Category: Food

Sweet benefit

AARP offers free ice cream nights

There is a surprising benefit to getting older that you don’t hear much about: free ice cream.

Ashley Davis with the New Hampshire office of the American Association of Retired People (AARP) is one of the organizers of AARPNH’s Free Ice Cream Nights. AARP members, and people interested in becoming members, can register with Davis’ office and get free ice cream, she said.

“We always have a social mission tied to our events, so we’ll bring educational materials and subject experts to the ice cream. So not only are you getting a free ice cream from a local place; you’re also able to talk and get information about issues like fraud or Social Security,” Davis said.

“You register online — just put in your name and information and you’re on the list. You can go to the ice cream place at the date and time. Most of them are on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and most of them are around 5 to 7 at night. You show up, you’ll see our setup — we usually have a red tent or table and lots of volunteers in red there to help you. We’ll get you checked in, and you get a ticket for a free ice cream.”

Davis said Ice Cream Nights usually have a good turnout.

“They vary a lot,” she said. “ but I would say we usually have between 75 and 250 [people show up], depending on the spot, over a two-hour period. We work really close with the ice cream places to give them a heads up and make sure that they have enough staff and support. We’ll usually have between 10 and 20 volunteers there, helping to make sure that the lines are good.”

Next up is at Richardson’s Farm in Boscawen on Wednesday, July 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. when the topic will be Social Security, according to the website. In August, the focus is on caregivers with events slated for Tuesday, Aug. 12, at 5 p.m. at Hayward’s Ice Cream in Merrimack; Tuesday, Aug. 19, at 5 p.m. at Memories Ice Cream in Kingston, and Wednesday, Aug. 27, at Arnie’s Place in Concord at 5 p.m.

AARP Ice Cream Nights
AARP New Hampshire will sponsor Ice Cream Nights throughout the summer. Visit local.aarp.org to register for upcoming events.

Historic meals

Derry library hosts unique dinner club

According to Erin Robinson, there was a time when shrimp poached in cream and tomato sauce was considered very cosmopolitan.

“It was called Cosmo Club Shrimp,” she said, “and there was in California at the time this social group called the Cosmo Club. When you find that sort of thing when a food’s named after a place, you want to start digging in further to find out more about it.”

Robinson is the Reference and Genealogy Librarian at the Derry Public Library and the organizer of the Library’s Historic Table Dinner Club. Once a month curious readers meet to share food made from recipes in a particular cookbook, either a history of a particular time and place or a vintage book shared online.

Robinson has been helping organize these historical experiences at the library for the past year and a half, she said.

“It … actually sprung out of our Genealogy Club,” she said, “and thinking about different ways to experience history but in maybe a non-conventional way. I always think of food when I’m thinking of that and tasting history. The first topic we ever did, I asked people to bring a recipe from their own family history. So we got a lot of traditional recipes that had been handed down. And that was interesting, because of course stories of home and family came out of those. After that tidbit of information it’s like a passageway to further inquiry. So we had a lot of discussions about the place and then we had to go back and look at which one it was specifically.”

The time and place of July’s topic is California in the early 1900s, Robinson said.

“This upcoming one is a vintage cookbook from 1914 and it’s called Midnight Feast. It was written by Mae E. Southworth, and she was a librarian from California. What we’re going to do is we’ll have the cooking. The food is interesting. It’s always a little hit or miss with the flavors, because some things don’t carry so well into the present day and some are just the same. So people choose a recipe from the cookbook and bring it along and they bring [a list of] the ingredients with any substitutions. They write it down so people can assess if they want to try it and/or should if they have allergies. Then what we do is we talk a little bit about the different options as we eat. We’re going to do some trivia based around that time period.”

According to Robinson, the each month’s food topic is a way for participants to connect with history — either their own or something truly unfamiliar. She gave two recent explorations as examples: “We did Jubilee, by Toni Tipton Martin, which looked at African-American history and had wonderful recipes. We also [read] Grandma’s World War II Kitchen. So that was interesting because a lot of people remembered from their parents’ tables some of the recipes.” Some of the club cooks remembered their parents talking about food rationing and victory gardens, Robinson said.

