of cacao beans with a special chocolate adventure class, hosted by Richard Tango-Lowy of Dancing Lion Chocolate (917 Elm St., Manchester). To be held next on Thursday, March 2, at 5:30 p.m., the class will cover how to grind cacao beans into chocolate, as well as how to properly taste chocolate like a chocolatier would. You’ll even get to sip the drinking chocolate (called xichoatl) like the ancient Mayans used to. Tango-Lowy will also discuss various myths and realities surrounding fine chocolate. The cost is $125 per person and registration is available online at dancinglion.us.

• Garden. New Hampshire Audubon is presenting a workshop on seed-starting for home gardeners on Wednesday, Jan. 25, at 6:30 p.m., featuring master gardener Sarah Marcoux of UNH Cooperative Extension. You’ll learn all about the benefits and best practices for starting your own plants indoors from seeds and cuttings, including the requirements for successful germination, and different growing methods, light and temperature needs and avoiding common problems like household pests. Admission is free but registration is required to receive an emailed link to the workshop — see nhaudubon.org.

• Garden herbs, for food and wellness. Become a home herbalist with a special virtual course series taught by Maria Noel Groves of Wintergreen Botanicals in Allenstown. Participants can take the nine-part course online at their own pace — each class covers how to incorporate herbs into your diet and discusses common health concerns related to herbs and herbal medicine. This winter Groves is also offering participants the option of getting a remedy kit to go with the course series, while supplies last. Kits are available first-come, first-served and are expected to be ready for shipping this month. The cost is $495 with the remedy kit included and $395 for just the nine-week series (no remedy kit). Visit wintergreenbotanicals.com.

• Learn to forage. Mushroom walks put the “fun” in fungus. Beginner and intermediate level foragers are invited to take the two-part Mushroom ID Class by Dunk’s Mushroom Products & Foraging in Brentwood (313 Route 125). The Part No. 1 class covers what a mushroom is, a mushroom’s life cycle and the anatomy of a mushroom and will be offered on Mondays, Jan. 23, Feb. 20 and March 20. The Part No. 2 class covers mushroom identification skills, how to make a spore print and how to use resources for mushrooming and will be offered on the Mondays following the Part No. 1 classes, on Jan. 30, Feb. 27 and March 27. Participants can take either or both classes. All classes start at 6 p.m., and the cost is $60 for each. Visit dunksmushrooms.com.

• Become an apiarist. The Deerfield-based Pawtuckaway Beekeepers Association is holding a two-day Beginner’s Beekeeping School on Saturday, March 11, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturday, March 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Deerfield Community Church (15 Church St.). The course will cover everything from basic bee biology and standard beekeeping equipment to how to obtain bees, honey bee colony management, seasonal responsibilities, pest and disease management practices and more. The cost is $100 per person. Register online at pawtuckawaybeekeepers.org.

• Look to the skies and get acquainted with New Hampshire’s feathered friends. The New Hampshire Audubon holds guided birding walks at the Massabesic Center (26 Deer Neck Road, Auburn) every other Saturday from Jan. 14 through Feb. 25. They start at 9 a.m., and participants should expect to walk 1 to 2 miles. The cost is $8 for NH Audubon members and $10 for nonmembers, and binocular rentals are included. Pre-registration is required. Visit nhaudubon.org/event and select the walk you’re interested in attending on the calendar to register.

• Look to the skies and get acquainted with the stars. The New Hampshire Astronomical Society has regular skywatches, many of which are open to the public, including a monthly skywatch as part of the Super Stellar Fridays on the first Friday nights of each month at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center (2 Institute Dr. in Concord; starhop.com, 271-7827). The Society, a volunteer nonprofit educational organization, can be a place to start to learn about telescopes and telescope making, astrophotography and more, according to the group’s website, nhastro.com. Annual membership dues are $30.

• Rock climb without having to find rocks. Vertical Dreams, an indoor climbing gym with locations in Manchester (250 Commercial St.) and Nashua (25 E. Otterson St.), offers a beginner lesson package that includes instruction on everything you need to know to start indoor climbing, including how to belay, how to tie a figure-eight knot and basic technique. The cost is $40, and walk-ins are always welcome. Hours at both locations are Monday through Friday, from 3 to 9 p.m.; Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m . Visit verticaldreams.com.

• Run with a crowd. In last week’s (Jan. 5) issue of the Hippo, we looked at running clubs and groups and how the camaraderie of fellow runners can keep you going. Find that story, as well as a listing of area clubs, winter running series and a calendar of road races over the next few months in the story that starts on page 10. Find the e-edition of the issue at hippopress.com.

