Hospitality is at the heart of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church’s annual Greekfest.
“This is our annual Greek festival,” Costas Georgopoulos said. “It’s a two-day event that we hold over the weekend to promote our Greek hospitality.”
Assumption Greek Orthodox Church’s annual Greekfest is a community event. Just about everyone in the congregation gets involved in one way or another, but a lot of the leg work falls on Georgopoulos as he’s the Parish Council President.
“I’m wrapping up at work,” he said the Friday before the festival, “so I can take all of next week to work on the Festival.”
According to Georgopoulos, Greekfest is a key to the church’s role in the larger community.
“It’s inviting people to an event and enjoying Greek culture, our food,” he said, “inviting them in as part of our family. Hopefully they enjoy our food, music, pastries, just the overall joyous occasion and we try to provide that to them. It’s not just about our food; it’s also [about] our spiritual aspect as well.”
Which is true, but with that said, one of the main draws for Greekfest is the food. As it’s a Greek celebration, of course there will be lamb.
“Our traditional lamb is lamb kabobs,” Georgopoulos said, “and we put that on skewers and we have a barbecue lamb machine, which cooks the lamb like a rotisserie. We also have half chickens, which we season with our Mediterranean seasoning and we cook in the oven. And then we do our specialty, which is called the “Greek lasagna”; it’s called pastichio and it has Greek noodles and beef hamburger and then we have a bechamel sauce that we put up in the oven.” It’s traditional Greek comfort food, he said. “It’s a long process to make it, so a lot of folks don’t make it at home because it’s very labor-intensive.”
And then there are the pastries.
“Of course, we have our traditional baklava,” Georgopoulos said. “That’s probably our best-known pastry. When people visit a Greek festival, baklava is kind of the main item.” Assumption’s baklava is a traditional New England version, he said, “with honey syrup, phyllo dough, and walnuts for the nuts. But then we have kadaifi, which is shredded phyllo dough. It’s the same as baklava, but it’s not actually the rolled phyllo dough, so that’s a little different type of texture. But still, it’s the same thing with walnuts and honey syrup. Then we have our finikia, which is our cinnamon honey cookies with walnuts.”
Georgopoulos said his personal favorite that he looks forward to all year is the loukoumades, small doughnut-like balls of pastry that are deep-fried and soaked in hot honey syrup, sprinkled with cinnamon and garnished with chopped walnuts or toasted sesame seeds. Every village or city neighborhood in Greece has its own take on loukoumades, he said.
“They each have their little spin on it … depending on what part of Greece that they come from they’ll have small differences, which is great because I love varieties.” The same goes for the loukoumades from each Greek church parish, he said. “Each church usually has one recipe that they use that gets handed down through the generations.”
Lastly, Georgopoulos said, there are the gyros.
“We do authentic gyros,” he said. “We have the gyro cones [of meat on a spit] and we have machines in the back that, you know, turn the gyro on. We cut the meat off the gyro and serve it on a traditional gyro bread with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and tzatziki sauce. It’s a mixture of beef and lamb.” To avoid confusion, he said, the Greekfest staff call them “JAI-roes” rather than the more authentic Greek pronunciation of “YEE-roes.”
“It’s 100 percent supposed to be called a ‘YEE-roe,’ though,” he said. “If you go to Greece and you say ‘JAI-roe’ they’re not going to know what you’re talking about.”
Greekfest When: Saturday, Aug. 23, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 24, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Where: Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, 111 Island Pond Road, Manchester, 623-2045, assumptionnh.org Admission is free; bring money for food.
• Dogs and food trucks: There will be food trucks at the Bark in the Park festival in Rollins Park in Concord, Saturday, Aug. 23, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. According to an announcement on Facebook, “This event is a celebration of local eats and community vibes — featuring a delicious lineup of at least five unique food trucks serving everything from burgers and tacos to sweet treats and creative eats.” This is a free, dog-friendly event. Visit dogfriendly603.com/barkinthepark.
• Wine and flowers: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) will host a Bloom Bar Pop-Up on Sunday, Aug. 24, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Enjoy a glass of handcrafted wine while creating your own floral bouquet at your own pace. The Bloom Bar will be stocked with fresh seasonal flowers for you to mix and match, with Brianne available to offer tips and inspiration. Gather your friends and let your creativity flourish. Stay after the Bloom Bar for live music starting at 1:30 p.m. Enjoy an afternoon of great wine, beautiful florals and local music. Tickets for the Bloom Bar are $46 through exploretock.com.
