You may have seen the new blogs that we've been launching here in Seven Days-land in recent weeks. Now that those are up, it's official: We're retiring the Blurt blog. R.I.P., Blurt.
Our dear friend Blurt, in all its green-tentacled, drooling glory, has served us well since early 2008. But it's changed a lot through the years — from odd photos and video clips from all over the internet in the early days to its recent life as a place primarily for longer stories that popped up outside of the usual weekly publishing cycle of our dead-tree edition. There's nothing wrong with that, but, being an internet-friendly, 21st-century news organization, we want our blogs to feel like, well, blogs.
So that's why we started two separate blogs dedicated to two of our most popular areas of coverage: the news-and-politics blog Off Message, and the food-and-drink blog Bite Club. On both blogs, expect a more frequent publishing schedule, more photos and video, and more links to stuff our staffers are reading around the web.
Content that used to be on Blurt that doesn't fit in with those two blogs, such as arts news and the Movies You Missed DVD reviews, will be posted on our main website at sevendaysvt.com. There's now a big widget for web-exclusive stories outside the usual weekly publishing schedule on the website. And the best way to make sure you don't miss any Seven Days content is to subscribe to our email newsletters and follows us on Twitter and Facebook.
It's important to note: no content is going away! Old links will continue to work here, and future posts in longtime Blurt staples will have a new home — Grazing and Alice Eats are both now on Bite Club, for example. We're just doing some reshuffling to make our web structure more sensible and, we hope, better.
We'll miss the little green monster, though. Sleep well, little guy.
1580 Dorset Street, South Burlington, 862-4602
It's apple season. While those with an interest in being outdoors go apple picking, I found a more passive way to enjoy the season's quarry. Right in South Burlington, the Mill Market & Deli has plenty of dishes that showcase the same local fruit the cider mill uses in its Chittenden's Sweet Apple Cider.
In early September, the Mill straddles the seasons. On my recent visit, locals were still hitting the creemee window, though the chocolate and (fresh berry) black raspberry machine was broken, leaving just vanilla and maple.
But I was there to pick up a meal. The counter girl told me they were out of sandwich menus, and the options aren't written on a chalkboard, so I had to go from my memory of the website. This lapse was representative of a general disorganization I encountered at the market. I was asked to repeat my order three times and even then, they still didn't make it exactly to my specifications. The employee helping me wasn't sure of the items' prices or even where the store might have napkins.
That said, it's a great little market, full of quirky specialty foods, from Island Ice Cream to local meats and snacks. I grabbed a bottle of green-apple Jones soda and a bag of sweet and lightly salted Danielle pumpkin chips to make a fall cornucopia of snack food flavors.
It was a pretty ideal match for the Cider Mill sandwich. Composed of Boar's Head maple-glazed honey ham, green apples, baby spinach and red onion on grilled wheat bread, the sandwich was a roundup of crisp, sweet early fall flavors.
But what really defined it was its condiments: apple butter and honey mustard. The two combined for a symphony of sugary, spicy and fruity tastes. A layer of cheddar calmed the aggressive flavors with a blanket of creaminess.
It was a well-thought-out sandwich. But the Thanksgiving Feast pizza was truly inspired. Like a teenager with a mohawk, uncommon pizza toppings all too often exist just for the sake of doing something different.
Not the case with this pie, which seemed as if it had always been waiting in some culinary heaven, and had only now sent its avatar down to us.
The homemade crust was thin and crisp, and the Thanksgiving Feast was host to two homemade sauces, a garlicky white sauce and a tangy cranberry one.
Mixed on the crust, they combined into a slightly creamy, slightly sweet concoction that played a surprisingly similar role to tomato sauce. Set in a layer of chewy mozzarella, thinly sliced turkey, spinach and onions showered with Parmesan added even more Thanksgiving flavor. I might have liked some chunks of butternut squash to add another dimension; my boyfriend proposed sage stuffing. But even unchanged, this is a $15.50, 16-inch pie we will certainly order again.
We finished lunch with a pair of homemade cider doughnuts so light that they'd gotten away from us several times in the strong winds at the Mill's picnic tables.
But once I bit in, I found the desserts to be more cakey than I had expected from their aerial acrobatics.