• Become a pickleballer. Your local YMCA might be a good place to start: YMCA of Downtown Manchester (30 Mechanic St., Manchester, graniteymca.org) offers pickleball in the morning Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., and Saturday 8 to 10 a.m.; in the afternoon on Tuesday and Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m.; and in the evening on Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m.; and YMCA of Greater Nashua (90 Northwest Blvd., Nashua, nmymca.org) offers pickleball Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to noon; Friday from 5 to 7 p.m.; and Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

• Get fit while stretching outside your comfort zone with pole dancing. New Perspectives Pole and Aerial (35 Londonderry Turnpike, Suite GH, Hooksett) offers an Intro to Pole class on Monday and Friday at 7 p.m., Tuesday at noon, Wednesday at 5:15 p.m., and Saturday at 9:30 a.m. First-time classes are available at a reduced price of $20; single classes after that cost $30 each, and there are packages available as well. Register online at newperspectivesnh.com.

• Go on a quest (with dice). For those who watched Stranger Things and wanted to get involved with a Dungeons & Dragons campaign but didn’t know how to start, Double Midnight Comics (252 Willow St. in Manchester) is hosting Adventure League D&D, a beginner- and drop-in-friendly quest, on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. The join fee is $5 per game night. Visit dmcomics.com for more information about the game, or to see a full list of rules and a link to the official Dungeons & Dragons website.

• Quest with costumes. The kingdom of Argost awaits members of Fealty, a New Hampshire-based high fantasy LARP (live-action role-playing) group. This year’s events will take place at Camp Allen in Bedford (56 Camp Allen Road) on the weekends of April 14 through April 16; May 5 through May 7; Sept. 8 through Sept. 10; and Oct. 6 through Oct. 8. In the meantime, visit fealtylarp.com to study up on the campaign and start developing your character; you can be a knight, a noble, a soldier in the royal army, a mercenary or a witch.

• Quest in your own city. Quench your thirst for adventure and put your puzzle-solving skills to the test with scavenger hunting. There are a number of apps and programs offering scavenger hunts in New Hampshire cities. They’re self-guided, so you can do them on your own schedule, alone or with a team. Compete against others and try to beat their times for a top spot on the leaderboard. Let’s Roam (letsroam.com) has hunts for Manchester, Concord and Portsmouth; Puzzling Adventures (puzzlingadventures.com) has hunts for Manchester and Portsmouth; Wacky Walks (wackywalks.com) and It’s a Scavenger Hunt (itsascavengerhunt.com) have hunts for Manchester; and Diversions Puzzles and Games (diversionsgames.com), Cashunt (cashunt.com) and Portsmouth Scavenger Hunts (portsmouthscavengerhunts.com) have hunts for Portsmouth.

• Learn how to create, record, edit and produce your beats. NH Tunes (250 Commercial St., Suite 2017, Manchester) Music Production offers lessons, taught by music professionals, that cover the music-making software program Ableton; recording midi and audio; using instruments; using effects; exporting songs; song writing and structure, and music theory while exploring a variety of musical genres. A half-hour lesson costs $31.50, and a 1-hour lesson costs $56.70. Students are encouraged to take one class a week for several weeks. All ages and skill levels are welcome. Visit nhtunes.biz/learn-music-production to schedule your first lesson.

• Discover an old-school way to socially network. Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, can be a fun way to experiment with communications technology, increase your emergency preparedness and connect with people from all over the world. To learn about how you can get on the air, attend a meeting held by a local radio club. The Granite State Amateur Radio Association (gsara.org) meets on the second Friday of every month at 7 p.m. at the Bedford High School library (47 Nashua Road, Bedford), and the Nashua Area Radio Society (n1fd.org) meets on the first Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. via Zoom.

–Angie Sykeny, Katelyn Sahagian and Matt Ingersoll

Featured photo: The Gate City Striders’ Freeze Your Buns 5K. Courtesy photo.

Races and running groups to get you moving

Looking to get out (or maybe get back out) and go for a run? We talked to running aficionados who are part of running groups and race series that will help you lace up and head out, even during these colder months. For additional motivation, we have a rundown of some upcoming road races. And, for those who prefer to run inside but are treadmill-averse, we found a few local spots with indoor tracks.

Picking up the pace

Why you should join a local running club or group

By Matt Ingersoll

[email protected]

Running is a sport that doesn’t always have to be done alone. Joining a local running club or group — especially when staying active during frigid temperatures sometimes proves to be a challenge — can serve as a valuable motivator for runners of all ages and abilities.

“I think it’s really a matter of being part of a group of other like-minded individuals,” said Stephen Rouleau, president of Gate City Striders, a Nashua-based running group that was founded in 1979. “I know that, for me, it’s tougher to get motivated to get out the door by myself, whereas if I have a group of people that I know I’m going to meet with there and go run, it’s more enjoyable. The shared miles make it so much better. … We also try to do a whole bunch of social events and other things within the community. In the past, for instance, we’ve rented out a theater and done a movie night. We have ice cream runs, we have our group socials and we try to do some speaker nights.”

With more than 600 members, Gate City Striders is one of the largest running clubs in the state.

“We try to make ourselves a home for everyone,” Rouleau said, “so we have everyone from starters … all the way up to your really competitive faster runners.”