Robinson hopes to bring some focus even closer to home in future meetings.

“There’s a New Hampshire cookbook,” she said, “that was published in the early 1900s, maybe 1904, called A Bachelor’s Cupboard and it was all about teaching a bachelor how to make the best food and it was written by A. Lyman Phillips. I was doing research and her name was Amy who wrote it, Amy Lyman Phillips. She was a hoot. She was an aviator at one time. She drove with this lady who was Blanche Stewart Scott, who was technically the first woman to drive across country solo in a car. She went with her to report back on it. So she’s just a really fascinating person from New Hampshire who happened to write this cookbook under this pen name.”

Historic Table Dinner Club
When: Tuesday, July 22, at 6 p.m. discussing Midnight Feasts (1914) by Mae E. Southworth
Where: Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry).
Sign up: Register through the Derry Public Library’s events calendar at derrypl.org/adult-events.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Pup Crawl might be the ulti-mutt fundraiser

Your dog is welcome at this weekend of breweries

Olivia Echteler is the Director of Community Engagement for the Humane Society of Greater Nashua and the organizer of this year’s Pup Crawl fundraiser.

“This is our fifth year hosting this event,” Echteler said. “We have nine participating breweries this year. And it’s a weekend-long kickoff event that will be held on Friday at Kettlehead Brewing in Nashua. And our finale event, it will be at the Beer Garden in Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack on Sunday, and in between, folks who register for this event can visit any of the participating breweries at their leisure. These breweries are dog-friendly so we get a lot of folks who come and bring their dogs with them. It’s really just about our community supporting our local breweries, local businesses, and just getting together with fellow dog lovers.”

Unlike some other pub crawl fundraisers, Echteler said, this will not be a competition. “If someone registers to participate, there’s no particular strategy or anything.”

Which isn’t to say that some participants don’t have a personal agenda, she said. When they register, “they will get a pup crawl T-shirt. Every year, we have a T-shirt that is specially designed for this event, and this year’s T-shirt features last year’s raffle winner on it. We held a raffle where you could enter and if you won you had your own dog featured on the Pup Crawl T-shirt for this year.” This year’s T-shirt dog is named Coda. “She’s a young chocolate Lab,” Echteler said. “She is the face of our 2025 pup crawl. We’re going to be holding that same raffle again at our finale event on Sunday. So next year’s shirt will feature another community dog.”

“We’ll have a registration table [at the opening event on Friday],” Echteler said. “So anyone who has registered will come to that event so they can pick up their T-shirts and pick up what we call our Pawsport — that is a trifold brochure that has all of the listed participating breweries with their hours and their addresses. It will include any information about any events going on at the breweries that same weekend. Some breweries will have a food truck there or live music. Folks will have that info with them and when they go to visit any of these breweries during that weekend they can get their Pawsport stamped or initialed and that earns them a raffle entry during the finale event on Sunday.”

“It’s always just a lot of fun,” Echteler said. “There’s always a really great crowd, and of course, it’s always fun to see the many, many dogs that show up at these breweries and get along with each other too. Last year at our finale we incorporated live music. It was a lot of fun to have the bands performing there. I think the biggest kick is just seeing everyone in the matching T-shirts. You can spot out all your fellow Pup Crawl participants.”

Humane Society of Greater Nashua Pup Crawl
When and where: From 4 p.m. Friday, July 18, beginning at Kettlehead on Main Nashua (97 Main St., Nashua, 204-5718, kettleheadbrewing.com/kettleheadmain), to Sunday, July 20, at the Biergarten at Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack (221 DW Highway, Merrimack, 595-1202), where the final event runs from 3 to 6 p.m. More: Ticket price is $25. 21+. Leashed dogs welcome. Visit hsfn.org/pup-crawl.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 25/07/17

News from the local food scene

• A picnic with experts in fresh food: Join the New Hampshire Farm Bureau for its annual summer picnic on Saturday, July 19, from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Osborne Farm on Upper City Road in Loudon. Bring your own food, or purchase it from the Gravy Train Food Truck. All attendees will be entered in a raffle for excellent prizes, and there will be farm-themed games and lawn games to play. General admission is $5; children 10 and under attend for free. Register at nhfarmbureau.org/2025-nhfb-summer-picnic.

