Category: Featured Content

News & Notes 21/07/15

Covid-19 updateAs of July 2As of July 12
Total cases statewide99,55599,770
Total current infections statewide181197
Total deaths statewide1,3721,375
New cases100 (June 29 to July 2)215 (July 3 to July 12)
Current infections: Hillsborough County3853
Current infections: Merrimack County1211
Current infections: Rockingham County4244
Information from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services

Covid-19 news

State health officials announced 17 new positive cases of Covid-19 on July 12. The state averaged 28 new cases per day over the most recent seven-day period, an increase of about 17 compared to the week before. As of July 12, there were 197 active cases and 15 hospitalizations.

Also on July 12, officials announced the launch of the NH Mobile Vaccine Van, a new initiative in partnership with ConvenientMD in an effort to increase access to Covid-19 vaccines. According to a press release, the van is due to begin operation on July 15 and will run throughout the summer, offering all three of the FDA-authorized vaccines in addition to translation services. It’s available to appear at local community events such as festivals, neighborhood block parties and farmers markets at no cost. The van is set to hold two upcoming vaccination clinics this week — at the Roundabout Diner in Portsmouth on Thursday, July 15, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and at the Sunapee Farmers Market on Saturday, July 18, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m.

Housing stability

The Council on Housing Stability released its three-year Strategic Plan last week, according to a press release from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. The plan is a roadmap that coordinates actions and resources and seeks to increase housing availability by 13,500 units by 2024 to ensure that homelessness in New Hampshire is rare, brief and one-time whenever possible. It includes a three-year actionable framework to address homelessness across the state, with an emphasis on the need for an increase in inventory of affordable housing, the release said. Recommendations include promoting new housing development, reducing barriers to affordable housing and using a data-driven approach to determine regional needs.

The New Hampshire Council on Housing Stability was established by Gov. Chris Sununu on Nov. 18, 2020, and includes stakeholders from across the state, including state leadership, local mayors, and people who have experienced homelessness. The plan is led by the Department of Health and Human Services, in partnership with the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs and the Community Development Finance Authority, the release said.

ARPA funds

On June 7, the Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted to initially approve Mayor Joyce Craig’s recommendations for the city’s use of American Rescue Plan Act funds. According to a press release, most of the programs and positions are funded for the next five years, and during that time the city will measure program effectiveness to make sure it addresses the negative impacts of Covid-19 and helps build a strong recovery for the city. The recommendations will be discussed by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen’s Finance Committee before a final vote. “Manchester residents overwhelmingly cited education as one of the areas to which they would like to see ARPA funds allocated, and we look forward to working with Mayor Craig and the Board to help expand access to higher education for public school students in Manchester and to support local workforce needs,” Paul LeBlanc, President and CEO of Southern New Hampshire University, said in the release. Greater Manchester Chamber CEO Mike Skelton said in the release that “The Greater Manchester Chamber, along with many community business leaders, support the proposed ARPA spending plan and the investments that will generate and support job growth, stimulate economic activity and expansion, and strengthen the city’s ability to attract and retain its workforce.”

Unemployment numbers

Last week, the New Hampshire Department of Employment Security issued a press release after the weekly unemployment report was released by the United States Department of Labor, stating that the numbers reported for New Hampshire were wrong “and present a misleading view of trends in the state’s unemployment claims.” According to the release, some claimants were counted twice — once when they received their last week of federal unemployment benefits and again as a new claim for state-level benefits the following week. New Hampshire ended participation in the federal pandemic unemployment programs June 19 and instead incentivized people to return to work with a $1,000 bonus payment. The final week of benefits was included in the claims numbers reported by the Department of Labor, and some of those recipients may have qualified for benefits in the state’s regular unemployment program during the week ending June 26 — meaning those same individuals were counted a second time by the Department of Labor, the release said, artificially inflating the state’s numbers. “These numbers are wrong and give the misleading appearance of an increase from the prior week which has not occurred in the prior 3 months,” Rich Lavers, Deputy Commissioner at Employment Security, said in the release. “In reality when you compare claims filed by people in the regular state unemployment program, the weekly claims fell by 19 percent compared to the prior week and federal claims fell by 12 percent in the final week they were available.”