The club is known for hosting a number of signature events and race series throughout the year — next up, Rouleau said, is the Freeze Your Buns 5K series, which kicks off on Sunday, Jan. 8, and will continue every other Sunday through March 5. Each race begins at 9 a.m. at the Conway Arena (Stadium Drive, Nashua), and is open to all registrants, regardless of your membership status with the club.

“The course is pretty much from the YMCA on roads down to Nashua High School [South]. You circle that a couple of times and come back to the finish line there,” Rouleau said. “It’s flat, it’s fast and it’s family-friendly, so it’s a great way to get out there and get your miles in.”

Each race takes place as scheduled, Rouleau said, unless inclement weather interferes with snow removal operations at the high school, or there are dangerously cold temperatures or wind chills. Registration is available online in advance or in person the day of, starting at 8 a.m.

“It’s open to the public, and there are a good number of non-members who run it, or they are members of other clubs in the area, so it’s a good mix,” Rouleau said.

The sense of community that comes with being part of a running group is also a major benefit for Blake Tyler, a lifelong Queen City native and a member of the Greater Manchester Running Club (formerly known as the Athletic Alliance Running Club). They currently meet for a run every Wednesday at 5 p.m. on the corner of Bridge Street and Mammoth Road, near the Derryfield Country Club, and also host group runs on Saturdays at 7 a.m., meeting at Fitlab in the city’s Millyard.

“I’ve always been a socially sports-based person,” Tyler said. “I really enjoy sharing an activity that I like with fellow people who are part of that activity, and I just find that in particular, the running community is really [made up of] just very genuine folks. … People just love running, they love being around other people who love running, and speaking for me, in my opinion, it’s been a great boon to my mental health, especially coming off the Covid lockdowns and isolation and the lack of being able to connect with people.”

Tyler agreed that, especially during the winter months, connecting with other runners is crucial.

“You can ask any runner who’s been doing this for a while … that in the wintertime, when it gets dark by 4 or 4:30 and the days feel way shorter, it’s a lot easier to slide into habits of, ‘Oh, I’m not going to go for a run today. It’s dark and it’s cold,’” he said. “For runners, I think the ability to get out with other people, even if it’s only a mile or a couple of miles, I think there’s something to be said for that.”

Up in the Concord area, Northeast Delta Dental is a chief sponsor of two racing series set to begin this month. Their third annual Hopkinton Winter 5K series kicks off on Sunday, Jan. 8, at 10 a.m. at Storms Fitness Center (442 Pine St., Contoocook), followed by two other races on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5. Then, beginning Saturday, Jan. 14, Delta Dental’s Snow or No, We Go Trail series returns, first taking place at Highway View Farm (100 River Road, Boscawen). Other races in that series are set to take place on Jan. 28, Feb. 11 and Feb. 18 at Canterbury Shaker Village (288 Shaker Road) and on Feb. 4 and March 4 at Prospect Acres (4 Beaumier Drive, Franklin). Each of those trail races is between 2 and 4 miles, running on one or two loops, and participants are encouraged to run on snowshoes.

“Delta Dental sponsors us so all the registration money can go to charities,” series coordinator Ellen Raffio said in an email, adding that the 2-mile option for the Snow or No, We Go Trail series is the perfect distance for a beginner on snowshoes. “Every series we do … brings a different crowd, and they’re always great people. It’s a lot of fun.”

Winter Races

• The Snowflake Shuffle will take place on Sunday, Jan. 15, at 9:30 a.m. from 25 Constitution Drive in Bedford. The cost for participants age 21 and up is $35 in advance and $40 on race day, and the cost for youth participants is $30 in advance and $35 on race day. Awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups. There will be a post-race beer garden and refreshments. Visit millenniumrunning.com/snowflake.

• The Northeast Delta Dental Boston Prep 16-Miler and 5-Miler organized by the Greater Derry Track Club will take place on Sunday, Jan. 22, at 10 a.m. at West Running Brook Middle School (1 W. Running Brook Lane, Derry). The cost for the 16-miler is $75 in advance until Jan. 20, $80 in advance after Jan. 20 and $85 on race day. The cost for the 5-miler is $40 in advance until Jan. 20 and $45 after Jan. 20 and on race day. Awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups for the 16-miler and to the top three male and female participants overall for the 5-miler. The first 325 runners will receive a race shirt. An after-party will be held at 603 Brewery in Derry, and all participants age 21 and up will receive a voucher for a free beer. Visit gdtc.org/run.

• The 50 Football Fields Road Race will be held on Sunday, Jan. 29, at 11 a.m. at 2 Delta Drive in Concord. The cost is $25. Awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups. Visit runsignup.com/Race/NH/Concord/50FootballFieldsRoadRaceJanuary2911am.

