Posted by Emily Koh, July 2, 2008 at 10:00 AM
A bill proposed by Massachusetts legislators would allow supermarkets to remove individual prices on each item, making customers rely instead on electronic scanners located throughout the store.
Some people don't like the idea, however. The Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group says it will inconvenience shoppers by forcing them to walk to scanning stations. Critics also say it will make it harder to catch overcharges at the register.
But Jon Hurst of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts says this move will ultimately benefit customers as it will lower prices and shorten lines without having to devote resources for item-by-item pricing. However, since most states don't follow this item-by-item pricing, the impact may be negligible.
I'm personally a big fan of the handheld electronic scanners available at my Stop and Shop back home in Connecticut, which lets you zap items as you shop through the aisles, and helpfully figures in any discounts available—not to mention informs you of items that are on sale as you walk around. When you finish, head to a register, scan the UPC code with your scanner, and pay up. It could be a little dangerous if you're guilty of being an impulse shopper, but the convenience can't be beat. [via Consumerist]
Posted by Adam Kuban, June 12, 2008 at 6:25 PM
"Tipping Point," from SimpleBits
Not that voting with your greenbacks will affect anything in the situation above. Well, it'll up the tip ante for the folks at Jaho Coffee in Salem, Massachusetts, where the "Should Obama veep Hillary?" question is left up to George Washington and the other presidents who appear on U.S. coinage. Jaho Coffee is web designer Dan Cederholm's local haunt, and he explains that the tip-prompting question changes daily. This was today's.
Posted by Ed Levine, May 23, 2008 at 8:30 AM
I forgot my scale (I was going to throw it into my duffel bag when we left the house on Wednesday), so I'm afraid there will be no moment of reckoning, no not-so-high drama, in my diet post this week. We have been up on Martha's Vineyard for two days now, and I must say my diet challenges up here are great, so there's plenty to write about and report on.
I have been coming to the Vineyard for more than thirty years now, and I have battled my addiction to pie for at least that long. Check that. I think my mother must have been addicted to pie, so she gave birth to a pie-addicted son more than fifty years ago. Over half a century of a craving for pie that has gone on unabated.
The problem is that Martha's Vineyard happens to be awash with pies. No matter what direction I drive in, no matter what town I head for up here, I pass at least a passable pie emporium. There's Garcia's Deli in back of Alley's General Store, the Chilmark Store in Chilmark, Morning Glory Farm and Just Pie in Edgartown, Black Dog Bakery and the Scottish Bakehouse in Vineyard Haven, The Old Stone Bakery and Little Rock Farms in Oak Bluffs, and many more pie establishments that I won't bore you with by listing. Anyway, you get the picture. Martha's Vineyard is pie central.
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, April 28, 2008 at 12:45 PM
I would have paid a lot more attention in high school chemistry if "Br" stood for dessert brownie instead of bromine, and "Sm" was mesculun salad with honey mustard, not samarium. At the Miracle of Science bar and grill in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a normal paper menu is replaced with a chalkboard periodic table. Drinks are apparently served from beakers and tables resemble lab benches. MIT isn't too far away, so there's plenty of chic geeks drinking to their patron saint Dmitri Mendeleev. [via Laughing Squid]
Posted by Ed Levine, August 27, 2007 at 8:23 AM
Everyone has, or at least needs, at least one truly local favorite joint in their lives, a go-to place for real, honest food served in a straightforward setting. I have a bunch of them in New York City, and I live and long to discover them elsewhere. Sometimes all it takes to discover a local favorite is friends who live in proximity to one of these gems. Our friends Tom and Vicky Kaiser have a house in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a shore town an hour or so from Boston that's just north of New Bedford, and they turned me on to the Oxford Creamery, a truly undiscovered and unhyped local fave.
Just how under the radar is the Oxford Creamery? Jane and Michael Stern, my friends over at Roadfood, live less than two and a half hours from the Oxford Creamery, and they have written nary a word about it. There are two books dedicated to seafood shacks, The New England Clam Shack Cookbook and New England's Favorite Seafood Shacks, and neither mentions the Oxford Creamery.
Just what is there to discover at the Oxford Creamery?
