The Food Issue 2014
Top Pot Chef: Farm-to-Pharmacy in VT; