Album Reviews 26/07/16

Shonen Knife, Let’s Knife Re-Cut (Summit Records)

Full-scale re-rub of the Japanese trio’s 1992 Let’s Knife LP, which Rolling Stone Japan placed at No. 37 on its list of the “100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time” in 2007. No idea why they did this; they could have left this album alone and simply rattled off a new collection of Ramones/Black Flag-flavored punk tunes, but instead it just serves to show that they’ve, you know, gotten a lot older. We can start at the start with “Riding On The Rocket,” which has its original raw energy surgically removed and replaced with a version that’s so lifeless it’ll make you think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Of course, that might have been the point of doing it; the updated version of “Get The Wow” sounds like a tune that should have made it onto the first Go-Go’s album. It’s still Shonen Knife, but jeez. They’ll be in Durham, N.H., with Men At Work and Toad The Wet Sprocket at the Whittemore Center on July 28. A

Electric Six, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master (red vinyl remaster) (Metropolis Records)

Born in the 1990s Detroit scene that also saw the emergence of bands like the White Stripes, these guys are often considered a “gay disco” band owing to their upbeat, high-energy tuneage and theatrics. If it matters to you, and it shouldn’t, the members all identify as straight but supportive of the LGBTQ community; they’re a go-to band for bros and others who hold such-themed events. This was their fourth album, released in 2007, and it was and is a blast, distilling their fun-filled essence and cementing the band’s reputation as a borderline joke band that can really play (“Down at McDonnelzzz” is a classic among their food-obsessed songs; as one YouTuber commented, “I got this song banned before due to ‘over-requesting’. 6:30 AM, trippin’ nuts, getting Egg McMuffins, and this song on the radio, I can die happy”). The bullet version of their legacy would read “Come for the hard garage rock, stay for the Danceteria madness.” Absolutely relentless record, now with bonus tracks and downloadable stuff and ruby red vinyl. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• July 17’s list of new album releases is in my hands, everybody start drinking and I’ll try to make it as painless as possible! Now, something that’d technically be proper to talk about this month owing to this column’s focus on — you know, famous people playing/singing music and whatnot — was the planned concert series for America’s 250th anniversary, which took place in several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, California, and Philadelphia, a city in Hell. As everyone knows, the main event was originally planned to be held at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but since all anyone does these days is argue about politics on Facebook, it got canceled and replaced with a giant thunderstorm, so I tried to find something about that whole 250th kerfuffle that wasn’t horrible, or at least not politically radioactive, and I finally did find something, specifically the appearance of opera-singing tenor dude Christopher Macchio, whose specialty is blending non-operatic genres with, you know, opera, at the Freedom 250 rally performance in D.C. on June 24. He has only made two albums and probably couldn’t care less if SpongeBob SquarePants was our president, but either way he is a great singing human. He hasn’t made an album since 2020, a Christmas album, on which he sang a rendition of my least favorite Christmas jingle, “O Holy Night,” which most singers only sing in order to show that they have lungs made of Kevlar and could probably impress Simon Cowell on his stupid talent shows, in other words it’s the “My Heart Will Go On” of holiday jingles. Will he make another album? I don’t know, but there’s definitely one coming out Friday from trip-hop pioneer Tricky, titled Different When It’s Silent! He was a member of Massive Attack when they were The Wild Bunch, and even though his last appearance on a proper Massive Attack album was 32 years ago, no one can ever utter his name without mentioning Massive Attack somewhere within the same breath. What does this mean? It means he is too cool for school, so let’s see what he’s up to, on this new album! Yep, “I’m Yours” is a great little tune, starting with its 1960s guitar line, over which Tricky lays his usual helium vocals, and then it becomes a loud-ass no-wave thing, he’s still got it, or whatever the kids say nowadays.

• But does rapping man Ne-Yo still have it, he of “I Wish” fame, from 70 years ago? The answer is a definite no if you only like him for his flows about being short or whatever, as he has been going in a more cowboy-hat direction since last year’s “Simple Things,” how do you feel about rappers going country? Highway 79 is the new album, and “Miss Tundra” the single, a chill R&B-tinted cowboy song about a girl with large glutes, don’t you love how nothing ever changes?