• Meat bingo: Amputee charity Less Leg More Heart has been gaining a reputation for fun and creative fundraising. Join them for a Meat Bingo Madnessevent Saturday, July 19, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Rod and Gun Club (358 S. Main St., Laconia, 524-9824). Twenty-four games of Bingo will cost $30, for a chance to win meat prizes. There will be raffles and food and drink on site. Simply show up; no pre-registration required. Visit lesslegmoreheart.com/events.

• Save the date for spicy: Get your tickets for the New England Hot Sauce Fest, presented by the Spicy Shark and returning to Smuttynose Brewing Co. (105 Towle Farm Road, Hampton) on Saturday, July 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event features local hot sauce companies selling and offering samples of their spicy products, as well as bounce houses, food trucks and more. General admission tickets are $15 in advance; VIP tickets are $20 in advance and give you a 10 a.m. admission time. Proceeds will benefit the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation and the Seacoast Science Center, according to newenglandhotsaucefest.com.

• Really good fudge: In a June 24 press release Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St, Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com) announced that its Whipped Honey + Peanut Butter Swiss Fudge has been named the 2025 Confection of the Year by Retail Confectioners International (RCI), a national trade association representing independent candy makers across the U.S. and Canada. The fudge is described as handcrafted with smooth peanut butter, locally sourced whipped cinnamon honey, and delicate feuilletine for a subtle crunch, the release said. See vanotis.com/whipped-honey-peanut-butter-specialty-swiss-fudge.

Frozen Lemon Bars

  • 12 full graham crackers
  • 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter – melted and cooled
  • 2 Tablespoons sugar
  • ½ cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • Zest of three large lemons
  • 1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1½ cups (340 g) heavy cream

Line an 8×8” baking pan with parchment paper. Set it aside, reassuring it that you’ll be back; you’re not breaking up with it.

In a blender or a food processor, grind the graham crackers and sugar into crumbs. Set aside 2 tablespoons of the mixture, then transfer the rest to a medium bowl, and mix in the melted butter, one half at a time.

Transfer the buttery graham cracker mixture to the baking pan, and smoosh it flat and into the corners with the bottom of a measuring cup. Set it aside again. It should be used to it by now.

In another bowl — or wash out the one you just used, because, come on! It’s not like you’re made of bowls! — whisk together the lemon juice, 2/3 of the lemon zest, the condensed milk, and salt. The condensed milk is thick and will want to splash the lemon juice around. Stir the mixture slowly with your whisk in the center of the bowl, and when the condensed milk gets tired and starts mixing with the other ingredients, you can make larger, dramatic whisk sweeps.

With a hand or stand mixer, whip the cream to medium peaks, then fold it into the lemon mixture. Work it gently, until all the clumps of whipped cream have given themselves over to the Lemon Collective.

Spoon the mixture into the baking pan, completely covering the graham cracker crust. Smooth it out, making sure you get into the corners. Top it with the remaining graham cracker mixture and lemon zest. Pat the toppings down to make certain they’re stuck to the lemon stuff.

Cover the pan with plastic. Yes, you could absolutely use regular, sticks-to-itself plastic wrap, but there is another way. Every few weeks I go to the dollar store and buy a couple packages of super-discount shower caps. These are really good at covering bowls of leftovers or the occasional frozen dessert.

Freeze for at least three hours — maybe all day.

When you are ready for frozen, lemony refreshment, remove the pan from the freezer, then use the parchment paper to remove the bars from the pan. Use a large knife to cut the block into nine Brady-Bunch like squares.You will probably want to eat this with a fork — the bottom crust sets up super firm.

