Lift one another up

At a religious ceremony last weekend, in the beautiful woods of New Hampshire, the priest counseled us to come together across our differences and to pray for one another. While that sentiment seemed reasonable among the small group of relatively like-minded folks gathered in the snow that morning, I realized it was directed ultimately not just to us but beyond, even nationally across our country. The challenge of that admonition was for each of us to look above what divides us to what we have in common. But in all honesty, that’s hard to do when so much of what has happened recently seems inevitably to drive us even further apart.

Tonight, as I write this, while watching the memorial service for the victims of the pandemic who were grieved at the National Mall, and especially when the 400 lights came on along the Reflecting Pool, each one casting a reflection in the shimmering water, as if to ripple out through each glistening reflection the individuality of every single tragically lost life from families across our nation, it became so very clear that that truly is what we have in common.

For regardless of partisan identity, as human beings we all grieve the loss of our loved ones.

In that other, almost religious service this evening, we were counseled, “To heal, we must remember. It’s hard sometimes to remember.” Yes, it is hard to look beyond the tragedy of our personal losses: the deaths of those who didn’t die with their families at their side, who died in the compassionate care of nurses and doctors who maybe knew them only by name and brief acquaintance, but who gave them tender ministration in our place. Yes, to hold that sorrow and look around to so many others with whom we share loss and to remember they, too, are our brothers and sisters.

Ancient wisdom tells us that “Nothing is as strong as a heart that has been broken.” Might this nation of broken hearts look up through our pain and remember who we are?

Rituals are things we do as a community at times of profound change and deep feeling. They can bind us up as individuals, but they can also urge us as fellow human beings to lift one another up. Truly, this I believe.

Playing out, in

Winter Warmer showcases regional talent

The spark for Winter Warmer, a virtual music festival that kicked off Jan. 16, came in the sweltering days of August. Along with fellow musician Nick Phaneuf, Mike Effenberger and his wife, videographer Amanda Kowalski, produced an outdoor, multi-camera video project and came away elated with the results.

As they watched the playback, the thought occurred to them that filming a series of professionally staged shows could provide a boost to the area scene when gigs grew scarce. They reached out to Martin England, who frequently uses his barn, dubbed North Buick Lounge, for house concerts. With plenty of space and good ventilation, it was a perfect venue for what they had in mind, Phaneuf said in a recent joint interview with Effenberger.

“The idea was to film when it was warm and safe, so that musicians could … monetize their work in the winter by having a high-quality concert to sell tickets to,” he said. “It would keep the local audience engaged with the scene by providing them with content to keep them caring.”

Area bands, spanning multiple genres, jumped on board immediately. Eleven sets were shot over two weekends, straddling the end of September and the start of October. The first performance filmed was by Boston rap group STL GLD (pronounced “Still Gold”). Effenberger wasn’t sure how the neighbors would react, even though they’d been advised of the plans.

“It’s 11 in the morning and there’s high-volume hip-hop happening that was exciting and briefly nerve-racking, but nobody complained,” he said. “Their set was incredible.”

The livestreams premiered in mid-January with New Orleans channelers Soggy Po’ Boys, and the March 27 finale stars Dan Blakeslee and the Calabash Club. Effenberger and Phaneuf are members of both groups. Upcoming shows include bluegrass from Green Heron (Jan. 23), Americana trio Young Frontier (Feb. 27) and harmony-rich quartet River Sister (March 20).

Phaneuf’s favorite was Seacoast rockers Rick Rude.

“I’ve only got to see them a couple of times over the years, and it was great being up close while we were capturing the concert,” he said. “Their music is joyful and chaotic, in all the best ways. That was a refreshing set to listen to.”

A key benefit for participating musicians is that they’ll retain full ownership of their performance video.

“Creating high-quality content that the bands could then continue to monetize or utilize after the series is done” was a key goal of the effort, Phaneuf emphasized. “We feel pretty good as an outcome of this that we can give them that.”

Both Effenberger and Phaneuf had a limited schedule during 2020, but when they did perform, they were pleased by the outpouring of support from the community.