Though not as airy as I might have hoped, the flavor was excellent. A hint of apple imbued the cake. A crust of sugar and spicy cinnamon covered it with just the autumnal tastes I was hoping for.
It seems I discovered the Mill just in time to bring in the cool weather. Surely as the leaves turn and fall, I'll be enjoying another Thanksgiving Feast.
Alice Eats is a weekly blog feature devoted to reviewing restaurants where diners can get a meal for two for less than $35. Got a restaurant you'd love to see featured? Send it to alice@sevendaysvt.com.
If you're the kind of person who loses all sense of time and self control whenever you visit King Arthur Flour, you might want to carefully plan your next visit. As in, set both a monetary and caloric budget and tell a friend where you're going, lest you get lost.
A few weeks ago, the baking giant unveiled the fruits of its yearlong, $10-million expansion. Though the building sprawls along the same hillside it's occupied for years, it feels like an entirely different place. And the complex looks like a wood-and-steel mothership. Which it is, of course, for thousands of bakers all over the world.
The iconic King Arthur throne is still inside, but it's dwarfed by interior improvements: huge windows that let visitors watch the baking in action; a larger, airy, polished retail space, with a Warholesque wall of flour; and most enticing of all (for me, at least), the new café, a roomy space filled with wooden tables and inviting leather chairs, plus a massive stone patio.
On a visit earlier this week, I tucked into an intense espresso tart and mulled which of the myriad pastries and breads to take home — a peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwich? A raspberry-topped cheesecake, or creamy Napoleon? In the end, I grabbed two chocolate-dipped macaroons and some 100-percent-Vermont-grains bread, a rich and nutty loaf that inspires instant bread lust. (You have to catch it on the right day, though; it's baked Tuesday and Friday). It was too hot of a day to stock up from the refrigerator, whose shelves are piled with sausages, bean salads, cheeses, pre-made sandwiches, sourdough starter, cultured butter...
As bakers well know, KAF's retail store can be like crack. Wandering its nooks, you can convice yourself that you absolutely need some Vietnamese cinnamon, panettone papers, and flour especially milled for "mellow" pastry, as well as a cupcake corer and baker's special dry milk. As much as I tried to stick to photo taking and avoid dollar spending, it was futile to resist a bag of feathery hazelnut flour. (I fried some flounder in it later that night; recipe below.)
KAF's official grand opening begins September 21, with a weekend of bread giveaways, demos from Gesine Bullock-Prado and Dede Wilson, and lots of fattening free samples. Are you brave enough?
Hazenut-Lemon Flounder
this quick and easy recipe serves 2
ingredients:
6 small or 4 large flounder filets (about 3/4 pound)
2 eggs
1 cup King Arthur Flour Hazelnut Flour
1 tbsp. lemon zest
punch each of sea salt, black pepper and dried oregano
2 tbsp. butter and 1 tbsp. oil, for frying
Rinse and pat dry fish filets. Crack eggs into a bowl and whip. In another bowl, add hazelnut flour, spices, herbs and lemon zest, and blend with hands. Put a fry pan on medium-high heat, and bring butter and oil to a froth. Coat each filet in egg, then roll in flour mixture and carefully lay in pan. Cook until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes each side. Plate, spritz with lemon, and serve.
This week in movies you missed: The French make movies about screwed-up families better than anyone.
What You Missed
Léna (Chiara Mastroianni, pictured) has at least 99 problems, and she herself is the biggest one. The moment we see this dark, glamorous woman in the middle of a busy Paris train station, towing one small child and yelling for another, we know she's in over her head.
Léna quit her job to stay home with her kids after she decided to divorce her cheating husband, Nigel (Jean-Marc Barr). (Yes, that is the connection to the XTC song, which is played in the film, though the movie's French title is completely different.) But her parents and sister worry that Léna isn't stable enough to be the custodial parent, so they arrange for Nigel to show up at the family's summer retreat in Brittany, hoping for a reconciliation. Things do not go as planned.
Meanwhile, Léna's parents (Fred Ulysse and '70s bombshell Marie-Christine Barrault) are wondering how to tell their kids bad news about his health. Léna's sister (Marina Foïs) is smoking like a chimney while pregnant and talking about dumping her husband. When Léna's brother (Julien Honoré) announces that he's engaged, the family's response is a collective Whatever.