• The Super Sunday 4-Miler will be held on Sunday, Feb. 12, at 9:30 a.m. at 1750 Taphouse (170 Route 101, Bedford). The cost for participants age 21 and up is $35 in advance and $40 on race day, and the cost for youth participants is $30 in advance and $35 on race day. Awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups. There will be a post-race party at 1750 Taphouse with entertainment and refreshments. Visit millenniumrunning.com/supersunday4miler.

• The Hampton Half Marathon & 5K returns to Hampton Beach on Sunday, March 5, at 10 a.m. The cost for the 5k is $39 in advance through Jan. 8, $44 in advance through Feb. 5 and $49 until registration closes. The cost for the half marathon is $74 in advance through Jan. 8, $79 in advance through Feb. 5 and $89 until registration closes. There will be an after-party at the Ashworth By The Sea Hotel with hot soup and complimentary Smuttynose beer for participants age 21 and up. Visit hamptonhalf.com.

• The Shamrocks and Shenanigans 4-Miler will take place on Sunday, March 12, at 9 a.m. from Great North Aleworks (1050 Holt Ave., Manchester). Awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups. The participant age 21 or older who is wearing the best representation of a kilt will win a pint. All participants age 21 and older will receive free beer vouchers redeemable following the race at Great North Aleworks or The Wild Rover Pub in Manchester. The cost is $35 for participants age 12 and up and $30 for youth participants age 11 and under. The first 400 registrants will receive a race shirt. Visit totalimagerunning.com/shamrocksandshenanigans4m.

• The Together We Fight 5K and 10K, to raise funds for Dana Farber for Nancy Rank and the American Liver Foundation for Bill Ducasse as they raise funds for the 127th Boston Marathon, will be held on Sunday, March 19, at 9 a.m. at 2 Delta Drive in Concord. The cost for the 5k is $20 until Jan. 31 and $25 after Jan. 31. The cost for the 10k is $35 until Jan. 31 and $40 after Jan. 31. Awards will be given to top participants within age groups. Additionally, there will be a free kids fun run at 8:45 a.m. Visit runsignup.com/Race/NH/Concord/TogetherweFight5K10K.

• The Citizens Bank Shamrock Half Marathon & Relay will be held on Saturday, March 25, at 8:50 a.m. at Veterans Park in downtown Manchester. The relay splits are 5.2, 3.2 and 4.7 miles, and awards will be given to the top three teams in the male, female and co-ed divisions. The cost for the three-person relay is $135 in advance until Feb. 28, $145 in advance after Feb. 28 and $155 on race day. The cost for the half marathon is $85 in advance until Feb. 28, $95 in advance after Feb. 28 and $105 on race day. The Citizens Bank Shamrock Shuffle, a 2-mile race, will be held the following day, Sunday, March 26, at 11 a.m. at Veterans Park in downtown Manchester. The Stonyfield Organic Lil’ Leprechaun Runs, a 100-yard fun run for kids age 8 and under, will precede the Shuffle at 10:30 a.m. The Manchester Saint Patrick’s Day Parade will follow the Shuffle at noon. The cost for the Shuffle is $25 in advance and $30 on race day for participants age 21 and up, $20 in advance and $25 on race day for youth ages 12 through 20 and $10 in advance and $15 on race day for kids age 11 and under. There will be medals for finishers, and awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups. The first 1,250 registrants will receive a long-sleeved race shirt. Visit millenniumrunning.com/shamrock.

• The Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter’s Run and Walk for Food & Shelter will take place on Sunday, March 26, at 1 p.m. outside the Muldoon Fitness Center on the campus of Rivier University (420 S. Main St., Nashua). There will be a 5k race, a 10k race and a 3k walk. Additionally, there will be a kids sprint for kids age 7 and under preceding the main event at 12:30 p.m. The cost ranges from $30 to $45 for adults and from $20 to $35 for students for the 10k; from $25 to $40 for adults and from $15 to $30 for students for the 5k and the 3k, depending on the registration date. The cost for the kids sprint is $5. Visit nsks.org/run-and-walk-for-food-and-shelter.

• The SEA 5K Road Race and Fitness Walk, a fundraiser with proceeds going to Operation Santa Claus, will be held on Saturday, April 1, at the Governor Meldrim Thomson State Office Complex (27-29 Hazen Drive, Concord). Visit seiu1984.org/sea_5k.

• The Easing Heartbreak Hill 5K: Don’t Forget Your Wings, to benefit the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will be held on Sunday, April 2, at 10 a.m. at 2 Delta Drive in Concord. The cost is $25. There will be awards for top racers overall and within age groups. Search “Easing Heartbreak Hill 5K: Don’t Forget Your Wings” on eventbrite.com.

• The Cheap Marathon, a Boston Marathon qualifier with a half marathon and full marathon, will take place on Sunday, April 16, at the Derry Rail Trail (1 E. Broadway, Derry). The full marathon will begin at 7:30 a.m., and the half marathon will begin at 8:45 a.m. Awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups. The cost ranges from $26.21 to $49.99 in advance and is $60 on race day. Visit millenniumrunning.com/cheapmarathon.