“I was personally blown away at the dollar value that people put on the thing that we do,” Phaneuf said. “Doing this for a living, you spend at least some amount of your time as musical wallpaper. … You’re seen and not heard. People paying $50 to lock down a table at a Portsmouth pop-up to hear a show made me feel the community really valued music more than I thought they did. It was sort of an ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ situation, where there was less music, but the audience dedication to being at those shows was impressive.”

Effenberger liked how venues adapted, and how a few new ones sprouted up overnight. “It was an uphill battle,” he said, noting a farm in Kensington that “simply built a stage and bought a PA, and said, ‘Let’s do this and see if the community bites’ — and they did.”

Almost all the money from Winter Warmer will go to the artists, with five percent benefiting Continuum Arts Collective, an effort run by Martin England that puts musical instruments and equipment in the hands of kids who don’t have access. The series also received critical assistance from Seacoast nonprofit Project MusicWorks.

Shows will be available for viewing after they premiere, for the rest of 2021.

“We’re encouraging people to have a group experience,” Phaneuf said, “but if you miss it on that Saturday, you can watch it later.” Winter Warmer Online Concert Series

Winter Warmer Online Concert Series
Shows debut on Saturdays at 8 p.m. on seacoastmusicsupport.com

Premiere dates:
Green Heron, Jan. 23
Rick Rude, Jan. 30
STL GLD, Feb. 6
Jim Dozet Band Record Release Show, Feb. 13
Jazzputin and the Jug Skunks, Feb. 20
Young Frontier, Feb. 27
Earthkit, March 6
Sojoy, March 13
River Sister, March 20
Dan Blakeslee and the Calabash Club, March 27

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Promising Young Woman (R) – One Night in Miami (R) – News of the World (PG-13)

Promising Young Woman (R)

Carey Mulligan plays a woman who can’t move on from the wrong done to her friend and the resulting devastation in Promising Young Woman, a dark, occasionally darkly funny, brutal revenge thriller that is expertly well made.

Promising Young Woman is so much more emotionally torturous than comes across in the trailers, which highlight the revenge element but serve it up with dark humor. While it does have dark humor, actually seeing the story play out and knowing the characters, makes everything so much grimmer. I’ve read and heard lots of commentators point this out but it’s worth really highlighting this fact now that the movie is available for home viewing. (I believe this movie is still in area theaters as well.) Be warned: This is not a “bad-girl” funny good time.

That said, this is also an exceptionally well-made movie. It is surgical in its writing; every line has a point. It looks great; so much care has clearly been taken with every shot and with where characters are in the frame and where the movie is directing you to look. I was amazed with how it is all staged and how everybody is costumed and how that all works into what is being conveyed with each scene.

And the performances are strong. Carey Mulligan brings a lot of layers to Cassie, a 30-year-old woman who is stuck in her grief. During the day, Cassie is being her “real” self — but with a wall of dry humor and disinterest to keep people at arms length.

At night, Cassie goes out as someone else. She’s made up and dressed up and nearly-falling-down drunk. Or really “drunk,” because the unsteady walk and halting speech are just an act. Eventually, some Nice Guy (played by Adam Brody or Sam Richardson or Christopher Mintz-Plasse) comes over to “help her,” to “protect her from those jerks.” This seems to eventually involve taking her to their house, offering her more intoxicants and starting to make out with her, or really make out on her because she doesn’t engage. And then, suddenly, she soberly looks them in the eyes and asks them what they think they’re doing, to their absolute terror.

Cassie does this in the name of Nina, her best friend from childhood through their time in medical school. We learn piece by piece that something terrible happened to Nina, who is always talked of in the past tense. The terrible thing — which the movie makes clear involved sexual assault even before we know the details — has traumatized Cassie too. She lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown), who seem supportive but also scared and sad for their daughter. She works at a coffee shop and won’t even consider the promotion offered by her kind boss (Laverne Cox). And she has no contact with any other friends or anybody from school, at least until Ryan (Bo Burnham) comes into the shop and, after some chat, asks her out. She is wary with him too but slowly starts to wonder if maybe he really is a nice guy and maybe there could be more to her future.

