Category: Food

Pubs and pups

Humane Society holds its weekend-long Pup Crawl

What would it take to be entered into a special type of raffle, a raffle with prizes you can’t buy for yourself? In the case of the 2026 Pup Crawl, it would involve petting dogs and drinking beer.

Olivia Ross from the Humane Society for Greater Nashua described the three-day fundraiser. “It’s not a traditional pub crawl,” she said. “We call it our Pup Crawl as a play on words. But really it’s a weekend-long event for folks who want to support local breweries, but also it is a dog-friendly event.”

Every stop along the Pup Crawl is a pro-dog brewery, she said. “We’ve chosen places that allow dogs on the outdoor patios or inside the breweries so that we get a lot of dog lovers who come through. It’s a great time for people to get together to celebrate and enjoy some good beer and some good food.”

It starts by buying a ticket on the Humane Society website, Ross said. “We sell tickets through our website, which is hsfn.org for, $25 per person. You do have to be 21 or older, of course, to purchase them. That money goes straight to the shelter, so it’s helping our animals right now who are currently awaiting adoption. And with that ticket you receive your Pup Crawl T-shirt and what we call our ‘Pawsport,’ which is a brochure with all the brewery and event info located on it.”

Throughout the weekend, each Pup Crawler will visit whichever and however many of the participating breweries they want to, Ross said. “So when they visit a brewery and they make a purchase, whether that’s for food or drink or even merchandise, they will get a stamp on that Pawsport from one of the staff members. And when we have our finale event on Sunday they’ll pass their Pawsport in and receive raffle tickets for each stamp that they’ve got on their Pawsport.”

The prizes for the raffles vary, Ross said, from things you might expect, like branded swag from participating breweries, to things a little harder to come by.

“One of the prizes is four tickets to a pre-season Patriots game,” she said. The most noteworthy prize is something much more personal. “This will be our third year doing this raffle where folks can enter to have their dog featured on next year’s Pup Crawl T-shirt. You can see this year’s T-shirt on our website. Our model is Miss Biscuit. She is an adorable cattle dog mix, and she’s just got a perfect little face for the T-shirt. She and her mom attend Pup Crawl each year, so she was very excited to win the raffle last year and have Biscuit featured on this year’s shirt.”

This year’s Pup Crawl will start on Friday, July 17, from 4 to 7 p.m. at Able Ebenezer Brewing in Merrimack.

“Our finale or closer will be at AJ’s Sports Bar and Grill in Hudson,” Ross said. “We used to host our finales at Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack, but unfortunately the location closed down. We visited AJ’s in Hudson and met with one of the managers there. They were so kind. They actually offer a doggy-friendly menu. You can order food and drink for yourself, but you can also order dog-friendly items like grilled chicken and plain rice for your dog. During the finale, along with the raffle, we’re also going to have a lure course that the dogs can participate in. Basically it is a white bag that’s attached to this zip line that sticks to the ground. Some dogs stay very focused and they run and follow the bag. It’s great exercise. Some of them will even catch the bag. And then you get the dogs like mine who get distracted and just wander off in the field or they just like to roll around in the grass.”

The Humane Society for Greater Nashua’s annual Pup Crawl
When and where: begins Friday, July 17, at 4 p.m. at Able Ebenezer Brewing Co. (31 Columbia Circle, Merrimack, 844-223-2253, ableebenezer.com) and ends Sunday, July 10, at AJ’s Sports Bar (11 Tracy Lane, Hudson, 708-1102, ajs-sportsbar.com). Visit participating breweries in between.
More: hsfn.org/pup-crawl

Featured photo: Pup Crawl pup. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/7/09

• Lavender date night: Lavender Fields at Pumpkin Blossom Farm (393 Pumpkin Hill Road, Warner, 456-2443, pumpkinblossomfarm.com) will host a Sunset Date Night in the Field, Friday, July 10, from 7 to 9 p.m. Share a sunset in the lavender fields at Pumpkin Blossom Farm picking lavender, eating a curated picnic, and drinking lavender-infused mocktails and Champagne. Tickets are $249 through the farm’s website.