No one seems to be enjoying the beautiful Breton countryside except the kids, and even Léna's eldest (Donatien Suner) is feeling the strain.
Why You Missed It
This 2009 film didn't have a U.S. theatrical release. It's now on DVD to coincide with the arrival in theaters of the latest from its director, Christophe Honoré: a multigenerational musical called Beloved (Les Bien-Aimés), which sounds worth checking out.
Should You Keep Missing It?
If you eagerly await the films of Noah Baumbach, and you loved the down-and-dirty dysfunction of the family in Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale, then no, you should not miss Making Plans for Léna. If you prefer your domestic dramas to have basically likable characters with quirks, like the ones in Little Miss Sunshine, this may not be for you.
These are difficult people. Often cruel people. At one point, Léna's hypercritical sister turns to her brother — the closest we get to an easy-going character — and asks him why he has to be so annoyingly positive all the time.
It's also a weirdly structured film. Midway through, Honoré throws viewers for a loop by taking us back to ancient Brittany for a dramatization of the folk tale that gives the film its original title, Non, ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser (No, my daughter, you won't go dancing).
Yet I found something mesmerizing about Léna and her rage and turmoil and general immaturity as she struggles to have everything her way. The film I was most reminded of was Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding, which is also about a "difficult" mother and the toll she takes on her young son. But Nicole Kidman's Margot was an inaccessible ice queen, so that film never really drew us in.
Léna, by contrast, feels compellingly open to us — way too open, just like she is to her kids — and her emotional rawness gives Making Plans its core. It doesn't hurt that Mastroianni, daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni, has old-school movie-star charisma. (She also stars in Beloved, with her mom.)
Verdict: Not for everyone, but I liked this. If you're a fan of Luc Besson's cult film The Big Blue, check out Jean-Marc Barr 20 years down the road, with a beard!
More New DVD Releases
Each week in "Movies You Missed," I review a brand-new DVD release picked for me by Seth Jarvis, buyer for Burlington's Waterfront Video, where you can obtain these fine films. (In central Vermont, try Downstairs Video.)
Revered Vermont institution Ben & Jerry's found itself in the news today, and not for its yummy, creamy treats: The company filed a lawsuit against the producer of the "Ben & Cherry's" series of pornographic films. Each title in the X-rated series is, you guessed it, a parody of a B&J's ice cream flavor. The New York Daily News has the scoop, along with some potentially not-safe-for-work photos (although the scandalous bits are blacked out) (not talking about the photo of Ben and Jerry themselves though).
The socially conscious Vermont company is suing a California smut peddler that blatantly ripped off its logo for X-rated DVDs.
...
An unprintable title drawn from the flavor Banana Split features two bare-chested women on the cover.A lawsuit filed Wednesday in Manhattan Federal Court demands the porn be taken off the market and seeks unspecified damages.
Unprintable? What prudes you are, New York Daily News.
Anyway, one wonders if Ben & Jerry's has a leg to stand on, given that some of their real-life flavor names are, well, kinda scandalous. (Yes, that includes Clusterfluff, which could probably be the title to a very fascinating porno but was later changed to What a Cluster.) Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all, and those Häagen-Dazs people can only wish that there was anything sexy about their treats.
And now, a game: We've listed ten names below. It's up to you to decide if each one is a Ben & Jerry's flavor or a porno flick. The answers are listed after the jump. Ready? Go!
And now, here are the answers. If you managed to get all ten correct, treat yourself with a pint of Ben & Jerry's tonight — or with a smutty film, if you'd prefer. We won't ask.
Photo credit: Don.chulio at the German language Wikipedia [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
69 Elliot Street, Brattleboro, 254-6143
Growing up outside New York City, my favorite flavors came from India. My earliest memory is of tandoori chicken.
When I moved to Vermont in 1998, I was nonplussed as to why something that seemed so effortless as preparing delicious, flavorful Indian food seemed so difficult within the borders of the Green Mountains.
My only hope was India Palace, a family-run restaurant in Brattleboro where I habitually stopped on my trips from Burlington to Connecticut. The food was flavorful, the meat was of good quality and the prices were astonishingly low.