• British indie rock band Kasabian has still got it, even though they’ve gone in a more wimpy direction since their early days, remember when “Club Foot” was on the mixtapes of everyone who felt the need to hide their taste for old-school heavy metal, that was a good one. Their latest LP, Act III, finds them trying to become New Order harder than ever, at least as far as the single “Great Pretender” is concerned; it has the same vibe as the old Modern English song “Melt With You,” which will please people who remember that dreadful period of cultural history.

• We’ll call it a week with boomy-voiced rapper Rick Ross and his new LP, Set In Stone! It is the usual fare: Sell stuff on black markets, avoid the po-po, and then buy some Benzes. Reddit’s r/hiphopheads group, which never met any pointless thing that didn’t start fights among the regulars, is mostly angry that the album cover is AI-generated; as far as that business goes, I do not care.

Featured Photo: Shonen Knife, Let’s Knife Re-Cut and Electric Six, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master

From milk to cheese

A day in the life of a cheese maker

Peter Kress is the owner of and head cheese maker at Swallow Ridge Farm in New Boston. This is how he described a day of cheese-making:

The day starts, he said, by picking up milk in Mont Vernon, the next town over.

“I go pick up about 3,300 pounds of milk, bring it back here in my tank, and then we pump it off.” (Dairy farmers measure their milk by weight, not by volume.) Then he pasteurizes it.

“Right now, we are pasteurizing all of our milk. We used to make just raw-milk cheese, but we got just a lot of requests and people nervous with unpasteurized cheese. So we decided to make pasteurized cheese.” Kress explained that the higher the temperature milk is pasteurized at, the more the structure and flavor of the milk changes. “We take it up to 145 degrees,” he said, “and hold it for 30 minutes. We used to have a big factory in Maine, and we had a high temperature-short time process. That would take 161 degrees for 16 seconds, but we do 30 minutes at 145. And then it goes into something called a plate heat exchanger, which cools the milk down to 88 [degrees]. We run well water on one side of the plates, and then the hot milk’s on the other side.”

The actual cheese-making takes place in a large, bathtub-shaped, stainless steel container, Kress said. “That is where we make most of our cheese. We also have a copper kettle where we make most of our Swiss. I like making Swiss in the copper kettle, because in Switzerland, by law, all Swiss cheese has to be made in copper. All Gruyere has to be made in copper. All Parmesan has to be made in copper. And they feel that the copper is a better heat conductor, but they also feel it gives some property to the cheese. So I got this vat” — the bathtub-shaped one — “out of Wisconsin about 30 years ago and it’s probably about 100 years old. So the milk goes into one of these two vats, and then we do our process.”

Once the milk goes into a vat at the proper temperature — 88 degrees — Kress said, he adds culture — strains of beneficial bacteria responsible for acidifying milk and building distinct flavors and textures. “Cultures come from mostly Wisconsin, but [ours are] from France. We let the culture grow for about an hour, then we add rennet, [an enzyme] which coagulates the milk. We use a vegetable-type rennet here. It turns the milk to something like Jell-O in about 30 minutes. Then we take knives and we cut it.”

This leaves Kress with pieces of milk solids and liquid, called curds and whey.

“The curds are what we keep,” he said. “The whey, we spread on the land. If you’re a really big [cheese-making] plant, it goes to a drying plant, they might use it for baby food, potato chips, all kinds of stuff. It’s protein — whey protein powder. We’re too small to do that. The curds we will add salt to, or any other ingredients you might add, like we add jalapeño peppers, or tomato and basil.”

At that point, Kress said, it’s a matter of shaping the young cheese in hoops.

“They’re square, but they’re called hoops,” he said with a shrug — and they get pressed overnight. “In the morning, we’ll have a block of cheese. That block will go into our cooler and age up to a year. Some ages longer than that. We have some cheddars that are almost two years old now. But that’s sort of the quick version of our process.”

According to Kress not all cheeses are equally complicated.

“Swiss is the hardest cheese to make,” he said. He said that recently Swiss scientists determined that the holes in Swiss cheese are due in part to cultures clinging to bits of hay that would traditionally fall into milk that Swiss milkmaids would carry in buckets. Kress said that is difficult to reproduce in modern, sanitary cheese making.

“Those holes, they’re called eyes,” he said. “I can make good Swiss, but sometimes the eyes are not so good. Because to grow those eyes is really hard. So you add a certain kind of culture. We have to add something we call a ‘former’ that helps form gas bubbles. If you have no gas bubbles, it’s called ‘blind.’ You don’t want a blind block of Swiss cheese.”