• The NHTI/Northeast Delta Dental 5K Road Race will be held on Friday, April 21, at NHTI (31 College Drive, Concord). The cost is $20. Visit runreg.com/nhti-delta-dental-5k.

• The Stonyfield Earth Day 5K will take place on Saturday, April 22, at 9 a.m. at Londonderry West Soccer Fields (90 West Road, Londonderry). A 100-yard fun run for kids age 8 and under will follow the race at 10:15 a.m. Awards will be given to the top three male and female participants overall and within age groups. The cost until March 11 is $25 for adults, $20 for youth ages 12 through 20 and $10 for kids age 11 and younger; the cost increases by $5 after March 11; the cost on race day increases by $10. The first 1,000 registrants will receive a race shirt. Visit millenniumrunning.com/stonyfield5k.

Local running clubs and groups
Here’s a list of locally based community organizations that are currently operating and promoting the sport of running through weekly meets and runs, special race series and more. Did we miss any? Let us know via email at [email protected].

Gate City Striders
gatecity.org, follow them on Facebook @thegatecitystriders and Instagram @gatecitystriders
How to join: Registration is available online at $30 per year for individuals or $40 per year for families. Individuals must be a minimum age of 13 and families must be a maximum of two adults and four children. Benefits include access to their bi-weekly email newsletter and discounts at some local businesses, like Fleet Feet Sports (4 Coliseum Ave., Nashua)

Greater Derry Track Club
gdtc.org, follow them on Facebook @gdtc78 and Instagram @gdtc_derrynh
How to join: Registration is available online at $25 per year for individuals and families, plus a $2.50 processing fee. Member benefits include discounts at some local and online vendors, access to monthly meetings, an annual dinner and more.

Greater Manchester Running Club
gmrcnh.org, join the Facebook group @gmrcnh
How to join: Registration is available online at $30 per year for individuals or $35 per year for families. Member benefits include access to weekly emails providing information on group runs and races, as well as some discounts.

Millennium Running
138 Bedford Center Road, Bedford, millenniumrunning.com/club, or see “Millennium Running Club” on Facebook
How to join: Registration is available online at $75 per year. Member benefits include club singlets, 15 percent off all purchases at Millennium Running’s retail store, weekly group training and workout opportunities and more.

Run Walk Brew
Total Image Running, 63 Coleman Road, Auburn, totalimagerunning.com/club, or see “Run Walk Brew Social Club” on Facebook
How to join: Registration is available online at $80 per year. Member benefits include 10 percent off all purchases at Total Image Running, Runner’s Alley and Her Tribe Athletics, as well as $10 off on two of Total Image Running’s signature races per year. New members also receive some Total Image Running swag, and membership renewals receive 30 percent off one item through their online store.

Runner’s Alley
669 Elm St., Manchester; 142 N. Main St., Concord; see “Runner’s Alley Concord Run Group” or “RA Manchester Run Group” on Facebook
How to join: Runner’s Alley’s run groups are free and runners are welcome each week. The Concord group meets on Thursdays at 6 p.m. and runs through all parts of the city, while in Manchester, groups meet Tuesday nights at 5:45 p.m. and Saturday mornings at 8 a.m. The Tuesday night group in Manchester features a 1-mile loop on Elm Street that you have 30 minutes to complete. The Saturday morning group is about 5 miles with shorter options possible.

To Share Run Club
To Share Brewing Co., 720 Union St., Manchester, see “To Share Run Club” on Facebook or follow them on Instagram @tosharerunclub
How to join: This club meets every Friday at 6 p.m. at the brewery, and all are welcome regardless of age, pace or running ability. Runners make their way around downtown Manchester with a lot of flexibility to choose your own distance.

Taking the inside track

A winter run doesn’t have to mean braving the elements

By Katelyn Sahagian

[email protected]

There are different options to running in the cold New Hampshire air this winter: treadmills, of course, but also indoor tracks.

“Treadmills have their values, but it does a little bit of the work for you,” said Mike Davis, the head running coach and owner of No Finish Line Fitness in Dover. “It’ll direct and force your movement and pace.”

According to Davis, who specializes in gait analysis and has been coaching people on running for 15 years, running on a treadmill can make it challenging for runners to know exactly how they’re moving.

Form is very important, he said, and keeping a good form is one of the few ways runners can protect their legs and joints from injury.

Davis’ advice to new runners is to get the right equipment (meaning a good pair of running shoes that fit well), to not download a one-size-fits-all running plan from the internet and to not sign up for a race that’s only six months or less away.

Davis recommends using a time-based model for training, starting at 30 minutes a few times a week, and doing intervals of walking and running until it gets easier. He said that listening to your own body is key in making good running decisions.

“I always say be conservative, take it easy, find your happy pace, and don’t sign up for a race too soon,” Davis said.

Indoor tracks

Here are a few locations with indoor tracks. Some locations require a membership to be able to run on the track while others will charge for a day pass.