• Farmers markets and cooking: The Culinary Playground (16 Manning St., Derry, 339-1664, culinary-playground.com) will hold a Farmer’s Market Finds class Wednesday, Aug. 27, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Participants will visit a local farmers market, shop together, and return to the classroom to make grain bowls with herb dressing and fruit crisp. This class will focus on choosing the freshest ingredients and learning how to best prepare them while practicing knife skills, cooking techniques, flavor development and plating. The cost is $85 per person, including market purchases.
• Bourbon brunch: Tickets are still available for a Breakfast Bourbon Brunch at Flag Hill Winery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) on Sunday, Sept. 7, beginning at 11 a.m. Attendees will have the chance to mingle in the vineyards, which are spectacular this time of the year. Enjoy handcrafted welcome cocktails, try the build-your-own-bloody-bourbon bar and savor delicious bites while enjoying live music to celebrate the release of Flag Hill’s new Breakfast Bourbon. Tickets are $60.
I’m looking for a value on my kitchen cabinet. I have decorated with it for over 20 years now. I’m moving and would like to find it a new home.
Thank you, Donna,
Tina
Dear Tina,
Your Hoosier style baker’s cabinet seems to be in very good condition. I don’t think finding a new home will be hard, as long as pricing fits today’s needs.
Hoosier cabinets and baker’s cabinets were popular during the early 1900s. Yours is most likely from the late 1920s or 1930s. That was when the painted ones were popular.
The cabinets were used as a mini kitchen, holding everything you needed for baking and most cooking. Flour, spices, dough boards, sugar jars etc. were all stored within the cabinet.
Back in my younger days the 1980s-ish everyone seemed to collect them and try to collect all parts to complete them. Because of the demand, the values on them were very high for ones in good clean condition.
I think things have changed a bit now and demand is lower. The values seem to be in the $350 range for an original painted one in clean condition. If the accessories are missing it would be less.
Tina, I hope this gave you some information and wish you luck finding a new home for the cabinet.
Since the mid-1950s, Nashua’s Actorsingers theater company has been a mainstay in the area’s cultural scene, performing classics like The Sound of Music, Cats and Beauty and the Beast. In 2005, a subsection of the organization called Second Stage was launched to present non-traditional works.
Among adventurous Second Stage shows have been Evil Dead: The Musical, Reefer Madness and The Wild Party.
“It’s a little bit more against the beaten track,” Christie Conticchio of Actorsingers said recently. “What they would like to call their fringe productions.”
Conticchio is directing the company’s latest effort, Avenue Q, opening Aug. 22. The Tony-winning musical takes a Sesame Street-ish tale and places it in a gritty Brooklyn where most of the principals can barely afford rent. Most struggle with the search for meaning; this is underscored in an early song, “It Sucks to Be Me,” where cast members compare their woes.
Avenue Q is driven by puppets representing onstage actors. There’s neighbors Princeton and Kate Monster (Will Sulahian, Zoë Vitalich), odd couple roommates Nicky and Rod (James Spinney, Chris Drury) and Trekkie Monster (B.C. Williams), who along with the Bad Idea Bears (Dara Brown, Elsa Gustafson) embodies the musical’s irreverence. (Despite the puppets, this isn’t a kids’ show. According to a disclaimer on the company’s website: “This show contains racism, homophobia, profanity, sexual themes, and other sensitive topics.”)
Apex, North Carolina, custom fabricator DreamLab Studio provided the puppetry, which also includes boss lady Mrs. T (Kayla Williams) and the vixen-ish Lucy (Caitlyn Reilly). DreamLab founder Kerry Falkanger deserves her own credit in the playbill, with characters that are amazing.
“My actors keep talking about how comfortable it is to use their puppets and to look at them … they’re so pleasing to the eye,” Conticchio said, while noting that the production is using “between 20 and 30 puppets of different heads, bodies…. You wouldn’t think that Princeton needed three costume changes, but he does.”