I excitedly returned on Sunday for my first meal there in more than a decade. I found that India Palace wasn't bad, but it was no longer great, either. The food to price ratio, however, was still unbelievable.
I ordered the $21.95 tandoori dinner for one, which proved to be more of a tandoori dinner for three or four.
Immediately after ordering, I was presented with a cup of mulligatawny soup (above right). It smelled delicious, its cumin aroma sensuously filling the air. The lentil soup also had a spirited punch of acid, and as I swallowed it, black pepper lightly burned my throat.
My only complaints with the soup were that the the broth was uncharacteristically thin and that the spice came from black pepper rather than chiles. But these were minor quibbles. It tasted great and that was what mattered.
It was closely followed by this table full of food (right). The dessert-level-sweet coconut soup, dotted with nuts, and the disappointingly bland chicken tikka naan were my boyfriend's. The rest of that feast was all mine.
Buttery basmati rice and a giant pile of naan served as the starchy bases for the meal. While the rice was pleasant enough, it lacked the aromatic beauty I expect from a great Indian restaurant. The naan was suitably chewy in some places, but in others, it was thin, greasy and overly crisp.
A platter filled with stewed lentils was grayish, which wouldn't have mattered had it had any flavor besides salt.
With the meal option, I was allowed to choose any meat curry on the menu. I opted for the boti masala, lamb cooked in the tandoor, then stewed in a tomato-based sauce. The thin slices of meat were tender and pleasantly spiced. The tomato-butter sauce was salty and slightly sweet but lacked the acid and delicate smattering of spice I generally expect from the dish.
There was still the sizzling platter of meats fresh from the tandoor to sample as well. This was the greatest disappointment. My prior visits to India Palace had been filled with moist, flavorful tandoori chicken. This time, the meat was dry, mildly gamy and almost completely lacking in the subtle layer of gingery spice the dish's yogurt marinade should provide.
The chicken tikka, while still not quite up to snuff, was tastier and slightly more moist. That was lucky, because the seekh kabob was an unmitigated disaster. The little lamb sausages were inedibly dry, almost mummified.
After all that food, there was still dessert. I skipped my usual gulab jamun to try the gajar halwa, a dish I rarely see on menus. While relatively unadorned — the carrot pudding is little more than shredded carrots speckled with cashews and bathed in butter and sugar — the dessert hit the spot. Light and creamy, it was a refreshing end to the heavy meal.
I might not recommend India Palace as heartily as I once did. And it won't fulfill my need for great Indian in Vermont. But if I'm looking to fill up on the cheap in Southern Vermont, it will certainly remain on my radar.
Alice Eats is a weekly blog feature devoted to reviewing restaurants where diners can get a meal for two for less than $35. Got a restaurant you'd love to see featured? Send it to alice@sevendaysvt.com.When President Obama heads to Charlotte, N.C., next week for the Democratic National Convention, former governor Mitt Romney will journey north to the one place the national press won't find him.
Reading, Vt.
With the nation's attention turning to the Democratic confab, Romney plans to hunker down at the Reading home of his former lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, to prepare for this fall's three presidential debates.
Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden confirmed to CNN, the Washington Post and others Saturday that the Republican nominee will be in Vermont Tuesday through Thursday. But Madden did not rule out the possibility that Romney would leave the Green Mountains occasionally to campaign in more battleground-y states, according to Reuters.
Click here to continue reading on Off Message, our new politics and news blog.
It’s less than 12 hours until August turns a corner. For me, it signals a sad close to a season that begins in early June and wends its way through three glorious, salmon-colored months: the season of sipping rosé, almost to the exclusion of other colors.
When I went to pick up another bottle of the pink stuff this week, the usually teeming display of rosé had disappeared; the remaining bottles had been relegated to a mid-shelf rosé ghetto. With heavy heart, I grabbed a bottle of pale Blaufrankisch and resolved not to let the moment die. So that you might consider joining the crusade, here are some wines you can (and should) keep drinking until the rain starts lashing your window — or until they become stranded behind an autumn display of Syrah or Cabernet Franc.