Aircrews from the New Hampshire Wing of Civil Air Patrol departed from airports in Concord, Laconia, Portsmouth and Nashua on July 10 during a statewide emergency response training exercise. According to a press release, the Air Force-assigned trainings focused on Civil Air Patrol’s airborne search and aerial disaster assessment photography skills.

The Manchester School District announced July 11 that longtime district administrator Debora Roukey of Goffstown will be the new principal of Central High School. According to a press release, Roukey is the first female principal in Central’s 175-year history.

A $50,000 Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act Local Drug Crisis Grant has been awarded to the Raymond Coalition for Youth, which works to reduce opioid, methamphetamine, and prescription drug misuse among youth and young adults in Raymond and its surrounding communities. According to a press release, the grant is provided by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, in cooperation with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and will be paid out over five years.

Isabel Povey of Hampstead will represent New Hampshire at the Miss America’s Outstanding Teen Competition in Florida later this month. According to a press release, the Pinkerton Academy senior was crowned Miss New Hampshire’s Outstanding Teen in February 2019 and has served as the state representative throughout the pandemic, volunteering with local food pantries, the NH Food Bank, and the international nonprofit organization Seeds of Hope. Preliminary competitions will be held July 29 and July 30, and the new Miss America’s Outstanding Teen will be crowned Saturday, July 31, the release said.

Clarification
Page 29 of the Hippo’s “Cool Things About New Hampshire” magazine should have said that Hayward’s Homemade Ice Cream served chicken tenders, steamed hot dogs and fries in addition to its homemade ice cream flavors. It does not sell burgers.

Generous Listening

Much of what passes for public conversation these days could well be likened to a poker game where each player slaps down a card and the others try quickly to put down one of higher value. Whether the topic is immigration, gun control/rights, or abortion, the exchange soon becomes heated and the pace frantic. What is lost, quite simply, is listening.

For 25 years, there had been a space in our lives where that was not the pattern. Rather than shouting, blustering assertions, or insulting innuendos, NHPR’s The Exchange had been true to its name, a thoughtful, measured, and substantive exploration of issues and events among people with diverse and often deeply different views (NHPR discontinued the show last month).

Twenty-five years of The Exchange also brought us lighter fare about matters we didn’t know we didn’t know, such as the issues of pets along our hiking paths, developing alternatives to maple sugar syrups, and the curious doings of some of New Hampshire’s long-ago governors.

These conversations, in the truest sense of that term, were moderated by Laura Knoy, host of the program since its inception.

Whether interviewing a U.S. presidential candidate on a swing through our state or hosting a three-way exploration of substance abuse, Laura consistently modeled her program on what she herself values, generous listening. The term first used by Rachel Naomi Remen and later by Krista Tippett is “listening that is powered by curiosity.”

It is further suggested that this is “a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive.” For anyone who had consistently tuned in to The Exchange each weekday morning, it would be clear that generous listening is instinctive with Laura.

And that is the point about what so many of us will miss. The program not only facilitated a statewide forum for the examination of issues critical to our community but also modeled behavior by which civil conversations even about profoundly contentious and divisive matters can take place.

At a time of such polarization, we need many more such exemplars of what our “better selves” could be to one another.

You can contact Steve Reno at stepreno@gmail.com.

Take a load off

The Weight Band plays drive-in show

Though named after The Band’s most iconic song, with sets featuring “Up On Cripple Creek” and other gems from their catalog, The Weight Band is a flame keeper, not a tribute act.

Guitarist and singer Jim Weider cofounded the group after Levon Helm died in 2012, but prior to that he’d assumed the role Robbie Robertson famously quit in The Last Waltz, touring with a reunited Band for 15 years, and playing on their final three studio albums, Jericho, High on the Hog and Jubilation.

Weider’s ties go deeper than that, however. In the mid-1960s, he began bumping into Band members while working at a stereo store in his hometown of Woodstock, New York. Owner Kermit Schwartz, an oddball who’d smoke two cigarettes at a time and had a constant Maalox ring around his mouth, endeared himself to musicians with a generous credit policy.

“He would just give everything out; pay later, they loved it. They would bring in their newest record and stuff they were working on and play it on the Macs and Crowns,” Weider said in a recent phone interview — the latter reference not to computers but to high-end receivers made by McIntosh and Crown Audio. “I met Levon very early on back then.”