• Sweet summer cookie decorating: Practice intermediate cookie decorating skills in a beautiful garden studio setting in Brookline. This class, taught by Make Sweet Art, is recommended for adults who have basic cookie decorating skills already. This event will take place Saturday, July 11, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in a private garden or an indoor studio, depending on the weather. Tickets are $69.82 through eventbrite.com.

• Cake and gardens are a perfect combination: The Sugar Connection Bakeshop (thesugarconnectionbakeshop.com) will lead a garden party cake workshop Sunday, July 12, at noon, guiding guests through decorating their own garden-inspired cake, sharing tips and techniques along the way. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, this workshop is all about having fun, sharing tips, and getting creative with yummy treats. Tickets are $55.20 at sapphiresocialnh.com.

• Wine, yoga, and Dave Matthews are another good combination: On Monday, July 13, from 1 to 5 p.m., join Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) and Blossom Yoga (120 N. Main St., Concord, 226-9642, blossomyoganh.com) for a celebration in Bicentennial Square of everything Dave Matthews Band. There will be free wine-tasting, yoga, and other Matthewsian celebrations. Visit wineonmainnh.com/event for details.

• Teens, tweens and basil: There will be a meeting of the Teen/Tween Spice Club at the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., Nashua, 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) Tuesday, July 14, from 2 to 3 p.m. Discover a new spice or herb each month through tasting simple recipes and hands-on food exploration. This month the club is featuring basil, a versatile herb used in cuisines around the world. Sample a variety of basil-inspired treats, make your own refreshing basil lemonade, and explore the many ways this fragrant herb can add flavor to food and drinks. You’ll also take home a recipe to try in your own kitchen.

• A cupcake and martini explosion: The martini and cupcake pairing at the Copper Door (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677, or 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033, copperdoor.com) in July is themed around fireworks. The Fireworks Finale Martini is made with whipped cream vodka, white chocolate liqueur, Triple-Eight blueberry vodka, blueberry syrup and cream, with a blueberry garnish, for $14.75. The Fireworks Finale Cupcake is a blueberry cupcake with blueberry puree filling, vanilla frosting, a fresh blueberry, and gold star candy sprinkles, for $12.

Raspberry cake with raspberry ganache

Chocolate and raspberries are a classic combination. What makes this particular cake so very raspberry-y is that it is flavored with actual freeze-dried raspberries, not raspberry flavoring. There is lemon zest to brighten the flavor, and actual chocolate for chocolateyness. The rainbow unicorns will appear independently.

Cake

  • 1⅓ cups (300 g, 2 cubes + 5 Tablespoons) butter
  • 1⅓ cups (266 g) granulated sugar
  • zest of 1 lemon
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour
  • ¾ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ⅓ cup (80 g) milk
  • 1 envelope (1.2 ounces or 34 g) freeze-dried raspberries

Ganache

  • ⅓ cup (80 g) heavy cream
  • 8.8 ounces (250 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • Another 1.2 ounces (34 g) envelope of freeze-dried raspberries

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and sugar a Bundt pan.

Grind each envelope of freeze-dried raspberries. Sift with a fine-mesh sifter to remove seeds. Set each aside.

In a mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and raspberry powder together. Set Team Pink aside.

Cream the butter, lemon zest and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and then the vanilla. Spoon the dry ingredients into the mix, then the milk.

Transfer the pink batter to the Bundt pan, one large spoonful at a time, then smooth the blobs out. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes or until the cake reaches an internal temperature of 200°F. Let the cake cool for 15 minutes or so, then flip it out onto a serving plate, and cool for another hour or so.

After you’ve dusted your mahjong trophies or written a Portuguese love poem, return to the kitchen.

Heat the chocolate and cream in a microwave-safe bowl for a few seconds at a time — 30 seconds, then 20, then 10, etc. — stirring each time, until combined and silky. Stir in the remaining raspberry powder, then spoon the ganache over the cake. Don’t worry if it’s drippy; it’s supposed to be.

Give the ganache a few minutes to set up, then cut slices, and serve with ice cream, or very cold milk.

Featured photo: Raspberry + chocolate. Photo by John Fladd.

Ice cream sandwiches for all

Sweet Bel’s Ice Cream has Happy Cake too

Jennifer Belmore was making a Happy Cake Bowl.