All Swallow Ridge Farm cheeses are aged.

“Depending on the cheese,” Kress said, “it can go anywhere from 30 days, 60 days, up to a year — some more. We make 20-pound blocks [of cheese]. I can’t lift 40-pound blocks anymore.”

Kress pointed out various blocks of cheese he was aging. “This particular one, this is an Asiago-type cheese, and this one has spices in it. This is our jalapeño. We have some Gouda. We have some flavored with dill.”

Wheels of cheese receive a special coating, Kress said.

“This is a special coating that comes from Holland,” he said, pointing at a red wheel of cheese. “It’s really nice stuff because you can’t scratch it off. It’s very hard and it protects the cheese so you don’t get any mold and it keeps it from drying out too much. It’s like wax but you can feel it’s really really tight and hard.”

And then, there’s the brie.

There is a special cabinet for aging brie, Kress said.

“We don’t have any brie in there right now. This is where we age our brie, and grow the white mold that you’re so familiar with on brie. Brie’s tricky, and we have a lot of trouble with that. We made some really good tasting stuff, and then people want it.” But then, he said, demand might fall off temporarily. And brie is good for about 60 days and then you have to sell it before it starts to break down.

“The cheese business is always adventurous,” Kress said. “I’ve always liked it, I love making the cheese. The hard thing always is selling it. I can make a lot of cheese, but I have to be able to sell it all. That’s the tricky part.”

Swallow Ridge Farm
170 South Hill Road, New Boston, 325-0477, swallowridgefarm.com
Cheeses: Swallow Ridge Swiss, Swallow Ridge Gouda, Swallow Ridge Gouda Rosemary, New Boston Cheddar, New Boston Cheddar Jalapeño, New Boston Cheddar Sun-Dried Tomato & Basil, New Boston Cheddar Caraway, Tuscan (an asiago-style cheese), Tuscan Italian Herbs, Swallow Ridge Havarti, Swallow Ridge Havarti Dill
Buy the cheese: At the farm, order through the website or at farmers markets including the Concord Farmers Market, the website said.

Featured photo: Swallow Ridge cheese. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/7/16

• Lavender skills for Goffstown teens: The theme of Flavor Our World, for teens entering grades 5 through 12, at the Goffstown Public Library (2 High St., Goffstown, 497-2102, goffstownlibrary.com) on Thursday, July 16, at 3 p.m. is “Lotta Lavender Love.” Participants meet on the Library’s lawn and discover new flavors and build real cooking skills. Registration is required.

• Chocolate truffle class: Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St., Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com) will host a truffle-making class Thursday, July 16, at 5:30 p.m. Guests will be given a demonstration of how to make a chocolate ganache, then be given a portion of a fresh ganache prepared earlier in the day, to roll into their own truffles. Once the truffles are rolled, guests will have the opportunity to dip them into a variety of toppings. Beverages and wine are welcome, and chocolate treats will be provided. Participants will take home 24 hand-rolled truffles. Tickets are $55.20 through the Van Otis website.

• Tequila at Tuscan: Celebrate Tequila Tuesday at Tuscan Market (9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanmarket.com/store/events) Tuesday, July 21, at 6 p.m. Shake up three cocktails with tequila in this hands on class. Enjoy a guided lesson on crafting unique cocktails led by one of Tuscan’s mixologists. Tickets are $64.74 through the Tuscan Market website.

• Taste the colors in Derry: The Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry, 432-6140, derrypl.org) will host a Red, White and Blue Candy Taste Test on Wednesday, July 22, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Celebrate the U.S.’s 250th birthday by indulging your sweet tooth. Sample a variety of candies, all red, white or blue. Then vote for your favorite. Register through the Library’s website.

• Wine and unicorn cake: Join LaBelle Winery at its Derry location (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) Wednesday, July 22, for a hands-on unicorn cake decorating class from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. This class invites you to transform a 5″x6″ blueberry lemon dome cake into your very own one-of-a-kind creation with various colorful buttercreams, playful textures and sparkling embellishments. All class materials are provided, and you’ll leave with a magical unicorn cake. Tickets are $86 through the LaBelle website.

• Tasting international sparkling wines: Svetlana from WineNot Experiences (winenotexperiences.com) will lead a tasting of seven sparkling wines from around the world paired with seasonal bites and lively stories, Wednesday, July 22, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Hunt Memorial Library in Nashua. Tickets are $65 through the WineNot website.