After the seismic impact of Music From Big Pink, the Woodstock scene dissipated as The Band hit the road and Weider began his professional music career. By the mid-’80s, everyone was back. The Band had reunited in 1983 with The Cate Brothers Band backing them, but by 1985 the four founding members were considering a lineup shuffle.

Weider, who’d been in Helm’s All Star Band post-Waltz, got a call.

“Levon said, ‘Come on down, the four of us are here at The Getaway playing,’” Weider said. “I sat in with them and we did a whole night of music with the original Band. … They realized they wanted to go back to five pieces after playing with me.”

His first gig was in front of 25,000 people, opening for Crosby, Stills & Nash.

“Dallas, Texas, no rehearsal, just boom,” he said, recalling an inebriated Richard Manuel being carried onstage by two roadies. “I got to kick off all the tunes. … They all have guitar intros, because the guitar player wrote most of them. It was pretty nerve-wracking.”

When Manuel died a year later, they continued to tour; the reunion ended when Danko succumbed to a heart attack in 1999. Later, Weider was part of Helm’s band The Midnight Ramblers during their legendary run of Rambles in his hand-built Catskills barn.

“Levon was in his glory there,” Weider said. “He loved having Allen Toussaint up with us, or John Hiatt or John Prine. Everybody wanted to come and take part. … It was like a big barn dance.”

The Weight Band now includes keyboard player Brian Mitchell, Albert Rogers and Michael Bram on bass and drums, and newest member Matt Zeiner on keyboards. Along with Weider, each brings a long list of credits to the mix, including Bob Dylan, Dicky Betts, Willie Nelson, B.B. King and Al Green.

The energy that moved The Band’s rebirth — honoring the past, while continuing to create new music — is alive with The Weight Band. In 2018, they released World Gone Mad: eight originals, with covers of Jericho’s “Remedy” and Grateful Dead’s “Deal.” In December they completed a follow-up, due later this year or in early 2022.

Shows still feature lots of Band songs, “but now it’s to pull people in,” Weider said. “I’m just carrying on some of the music, and we’ve got our whole catalog of our own sound.”

The night always ends with the song that gives them a name, one many call the national anthem of Americana. Why does “The Weight” endure?

“People can relate to it, they can sing it, and the melody — it’s just, help your brother, take a load off,” Weider said. “It’s just a good feel song, one that everybody wants to play and sing. Robbie wrote a good one.”

The Weight Band
When: Sunday, July 11, 3 & 6 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $75 per car, $22 per person at tupelohall.com

Featured photo: The Weight Band. Courtesy photo.

The Tomorrow War

The Tomorrow War (PG-13)

Chris Pratt stars in the old-fashioned summer save-the-world popcorn movie The Tomorrow War, released on Amazon Prime Video.

Dan Forester (Pratt) is having difficulty getting ahead in his career (science something or other) but has all sorts of admiration from his wife, Emmy (Betty Gilpin), and young daughter, Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). He’s in the middle of a consoling snuggle with the two of them while watching World Cup soccer when a wormhole opens up on midfield and soldiers come pouring through. They announce that they are from about 30 years in the future and are losing a war with an alien force. Come and fight with us to save humanity, they say, and, as news clips explain, the countries of the world eventually agree to a draft. The people drafted are both random and specific: They are men and women, fit and doughy, but most tend to be older — perhaps because, as Dan and fellow draftee Charlie (Sam Richardson) surmise, they will all be dead by 2052 and therefore won’t accidentally meet their older selves and cause a paradox.

When Dan is called up, it’s after nearly a year of the present sending soldiers to the future, with few returning and no sign that humanity’s prospects for winning the war are improving. He learns that draftees get very little training and not much in the way of uniforms; it’s just “here’s a gun, try not to get eaten.” The aliens, white insect/crustacean-y creatures, don’t have weapons (except for the sharp spikes that shoot out of their tentacles, hence their name “white spikes”) or even an organizing structure. They eat, people and whatever other animals cross their path, and once a week they go back to their nest-holes and rest (or, as we later learn, breed, which is why there are now so many of them). White spikes move fast and only lucky neck or abdomen shots take them out, so when Dan shows up in the future for his seven-day stint in the war, it’s clear that the outlook for humanity is bleak.