This movie is written and directed by Emerald Fennell (known, as an actress, for roles in Call the Midwife and The Crown). This is her first feature-length movie, which makes the excellence in execution seem all the more extraordinary. I heard somebody on a podcast (maybe This Had Oscar Buzz) compare her to Jordan Peele and his initial outing Get Out and I thought of that comparison while watching the movie. There is a similar thoughtfulness and preciseness in both movies. It’s rare to see someone completely ace their first outing the way Peele did and Fennell does here. I don’t know that I’ll ever bring myself to watch this movie again but I can’t wait to see what she does next. A

Rated R for strong violence including sexual assault, language throughout, some sexual material and drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman is an hour and 53 minutes long and is distributed by Focus Features. It is in local theaters and available for rent.

One Night in Miami (R)

Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown hang out together after Ali’s fight with Sonny Liston in One Night in Miami, a movie based on a play of the same name and directed by Regina King.

You can still feel the play in elements of this movie, which is largely made up of the four men hanging out in a hotel room, talking and arguing. Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir); Muhammad Ali, still going by Cassius Clay (Eli Goree); football player-turned-actor Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) gather in Malcolm’s room after the fight in 1964. The plan is to have a party but Malcolm offers only vanilla ice cream and conversation. Cassius is on the verge of announcing his conversion to Islam. Malcolm seems proud but also conflicted — he is in the process of making a break from the Nation of Islam. Jim has recently shot his first movie and seems to be considering leaving the NFL. Sam is preparing for a show at a venue where he previously bombed — and working on some new music. The friendship of these men is strong but the momentum of their own careers and their various approaches to the civil rights movement are points of friction between them.

To some extent the movie at its core is “just” conversation, but it’s engrossing conversation between people who feel multidimensional, with more layers than just “history’s Malcolm X.” We see just enough of these men’s lives to get a hint of what they’re bringing into the room, their hopes, their insecurities, what things inform their point of view.

The performances here are stellar across the board but I will admit that my eyes kept landing on Odom and his take on Cooke. He plays Cooke as someone who is canny about his profession and how to make it make money for himself and for other African American artists but he still has those desires to say something more through his songs. Maybe Hamilton just sort of taught me to look for “guy working at several levels” from Odom but I feel like he’s doing it again here and it pulls his Cooke to the center of the story even if Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali have the bigger personalities. A

Rated R for language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Regina King with a screenplay by Kemp Powers (who also wrote the play), One Night in Miami is an hour and 54 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon Studios and available via Amazon Prime.

News of the World (PG-13)

Tom Hanks plays the Tom Hanks character who is unexpectedly tasked with bringing an orphan to her distant relatives in post-Civil War Texas in News of the World.

This is basically Hanks’ Greyhound if you replace “get convoy of ships to the U.K.” with “get little girl to the Texas Hill Country” and “outrun Nazi submarines” with “outrun Old West-y villains.”

I mean that in the best way; I liked Greyhound. Here as there, Hanks is a man who calls on his quick thinking and basic decency to complete his hero’s journey. Is chicken parm the most inventive dish in the world? No, but few things are better than a really good chicken parm. Hanks is serving up some very classic cuisine and doing it expertly.

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), mostly just called Captain, was once a Confederate soldier but he seems very “bind up the nation’s wounds” for some “just and lasting peace” about the whole thing. Now, 1870-ish, he travels the Texas countryside and reads newspapers to audiences who pay a dime a person for this in-person Walter Cronkite action. Captain is lively but down the middle with his news reading, not allowing meetings to turn into anti-federal-troops gripe sessions, for example.

While on the road, he comes across a wrecked wagon and an African American federal agent who has been lynched — which, the movie makes clear, Captain finds appalling. He figures out that the man was tasked with transporting Johanna (Helena Zengel), the young blonde girl hiding nearby, who had been living with the Kiowa tribe. When the Kiowa were forced off their land, Johanna’s Kiowa parents were killed and Johanna, who only knows her name as “Cicada,” found herself orphaned for a second time. She lost her biological parents as a young girl when their settlers’ village was raided. She doesn’t appear to retain any memory of that life — or of being called Johanna — and doesn’t speak English.