Treasure Hunt 26/07/16

Hello, Donna,

I have this glass-front cabinet with the attached label on the back. It belonged to my mom and dad and they used it as a “china closet.’ I know that they purchased it at a second-hand furniture store in Vermont in the early 1950s. It is in good condition, other than some dust from storage after they passed. It has lovely turned legs and the overlay designs on the side, glass doorknob. The glass is clear glass, I believe original to the piece (not a mirror as the picture might suggest). We are now downsizing and I would like to know if it has value as a vintage or antique item.

Thank you in advance for any insight you might share with us.

Marie

Dear Marie,

Your china cabinet is most likely from the 1930s or 1940s. It does look to be in good original condition. It’s not considered an antique yet but getting there. To be considered an antique it has to be at least 100 years old.

China cabinets from that era are the most desired out of tables, chairs and buffets etc. The more popular ones would have glass on all three sides. I think the ones like yours would be more desirable to be repurposed and painted.

The values are tough because you really have to find that right buyer. It would be in the $75 range, leaving room for negotiations. I also would try to sell it myself, trying like Facebook Marketplace or a yard sale.

Marie, thanks for sharing and good luck finding a new home for the cabinet.

Donna

Kiddie Pool 26/07/16

Family fun for whenever

Fairs & festivals

  • The Second Congregational Church, 25 Gregg St. in Wilton, will hold its annual Summer Fair on Saturday, July 18, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. featuring crafts, food, music, kids’ activities, plant sales, book sales, a food auction at 1 p.m. and more, according to an email from the church. See 2ccwilton.org.
  • The 10th annual Fairy and Hobbit House Festival will take place at Bedrock Gardens, 19 High Road in Lee, Friday, July 17, through Sunday, July 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, according to bedrockgardens.org. Come in costume to compete in the Designer Fairy and Hobbit House Competition (see the website for details), vote in the competition, take part in fairy- and gnome-related activities and more, according to the website, where you can purchase tickets and reserve parking.
  • The Nashua Fairytale Festival will take place Saturday, July 18, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Greeley Park in Nashua featuring stage acts, fairytale characters, character meet and greets and “over 30 community vendors with activities, caricaturists, games, books, and more for the whole family,” according to nashuanh.gov/546/SummerFun.

Fun at the theater

  • O’Neil Cinemas, 16 Orchard View Drive in Londonderry, continues its Summer Kid’s Series of screenings of kid-friendly movies on Mondays and Wednesdays at 11 a.m., according to oneilcinemas.com. Screenings on Monday, July 20, and Wednesday, July 22, feature How to Train Your Dragon (PG, 2025).
  • Chunky’s in Manchester has some family-friendly events on its upcoming schedule. On Tuesday, July 21, the cinema will screen Minions & Monsters (PG, 2026) at 11:30 a.m. as part of the Little Lunch Dates series geared to parents and preschool children, “with the lights slightly dimmed…. This is a worry-free lunch without the fear of disturbing others,” according to chunkys.com, where you can purchase tickets.
    The theater also has a family-friendly theater candy bingo event on the schedule on Friday, July 24, at 6:45 p.m., the website said. “With your $10 purchase you receive a Chunky’s complimentary Movie Pass for a future movie & $5.00 off one food item during the event. With this purchase you are eligible to receive a FREE Bingo Card! This event will last around an hour and a half, so we hope to get at least 8 rounds in! We’ll do classic straight bingo and a handful of other creative rounds to win!,” according to the website, where you can purchase tickets.
  • The Summer Movie Clubhouse, a lineup of kid-friendly films running Wednesday and Thursday mornings (with a start time usually around 10:30 to 11 a.m.), continues at Cinemark Rockingham Park (15 Mall Road in Salem; cinemark. com/theatres/nh-salem/cinemark-rockingham-park-and-xd). Catch Dog Man (PG, 2025) on Wednesday, July 15, and Thursday, July 16, at 10:30 a.m. and How to Train Your Dragon on Wednesday, July 22, and Thursday, July 23, at 10:30 a.m., according to the website.

Plants that have stood the test of time

The Fourth of July celebrations are over — the fireworks, parades, hot dogs and strawberry shortcake. Leading up to the Fourth I paused to think about the gardens of Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors and signers of the Declaration of Independence. He lived and gardened at Monticello, his estate in Virginia. According to the Monticello website, Jefferson planted (or ordered and supervised the planting of) 160 different kinds of trees and shrubs as well as perennials, annuals and vegetables — and kept notes of everything. Monticello still grows almost everything he did.

