It’s August 18th and I have yet to go to the beach this summer. I believe that’s a serious mistake because, guess what? My garden tomatoes are exploding on the vines and summer is over in about four weeks and, sadly, I can already smell Fall in the air. I love Fall, so I’m not that sad, but I’ve already got a few regrets (and remedies!) for the summer of 2011.

Regret #1:

I never did hit the beach. My garden and pots are all overgrown and it isn’t because I’ve been sunning myself on the sand. But instead of continuing to complain – because that’s no fun – I am booking a September weekend in Maine to celebrate my wedding anniversary. I also bought a flight to Bermuda for October. Until then, I’m breaking into our stash of fresh taffy that’s in our summer seashore gift box. We’ve all got to squeeze some beach in before the snow starts falling. (We’re offering free shipping on our gift boxes for the rest of August – whoopee! – just enter coupon code: BEACH)

Regret #2:

I didn’t eat my weight in berries. And, darn it, I always miss berries, especially at the holidays when the colors just work so well with holiday decor. I settle for cranberries, but I miss local raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. I did manage to make a cool strawberry buttermilk cake this summer when I wrote a guest post for Love & Olive Oil and I made a few currant cordials I’m dying to taste. But I’m itching for the Maine blueberries Shelby is bringing me on the weekend. I have a blueberry bread pudding to make stat.

Regret #3:

I didn’t see all my friends. Summer is about slowing down and, for me, reconnecting with folks I have no time to visit with throughout the year. I didn’t host a grilled pizza party, barbecue marinated good things over open flames, and munch on sun gold tomatoes plucked from a vine along with cocktails and friends. Ugh, I just skipped over all of that. I promise to make it up to all of you and me. I’m hosting the first Eat Boutique Local Market on Saturday, September 24. I’ve gathered all of my favorite food makers, a boutique wine shop and a cookbook author or two, at my favorite eco-friendly furniture and design shop, Twelve Chairs. From 1-5pm, you’ll get the chance to meet the people behind the food, taste their food and, the best part, buy delights to take home with you, if they make it that far. Be the first in line by subscribing to our Local Market mailing list.

Summer is almost over, but I’m committed to soaking in every ray of sunlight and each overripe, plump tomato. How are you enjoying all these last moments?

As I mentioned, we’re offering free shipping on our gift boxes for the rest of August – whoopee! – just enter coupon code: BEACH

Eat Boutique is an online magazine + market for food enthusiasts to celebrate the best pure, local + comforting handmade foods. We call it: food that hugs you back. Looking for the perfect gift? Eat Boutique sells gift boxes filled with handmade sweet and savory treats. Send food that hugs you back today.

Good luck to the soul who stands between a California Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel and me. Seriously, get out of my way.

I like wine and, especially, red wine. When I’m in northern California, I can drink a fancy red bottle or take my jug to the local vineyard to fill up on solid house wine. Either way, I’m happy because in California, I’ve got options.

Not so much in New England.

In fact, when a winemaker from a vineyard along the Coastal Wine Trail (which covers Rhode Island and Massachusetts) told me it’s impossible to make good red wine north of Connecticut, I pouted and considered a move out west permanently.

That was until I battled through thunderstorms to make my annual journey to Woodstock, Vermont in June.

I’ve been visiting Woodstock for ten years. My husband and I met Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber, proprietors of Osteria Pane e Salute, when we put ourselves in their hands for one of our first very fancy dinners as a couple. We chose our dishes based on their very seasonal and local menu, and Deirdre paired each course with her carefully-curated wines.

I love when someone who loves wines tells me what to drink.

Each year, we visit their bistro-size restaurant and, each year, I learn about so many boutique wines that Deirdre has discovered during her trips to Italy. Deirdre and Caleb visited during their honeymoon and return to taste, cook and get inspired during the off-season each year.

Lucky for us.

In June, we followed our typical 1-2-3 plan for a visit to Woodstock.

1. We checked into our favorite inn: The Woodstocker Inn

2. We ate and sampled beers at our favorite brewery: Long Trail Brewing Company

3. We dined in one of the best restaurants ** in New England: Osteria Pane e Salute

There was one slight alteration to this pretty awesome agenda. Deirdre and Caleb have started making wine on their eight-acre farm about 10 miles from the restaurant in Barnard, Vermont. And as a little gift to my husband, I surprised him with a tour of their farm, from which they grow vegetables and herbs for the restaurant, and a tasting of their very first wine vintage in progress at La Garagista. (They already make classic method ciders and aperitivi, delicious cordials and liquors to serve before a meal, and digestifs, for after a meal.)

The entire farm was stunning and quite special. And when I relayed the Coastal Wine Trail story to Deirdre just as we sipped her red wine, she gave me a look and a smile, and it was very clear to me that though the wine was still developing, I was soon going to have a favorite New England red wine.

Deirdre and Caleb are very busy with the restaurant and the farm and their wine tastings and all those trips to Italy but if you ask very nicely, they’d let you tour and taste their wines too.

