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News & Notes 26/09/24

Color Main Street

Coloring Main Street returns to downtown Nashua on Saturday, Sept. 26, on Main Street from the Main Street Bridge to the Nashua Public Library to City Hall, from noon to 3 p.m., according to a press release. “Chalk will be provided by local Main Street businesses and DNA [Downtown Nashua Association], so all you need to bring is your creativity and enthusiasm. However, it is recommended that participants wear clothing they don’t mind getting chalky and be sure to use the hashtag #ColoringMainStNashua when posting photos of their work on social media,” the release said. See downtownnashua.org/coloring-main-street for details.

Democracy & AI

Tickets are on sale for the New Hampshire Humanities Annual Celebration on Thursday, Oct. 1, at BNH Stage in Concord, according to nhhumanities.org, where you can purchase tickets for the event at 6 p.m. and for the reception at 5 p.m. at the League of NH Craftsmen Headquarters. Doors to the BNH Stage open at 5:30 p.m.; “Visit exhibits of New Hampshire Humanities programs such as Live Free or Dial with the New Hampshire Telephone Museum and Community Conversations with cartoonist and educator Marek Bennett. Peruse books for sale courtesy of Gibson’s Bookstore,” the website said. The main event is the presentation “Democracy in the Age of A.I.: An evening with Jenn White of 1A [the NPR show]” with special guests including Father Philip Larrey, a Catholic priest and professor at Boston College; Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, and Roopika Risam, chair of film and media studies at Dartmouth College and author of the new book Data Empire: The Power of Information to Organize, Control and Dominate, the website said.

Fall league

Five players from the 2026 New Hampshire Fisher Cats roster are on the Mesa Solar Sox, “a roster made up of prospects from five different MLB clubs,” part of the 2026 Arizona Fall League, according to a Fisher Cats press release. “Pitchers Jake Bloss, Yondrei Rojas and Fernando Perez, catcher Aaron Parker and infielder Arjun Nimmala were all listed on the Solar Sox roster, along with athletic trainer Katie Reyes. Nimmala was traded to the Angels earlier this year on Aug. 3 but played in 33 games with New Hampshire after making his Double-A debut on May 5,” the release said. “The Mesa roster also includes Toronto minor league pitchers Brandon Barriera and Gilberto Batista, and outfielders Jake Casey and Jake Cook.” The Arizona Fall League runs its regular season of 30 games per team Saturday, Oct. 3, through Saturday, Nov. 14, the release said. See mlb.com/arizona-fall-league.

Correction

Last week’s Kiddie Pool and film listings featured the wrong date for the next outdoor screening in Manchester. Inside Out 2 (PG, 2024) will screen in Derryfield Park in Manchester on Friday, Sept. 25, at 8:15 p.m., according to a post on the Manchester Parks & Recreation Facebook page.

Kimball Jenkins, 266 N. Main St. in Concord, kimballjenkins.com, will hold a one-day class “Ghosts & Pumpkins: A Halloween Clay Workshop” on Saturday, Oct. 17, from 1 to 4 p.m. for ages 12 and older, according to a newsletter. See the website to register for this and other classes in the school’s second fall session, for which registration ends Oct. 12, the newsletter said.

The Millyard Museum, 200 Bedford St. in Manchester, will hold an American Girl Tea Party featuring Felicity Merriman, a Colonial-era American Girl Doll, on Saturday, Oct. 3, at 11 a.m., according to a press release. See manchesterhistoric.org for advance registration, which is required. The event is part of a day of events at the museum themed “Whose Revolution Is It Anyway?” the release said.

The Dover Public Library, 73 Locust St. in Dover, will hold a puzzle swap Saturday, Sept. 26, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Donate complete puzzles in good condition of 250 pieces or more through Friday, Sept. 25, and then come to the library Saturday to pick up to five new-to-you puzzles, according to a press release. See library.dover.nh.gov.

The New England Animation Festival, which will run Friday, Nov. 20, and Saturday, Nov. 21, at the Park Theatre in Jaffrey, is accepting submissions of animated short films (10 minutes or less), according to a press release. The last-minute deadline is Nov. 11 (with earlier deadlines for a discounted entry fee), the release said. See filmfreeway.com/NewEnglandAnimationFestival.

Comicon comedy

Jay Chanoine headlines Queen City Center afterparty

As his comedy special Chanoinigans hit YouTube on Halloween Day last year, Jay Chanoine already had enough new material for a follow-up. A week later he flew south to do a half hour of it at the Altercation Comedy Festival in Austin. His headlining set got a standing ovation.