“I make cake pretty much every day here,” Belmore said, as she cut a slab of chocolate sheet cake from a baking pan and cut it into cubes. “Right now I have chocolate cake and funfetti to put at the bottom of a bowl. and then you get to pick your ice cream. You get to pick a hot topping and then it’s covered in whipped cream and sprinkles and a cherry. It’s a hybrid sundae per se — kind of like a throwback to your younger days when you were a birthday boy or girl and you had your cake and ice cream. We got away from it for some reason. And who doesn’t love cake and ice cream?”

Belmore opened Sweet Bel’s Ice Cream & Dessert Creations in Merrimack in April,

“I opened April 18. And business has been good so far,” she said. Her vision is to serve ice cream with a different spin on things. “My background is in baking,” she said. “I was trained as a French pastry chef, and I’ve always wanted to have a bakery. And so, fast-forward all these years later, and I have the attitude of, ‘What goes better with baked goods than ice cream?”

Belmore bought an existing ice cream shop on Daniel Webster Highway in Merrimack. “It already had the right footprint,” she said, “and I just had to add an oven, and voila! Here I am.”

At this point, Belmore put cubes of chocolate cake in the bottom of a bowl, setting several off to the side, and scooped ice cream on top of the bowl-cake. At any given time Sweet Bel’s offers more than 30 choices of ice cream.

“Our ice cream comes from Shain’s of Maine, up in Sanford, Maine,” she said, “a small little place.” This time Belmore chose banana ice cream to go over the cake cubes. Given the choice of chocolate, marshmallow, caramel, peanut butter or strawberry sauces, she chose peanut butter to go over the two scoops of ice cream.

“This is probably one of the best combinations,” Belmore said with a nod. “This and our peanut butter cup sundae; everyone loves peanut butter and chocolate.” She said she really likes making Happy Cake Bowls. “There’s something very satisfying about them,” she said. “My favorite ice cream probably changes by the week, but right now, it’s Turtles — vanilla [ice cream] with chocolate chips, cashews, and swirled with caramel. It’s so good; I like the texture. And then chocolate peanut butter is probably my second favorite.”

Scooped ice cream and sundae’s make up a large part of Belmore’s sales, she said, but her particular specialty is custom ice cream sandwiches.

“We do custom ice cream sandwiches,” she said. “I bake cookies every day and then you can pick your cookie, your ice cream.” Baking two types of cookies per day means that a customer might have more than 60 different ice cream sandwich combinations to choose from.

Belmore covered the sundae in the Happy Cake Bowl with whipped cream, then crumbled the remaining cake over the top. She examined the bowl carefully, then added a cherry, and sprinkles, then nodded again.

Sweet Bel’s Ice Cream & Dessert Creations
Where: 608 DW Highway, Merrimack, 670-2161, sweetbels.com
When: open seven days a week during the summer, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Featured photo: Happy Cake Bowl from Sweet Bel’s Ice Cream. Photo by John Fladd.

Now with gelato

A changing of the guard at the Bakeshop on Kelley Street

After more than 15 years, Denise Nickerson, the owner of The Bakeshop on Kelley Street in Manchester has sold her business and retired. The Bakeshop’s final day of business was June 26. The good news is that a new food business is set to take over the space at 171 Kelley St. within the week.

Karsyn’s Gelato and Bakeshop plan to open Wednesday, July 8. Owner Brooke Viviers said that while the focus of the new shop will be in a slightly different direction, fans of the Bakeshop on Kelley Street’s baked goods will not be left hungry.

“My plans are to keep a lot of Denise’s baked goods,” she said, “but gelato is going to be our main seller. So we’re going to have gelato. We plan to make gelato cakes, sundaes, and we’re also thinking about serving smoothie bowls as well. I’ve talked with Denise about what her best sellers are and what people constantly come in here for. I want to try to keep that here so we’re not taking everything away that Denise does, but changing it up a bit.”

Gelato is a lot like ice cream, Viviers said — a sort of close Italian cousin to it.

“Gelato is prepared a little bit differently,” she said. “It actually has a much lower sugar content. but it’s made with milk instead of cream, so you think maybe it won’t be as creamy as ice cream because there’s less fat, but it’s very creamy and it’s softer; it’s kept at a higher temperature so it’s not as hard as regular ice cream.”