What makes rosé so ridiculously perfect, besides being the anathema to sticky, hot days, is that it pairs like a glove with almost any kind of food. It's cheap, too, or at least can be found for a song. Sparkling rosé can help you wash down anything from fries to oysters to acorns and seeds (why not indoctrinate squirrels, too?). 'Still' rosé loves on BBQ pork, salads, tarts, burgers, or even any iteration of tomatoes you’ve dreamt up in the last few, red-stained weeks. The wisps of acid in a dry rosé deftly meet those in food, punch for punch; their inevitable fruitiness makes for satisfying patio pounding.
Yet do not — repeat, DO NOT! cross over to the dark side: sweet rosés. These run counter to nature. They often have sugar added to their juice, and they are not your friend.
Granted, many Vermont wineries have to make sweet wines to sate the average sugar-loving palate, and rosé is no exception. Fresh Tracks Farm in Berlin makes two rosés: the off-dry Little Piggy Pink, a pressing of Frontenac grapes; and the drier Vermont Rosé, a quenching press of St. Croix grapes.
The latter is where it’s at. With an autumnal tinge to its pink hue, it throws off aromas of raspberries, melon and a hint of menthol, and has heady flavors of cranberry, blackberry and a touch of quince. It’s palate cleansing, luscious and superb for these parts.
I first had Boyden Valley’s Rose La Ju Ju at the Stowe Farmers Market last year, when it was first released; it was striking in that, unlike many dry Vermont rosés up to that point, it lacked the puckery acids that can mar some of our cold-climate wines. Made from Frontenac and Cayuga White grapes, each sip has hints of pomegranate, watermelon and pebbles.
Truth be told, though, most of the rosé I’ve quaffed this summer has been from other shores. As with an acceptance speech, there are too many to mention — floral Masciarelli rosato from Abruzzo; the poised, crisp Château Thivin Beaujolais Rosé; the easy-sipping Cline Mouvedre rosé from California, a real bargain; even the fruity, slightly herbaceous Sofia (Coppola) Rosé that seemed everywhere this summer (even gas stations). But the real lesson of the summer has been that rosé made from Grenache is round, spicy and utterly captivating. The Capcanes Montsant Mas Donis Rosato, for instance, is an extroverted, berry-hued, almost chewable meld of cherries, pepper and plum.
Yet if there was a frog-prince of my summer, it was Austrian rosé. The salmon-hued 2011 Erwin Tinhof Blaufrankisch Rosé, made in Austria’s Burgenland region with native yeasts, exhales citrus and a wisp of candied apple when poured; lime, red fruit and a touch of butter dwell within. On the finish, the wine gives you a tiny kick to the top of the mouth, then settles into a long ‘om’ of tart strawberries.
Here's to Indian summer.
This week in movies you missed: teenage lesbian vampires, oh my! Or, perhaps, ho-hum.
What You Missed
When a mysterious new pupil named Ernessa (Lily Cole, pictured) comes to exclusive, girls-only Brangwyn School, she brings trouble for young Rebecca (Sarah Bolger). Traumatized by the suicide of her father, a famous poet, Rebecca has been leaning hard on the support of her wan but nurturing roommate and best friend, Lucie (Sarah Gadon).
But now Lucie and Ernessa are developing a close friendship — some would say too close. Rebecca, who's been taking a class in vampire fiction from the school's hot new teacher (Scott Speedman), is becoming convinced that Ernessa is literally sucking the life from Lucie. Can she convince anyone else?
Why You Missed It
This Irish-Canadian coproduction only played in two U.S. theaters, though it's scripted and directed by Mary Harron, the justly acclaimed director of American Psycho and I Shot Andy Warhol.
Should You Keep Missing It?
I wanted The Moth Diaries to be good. After all that Team Edward/Team Jacob foolishness, it would be nice to see a self-aware gothic that is purely about teen girls and their anxieties, crushes and obsessions (with each other, among other things). Harron seems like the perfect person to helm one, and the book on which the film is based (by Rachel Klein) has a strong fan base and sounds a lot smarter than Twilight.
But The Moth Diaries just does not work. The creepy boarding-school atmosphere is there. The acting is fine. The problem is with the story itself.