Chanoine will debut the full special Sept. 19 at Queen City Center.

“I think this is the strongest hour of material that I’ve ever written,” he said as he prepared to do a quick set for a food pantry benefit at Manchester’s Shaskeen Pub recently. “I am so proud of this new batch.”

The show is the latest in a series harkening back to a weekly comedy night at the Shaskeen, where Chanoine did his first open mic in 2009. Matt Barry, another comic who also started there, though a bit later, also appears, with Brienna Woodward rounding out the bill.

Future shows in the QCC series, booked by Nick Lavallee’s Wicked Joyful, include Kendall Ferrall on Oct. 3, Sam Jay (HBO, SNL, Netflix) on Oct. 21, Alex Giampapa on Nov. 21, and two nights from Tina Friml (Comedy Central) on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12. A New Year’s Eve bash is also slated, with a lineup still being finalized.

Chanoine’s show is also part of Granite State Comicon, and telling jokes is only part of what the confirmed pop culture nerd will be doing at the event. He’ll also moderate a few celebrity panels, including one with Felicia Day, whose movie spinoff from her gamer-themed series The Guild just broke a Kickstarter record.

Additionally, he’ll run panels with voice actors from Teen Titans and the Grand Theft Auto 5 video game.

“My personality has two sides; take a comic book and a comedy stage and put them together,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do a comedy show to tie into Granitecon for years — because that’s me, man, and those are my people. Get them in a room where I can do jokes for them.”

The show starts promptly at 6:30, with doors at 6, and there’s a reason for the early start.

“They always do an after party at Shaskeen on Saturday night at 8,” Chanoine said. “Comicon stuff ends at 5, so there’s this gap in the middle of your nerdy Saturday. I was like, let’s give them a nerdy thing to come do in between.”

It caps a big year that included a trip to Alaska for the Before You Die Festival.

“The people that run it are friends of friends; we’ve been connected online,” Chanoine said. “It’s been a destination thing that I wanted to do eventually, and this year they were saying it might be the last one. I was like, well, I need to go, to cross it off the list.”

He’s not surprised to be one of a few Shaskeen comics — Barry’s another — to still be around many years later.

“I definitely knew I’d still be doing it at this point,” he said. “I mean, the first time I did stand-up, I was 12 years old. It was something I’d been in love with since I was about 6 or 7. I always wanted to be the funny friend, I was always cracking jokes and trying them out on different groups of friends.”

By the time he stopped playing in punk bands and walked on stage at Shaskeen for the first time, he was more than ready.

“I was already in that writing process. I was already doing it, and turns out part of it was just that I was an undiagnosed autistic kid, and I was trying to kind of formulate this practiced personality.” When he was diagnosed in 2024, it was more confirmation than revelation, and his doctor said he might not want to make it official. Nope, Chanoine replied. “I’m going to need there to be a piece of paper for me to talk about this on stage as much as I plan to,” he told her. “I’m going to need us to be 100% sure before I make fun of this disability.”

Even with that medical stamp, his new special is consistent with Chanoine’s 17 years as a standup.

“It’s always been, just take this,” he said, with a smile stuck between amused and incredulous, waving at his oversized glasses, worn-in Misfits T-shirt and red plaid pants, “and put it into a microphone. And it’s definitely more of that.”

Jay Chanoine, Matt Barry & Brienna Woodward
When: Saturday, Sept. 19, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Queen City Center, 215 Canal St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 at wickedjoyful.com

Featured photo: Jay Chanoine. Courtesy photo.

Good times at Glendi

Giant Greek food fest is a labor of love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured photo: Pastries prepped for Glendi. Courtesy photo.

A world of food and music

Concord Multicultural Festival celebrates the community

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

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

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

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

For many festivalgoers the main draw is the food.

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

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

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

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

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

Featured photo: Multicultural Festival. Courtesy photo.

Citywide convention

At 24th Granite State Comicon, downtown’s role grows

Chris Proulx is already planning next year’s Granite State Comicon, even though this year’s doors haven’t opened yet.

“It’s a lot of work, and sometimes a lot of crazy coordinating,” Proulx, who opened Double Midnight Comics in 2003 and held the inaugural Granitecon that year as a one-room comic book show, said in a recent Zoom interview.

It’s grown into its 24th edition, happening in Manchester Sept. 18 through Sept. 20 at the DoubleTree Hotel and SNHU Arena. With next year marking the event’s 25th anniversary, Proulx is already promising “some big things.” This year’s edition leans into an idea that’s been building since the state’s biggest arena joined the fun three years ago.