• Executive Health and Sports Center (1 Highlander Way, Manchester; ehsc.com, 668-4753) Call for pricing details.

• Hampshire Dome (34 Emerson Road, Milford; hampshiredome.com, 673-7123) $6 for a one-day pass, $80 for a 20-visit punch card. Members of Hampshire Hills Athletic Club can use the facility for free.

• Health Club of Concord (10 Garvins Falls Road Concord; healthclubofconcord.com, 224-7787) Call for pricing details.

• Nashua YMCA Branch (24 Stadium Drive, Nashua; nmymca.org) $100 to join; adult pricing starts at $49

• Merrimack YMCA Branch (6 Henry Clay Drive, Merrimack; nmymca.org) $100 to join; adult pricing starts at $49.

Upcoming winter running series
Here are a few upcoming organized running series brought to you by local clubs and groups.

Freeze Your Buns 5K series
Gate City Striders, gatecity.org
When: Sundays, Jan. 8, Jan. 22, Feb. 5, Feb. 19 and March 5; races kick off at 9 a.m. each day
Where: Conway Arena, 5 Stadium Drive, Nashua
Cost: $5 registration per race, or $20 for the entire series ($12 for runners ages 17 and under); a virtual option is also available

Hopkinton Winter 5K series
runsignup.com/Race/NH/Contoocook/HopkintonWinter5kSeries
When: Sundays, Jan. 8, Jan. 22 and Feb. 5; races kick off at 10 a.m. each day
Where: Storms Fitness Center, 442 Pine St., Contoocook
Cost: $25 registration per race; a virtual option is also available

Snow or No, We Go trail series
shakers.org/winterraces
When: Saturdays, Jan. 14, Jan. 28, Feb. 4, Feb. 11, Feb. 18 and March 4; races kick off at 10 a.m. each day
Where: Locations vary depending on the date; the Jan. 14 race will take place at Highway View Farm (100 River Road, Boscawen), the Jan. 28, Feb. 11 and Feb. 18 races will take place at Canterbury Shaker Village (288 Shaker Road), and the Feb. 4 and March 4 races will take place at Prospect Acres (4 Beaumier Drive, Franklin).
Cost: $25 registration per race; each race is limited to 75 participants

Featured photo: The Gate City Striders’ Freeze Your Buns 5K. Courtesy photo.

Local confectioners discuss candy cane creation

Christmas may be days away, but at Nelson’s Candy in Wilton, it’s not uncommon for the unmistakable scent of peppermint to fill the air as early as October — a sign that candy cane season has begun.

“The minute they know we have them … people will ask,” owner Nancy Feraco said of Nelson’s candy canes. “We do wait to hang them up until about a week or two before Thanksgiving, but people will ask for them, and we’ll run in the other room and get them, and sell them that way.”

Feraco took over the shop in early 2019 for the late Doug Nelson, continuing his decades-long legacy in town of chocolate and candymaking. Chief among their products during the holiday season are the candy canes — made the old-fashioned way, of course, using large kettles of boiling water and a taffy puller.

“The candy cane recipe goes way back,” said Philip LaVergne, one of Nelson’s candymakers. “Doug rarely used a thermometer. Everything was all by feel. … But when it came to the candy canes, he would use one because it’s a little bit more specific.”

Indeed, the practice of making these beloved peppermint canes by hand is about as traditional as it gets in the candymaking world. It requires a distinct level of precision — not to mention consistent manpower for all the quick cutting, rolling and shaping due to the short window of time before the candy hardens — to craft them from start to finish, making the final product that much more special.

“It’s not a difficult process to learn. It is pretty straightforward but there’s a lot of scientific stuff behind it,” said Emily Lewis, production manager of Van Otis Chocolates, which, in the past, has held public candy cane making demonstrations as fundraisers for Easterseals New Hampshire. While the demonstrations have been put on hold due to the pandemic, Van Otis does carry an assortment of seasonal items during the holidays, including peppermint cream and candy cane Swiss fudge, or dark and white chocolate Swiss fudge blended with candy cane pieces.

Up in the Weirs Beach area of Laconia, Kellerhaus is another New Hampshire shop known for making its own candy canes by hand. Owner Daryl Dawson said they always make sure to get their first batch done just in time for their annual holiday event in late November.

“We’re not in a temperature-controlled facility … and so we need it to be a cool temperature and low humidity in order for the candy to harden correctly,” Dawson said, “and that’s usually around [the] end of October, beginning of November for our candy canes and also our ribbon candy.”

Granite State Candy Shoppe, with stores in Concord and Manchester, also offers handcrafted candy canes — they’re available individually as is, or dipped in white or dark chocolate. The shop also offers white and dark chocolate-layered peppermint bark and candy cane cocoa bombs, featuring a combination of dark chocolate and their homemade candy cane pieces.

From the traditional red and white peppermint cane to those in an assortment of crazy colors and flavors, we take a deep dive into how local candy experts make the magic happen and explore the folklore and claims of origin behind the candy cane as a uniquely Christmastime treat.