For expertise controlling them, she consulted Ro Gavin, whose eponymous theater company in Portsmouth did Avenue Q in a previous season. “They came for … an entire workshop with the cast,” she recalled. “We went through syllables, how to do hand stretches, upper body strength. They got a crash course in Puppetry 101, even how to make a puppet breathe.”
A team of eight operators handles the puppets, and unlike the original Broadway show, there is no cast doubling. This is a move consistent with Conticchio’s directorial vision.
“Getting them as in-depth of the storyline as possible” was key, she explained. “This ensemble is, from the beginning, on stage I’d say more time than some of the leads.”
Actorsingers’ mission begins with “the promotion and presentation … of good amateur stage entertainment primarily of a musical nature” with “assistance and encouragement of many people, regardless of age, race or creed, in the development of their stage talents and to express such of their talents as will contribute to successful stage productions.”
Auditions for the show attracted an embarrassment of riches. More than 60 community actors showed up, all apparently Avenue Q fans.
“Casting Kate was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do as a director,” Conticchio said. “Luckily, I have seven other people on the board to help me.”
Asked what the response said to her about the amateur theater community in New Hampshire, and in the southern region of the state specifically, Conticchio was full of praise. “Honestly, it levels up with anything else regional, if not Broadway; I was so impressed with the talent,” she said. “After every group, I was like, honestly, thank you for coming out and sharing your talents with us. This is not going to be an easy decision.”
Pistachios are beautiful, delicious and green. They make a pie crust shockingly good, and in the hands of an expert bartender they will make you completely rethink the whole concept of a mai tai.
And yet, until relatively recently, most of us rarely thought much about pistachios, or about the Emirate of Dubai. That changed with the craze for Dubai chocolate, which became suddenly famous about a year ago.
The Dubai craze
Made popular by Fix Dessert Chocolatier, an ultra-high-end chocolate shop in Dubai, “Dubai chocolate” is a style of dark chocolate filled with chopped filo pastry, tahini (sesame paste) and pistachios. Jaime Metzger, the manager of Granite State Candy Shoppe in Manchester, said customers started asking for it about a year ago.
“I think it was roughly last summer that it started to pop up all over the place,” Metzer said, “and it became a craze; it became a trend like all these new things, and then it kind of fizzled like trends do. But suddenly it came back again!”
The ingredient in Dubai chocolate that enthusiasts seem to have latched onto is pistachios. It might be their exotic green color, or their rich, slightly woody flavor, but it’s an element that customers feel strongly about, according to Trina Bird, the Head Baker at Lighthouse Local in Bedford. As it turns out, she said, pistachios can be a bit temperamental to work with.
“A lot of [makers] use pistachio cream,” Bird said. “Pistachio paste is all natural; it’s literally just pistachios, salt and a little bit of oil. But pistachio cream typically has sugar in it or white chocolate, which gives it a sweet creaminess. At first I was trying to make Dubai chocolate-treats with just the pistachio paste because I didn’t trust the ingredients in the ‘cream.’ But then what I figured out is I could use the paste and have our chocolate lady whip me up some white chocolate and I will drizzle a small amount of that in to promote emulsion, and that gives it what people want — they want that sweet spreadability.”
The key, under-appreciated ingredient in Dubai chocolate, Bird said, is the crushed filo dough, or kadayif. Because pistachios are pretty oily, pistachio paste has a tendency to leak out of whatever you’ve put it in. The threads of kadayif provide a matrix to help keep it in place.
Pistachio Butter 2 cups (250 g) roasted, salted pistachio nuts 1 teaspoon flavorful olive oil Pinch of salt
Combine all ingredients in your food processor or blender, and blend until you break their spirit. First, the mixture will grind into a floury powder, but if you keep grinding/blending/processing it, the pistachios’ oil will start to be forced out and it will form a stiff paste. It will try to play on your emotions and pretend that it has no more to give, but if you keep working it, it will eventually break down into a runny peanut butter consistency. At this point, taste it to see if it needs more salt. Alternatively, you could just buy some pistachio butter at the store.
Pralines and halvah
But clearly pistachios have a bigger role to play outside of Dubai chocolate. Pistachios have been grown in Iran for more than 8,000 years and are a critical part of food cultures throughout the Middle East. According to Master Chocolatier Richard Tango-Lowy, owner of Dancing Lion Chocolate in Manchester, while pistachios have a distinctive flavor, that flavor lends itself to a large number of applications.
