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Boreal Winery in Warren, east of Sudbury, is trying something new: pumpkin wine. They've used some giant pumpkins grown in Sudbury, and fermented the wine right inside the pumpkins. It was bottled just a few weeks ago, and the winery will start selling it this weekend. Owner of Boreal Winery Greg Meilien said the wine is fantastic. "[We were] quite surprised. We weren't sure what was going to happen but it turned out very, very nice," he said. Meilien said as for the taste, it's something you need to try for yourself, but added it does have a melon mid-palette...

Panzanella, and other hearty sides! Every year around the first of June, my office has a barbecue party. Thinking of a side dish to take this year, I remembered one that I haven't made in a while. I first had 'Panzanella' - or Tuscan Bread Salad - at the home of a friend, and looked for a recipe of my own. This one is very good: Tuscan Bread Salad 1/2 loaf day-old dense, country-style bread (I always use Italian bread) 3 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced 1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced...

Many of the largest U.S. sellers of organic eggs boast that their hens are vegetarian, and for an increasingly food-curious public, this may be great advertising. A carton of Eggland’s Best advertises that the company uses “vegetarian fed hens.” Horizon promises that their eggs “come from hens that are fed a 100% organic, vegetarian diet.” Land O Lakes hens have a diet with no animal fat or by-products. Yet for the chickens, who are natural omnivores that readily devour bugs and small animals when they’re available, the forced vegetarianism can be a disaster.

Vietnamese foodie guide: Critic Brad A. Johnson dishes about the 25 best things to eat in Little Saigon The scent of Little Saigon hits me in the face. An intoxicating perfume of jackfruit and bananas and the vanilla-y scent of pandanus leaves wraps itself around me in a warm, tight embrace. It’s a sunny Friday afternoon, and the line to purchase something cold and sweet at Thach Che Hien Khanh in Garden Grove stretches out the front door and down the sidewalk, past a vendor of exotic fruits and knickknacks — chopsticks, paper lanterns, plastic Buddhas, various figurines of the...

An actor named Sean Whalen sits at a desk, spreading a generous helping of peanut butter on a slice of bread, listening to a classical music radio station. The scene of the ad makes it clear he’s surrounded by artifacts from the Burr-Hamilton duel, the historic 1804 showdown between U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and vice-president Aaron Burr; Whalen’s character is, apparently, something of an expert. The song on the radio fades, and the radio host announces that day’s $10,000 trivia question as the subject shoves a peanut butter sandwich — the whole thing! — into his mouth...

Hit the concession stands at MLB ballparks this year, and you’ll find Fried S’mOreo, 8,000-calorie burgers, and many more monstrosities. It’s the great American pastime: gorging on obscenely unhealthy food. In recent Major League Baseball seasons, over-the-top ballpark foods have become their own attraction. These bombastic new recruits of the concession stands are often riffs on ballpark classics like the hot dog and hamburger, but they’re jacked up and deep fried into stunt food territory. They can also cost $25 or more a pop — and still sell. One report has the Texas Rangers moving nearly 20,000 of their first...

A Placerville man was arrested in Petaluma Thursday afternoon after he broke into a house, had himself a snack of tater tots and set down on a sofa to take a nap, only to be discovered by the startled resident, police said. Around 2 p.m., the homeowner was minding her own business in an upstairs bedroom on the 1600 block of Caulfield Lane. For one reason or another, she decided to venture to the first floor, where she found a man — later identified as 44-year-old James Adams — peacefully snoozing on the sofa.

In the introduction to her book “Global Meatballs: Around the World in 100-Plus Boundary-Breaking Recipes,” Adeline Myers celebrates the imperfections that make these “humble, misshapen rounds” a home kitchen favorite. When it comes to assessing both flavor and aesthetics, Myers, 31, knows her stuff. The author, trained at Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco, has baked desserts for many area restaurants, and also works as an art conservator, recently on assignment to restore a gilded picture frame for Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Myers set off to research the worldwide variations on one of the world’s great comfort foods...

This Saturday marks the return of the Hester Street Fair to its home in Seward Park on the Lower East Side. On tap for this season: fried squid on a stick from Kaya NYC; delectable sandwiches from Red Star Sandwich Shop; fluffy biscuits from Field & Clover; and a ton of other awesome eats. The Hester Food Court, as they're calling the dining section of the Fair, will operate from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Also on Saturday, the Court Tree gallery in Carroll Gardens transforms into the Kar Yee Noodle Shop, a pop up noodle soup outfit run by...