Deirdre and Caleb have written several books: Libation, a Bitter Alchemy; In Late Winter We Ate Pears: A Year of Hunger and Love; and (my personal favorite) Pane e Salute: Food and Love in Italy and Vermont. They’re also on Twitter and write the inspiring blog Fuoricitta. I’ve written about Osteria Pane e Salute before too.

** Now I don’t make a broad statement like this very easily. But my first experience dining at this restaurant, and every single visit since, has inspired me. Their passion for food and wine inspired me to find my own and they’re one of the reasons I choose to work in food. Yes, those are big shoes to fill but they fill them beautifully.

Eat Boutique is an online magazine + market for food enthusiasts to celebrate the best pure, local + comforting handmade foods. We call it: food that hugs you back. Looking for the perfect gift? Eat Boutique sells gift boxes filled with handmade sweet and savory treats. Send food that hugs you back today.

Chive is a female-powered, sustainable catering and event design company just budding in Boston, Massachusetts. The passion that Jen, Julia and Lindsey have for seasonal flavors, environmental sustainability, and the Boston community is infectious. It’s impossible not to get excited about their vision for Chive.

I met Chef Lindsey Wishart almost four years ago when she was making bread and pizzas at Green Meadows Farm. There was something deeply captivating about her food: the perfect blend of honey and whole wheat in the Anadama bread, the loving placement of sunflower seeds on the multi-grain loaf, and the mouthwatering combination of fresh-from-the-fields produce on each pizza. Even two years after Lindsey left Green Meadows, customers would ask for her, longingly.

Luckily, I knew where she lived. In fact, we lived together for almost three years (so I may be a wee bit biased). During that time, she completely changed the way I thought about food and cooking. She could look into our empty fridge, where I saw nothing, and create a beautiful feast within 45 minutes. She has an instinct for flavors and a love of fresh, local, artisan ingredients that made our kitchen the best room in our home.

Last spring, Lindsey’s college friend Jennifer Frost decided it was time to launch the business they had been scheming about for years, seeing catering as their way to bring delicious, beautiful, local food to the community. Jen, who has a degree in interior design and years of experience in catering and hospitality, has a gift for creating classically modern spaces out of found and recycled objects. She is inspiring in her resourcefulness, often designing and building structures herself in order to execute her vision for an event.

Jen’s sister Julia calls herself the official taste-tester for Chive, and with a business degree from Suffolk, she has created the strong foundation that allows Jen and Lindsey to focus on their craft and have fun in the kitchen. They take simple farm ingredients and turn them into elegant and transporting plates. Menu creations have included Rosemary Pork with Chile, Cocoa and Black Bean Puree; Seared Nantucket Bay Scallops with Spicy Carrot Aioli; and Apple Cider-Braised Short Ribs on an Open-Faced Corn Muffin. Yum.

Chive’s uniqueness comes from their take on social sustainability. Yes, they compost and recycle and use Verterra plates (made from fallen palm leaves). But they also structure their events in a way that breaks down the barriers between the chefs and the eaters. Food is never just dropped off to be served by another staff; interaction between the Women of Chive and the people enjoying their food is key. At some events, guests have even become part of the food preparation process, sampling raw ingredients and inspiring the way components are put together. Because Lindsey and Jen are in the kitchen at every event, they can create plates on the spot based on guest preferences, generating very little waste.

What’s the long term vision for Chive? The three hope to eventually open a non-profit arm that would include a working educational farm, community kitchen, and advocacy organization aimed at getting good food into school systems. I can’t wait to see what these incredible ladies do next!

Check out Chive online or email julia@chiveevents.com.

A few weeks ago, the husband requested my presence at a date in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city in which our romance blossomed seven years ago. We both lived in the North Cambridge/Porter Square vicinity, a neighborhood fairly barren of fine dining establishments at the time, a little sweet pocket of Cambridge that just didn’t have much going on.

Boy, have times changed, and all over Cambridge. Like our old neighborhood, the strip of Massachusetts Avenue between Harvard and Central Squares was equally bland, only speckled with late night dive bars and modern furniture stores. Until 2007, that is, when a great young chef opened a little spot called Garden at the Cellar, a sweet little spot I was beckoned to for drinks and snacks.

Snacks turned into dinner. In fact, the spot was so great, we had friends meet us there for late night drinks and even more snacks. Everything was cooked and assembled with such care and attention to detail, like the lovely yellow beet salad pictured above. The Chef, Will Gilson, had given the scoop on his sourcing, cooking and dining philosophies to my company a few week’s earlier. Will is big into being kind to the environment, and practices what he preaches. As my husband is big into green these days, he promptly felt the urge to patronize the Garden, and I was delighted we did.

A few highlights from our meal:

- The husband had a delicious Hendrick’s and Tonic, made even more special by this smooth lemon cucumber slice

- Fried Green Tomatoes, lovingly and firmly coated with a light cornmeal batter and a smudge of sauce

- Ripe yellow tomatoes with handmade burrata cheese, speck and basil

- Grilled skirt steak with rosemary truffle fries and parsnip puree, cooked beautifully

The Garden filled up quickly but the staff remained as pleasant and sweet as can be, never rushing us to bar seats at the end of our meal. (Having worked at the same restaurant as Will, and manning the host stand, I totally understood the crowd and wanted to vacate our table to permit newbies to get a shot at a great dinner.) The husband was delighted and we mutually agreed that we had found a new home in Cambridge. It wasn’t in our old neighborhood, but was fairly close, and gave us hope that new people were seeing glory in little barren spots of our old hometown.