“We’ve kind of been working on making Manchester the third venue,” Proulx said. “How do we keep the fun going while we can expand things?” The answer has been letting downtown businesses in on the action. What started with Diz’s throwing a themed night a few years back has grown into more after-hours programming than ever for the event.

There’s a comedy show at Harpoon Brewery (covered elsewhere in this edition), a drag night at Hop Knot, cartoon-themed karaoke at the Shaskeen and crafting at Make It Pop Studios. It’s capped by the new Dirty Shirley Pub Crawl, organized by Bookery and built around the buzzy Dungeon Crawler Carl franchise.

Organizers are also coordinating with the Amherst Street Arts Festival.

“We want our event to raise all ships,” Proulx said.

Growth brings logistical demands. As food trucks will line the hotel, organizers asked city officials about closing part of Pleasant Street. Police couldn’t shut the block down — “it’s one of the busiest times downtown,” Proulx was told — but accommodations were promised and will be a big help.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles remains an annual fixture.

Kevin Eastman, who created the comic with Peter Laird, is on a Saturday Mighty Mutanimals panel, after a Q&A with cast members from the 1990 film Kevin Clash (puppeteer for Master Splinter) and James Saito (Shredder). All weekend long in the gaming lounge, a new TMNT tabletop RPG is showcased.

Along with the half-shell heroes, there’s more homegrown talent in the spotlight this year.

Sci-fi streaming series Resonance, currently being produced at StudioLab in Derry, will debut its first 10 minutes at a panel that includes the all-local cast and crew in a Q&A. Proulx heard about the project through SNHU and urged director Rob Livie to attend GraniteCon.

“Show people what is being done here in New Hampshire,” he told him. “It’ll kind of blow your mind.”

For Livie, a television and digital media veteran who recently relocated to Manchester after he and his wife became empty nesters, it’s a dream project.

“Resonance is a story I’ve wanted to tell since I was a kid,” he wrote in an email. “An epic ’80s sci-fi adventure about five people from very different worlds who come to Earth hoping it holds the key to saving their own.”

Its central theme, he continued, “is this: ‘You are not my enemy.’” Another local effort is an indie animated series, Player vs. Trinity. A panel focuses on how the project developed from an idea to a YouTube premiere. It will offer insider guidance for anyone looking to make their own mark on the industry.

Celebrity panels this year include “Queen of the Nerds” Felicia Day and actor Lou Diamond Phillips, known for La Bamba and Young Guns. Photo ops and autographs can be booked at a price set by each guest’s team. While selfies are free, demand is intense. Last year, voice actor Roger Clark’s line grew so long that a queue system had to be built on the fly.

The weekend after GraniteCon, the national Local Comic Shop Day event happens, at Double Midnight and other locations, including Jetpack Comics in Rochester. The event, once modeled with a nod to Record Store Day and its exclusive releases, is shifting its identity toward community over collectibles, Proulx said.

“It’s more about how to get people in the shop for their first time and show off everything that we do.”

Granite State Comicon
When: Friday, Sept. 18, 3-8 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 19, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 20, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Where: Downtown Manchester, including DoubleTree by Hilton (700 Elm St.) and SNHU Arena (555 Elm St.)
Tickets: $21-$157 at granitecon.com

Featured photo: Granite State Comicon. Courtesy photo.

A is for Apple

An alphabetical look at the tasty fall foods of nh

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

A is for Apples

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

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

B is for Beaujolais Nouveau

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

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

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

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

C is for Conchas

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

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

D is for cider Doughnuts

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

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

E is for Espresso

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

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

F is for Fried Fair Food

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

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

G is for Grilled steak tips

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

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

H is for Hard cider

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

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

I is for pumpkin Ice Cream

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

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

J is for Jalapeño cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches

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

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

K is for Kimbap and Kimchee

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

603 Meal Prep (603mealprep.com)

L is for Loukoumades

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

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

M is for Mongolian

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

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

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

N is for NH Pink Boots

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

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

O is for Oktoberfest

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

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

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

P is for Pot pie

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

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

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

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

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

Q is for Quinoa, where you least expect it

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

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

R is for Ramen

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

Go! Go! 88 Ramen (thegogo88.com)

S is for Sweater Weather Pie

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

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

T is for chicken Tenders

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

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

U is for tropical drinks with

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

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

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

V is for Vegan chili on a baked potato

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

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

W is for Wienie Weekend

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

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

X is for eXtra eXtra large

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

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

Y is for Yankee pot roast

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

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

Z is for Zinfandel

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

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

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