SNIP In the town of McPherson, Kansas, there is a butcher shop called Krehbiels Meats, where, not long ago, an elderly woman bought a chicken that moved her to tears. The chicken had longer legs, a smaller breast and yellower skin than regular chickens, and on the back appeared two words the woman, who was in her 70s, would not have seen in a very long time: “barred rock.” SNIP She had every reason not to be excited. During the course of her 48 years of marriage, chicken had only ever brought disappointment. The problem was chicken and dumplings. It...

WINE IS A BEVERAGE with its own set of rules. Some of these rules, such as “Wine must be served in a glass with a stem,” are more like suggestions. Others, such as “White wine must always be chilled,” are regarded as near-gospel truths. A rule that many drinkers seem to follow is the one that dictates wine should not be consumed alone. Wine is a social beverage and is best enjoyed in the company of others, ideally in the context of a meal. But what of wine lovers who live or travel alone or cohabit with a non-oenophile? Does...

You might be surprised who the government considers too fat, too skinny, and just right(Photo: Getty Images) When Furious 7 set box-office records on its opening weekend, there was one story lurking in the shadows of the celebrity-industrial complex that no one wanted to talk about: The star, Vin Diesel, is overweight. And costar Dwayne Johnson? Dude’s obese. Johnson has a body-mass index, or BMI, of 34.3. Which means, according to U.S. government standards, the Rock is obese. And Diesel, at 27.1, is overweight.* ... ... ...They published their first set of weight-for-height tables in 1942, and then updated it...

Opened my e-mail this morning and just flat out enjoyed this short

NEW YORK (AP) — PepsiCo says it's dropping aspartame from Diet Pepsi in response to customer feedback and replacing it with sucralose, another artificial sweetener commonly known as Splenda. The decision to swap sweeteners comes as Americans keep turning away from popular diet sodas. Competitor Coca-Cola said this week that sales volume for Diet Coke, which also uses aspartame, fell 5 percent in North America in the first three months of the year. Executives at Coke and Pepsi blame the declines on perceptions that aspartame isn't safe. That's even though the Food and Drug Administration says aspartame, best known by...

Sammiches! With Summer coming, I'm looking forward to nice tomatoes, and one of our favorite sandwiches is the classic BLT, for which nobody needs a recipe. (Before he died, my father-in-law would ship us boxes of his first eating tomatoes from PA, and we always looked forward to that - and to the sore gums that were a measure of our delighted excess :-) But when I was growing up, my favorite Summer sandwich was just thick tomato slices on white-bread toast, with lots of mayonnaise and salt and pepper. Due to this love of fresh tomatoes on bread, I...

With America fixated on all things Bruce Jenner and the anticipation around his Diane Sawyer interview Friday night on ABC, it seemed an interesting moment to revisit another time when he captured this country’s attention. In 1978, Jenner snagged one of the sports world’s biggest honors: appearing on the Wheaties cereal box. While this might not sound impressive in today’s era of multi-million dollar endorsement deals, back then it was one of the ultimate prizes for a top athlete. A lot of people know Jenner today from his relationship to the Kardashian clan. But decades ago, he became a national...

You probably saw the story yesterday that McDonald’s had yet another rough quarter, with sales down globally yet again. I didn’t think it was worth blogging again after reading this part, but please indulge me before we get to the good stuff: Shares of the fast-food company were up almost 5 percent in early trading. At midday, they remained 3 percent higher at $97.70 as investors shrugged off declines in quarterly earnings and sales.McDonald’s global sales at restaurants open at least 13 months fell a worse-than-expected 2.3 percent in the first quarter, and the company warned of another drop in...

The Agriculture Department has determined that 36 pounds of food per person is wasted every month, about 21 percent of the available food in the United States. And one big reason: those expiration dates are wrong or overly cautious. The solution: Hold your nose and just eat it. Even if it is 18 months past the expiration date. It sounds yucky, but officials think they’ve got the trick to get moms to feed expired but safe food to kids and adults alike—they’ve even got an app. It’s called FoodKeeper and it is supposed to have a more accurate calculation of...

Federal agricultural officials are planning to announce voluntary programs and initiatives for farmers, ranchers and foresters meant to build on President Barack Obama’s efforts to combat global warming—and don’t require congressional approval.Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is expected to unveil plans Thursday at Michigan State University, where Obama signed the sweeping farm bill into law last year. The efforts, many of which have their roots in that law, aim to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, boost carbon capture and storage and come with various enticements, including grants, low-interest loans and technical assistance. […] Obama administration aides have said the issue of...

When people think barbecue sauce, they usually think something tomato- or vinegar-based. But today, I want to convince you to consider another breed of barbecue — white...