A pistachio rocher from Dancing Lion, with mango, peach and dark chocolate, tossed in chopped pistachios. Photo by John Fladd.
“When you taste pistachios,” he said, “they have a fairly unique, almost like slightly woody flavor to them when you pay attention. They’re native to Iran, where some of the most interesting foods are from. Hence, it’s common in Persian food. It’s an [ingredient] that you can easily use in savory applications. We tend to sort of pigeonhole things a lot, but the reality is [that] pistachios can go in a lot of different directions. If you’re doing a fish or chicken dish with some pistachio and brown butter, or maybe some Persian lime or something, it would be really good. Or, of course, you can go in the sweet direction with it.”
“We might do a praliné,” Tango-Lowy said, “which is kind of what Dubai chocolate is, which is cooking the nuts in molten sugar to make like a brittle. You lay it out for a day or so until it completely crystallizes and it’s really nice and hard. And then you break it up and grind it to a paste, and you get this beautiful sort of caramelly, nutty [building block], and you have a lot of control of the flavors you want to bring out of it. So those sorts of techniques are actually pretty old. Pralinés go way back in France but a lot of this stuff actually does go back to Persia.”
Another classic sweet way of using pistachios, Tango-Lowy said, is in halvah, a dry, crumbly, fudge-like confection.
“We’ve been doing a lot of halvah lately,” he said. “People are used to it with sesame seeds, but it’s also very frequently made with pistachios. And there are so many different ways of making halvah, depending on where you’re talking about. You have Israeli halvah. In Iran they put flour in their halvah, which is really different — wheat flour, which completely surprised me when I learned about it. It’s a much softer thing; it’s served for dessert. You scoop it or eat it with a fork. It’s a very different take on halvah. And you have Greek halvah, which is a different thing, yet again.”
“At its most fundamental,” Tango-Lowy explained, “you’re basically toasting sesame seeds, or in this case pistachios, grinding them into a paste with whatever spices you want, then pouring over hot sugar syrup and stirring it until it crystallizes. Halvah’s pretty easy to make. But then you can do it with other nuts. We’ve made halvah with pecans and maple.”
Boil the pistachios for three minutes, then drain them and rub them with a towel, to remove the skins. Set them aside to dry. Combine the butter and about a third of the milk, and heat until the butter has melted. Add the chopped white chocolate and stir it until everything has come together. You can put the bowl over a pot of simmering water, or heat everything in your microwave, a few seconds at a time. Add the pistachios, powdered sugar, salt, and the white chocolate mixture to a blender, and blend everything until it forms a paste. Add any remaining milk to the mixture, and blend it until it reaches a consistency you like. Remember that it will stiffen up as it cools, so you can probably afford to make it a little runny.
Pistachio latte
According to Angie Castro Andrade, cafe manager and co-owner of The Moka Pot in Manchester, pistachios make a staggeringly good latte.
“It gives it more of a nuttiness,” she said. “I like that creaminess to it, so when we decided to build a latte around it, I wanted to make the pistachio element myself. It turned out to be a little tricky. It’s full of oils, which doesn’t mix well with the espresso. We tried to just use the paste and it turns out that it just destroys the milk. So it’s like super hard to use just straight up.” Ultimately, she said, she and her team deconstructed the whole idea of a pistachio syrup, and broke it down to its very basic elements.
“We blanched [fresh pistachios],” she said. “Then we let them sit, and then like pulled the skin off of them. We cooked them down with white chocolate and milk and cream. It made this thick, like, almost like, chocolate sauce.” The white chocolate acted as an emulsifier, Castro Andrade said. “It was sweet, but not overbearing. “It was really, really good on its own. We were very tempted to just take it by the spoonful and eat it. But with the coffee, it was very delicious. We made a latte with it for St. Patrick’s Day because of the color. Everyone always uses mint for this sort of thing, and we wanted to go in a different direction; we called it The Nutty Irishman.”