Ribbon candy
Like candy canes, ribbon candy is perhaps associated with the Christmas season more than any other time of the year. Kellerhaus in Laconia, in business since 1906, is known for being one of the few shops in the Granite State that regularly makes its own ribbon candy. They usually start making it around November in tandem with the candy canes, according to owner Daryl Dawson.
“A candy cane is really solid, but the ribbon candy we’ll pull into really thin strips,” Dawson said. “A lot of people think of ribbon candy as what they’ll see in the grocery store and it’s very thick. Ours is very thin, so thin that it’s almost one of those Listerine strips. It sort of will just melt in your mouth. … You won’t be chewing on it or having to suck on it for very long.”
For flavors, Dawson said they offer two different boxes — one is a traditional box holding cinnamon, wintergreen, peppermint, molasses and chocolate, while the other is an old-fashioned box with flavors like licorice, clove, spearmint, root beer and vanilla.
Nellson Perry, a candymaker who joined the staff of Nelson’s Candy in downtown Wilton back in March, has a mostly hard candy background — including candy canes and ribbon candy. Owner Nancy Feraco said they’ve made a few types of ribbon candy so far and hope to start experimenting with more soon. They have also been playing around with small hard candy pieces featuring drawn festive imagery in the center, like snowflakes and Santa Claus faces.

Getting hooked

Depending on their size, LaVergne said Nelson’s can usually produce around 150 individual candy canes or slightly more per batch, while at Kellerhaus, Dawson said that number tends to be between 75 and 100 due to its larger, nearly foot-long canes. The process starts by cooking a mixture mostly made up of sugar and water together until it reaches a temperature of just about 300 degrees.

“Once it hits the 300 degree mark, we pour that mixture out onto a stainless steel table that is heated with water to prevent the candy from breaking,” Dawson said. “When it’s poured onto the table, it’s completely clear. You can almost see through it into the table and we let it cool and add flavoring and color. … When it’s really hot it comes out in pools on the table, and you have to block it from kind of flowing off of the table, it’s so liquidy.”

When the sugar mixture cools enough and reaches a malleable, plastic-like state, that’s when it can be taken over to a taffy puller.

“They are like big coat hooks, basically,” Lewis said. “You have to wear gloves because it’s still very hot at that point, probably at around 250 degrees, and so some of us will wear multiple layers of gloves. … You rapidly flip it over the hook and pull it down and flip it over the hook and pull it down again, and that incorporation of air is actually going to make your candy cane turn white.”

Dawson said this process of turning the mixture from a clear color to a solid white only takes about five minutes.

“It’s really remarkable to see that happen,” he said. “[Pulling it] not only helps to cool it, but it also makes it a little bit more pliable and easier to work with. … We’ll also pull the red of the candy cane stripe until it’s nice and shiny looking.”

From there, the mixture — also known as a loaf — is moved to a table to be rolled, extruded and cut into individual pieces. Candymakers will use a sharp knife or a pair of shears to carefully section pieces off.

“You make a big log out of the white in the center, and then you put the stripes you added flavoring in on the side to create a design,” Lewis said. “You pull it into almost like a rope shape, and then cut your desired length and then shape them and pass them on. It sets really quickly on the table. I mean, once it gets removed from any kind of heat, it’ll set within maybe 30 seconds to a minute. So you can’t really play around with it too much or you’ll start cracking it.”

The final step, Dawson said, involves gently bending the top of each rolled up piece to create that signature hook-like shape of the candy cane.

As they reach the end of a batch, LaVergne noted, sometimes the stripes won’t always line up just right, or there won’t be enough left to create a full-sized candy cane. Those pieces are set aside to be used on other items like Nelson’s peppermint bark.

“[The candy cane pieces] are all mixed into the dark chocolate layer and the white chocolate layer, and then we sprinkle more of them on top,” he said.

Fun with flavors

Who says candy canes have to just be red and white and peppermint-flavored? In March of this year, Peterborough native Nellson Perry joined the staff of Nelson’s — Feraco likes to joke that they named the shop after him — bringing with him an extensive background in hard candy making from his time in the Los Angeles area.

“Nellson actually showed us another methodology of flavoring [candy canes] in the kettle,” LaVergne said, “because before, we used to flavor it on the hook. This way, it’s more specific, more precise and it’s the same exact flavor every time. … The other thing was that before, the stripes didn’t get flavor, because we cut off that piece of candy before they brought it to the hook. So now everything’s got flavor, and you’re going to get a better product out of it.”

The changed step of adding the flavoring into the kettle has also afforded them the opportunity to more readily experiment with different types of candy canes. Peppermint remains the tried and true favorite, but Nelson’s has also been known to make orange candy canes, blue raspberry candy canes, root beer candy canes and even anise candy canes for those who like the taste of black licorice. They made an orange candy cane with black stripes during the Halloween season, and recently Perry combined green apple, pineapple and orange flavors to create a fruit punch candy cane. Other unique flavor combinations have included a “chocolate-filled” candy cane, the inside of which Feraco equated to the chewiness of a Tootsie Roll.