I’ve written for magazines and websites in the past, but I’m particularly excited to announce that I’m writing a column over at IzzitGreen.com starting now! IzzitGreen is a new rating and review site launched last month. You can visit IzzitGreen to find out both how good and how green your local businesses are. I’m writing about food (big surprise!) and all the ways to be more friendly to our earth as we dine, cook and eat. Check out my latest column, all about community-supported agriculture, called “Welcome to My Farm.” Please post your comments over there, as I’m excited to jointly explore how we can all eat good and green.

I had quite an interesting exchange this evening. We had run out of vegetables from our farm share so I popped into the local fruit stand to pick up some salad greens and fruit. Calareso’s Fruit Stand is located in Reading, Massachusetts, and sells fresh vegetables, fruit, plants, flowers and baked goods. (During the winter, they sell Christmas trees and  evergreen wreaths.) The stand is a fairly hot spot during the early evening hours, especially with folks picking up last minute additions to their dinner table.

I picked up some cherry tomatoes, noticed they were from Mexico and returned them to their spot. Just not worth the increasing my carbon footprint, let alone the unknown pesticides. I pondered a package of strawberries from California, and decided to let my hunger for strawberries overtake my desire to buy local or organic, and shoved them into my cart (of course, quietly looking around for the “local” and “organic” police, who were no where to be found).

I added several greens to my cart, including bags of arugula, basil and mixed salad greens marked solely with the Calareso’s label. I began to wonder where all these greens were born. Calareso’s didn’t have a farm per se, so they likely purchased all these items at some wholesale market. But beyond that, where the heck did these greens come from? If I wasn’t going to eat organic, I could at the very least focus on supporting farmers in New England, or at least the east coast, and do my little part to reduce my carbon footprint. I really, really wanted to know where these greens came from, so decided to broach the subject at the checkout. And, despite a young 20-something gal at the register, I decided to give my “local” speech a shot.

I told the young woman that I had a notion for her to float up the corporate chain. It went something like: “Wouldn’t it be awesome if you labeled the origin of all your produce so I could choose to support local farmers?”

She said something like: “Well, we buy from the produce market daily and the growers change daily, so that’d be impossible to maintain.”

So I was like: “Well, you could have laminated signs that you wipe clean and re-write on each morning.”

And she was all: “Well, that’s a lot of work.”

So I was like: “Well, I guess, but it’s worth it for your customers. I want to know and I’m sure lots of others would appreciate knowing they were supporting local farmers.”

As her eyes glazed over, she said: “Well, that’s an interesting an idea.”

I realized I was speeching to deaf ears and decided to move on with my non-local groceries. Once home, my husband giggled at my attempt to wise up some 20-something. I insisted that kids these days were allegedly far more eco-aware than us old folks, and that my fruit stand clerk was an anomaly. Or, at least, I hoped.

As I assembled the above salad, I worried for all those 20-somethings who didn’t care where their food was born. Sure, the salad is pretty and was quite tasty, but I grieved for my hard-earned dollars potentially going to corporate farmers. I grieved for the carbon release I had supported. I grieved for all those 20-somethings who simply don’t know better yet… but knew, one day, they would.

1. Use an artificial tree that you plan to use until the day you die, and understand that the tree will never breakdown in our landfills but that you’re saving a live tree from death.
2. Cut down a live tree from an organic Christmas tree farm that uses no pesticides in the growing of their trees and thus you may be cutting down a tree but you’re saving our atmosphere from wicked chemicals.
3. I just learned a third… but where do you get Josh Lucas’ tree? Not in New England…

Artificial trees have a long, long, long way to go in order to be considered design-friendly, let alone eco-friendly, so that was not an option. I sadly didn’t find an organic tree farm on the north shore of Boston so I decided to cut down on CO2 damage to our atmosphere by buying from a local farm in Topsfield, Massachusetts. (Don’t ask me for a website or address, as they’re so local, they don’t really exist but by word of mouth. I’d have to give you step by step directions for how to get there.)

My beautiful fir trees were picked especially for their “airy” quality. The branches are very far apart and some would say they resemble a fuller, but not quite full Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. I guess my husband has been talking about these “airy” trees, so he asked me to post photos. I think he’s just happy that (1) he didn’t have to trek out to this farm to cut/carry the trees himself and (2) they’re super light and very easy to manipulate in the house. (I should add that the woman who sold me the little tree said her husband was going to scold her for selling it because no one should buy a tree that’s so oddly-shaped. I’ve been selling “perfect” Christmas trees for the last several holidays and assured her that I wanted to buy the least perfect tree that she had. I’m so in love with it. So don’t you dare laugh at me.)

So again, these are naked pictures. I will post follow-up photos once they’re completely decorated.

The Big Tree, in my family room, about 7 feet tall

With a slightly different filter on the camera…

The Small Tree, in my new kitchen, about 5 feet tall

With lights and a slight blur – sorry!