Viviers’ plan is to carry a large variety of gelato.

“We’re going to have 18 flavors to start,” she said. “We’ll have more than 18 flavors available from where we get the gelato from, but we’re going to rotate and see what sells the best. When we have a good idea of what [our customers] like the best, we’ll have some flavors that will probably always stay and then we’ll rotate some as well.”

Gelato is a family business for Viviers.

“My family has been in the bakery — and now gelato — business for the past eight years now,” she said. “My brother [Zack Smith] started selling gelato in his bakery [in Methuen, Mass.] three or four years ago, and since then, he’s acquired a couple more locations where he’s trying to do more gelato and not as many baked goods, and kind of steering more toward the frozen side of things. He built a relationship with the owner of [gelato maker] Dolce Freddo, and asked if he could sell it at his bakery, and that’s kind of how it happened. I moved to Manchester when I was dating my husband. We’re now married, but we have a home in Manchester, in the North End area, and I’ve been here for about six years now.”

Viviers said the gelato flavors at Karsyn’s [named after her new son] will be familiar to her customers.

“We’ll have a lot of standard flavors,” she said, “like chocolate, vanilla, we have a Nutella, Reese’s, and a cannoli flavor. We plan to do like a special cannoli sundae, cannoli ice cream cakes, that kind of thing. With mascarpone. We’ll keep Denise’s recipe, for cannoli filling, so it’ll be like, we’ll still sell cannolis like Denise does here, but we’re going to make cakes and sundaes out of it.”

“That said, we have an amazing pistachio gelato,” she said. “And maybe rum-raisin.”

Karsyn’s Gelato and Bakeshop
Where: 171 Kelley St., Manchester
When: Starting Wednesday, July 8, open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Featured photo: Denise Nickerson, owner of The Bakeshop on Kelley Street, demonstrates her style of cake decorating to Brooke Viviers, the owner of Karsyn’s Gelato and Bakeshop, which will open in the same space at 171 Kelley St. in Manchester on Wednesday, July 8.

The Weekly Dish 26/7/02

• A new farmers market: According to a recent press release by Hampton’s Lane Memorial Library, there is a new farmers market in Hampton. “The Hampton Farmers Market is a new market in Hampton, NH with a mission to provide a community space for local farms and artisans to vend their products,” the announcement read. For its initial season, the market will run from July 11 to Aug. 8. All market dates are on Saturdays, from 2 to 5 p.m. at 19 Academy Ave, near the library. The market will be held rain or shine. Visit hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton-farmers-market.

• Making batch cocktails: Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a class from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 2, teaching the art of making batch cocktails designed for summer parties and backyard barbecue. In this interactive class, guests will learn how to craft three crowd-friendly cocktails that are easy to prep ahead of time and serve in large batches. Afterward enjoy fireworks on the Tuscan Market Lawn. The cost is $64.74 through the Tuscan Brands website.

• BVI terrace party: The Bedford Village Inn (2 Olde Bedford Way, Bedford, 472-2001, bedfordvillageinn.com) will host a celebration of America’s 250th anniversary with an evening of festivities on its Fondi Terrace Thursday, July 2, from 5 to 9 p.m. There will be a live grill station serving a special outdoor menu featuring sausage and peppers (served on a fresh roll or paired with pasta), a variety of grilled skewers, pasta salad and more. There will also be a festive spritz bar. No tickets are required to attend, but registering for the event will help guests save the event to their calendar. Guests are welcome to stop by throughout the evening and enjoy the festivities.

• New brew: Shoreline Vodka Lemonade is now on draft at 603 Brewery & Beer Hall 42 Main St. in Derry, according to a brewery newsletter. 603’s hard lemonade has an alcohol by volume of 5 percent, the newsletter said. The newsletter also announced 603’s New England Strawberry Wheat, a beer with a 5.2 percent ABV. 603 will head to Meredith on Thursday, July 23, to celebrate National Lemonade day: “Join us at Town Docks … from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., where we will be sampling our collaboration with the Common Man, Big Lake Vodka Lemonade! … enjoy live music, swag giveaways, product samples, and of course the usual great food and drink offerings from Town Docks!” the newsletter said. See 603brewery.com.

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