“We took the candy loaf and flattened it out first, and then we put a big tube of chocolate taffy in there and then sealed it up,” LaVergne said.

At Kellerhaus, Dawson said they’ll always roll out peppermint and wintergreen candy canes, along with a third flavor that’s typically switched up every season.

“The peppermint is your typical red and white candy cane, and then the wintergreen is green and white,” he said. “Wintergreen is kind of like if you think about a wintergreen gum. It’s a little bit sharper and not as minty as the peppermint. … Everybody’s got different tastes of what they like; it just depends on the person. But the peppermint is definitely the top seller for us.”

As for that third flavor, this year it’s a blue and pink-colored cotton candy-flavored cane. But Dawson added that, oftentimes, the sky’s the limit with what they can come up with.

“We’ve done gingerbread, grape, orange, sour apple … [and] some of them actually do really well,” he said. “We usually like to let some of our newer employees decide on the flavor to do.”

An age-old tradition

There is much folklore surrounding the origin of candy canes and their significance at Christmastime. According to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, an encyclopedia edited by Darra Goldstein and published by Oxford University Press, a common story comes from the German city of Cologne, around the year 1670.

Hard candy sticks were a popular confection in Germany during the 17th century. Goldstein writes that a choirmaster of Cologne Cathedral, in his attempt to quiet children during holiday church services, consulted with a local candymaker. He ended up asking him to make a special version of a hard candy stick — one with a hook on the end, to resemble a shepherd’s crook.

Of course, there’s also the customary suggestion that, because a candy cane turned upside down resembles the letter “J,” it’s symbolic of Jesus Christ. Goldstein goes on to write that other theologians have suggested the white color of candy canes to be reflective of purity.

Prior to World War I, candy canes were manufactured by hand just about everywhere in the world. That began to change, Goldstein writes, around the early 1920s when the Bunte Brothers of Chicago applied for a patent for a machine that would manufacture them.

Considering the fact that candy canes have been mass-produced by machine now for roughly an entire century, it’s rather remarkable to see local shops like Nelson’s Candy — which, in its own right, has been in business since 1914, dating back to its days in Lowell, Mass. — take the time to continue to make them the old-fashioned way today.

Inside the Wilton shop is a framed black-and-white photograph of Doug Nelson’s grandmother and other family members and employees. Above them is a large chandelier-style structure with homemade candy canes hanging from it.

“As a child, Doug started making candy for her, and he made it all his life,” Feraco said. “In the 1980s, she sold [her shop] and she had all the grandchildren come in and take whatever they wanted for equipment. And so Doug took the taffy machines, he took the kettles and a few other things. … He moved here [to Wilton] in the early ’90s.”

Where to get your candy cane fix

Here are some local shops that offer their own handmade candy canes and other candy cane-related items, from peppermint bark to candy cane cocoa bombs.

Granite State Candy Shoppe
13 Warren St., Concord, 225-2591; 832 Elm St., Manchester, 218-3885; granitestatecandyshoppe.com
With stores in both downtown Concord and Manchester, Granite State Candy Shoppe offers handmade peppermint- or wintergreen-flavored candy canes — they are sold individually as is, or come dipped in milk or dark chocolate. Other products include dark and white chocolate peppermint bark (topped with the shop’s homemade peppermint pieces) and dark chocolate candy cane cocoa bombs.

Kellerhaus
259 Endicott St. N, Laconia, 366-4466, kellerhaus.com
Located in the Weirs Beach area of Laconia, Kellerhaus typically gets rolling on the candy canes and other peppermint-flavored items just before Thanksgiving. Individual canes are rather large — nearly a foot long after they are hooked, according to owner Daryl Dawson — and come in peppermint or wintergreen flavors, as well as a third flavor that rotates out every season. This year it’s cotton candy, featuring a blue and pink-colored cane.

Nelson’s Candy and Music
65 Main St., Wilton, 654-5030, nelsonscandymusic.com
It’s not uncommon for the sweet scent of peppermint to flow through the air inside this downtown Wilton shop as early as October. Nelson’s Candy is known for being somewhat of an experimental candy cane factory behind the counter — the traditional peppermint-flavored canes are available here, as well as everything from fruit punch to root beer candy canes. The same candy cane pieces are used in the shop’s own homemade peppermint bark.

Van Otis Chocolates
341 Elm St., Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com
While this Manchester shop has halted its candy cane making demonstration fundraisers due to the pandemic, there are still all kinds of seasonal treats here, from the peppermint creams to the candy cane Swiss fudge, featuring dark and white chocolate Swiss fudge mixed with candy cane pieces.

Featured photo: Candy cane Swiss fudge from Van Otis Chocolates in Manchester. Photo by Kreativ Studios.