Dan, who once served in the military and did a tour of duty in Iraq (where he had a leadership role), is also a science teacher who has shared his love of science with his daughter. Charlie is also a former science professor who now works in tech research and development and makes up for his lack of military prowess with quips. Dan has a difficult relationship with his father, James (J.K. Simmons), who also has a military background and now has a shifty job fixing planes and skirting the law. I could list a few other Chekhov guns in the packed metaphorical armory of the first segment of this movie that go off in the final action set piece. There are a lot.

And that’s OK.

Like an Independence Day with a smaller budget and a lower wattage of stars, The Tomorrow War hits a lot of the familiar apocalypse action movie beats with a nice mix of shooting and explosions and humor and basically appealing characters played by actors who have more in them than this movie asks of them. It’s microwave popcorn fare, in the sense that it isn’t quite the fresh popcorn with real butter of summer blockbusters past and in the sense that you’ll be enjoying this one at home, which perhaps lowers the bar a little. If you need it, you can look for some deeper commentary about climate change and the ability of humans to come together (or not) when they really need to. But you also don’t need to dig that deep for a reason to basically enjoy this (long but forgivably so) lightweight summer movie. B-

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and some suggestive references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Chris McKay with a screenplay by Zach Dean, The Tomorrow War is two hours and 20 minutes long and is distributed by Paramount Pictures but somehow available on Amazon Prime Video.

The Boss Baby: Family Business (PG)

The suit-and-tie baby of the 2017 The Boss Baby returns in The Boss Baby: Family Business, a cute animated movie that isn’t quite as rich as the original version but is still family-friendly.

And by that I mean not only that it is kid-appropriate (for, I don’t know, elementary schoolers and up) but also all about family. In the first movie, Boss Baby, also named Ted (voice of Alec Baldwin), is the younger brother of Tim (voiced in this movie by James Marsden). Though appearing to be a regular goo-goo-gaa-gaa baby, Boss Baby is actually a 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy-style corporate ladder-climber sent by his company, Baby Corp., on a mission. Tim deeply resented new baby Ted at first but eventually learned to live with him, in part by helping him with his corporate ambitions at Baby Corp., the company that is bullish on babies and tries to keep their affection rankings higher than those of, say, puppies.

In the years since, Ted and Tim have grown up and grown apart. (Actually, in the years since 2017, Boss Baby and Tim have had continuing adventures in a Netflix TV series called The Boss Baby: Back in Business, which has an enjoyably oddball sense of humor. For example: Boss Baby finds himself battling an outside consultant brought in to evaluate Baby Corp. managers and makes regular cracks about why you can’t trust the marketing department. In one episode, when the boys’ grandma fights with a department store over returning a blouse, she ends up unionizing the store workers. It’s weird and I recommend it.)

But now adult Tim is living in his parents’ (voiced by Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow) old house with his wife Carol (voice of Eva Longoria) and their two daughters, second-grader Tabitha (voice of Ariana Greenblatt) and baby Tina (voice of Amy Sedaris). Tabitha has recently started at a new school and seems stressed out by its expectation for advanced math and proficiency in Mandarin. Tim, a stay-at-home dad, is worried that she is growing up too fast and growing away from him, not unlike how he and Ted have grown apart. Though they were once best friends, Ted is now very busy with his executive businessman lifestyle and mostly interacts with Tim by turning down invitations to come and visit and sending overly elaborate gifts.

This can not stand, decides Tina, who is, like her uncle before her, a Baby Corp. executive. She needs both Ted and Tim to help fight a new threat: Dr. Armstrong (voice of a very Jeff Goldblum-y Jeff Goldblum), the head of the international chain of high-achievement-focused schools (including Tabitha’s). Tina and Baby Corp. are certain he has some sort of shifty plan and they need Boss Baby to help them. Thus does Tina lure Ted to the family home and then dose both Ted and Tim with special de-aging formula that temporarily turns them back to roughly Tabitha-aged Tim and Boss Baby.