By the scoop
For anyone over the age of 30 the word “pistachio” brings up memories of pistachio ice cream. Today it seems like an old-fashioned ice cream flavor, like rum-raisin, that probably is a bit of a food relic. You’d think that, said Victoria Riese, manager of the Puritan Backroom Restaurant in Manchester, but you’d be wrong.
“We have a couple of super-old-fashioned flavors that have had a real resurgence in popularity over the past few years,” Riese said. “Orange-pineapple is one, and pistachio is the other. At the Puritan, we make really good ice cream. But I think pistachio overall, that flavor is very in vogue right now. I think it all plays together. People are seeing more pistachio flavor out there, and they’re coming in and they’re asking for it. And our pistachio ice cream is very good.”
Pistachio is one of The Puritan’s original ice cream flavors, probably going back to when the restaurant started in 1917, Riese said. “I asked our ice cream maker, and he makes about 30 pints of it a week to sell. That’s on top of the [pistachio] ice cream we serve here at the restaurant and for takeout.”
Pistachio Ice Cream ¾ cup (180 g) pistachio butter (see page 10) ¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons (180 g) sugar 2⅔ cups (660 g) half and half pinch of salt ⅛ teaspoon vanilla
Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor until thoroughly combined. If you have an ice cream maker: Chill this ice cream base for several hours, then churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If you do not have an ice cream maker: Pour this base into a large zippered plastic bag. Lay it on its side in your freezer until it has frozen solid. Break it into chunks, then blend it in your blender. It will break down into soft-serve consistency (which is what an ice cream maker would produce). Spoon it into freezing containers, and harden it in your freezer for two hours or overnight. This is a simple classic pistachio ice cream. How green it is will depend on the pistachios in your pistachio butter.
Other treats
According to baker Trina Bird, the taste of pistachios works extremely well in baked goods.
“It’s a very pure flavor,” Bird said. “It’s not like it’s a strong flavor, but it insists upon itself.” Because of its woody richness, it’s complemented by floral flavors like rosewater, she said. It’s a classic Middle Eastern combination. “Our baker who makes all our scones,” she said, “makes a rosewater-pistachio scone and it is so popular!”
What a baker needs to keep in mind when they bake with pistachios, Bird said, is giving the pistachios the support they need. Toasted pistachios are fine sprinkled on top of baked goods, or added inside a muffin or a scone, but if someone wants to really highlight pistachios’ flavor and color, they will probably want to use pistachio paste, which means they’ll have to face the runniness issue again.
“I like to swirl it into a brownie or a blondie,” Bird said. “That way, as the base bakes super-firm; it will hold the pistachio in a sort of a matrix. That’s why [pistachio] is also a great filling for a cupcake — it’s completely surrounded by cake that keeps it from running away.”
Other drinks
Phil Mastroianni is the co-owner of Fabrizia Spirits in Salem. His company makes premium limoncello, but also pistachio liqueur.
Pistachio latte at Moka Pot.
“A lot of our customers in the North End of Boston were telling us, ‘You know, we’re getting more people that are asking for pistachio martinis. Would you consider making [a pistachio liqueur]?,’” he remembered. “And so I went into the lab and it was without a question the most challenging recipe we’ve developed. What I found out is while there’s like more or less one recipe for limoncello — lemon zest, alcohol, sugar and water — there’s no set recipe for pistachio liqueur. … At the time, I started buying some pistachios from California. We tried roasted ones. We tried fresh ones, then just dry, not roasted. And ultimately we came up with a recipe to launch a pistachio liqueur. And the only change we’ve ever made to that recipe is a couple of years in when it was doing well and we said, wait a minute, we bring our lemons in from Sicily, and Sicily is known for pistachios. We started buying our pistachios directly from one family on the backside of Mount Etna in the small town of Bronte — which is famous throughout the world but definitely in Italy — for its pistachios.”
The key to great-tasting pistachios, Mastroianni said, is toasting them.
“What people really like about pistachios,” he said, “what I’ve learned even from my own consumer standpoint is that what we like about the pistachio is as much the toasting and the taste of the charred pistachio. In our liqueur, the toasty, almost decadent pistachio flavor is, in my opinion, what really connects people’s minds with their enjoyment of our final product.”
Pistachio pesto. Photo by John Fladd.