Klein's novel is set in the 1960s and consists entirely of Rebecca's diary entries (hence the title). The film is set in the vague present and appears to show events objectively, though we sometimes hear Rebecca's diary in voiceover.
Both changes are problematic. For one thing, it stretches credibility to suggest that a 21st-century girl needs to learn about vampire lore from 19th-century novels. For another, the film fails to establish Rebecca as an unreliable narrator, which appears to be the crux of the novel.
Sure, Rebecca has weird, saturated-color flashbacks about her dad, and nightmares, and she's clearly mentally unstable. But we are never offered any evidence that she is imagining Ernessa's malevolent, supernatural nature — just the opposite. (A cheesy special effect of Ernessa stepping through a closed window leaves little ambiguity.) It doesn't help that Cole, the British model who starred in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, just looks like a vampire.
So we are trapped in Rebecca's version of the story, which is so traditional that nothing unexpected ever happens. Worse, what Rebecca believes is happening keeps getting spelled out for us, as if we hadn't already figured out that Lucie is a parallel to Lucy in Bram Stoker's Dracula. I gave up on the movie after a painfully unsubtle conversation between Rebecca and her teacher that serves to remind us, once again, that the heroine is applying the vampire-fiction template to her life.
Verdict: If "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" did anything, it made this type of story obsolete, but teen girls seeking something weirder than Twilight might still get a kick out of it. The setting and Cole are authentically creepy. There are no cute boys, however, unless you count Speedman.
The Alternative: Watching The Moth Diaries made me remember there really is a smart, low-budget Canadian horror flick about girls coming of age, scripted by a woman. That would be Ginger Snaps.
More New DVD Releases
Each week in "Movies You Missed," I review a brand-new DVD release picked for me by Seth Jarvis, buyer for Burlington's Waterfront Video, where you can obtain these fine films. (In central Vermont, try Downstairs Video.)
Demonstrating an apparent dearth of self-awareness, a Vermont-based "super-PAC" whose creation opened the door for super PACs to operate in Vermont released a statement Thursday decrying the influence of an out-of-state super PAC in Tuesday's primary election — and using the situation to justify its own existence.
Got it? Didn't think so. Let me take you back.
Six weeks ago, a liberal advocacy group called Vermont Priorities announced it was launching Vermont's first home-grown super PAC, allowing it to raise and spend unlimited funds on state elections. Why? Because the folks behind it — Vermont Priorities chairman Bob Stannard (pictured) and the group's consultant, KSE's Todd Bailey — were greatly a-feared that big, bad out-of-state super PACs would get all up in Vermont's otherwise pure elections.
By starting their own, way more awesome super PAC, Stannard and Bailey reasoned, they'd be ready to do battle with Karl Rove and the dreaded Koch brothers when those dudes inevitably came to town. Meanwhile, without all those pesky campaign finance restrictions, Vermont Priorities would able to raise and spend as much as they liked to elect their fellow liberals to office!
Click here to continue reading on Off Message, our new politics blog.
While Republicans from around the country gather in Tampa this week, a Burlington designer is looking back on his small but significant contribution to a different presidential campaign.
In the summer of 1992, Doug Dunbebin was a graphic artist living in Beltsville, Md. when he came up with a design and slogan for the Clinton-Gore ticket that would soon catch fire and become one of the iconic images of the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns.
In June 1992, then-candidate Clinton appeared on the "Arsenio Hall Show" and ripped out a bluesy version of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" on his tenor saxophone. It was a seminal moment in Clinton's political career — as Hall remarked afterward, "It's good to see a Democrat blow something other than an election" — and earned him new found respect and support among young and minority voters.
Click here to continue reading on Off Message, our new politics blog.
Burlington City Councilor Ed Adrian (D-Ward 1) is resigning effective September 30. He informed fellow councilors in an email this morning.
Did he do it to spend more time with his family? Adrian tells Seven Days that he's stepping down for a "combination of reasons."
"There's no great revelation there," he says. "I just think the Senate race actually brought some clarity to me and the path I need to choose right now, and it's not one of volunteer political service. It's just the fact that [council service] is a great consumer of time that puts pressure on everything.
"I know that sounds nebulous," he added.
Click here to continue reading on Off Message, our new politics blog.