The first movie used the Boss Baby conceit as a way to play out Tim’s feelings about going from only child to oldest child with a pushy infant sibling. Likewise, this movie uses it to work through various family relationships — Tim and Ted, Tim and Tabitha and maybe Tim and his own sense of self if his oldest daughter doesn’t need him as much. And it works about as well as the first movie did, but this feels less kid-focused. Though he appears in a kid’s body, Tim is really an adult person with his adult person worries and the movie is more centered on those than on executive baby humor or kid antics.

That said, the movie did seem to have enough wackiness to entertain kids — there’s a lot of silliness with a horse, we do still get some “the horror of other babies” moments with Boss Baby. Goldblum brings a nice element of weirdness to his character who is a villain but not violent or particularly mean.

I think I liked the original The Boss Baby (which doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere but is available for rent or purchase) more than a lot of reviewers. I still like the overall universe, as presented here, even if the sequel doesn’t quite match up. B

Rated PG for rude humor, mild language and some action, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Tom McGrath with a screenplay by Michael McCullers (based on the books by Marla Frazee), The Boss Baby: Family Business is an hour and 47 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios in theaters and on Peacock.

The Forever Purge (R)

The Purge-supporting totalitarian government of the U.S. is threatened by an even more violent social-media-organized group in The Forever Purge.

Don’t worry if you haven’t seen or have forgotten previous Purge entries (this is No. 5 in the series). This movie sort of catches you up/reorients you in the Purge universe: The Purge is the annual 12-hour period when people can commit any crimes they want and apparently what they want is to wear menacing animal masks and go on spree killings. It went away for a while but is back now, thanks to the recent elections favoring the Purge-supporting New Founding Fathers. They were reelected because of increased crime and anti-immigration sentiment and something something The Purge will fix it.

This movie, though, isn’t really about the Purge. While we see two main sets of characters prepare for and weather the Purge, most of the story takes place in the hours after it’s over.

The wealthy cattle ranching family in rural Texas the Tuckers gathers at their large, secure home for the Purge: there’s the paterfamilias Caleb (Will Patton), his adult daughter Harper (Leven Rambin), his sullen adult son Dylan (Josh Lucas) and Dylan’s pregnant wife, Emma Kate (Cassidy Freeman). None of them seem to be on Team Purge or Team Current Administration, though Dylan has some general resentment because his father and everybody else at the ranch knows that he’s not such a great cowboy. Certainly, he’s not a great cowboy compared to Juan (Tenoch Huerta), one of the ranch workers, and this makes Dylan all jealous, which he expresses via racism.

Juan and his wife Adela (Ana de la Reguera) are recent immigrants from Mexico and are aware of the weird annual festival of violence of their new home but they are determined to make it work, especially Adela. They spend Purge night hunkered down with other families in a fortified and guarded warehouse. And yet she remains optimistic about America and their future as the Purge ends and she heads back to her life. Optimistic right up to the moment when she is trapped and nearly killed by some mask-wearing loons telling her that it’s “purge ever after.” The Forever Purgers have decided one day of violence is not enough and want to continue the killing until everyone who doesn’t agree with their brand of white supremacist fascism is dead.

She and Juan and their friend (Alejandro Edda) and the Tuckers trying to find their way to safety — which is eventually identified as refuge in Mexico — makes up the bulk of this movie’s action, making it not really about some “organized chaos” day but about actual anarchy and the collapse of society.

I’ll try to separate what has always annoyed me about the Purge movies and the overall “watching a reenactment of your root canal” feel of this movie with what worked about it — and there are small elements that work.

I have always found the Purge as a concept maddening, both as public policy (how does it reduce crime and stimulate the economy? Even in a bread-and-circus sense it seems stupid) and as a story-telling device. The movies use the Purge as a sort of dippy murder fest — either thrill killing or petty revenge — without going much beyond that. There is a general “saying something about wealth inequality” sheen on these movies but they don’t really say that much; “rich people are jerks” is maybe as far as it goes.

So what works here? The movie gets its pacing right. It takes us from Juan and Adela’s backstory to Purge night to post-Purge pretty quickly. And it keeps up the energy without lingering too much on grisly violence for grisly violence’s sake.

Ana de la Reguera is a fun action heroine. We are probably with her more frequently than with any other one character and she definitely has that believable, can-do butt-kicking energy.

The movie also has some visual cleverness about juxtaposing Mexico and the chaotic U.S.; one of the final shots in particular made me think “huh, neat” for the way it referenced so many other movies.