Captain tries to turn her over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the next town but he’s told that the agent won’t be back for months. Eventually he agrees to take her on the several weeks’ drive south to find a biological aunt and uncle. Along the way they encounter various people who want to kill (or in Johanna’s case, kidnap) them, but Captain’s Hanks-y cleverness helps them deal with dicey situations. To pay for their journey, he continues his news-reading work, with Johanna collecting dimes from the crowd and learning to enjoy his stories.

There is nothing surprising here but everything here is done really well. Zengel is a solid child actor, communicating a lot with her face. Hanks, of course, is top notch, turning in the high-quality performance that seems like rote for him but is really the demonstration of extraordinary skill. Director Paul Greengrass is able to show us a country still mired in all kinds of conflict and aware of what our modern opinions will probably be without turning Captain into some kind of anachronistic saint. Even when the movie veers into “OK, this is a bit much” it is able to pull off the sandstorms and the town full of weird and violent separatists thanks to the skill of everybody involved. B

Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, thematic material and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Paul Greengrass with a screenplay by Paul Greengrass and Luke Davies (from a novel by Paulette Jiles), News of the World is an hour and 58 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios. It is playing in local theaters and available for rent.

Featured photo: Promising Young Woman (R)

Zombies!

One fairly common New Year’s resolution is to read more classics of literature. I didn’t actually make that resolution this year, because I really don’t need any more sources of failure and self-recrimination. But that said, I’m probably ahead of the game and have read more classic literature during the first few weeks of this year than many people who did make that resolution.

To wit, 1951’s The Holiday Drink Book.

I did rather well for myself over the holidays and was given several antique cocktail books, this being easily the most festive.

Is it dated? Yes. Does it include dated references to ingredients — claret or sauterne, for example — that we don’t use anymore? Undoubtedly. Does it include unfortunate illustrations of leprechauns, cannibals and serving wenches? Um, yes. That, too.

That said, given the first few weeks of this new year, I think we could all use a stiff drink. And if you are looking for a stiff drink, I say, go to the source — the 1950s, the era of the Three-Martini Lunch. And, if you are looking for a stiff drink from the 1950s, you could do worse than go with the grandfather of all stiff drinks, a Zombie. The Holiday Drink Book puts it rather well: “In appearance and effectiveness the Zombie is the king of all table drinks.”

I’m a big believer in sticking strictly to a recipe the first time I make something. It drives me crazy when someone omits all the butter from a recipe and replaces half the flour with oat bran, then complains that their muffins taste cardboardy. It’s a good idea to cook what the recipe’s author had in mind before messing with it too much.

But you do need to draw the line somewhere.

Did I use four types of rum in my test Zombie, as specified? I did. Did I garnish it with fresh mint leaves and a dusting of powdered sugar? Yes.

But here’s where The Holiday Drink Book and I parted ways: Their recipe calls for papaya juice.

Now, I don’t want to hurt your feelings if you happen to be a papaya, but certain harsh truths need to be recognized. Papaya is a trash fruit. If fruit cocktail and oatmeal had a torrid half-hour in the alley behind a bar, the result would be something very much like papaya. So I had to play with the recipe a bit. Ultimately, this is what I came up with:

The Purple Zombie

The juice of one lime – approx. 2 oz.
1 oz. pineapple juice
1 oz. frozen grape juice concentrate – the deeply purple kind
1 oz. golden rum
2 oz. dark rum – I used Meyers’s
1 oz. white rum – I went with Mr. Boston
½ oz. apricot brandy

Enough over-proof rum to float on the surface of the cocktail – in my case, Gosling’s Black Seal 151-proof dark rum

4 up-market cocktail cherries – right now, I really like Luxardo.

Fresh mint leaves to garnish

1) Combine the first seven ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake until very cold. I like to include one of the spent lime halves, as well. I don’t know for a fact that it improves the flavor, but I like to give limes the vote of confidence. They are the hardest-working members of the citrus family, and I like to make them feel needed.