Jefferson grew one of my favorite trees, the Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis). It is a wonderful early-summer blooming medium-sized tree and I’ve had one for at least 10 years. It is suitable for a part shade location or full sun. In the wild (New Jersey and south) it is found mainly as an understory tree. It blooms in early summer with small pink blossoms that seemingly pop right out of the bark. Cold hardy varieties are common now and it is rated to Zone 4.

Jefferson loved peaches. He grew more than 30 kinds of peaches but we can grow just a handful that are sold here in New England. A few will survive a Zone 4 winter, but Zone 5 is better for peaches, with winters that never drop below minus 20.

All peaches do best in full sun, meaning six hours of sun or more per day in summer. They are self-fruitful — they self-pollinate and you need only one tree to get fruit. Apple, plums and most pears do need a second variety that blooms at the same time for pollination. Most fruit trees are said to “Not like wet feet.” So don’t plant them in an area where the soil is usually wet.

The ‘Reliance’ peach, developed at UNH, has been around for decades and is one of the better cold hardy peaches. It is productive and tasty. Other good peaches are Red Haven and Madison. Contender is well thought of, but I have not found the fruit very tasty, and a lot of my fruit has rotted on the tree. Other growers love it. Try to taste peach varieties before planting one.

Jefferson was intrigued by sugar maples as an alternate source for sugar, but they did not do well down there. Virginia is a bit too hot. In my experience, if you have an old maple that is declining in health, try giving it some garden lime. Spread it not just under the drip line, but go out much farther because the roots do.

I gave lime to an old maple because I read about an experiment in 1999 at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Station in northern New Hampshire. Scientists found that acid rains had depleted calcium in soils there. They distributed calcium (using crop dusters) and found it increased health in stands of sugar maples and red spruce. I’ve given my old sugar maple several applications of lime over the last 25 years and it is doing fine. And don’t park cars under your maples as root compaction is not well tolerated.

One of Jefferson’s favorite trees was Southern Catalpa (C. bignonioides). That is hardy to Zone 6, but I grow northern Catalpa (C. speciosa) and love it. I planted mine eight years ago as an 8-foot-tall tree that came in a 7- or 10-gallon pot. Now it is 30-some feet tall with a trunk diameter of 12 inches a foot off the ground. My catalpa blooms vigorously in late June or early July each year, producing cream colored flowers that are 2 inches long and flecked with purple inside, growing in panicles. The seed pods look like foot-long beans.

Catalpas can get 60 feet or more tall, and are a bit weak-wooded, so they are prone to wind damage or blow-overs. My solution? I use an extension ladder to get up to a spot 30 feet off the ground each fall and cut off all growth that occurred that year. I top it. That keeps it from getting too tall — it can and does grow up to 5 feet in a year. Of course, at some point I won’t be allowed up a ladder. So far, so good. I’ve done it for the last three years.

Jefferson loved lilacs, as we all do. If your lilac has not produced many blossoms in recent years, it may also need a treatment of garden lime. Lilacs do best with soil that has a neutral pH, around 7.0, and lime will help get the pH closer to neutral. By now they have already set their buds for next year, but add lime or wood ashes now while you are thinking of it.

A shrub liked by Jefferson is called the Carolina Sweet Shrub (Calycanthus spp.). I grow it, but found it a bit fussy. I moved mine twice to find, like Cinderella, the fit that was “just right.” I first tried it in full sun and the leaves scorched — despite plenty of moisture. After the second year I moved it into shade, but it didn’t get enough sun and did not bloom much. Finally, five years later, I moved it under a big pear tree, where it gets filtered sun all day and it blooms and grows vigorously. The blossoms are a deep wine red, up to 2 inches across and shaped like little peonies. Some specimens are very fragrant, though mine is not. It blooms in early summer,

Like Jefferson, I like keeping a list of what woody plants I grow. Since I bought my house in 1970, I have planted at least 118 different kinds of woody plants, and about 95 percent of them have survived. And I’m still going to plant a few more. I make it through winter and mud season each year, in part, because I want to see what plants survived, too.

Henry may be reached by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or by regular mail at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat,NH 03746.

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