Overall, though, The Forever Purge was a bummer, but I guess if Purge movies are your thing, this is maybe one of the better ones. C

Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language throughout, according to the MPA on filmlistings.com. Directed by Everado Gout with a screenplay by James DeMonaco, The Forever Purge is an hour and 43 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios, in theaters.

Featured photo: The Tomorrow War

Italian traditions

Rig A Tony’s expands to Bedford; new Windham and reopened Derry spots on the way

Lisa DeSisto was gearing up for a 20th anniversary celebration of Rig A Tony’s Italian Takeout — and had just opened a second location in Windham — when the pandemic hit, followed by a fire in May 2020 that forced the closure of the downtown Derry Rig A Tony’s.

“I wasn’t going to close during Covid because I wasn’t going to let it defeat me,” said DeSisto, who is also in her second season as owner of Clam Haven in Derry. “Then when the fire happened, it made me say, ‘OK, I have an opportunity to rebuild my restaurant. What else can we rebuild and do differently?’ It made me start to think about what was next.”

A year later, DeSisto and her team are hard at work on reopening the original Rig A Tony’s on West Broadway in Derry, and the Windham location is moving into a larger space four doors down. Both are on track to open later this year. Meanwhile, a new Rig A Tony’s in Bedford opened last month, and while a third location hadn’t been part of DeSisto’s initial plans, she couldn’t pass up the chance to purchase the space that was previously home to Table 8 Pasta.

DeSisto has teamed up with longtime industry professionals Rich Vellante and Jason Berkman, who each now serve as business associates of the company. Vellante is the former executive chef and executive vice president of restaurants for Legal Sea Foods, a role he held for two decades. His and DeSisto’s families also happen to hail from the same region of Italy.

close up of hands holding sandwich
Uncle June’s Garden sandwich. Photo courtesy of Rig A Tony’s.

“With Jason and Rich, I was [introduced] to all these elevated products that I didn’t even know existed,” DeSisto said. “I feel like they’re here helping me carry on the family legacy.”

All three Rig A Tony’s locations have the same takeout and catering menus, which are filled with new options. Appetizers include wood-grilled Tuscan wings with lemon, rosemary and Calabrian pepper sauce; a whipped feta cheese dip with roasted pepper puree, garlic and parsley; and seared broccoli rabe with white beans, garlic, red chili flakes and white wine. Notable additions to the entrees menu are beer-braised boneless short ribs with a mustard glaze and stewed vegetables, and a spit-roasted porchetta with roasted carrots and apricot pesto.

“Porchetta is something you don’t see too often that we’ve introduced,” Vellante said. “It’s a highly seasoned pork that we do as a meal and on a sandwich as well. … We use fennel pollen, which gives it a more aromatic and floral flavor and smell to it.”

You’ll still find lots of Rig A Tony’s favorites on each of the menus too, from chicken or eggplant Parmesan to spaghetti and meatballs, Sicilian pan pizzas and other Italian staples. Even the pastas and the tomato sauces have received upgrades of their own.

“We chose to use the De Cecco brand pasta. They dry it in a very slow process, and also cut it with a bronze die, so what it does is it holds up a lot better and just complements the sauce,” Vellante said. “We tested a lot of different tomatoes, and what makes them taste so good is the soil. … These tomatoes that we have are actually grown at the base of Mount Vesuvius, and so it’s that volcanic soil that makes the difference.”

There are also new selections of savory salads, like pesto burrata and Sardinian couscous, and sweet treats from cannolis and Italian cookies to tiramisu and whoopie pies. Inspired by Vellante’s 2-year-old dog Barbuto, there is even a section of the takeout menu that is dedicated to man’s best friend, featuring homemade dog treats and hearty bowls, like chicken with sweet potato and peas, or beef with brown rice and carrots.

Rig A Tony’s Italian Takeout & Catering

Bedford: 254 Wallace Road (now open); current hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Derry: 38 W. Broadway (reopening; coming soon)
Windham: 13 Rockingham Road (coming soon)
Visit rigatonysitalian.com, find them on Facebook and Instagram @rigatonysitalian or call 488-2877

Featured photo: Chicken marbella. Photo courtesy of Rig A Tony’s.

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