2) Remove the lime half, then pour the contents of the shaker — ice and all — into the most garish tiki glass you own.

3) Float ½ an ounce or so of the 151 over the top of the drink. Pour it over the back of a spoon, much like you would the whiskey in an Irish Coffee, so it stays on the surface.

4) Garnish with snobby cocktail cherries and fresh mint. If your mint leaves are large, chiffonade them (cut them into ribbons).

Three important points about The Purple Zombie:

a) The mint leaves totally make this drink. Somehow the herbiness of the mint plays very well off the dominant taste of the cocktail, which is the rum. Don’t skip the mint.

b) Do skip the powdered sugar. I’m not entirely sure what they were thinking with that one.

c) “Wait a second. You got all snobby about papaya, then replaced it with frozen grape juice concentrate? What kind of beatnik hypocrite are you?” What can I say? It works. The drink needs some sweetness to balance the alcohol and the grape juice concentrate does that very well while adding to the fruitiness. Why not just grape juice? It isn’t quite sweet enough. You need to go with the hard stuff.

Plus, it turns your Zombie purple.

Am I saying that drinking a Zombie will remove any of the heavy weight that the past year has put on your shoulders? No. But I am saying that if you approach it right, a good Zombie might give you the emotional shoulder pads to allow you to claw your way through to February.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

A blend of flavors

How grape varietals come together in wine blends

Courtesy photo.

Most wines produced today are made up of a blend of wines from different casks or vats. Fundamentally the goal of blending wines is for the final product to be greater than the sum of its constituent parts. These “parts” could be wines from different grape varieties, or simply distinct parts within the same vineyard.

Wines exposed to or without oak barrels, or different vintages and other variations, such as percentages of each wine component, can make up a blend. Blending is a skill developed by experience, requiring a fine palate and the foresight of how the different flavors will work together.

Champagne and American sparkling wine is a blend. It can be a blend of different chardonnay wines, or a chardonnay blended with pinot noir. This blend results from the process of making the wine, as new wine is added to the bottle during the dosage. A white wine such as sauvignon blanc will often have sémillon added to it to quiet the acidity and citric notes of the sauvignon. Even Prosecco, the wine from a particular region in northeast Italy, is made mainly from the glera grape but can have up to 15 percent chardonnay, pinot bianco, pinot grigio or some less familiar native grapes to add to its sweetness and complexity.

Chianti, the darling of Italian restaurants with red-checkered tablecloths, gets its name from the hills that stretch south from Florence to Siena. While the main grape is 80 percent sangiovese, up to 20 percent canaiolo, cabernet sauvignon and merlot are added to provide the wine with a silkier texture, finer finish and more fruit flavors than 100 percent sangiovese wine can offer.

Bordeaux is more than a world-famous wine region; it is a wine empire, with 463 square miles of vineyards (half the size of the state of Rhode Island) and 57 appellations of grape growers, vineyard owners and numerous cooperatives. Bordeaux is well-known for its red wine, the blends made from cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and petit verdot combined in varying percentages based on the estates’ locations, soils and weather of the growing season, an intricate balance that changes from year to year. The cabernet franc is lighter than the lead cabernet sauvignon and, when added, contributes a finesse to the more robust leading grapes of cabernet sauvignon and merlot.

Blends do not always have to be traditional or formulaic. In an exclusive offer to the New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlets, Frog’s Leap Vineyards owner John Williams presents his 2018 Granite Red Blend (originally priced at $54.99, reduced to $19.99). While almost all the wines produced and bottled by Frog’s Leap Vineyards are estate grown, sometimes, due to weather or the estate’s production in a given year, they will supplement with purchased grapes. For the 2018 Granite Red Blend, Frog’s Leap used carignan grapes from a Mendocino County vineyard planted in 1942. Typically the carignan grape is used in blends, as it has a tannic, rustic quality. It has a dark red color and produces a wine with notes of the dark red fruit of cherries and plums. While this blend of mostly carignan along with some cabernet sauvignon lacks a long finish, it is the perfect wine for the weeknight dinner.