The crust gives these bars a crunchy, buttery element, which contrasts nicely with the smoothness of the lemon layer, which tastes — not surprisingly — satisfyingly lemony, but with a creamy richness from the condensed milk.

Once your ingredients are prepped, these bars will take about 10 minutes to make — not counting the time in the freezer. They have an extremely high reward-to-effort ratio.

Featured photo: Frozen Lemon Bars. Photo by John Fladd.

Taste the terroir of home

NOK Vino serves New Hampshire in a glass

What does New Hampshire taste like? Dunkin’ coffee? Pine needles? Poutine gravy? For Nico Kimberly, the owner of the new NOK Vino Tasting Room in Hooksett, it’s a serious question with a serious and complicated answer.

There is a term in the wine world, “terroir,” that is used to describe the taste that comes from particular growing conditions in a particular location. For instance, two wines in the same style and made with the same variety of grapes, but one from South Africa and the other from California, will taste different from each other. Each will carry a flavor influenced by the amount of sunshine the grapes got, the minerals in the soil, the amount of rainfall they received, and a thousand other factors.

So, what is New Hampshire’s terroir?

“New Hampshire’s a really good place to grow wine,” Kimberly said. “We have really sandy, really rocky soils. They shed the water, which the grapes love. We’ve also got a lot of elevation — we’ve got these hillsides. Grapes love to grow on a hill because the water runs off and the cold air runs off. Also, when you grow on a hill it actually changes the angle at which the sun hits the plant, which maximizes the photosynthetic capability.”

Growing grapes on a hill also improves the vines’ access to airflow, Kimberly said.

“The enemy of fruit trees and grapevines is mildew,” he said. “It needs wet conditions. It needs some warmth. But if you’ve got wind and you’ve got sun, you’re going to keep that mildew at bay just naturally. All these conditions really concentrate the flavor of the grapes. When we really get down to it — because the grapes are growing in these sort of like difficult conditions, this austere soil — they don’t have a ton of energy to grow super big and vibrant. They tend to be smaller and stronger plants, which means that every part of them is stronger, and so we get these flavors that are really complex in the wine.”

NOK Vino — which stands for “Not Otherwise Known” — is a collective of six New Hampshire vineyards that produces 18 hyper-local wines and ciders. To understand the relationship between New Hampshire wines and their terroir, Kimberly said, you have to understand the history of grapes.

“Up until Prohibition,” Kimberly said, “American grape and wine culture was thriving and it was all based on native grapes that grow here. Once Prohibition happened, a lot of those producers went out of business.” NOK Vino grows hybrids of those original native grapes.

“We’re coming back into more acceptance of those grapes,” Kimberly said, “mainly because of a few people who said, we’re going to treat these grapes as if they were the fancy European ones. We’re going to grow them.”

NOK Vino has opened a new tasting room in Hooksett to show off some of these wines.

“Our mission is to really change the way people think about New Hampshire wine,” Kimberly said. “We are providing this unfettered, clear view of what New Hampshire really tastes like. What we’re really passionate about is helping educate people about the difference between a grocery store wine and a wine that’s made in New Hampshire.”

The tasting room, which is open Friday, Saturday, and Sundays, is tucked away in an industrial park off the Londonderry Turnpike and seats 20 tasters.

“If there’s a holiday that lands on a Monday,” Kimberly said, “we also open up for that. We’re trying to make this a place you can come and learn about New Hampshire wine and meet the farmers. Everyone who works here is somebody who works in the vineyard and also participates in the winemaking. So no matter who’s working here you’re going to get the real-deal experience. They can answer any question you have about our wines.”

NOK Vino tasting room
Where: 146 Londonderry Turnpike, Building 3, Unit 23, Hooksett
When: open Fridays 5 to 8 p.m., Saturdays 3 to 9 p.m., and Sundays 3 to 7 p.m.
More: 315-5272, nokvino.com
A selection of cheeses, salami and olives is available for pairing.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

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