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Posted by Adam Kuban, June 1, 2007 at 6:45 PM
Earlier today, our SF-based blogger, Harold, brought the noise with a link to a map of L.A.'s best doughnuts. Above, a Google map of Boston hot spots. [via Bostonist]
Posted by Ed Levine, April 17, 2007 at 1:30 PM
According to the New York Times, lobster prices have nearly doubled in the past year, thanks to a "confluence of bad weather, extremely cold water, and a lack of reserve supply."
Some current New England restaurant lobster prices:
- Anthony's Pier 4 (Boston): $112 for a 3.5-pound lobster
- Union Oyster House (Boston): $47.95 for a 2-pound lobster
- Warren's Lobster House (Kittery, Maine): $28.95 for a 1-pounder
According to the owner of Warren's, "We thought we might have to change our name to Warren's Chicken House or something."
Posted by Alaina Browne, February 16, 2007 at 6:00 AM
Photograph by Adam Kuban, Serious Eats
Chinese New Year and the year of the pig according to the Chinese zodiac, begins this Sunday, February 18. Because Chinese New Year is tied to the lunar calendar, it falls on a different date every year, usually between January 19 and February 23. It begins on the second new moon after the winter solstice and ends 15 days later with the Lantern Festival. According to tradition, the celebration gets under way on New Year's Eve with a family dinner hosted at the eldest family member's home; it is considered the most important annual family tradition. Family members travel from near and far to attend. A family's given menu will vary by region, but here are some of the more popular dishes and their symbolism:
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Posted by Jane Black, February 15, 2007 at 7:00 AM
Photo credit: iStockphoto
Sitting on chef Chris Schlesinger's desk is a framed picture (right) of a hastily scribbled, stained recipe for his Inner Beauty Hot Sauce: Five pounds of Scotch bonnet chilies, one gallon of yellow mustard (preferably the cheap stuff), plus molasses, brown sugar, honey and spices. The method: Throw it all in the blender, and serve: "I don't know why people buy hot sauce," Schlesinger says in a country drawl he should have lost after more than 20 years in New England. "It's ridiculous when it's so easy to make yourself."
I know why. Chilies are intimidating. You only need to screw up once—like the time I accidentally made a stir fry with an Indian Naga pepper, which clocks in at 1 million on the Scoville chili scale, making it one of the hottest chilies on earth—or perhaps twice, like the time I failed to notice that I had put extra hot chili powder in my Super Bowl chili, instead of the regular stuff, and almost blew the heads off all of my guests.
When something's bottled, I figure, someone knows what he's doing.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 28, 2006 at 7:02 AM
Having come to Martha's Vineyard for the last 28 years I can tell you that it is not a place you come to eat in great restaurants. I always advise my friends who vacation here to buy some fresh fish at Larsen's, Poole's, The Net Result, or John's Fish Market, some freshly picked lettuce and corn at a farmer's market, and a few vine-ripened tomatoes, and then you'll eat like a king or queen at the house you've rented.
But the island does have one amazing foodstuff you can't get anywhere else, Mrs. Blake's pies. Mrs. Blake's husband sells her pies in a little hut in front of their house on State Road a couple of hundred yards before you get to the grocery store known as Up Island Cronig's. It might be my imagination, but I swear every time I go to pick up a pie at Mrs. Blakes (which is every day I'm on the Vineyard) Mr. Blake is there with his feet up relaxed but ready to sell you one of his wife's amazing pies.
Mrs. Blake is a flaky pie crust master. I figure the test of a pie crust is whether you'd be willing to empty out the pie's filling and just eat the crust.
Mrs. Blake gets an A plus on that score. Her shortening crust is oh so flaky, golden brown, and has a wonderfully crisp exterior.
She makes perfectly good crumb pies, but you wouldn't go to Peter Luger's and order the salmon, would you? Of course not. I often get two pies when I go to Mrs. Blakes (if my wife's not with me, that is), but the second pie is either a Tollhouse Pie, which is simply a chocolate chip pie she sells with or without nuts, or a very fine if not quite tart enough Lemon Chess pie, which Mr. Blake will always tell you is Bill Clinton's pie of choice when he and the missus come to the Vineyard.
So which doublecrusted fruit pie do I get at Mrs. Blake's? Yesterday I bought a Blueberry-Blackberry pie, but just as often I get a blueberry peach or the strawberry rhubarb pie.
On the plain white box Mrs. Blake's pies come in there's a phone number, 508-693-0528. I've never called, but it's somehow comforting to know that it exists.