In the New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet’s website under Education is a window titled “The Tasting Room.” As part of their “90 Days Around the World” promotion, there is an hour-long Zoom interview with John Williams from November ― “Wines of Frog’s Leap with John Williams.” It is highly entertaining and informative as John is an endearing personality who presents his philosophies of making wine, protecting the environment and living life to the fullest. It’s worth checking out.

Featured photo: Rory and John Williams. Courtesy photo.

Laura Fucella

Laura Fucella of Concord is the owner of E(at)xactly Cakes (eatxactlycakes.com), a homestead business specializing in custom designed cakes, cupcakes and cake pops for weddings, birthday parties and other events. Born and raised in New Hampshire, Fucella completed a nine-month intensive program in baking and pastry arts at Le Cordon Bleu College in Cambridge, Mass., in 2011. She also held various baking and restaurant management positions before returning to her home state — E(at)xactly Cakes was later launched in early 2017. She offers a variety of signature cake flavors, like lemon, pistachio with cherry filling and buttercream, and cookies and cream cake with a layer of cookie dough. But you can also go with something more familiar, like red velvet, vanilla or chocolate cake. Most cakes require at least a seven-day advance notice. E(at)xactly Cakes has been named a 2021 Best of Wedding Vendors award winner by The Knot for its custom designed wedding cakes.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

I always need a spatula. That’s the most versatile tool. I also always have a cup of coffee in my hand when I’m baking or decorating.

What would you have for your last meal?

An Italian lobster tail pastry, which is called sfogliatelle. It’s a giant flaky crusty pastry with an amazing diplomat cream in the center. I don’t allow myself one often, so I think that would be my one indulgence.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

Colby’s in Portsmouth. They do breakfast all day and have a really delicious corned beef hash, so that’s always a win.

What celebrity would you like to bake something for?

Mary Berry. She was one of the original judges of The Great British Bake Off. I just love that she always approaches things very humbly with constructive criticism. Even if it wasn’t something amazing, she’s really [good] at speaking about how it could be improved.

What is your favorite thing that you’ve ever baked for someone?

The year I started the business, I made an amazing mandarin orange cake for my husband for his birthday. It was probably a three-day process to make, but it was really good. … My personal favorite signature cake that I do is The Goomah, which is kind of my take on an Italian lemon cake. It has lemon curd, a ricotta filling and a light lemon buttercream. For summer weddings, it’s definitely one of the more go-to flavors.

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

Doughnuts are really big right now. I’ve seen more doughnut shops opening up and bakeries doing doughnuts, and it’s very much finally time New Hampshire got on that trend.

What is your favorite thing to cook or bake at home?

Cookies! I love just a good traditional chocolate chip cookie or peanut butter cookie.

Chocolate chip banana bread
From the kitchen of Laura Fucella of E(at)xactly Cakes in Concord

4 ripe bananas (5 if bananas are on the small side)
⅓ cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1½ cups flour
1½ cups milk chocolate (either chocolate chips or a good quality chocolate bar cut into chunks)

In a medium bowl, mix together flour and baking soda. Set aside. Measure out a little more than ⅓ cup of butter and place in a microwave safe bowl or cup. Microwave butter for about one minute until fully melted. Peel bananas and place in a large bowl. Mash well using a fork. Add sugar, vanilla and melted butter to mashed banana and mix until combined. Add and mix in the beaten egg. Add flour, baking soda mixture and chocolate to banana mixture and mix until fully incorporated. For the best flavor, cover batter and set aside for four hours or overnight. Allowing the ingredients to sit all together will create further ripening and yield a very flavorful loaf, although the batter can be baked right away if you don’t want to wait. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a nine-inch loaf pan using oil or butter and coat in flour. Pour batter into the prepared pan and place in the oven. Bake for one hour, or until you can insert a knife in the center and it comes out mostly clean. Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool. The best way to enjoy a slice, according to Fucella, is by taking half-inch slices and placing them in a frying pan with butter, letting them cook for a few minutes to make a crispy outer layer and a gooey inside.

Featured photo: Laura Fucella

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