Pistachio Pesto ½ cup (65 g) roasted, shelled, salted pistachio nuts 2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice 1 clove of garlic, peeled sea salt to taste freshly ground black pepper to taste 1 1/2 cups (about 75 g) fresh basil leaves 1/2 cup (about 25 g) fresh parsley or cilantro ¼ cup or so (about 55 g) of your favorite olive oil ¼ cup (about 15 g) of grated parmesan cheese – not the dust in the green tube
Some of the measurements above are a bit vague. One of the liberating things about making pesto is that it is very much a “handful of this” and “a pinch of that.” Do you have super-flavorful basil in your garden? You might want to add less — or more — of it. Did you forget to buy actual Parmesan cheese but find a mummified lump of cheese at the back of the refrigerator that you can grate with your food processor? Cool. Add the pistachios, lemon juice, garlic, and herbs to your food processor or blender. (If you’re feeling really old-school, you could pound all this in a large mortar and pestle.) Mix/chop/grind it up, until it forms a paste. Drizzle in the olive oil, a little at a time. If you try to pour the whole amount in at once it will be too much for your pesto to deal with emotionally, and it will break into an oily mess. You know that hole in the lid or your blender, or the little holes in the insert for your food processor? This is what they are there for. Mix everything until you are happy with it. Transfer the pesto to a bowl, and mix the cheese in. If you can manage to get it to the table before it is all “tasted” away by kitchen bystanders, serve this pesto on a twisty ridged pasta that will hold onto it.
Classic heavy metal band Queensryche performs at the Tupelo Music Hall (10 A St., Derry, 437-5100, tupelomusichall.com) tonight at 8 p.m. as part of their All Sinners Open tour. Tickets start at $70.
Friday, Aug. 22
As part of its Locally Sourced concert series, the Capitol Center for the Arts hosts hard-rocking bands Doug, the Worst, and Grub Lord tonight at 7 p.m. at the BNH Stage (16 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com). Tickets are $18 , $21 at the door.
Friday, Aug. 22
Join a 120-minute DIY watch-making workshop at Skyrim Watch Studio (427 Amherst St., Nashua, 810-9528, skyrimwrist.com). Learn to assemble your own timepiece step by step, with all parts provided, and take your dream watch home. Workshops are tonight as well as Saturday, Aug. 23, and Sunday, Aug. 24, from 6 to 8 p.m. The cost starts at $46 per person; tickets are available through eventbrite.com.
Saturday, Aug. 23
The 13th Annual New Hampshire Monarch Festival takes place today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at its new location, Canterbury Shaker Village, 288 Shaker Road in Canterbury. The day will feature exhibits and presentations about butterflies and other pollinators as well as children’s activities and walking trails, according to the event’s Facebook page. Visitors can take home free milkweed and flower seeds, according to a press release. Admission is free for children under 2 years old (and for kids ages 2 to 12 years old if wearing an appropriate costume); admission is $4 for ages 2 to 12 is $4 and $7 for ages 13+, the release said.
Saturday, Aug. 23
The Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St, Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com) hosts a night of soul-stirring music at the Devon Allman Blues Summit tonight beginning at 8 p.m. Joining blues great Devon Allman will be the legendary Jimmy Hall of Wet Willie and Jeff Beck fame, blues icon Larry McCray, and New Orleans singer Sierra Green. Tickets start at $43.
Sunday, Aug. 24
Merrimack High Schools FIRST Robotics Team hosts its second annual Cars, Robots and Coffee event this morning from 8 a.m. to noon. The event is a blend of a traditional Cars and Coffee event mixed with demonstrations from local FIRST Robotics teams. The event will take place at Merrimack High School (38 McElwain St., Merrimack).
Sunday, Aug. 24
The Summer Silent Boxing Film Series concludes with a screening of Buster Keaton’s Battling Butler (1926) today at 2 p.m. at the Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton. Admission is free; a donation of $10 per person is suggested. There will be live musical accompaniment by organist Jeff Rapsis.
Save the Date! Thursday, Aug. 28 Post-grunge rock band Creed will take the stage at the SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, 644-5000, snhuarena.com) Thursday, Aug. 28, at 7 p.m. as part of their Return of the Summer of ’99 tour. Special guests Daughtry and Mammoth will open for them. Tickets start at $49.
