Half-and-halfers: Your ticket to knowing new wines

“But what is this like?” Ever notice how often you ask yourself that when shopping for new wines? Especially when it comes to taste, we fumble about for something related, something familiar on which to anchor our perceptions as we explore – either tentatively or at full speed ahead – uncharted territory. Take Sonoma cab. I [...]

Dessert of the Week: Real-Kind Lemon Meringue Pie, at Hi-Rise Bread Company

Lemon meringue pies, the real kind, are seasonal. That season started in February and — as lovers of real lemon meringue pie know — our favorite season is coming quickly to an end. That’s what the people say at Hi-Rise Bread Company in Cambridge. We’ll stop making them within the month, they say. But why, you say. [...]

Healthy Habits Kitchen: A different kind of take-out

It isn’t just the cooking that makes healthy eating untenable. It’s also the shopping, organizing, and clean up that needs to happen in addition to the cooking. Those are exactly the things that Susan Schochet and her staff at Healthy Habits Kitchen do (exceptionally well, I might add). Healthy Habits Kitchen in Wellesley offers meal [...]

Wine dinner this Friday at BOKX 109; special discount for WGBH members

Unfiltered wines are all the rage — we’re living in a pared-back, honest era, people — but few wineries get unfiltered wines right. Newton Vineyard, which wine critic Robert Parker calls one of the world’s greatest wine estates, is one of those few. This Friday night offers a chance to taste Newton Vineyard’s work for [...]

Music, dancing, and loukaniko: Greek Independence Day in Boston Common

In honor of the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire (and Greek pride in general), the Greek Independence Day festival took over Boston Common on Sunday. The festival gave a hint of the wonderful culture — and food — one might experience on a visit, as with WGBH’s upcoming LearningTour. Dancers in costume, [...]

Tips for getting adventure and value from your wine

Kerri Platt, owner of The Wine Bottega wine shop in the North End, has her internal lie detector tuned to high. All. The. Time. Which means that when a wine rep comes into the shop hoping to sell Platt on some wines, most will quickly fail her sniff test. That’s because Platt stocks her shelves [...]

Sister Noella and her cheese: “The Cheese Nun” in Cambridge

Cheese is one of the world’s most beloved foods whether you’re a celebrated French chef or a scruffy American kid on a picnic bench. But even if you love cheese, you probably don’t detect which type of flowers a cow, sheep or goat consumes or the time of day the milk is produced when you [...]

Anne Amie winemaker dinner at Grill 23

The last time Thomas Houseman, winemaker for Oregon’s Anne Amie Vineyards, was in Boston, he ran the marathon on Patriot’s Day, 2004. This time around, Houseman tackled Grill 23, not Heartbreak Hill. This time, on Wednesday, April 14, Houseman was more concerned with his pinot noirs than his mile splits. The wine dinner at Grill [...]

The Garden, in film and reality: Two surprises in Cambridge

Two surprises of the garden variety came in rapid succession last Wednesday at an event sponsored by the Food Literacy Project at Harvard. Fitting, given they came but a few days before the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and WGBH’s upcoming broadcast of Food, Inc. The first was the focus of the event itself, namely [...]

Dish of the Week at Trident Cafe

These days, in this weather, very few things taste bad. Partly it’s because we’re editing what we eat, choosing things that are lighter, more refreshing, spring-i-er. It’s fish tacos over Roquefort burgers. Iced tea rather than hot chocolate. Leafy vegetables before root ones. Whatever most jives with our surroundings of sunny, warm days and light-jacket [...]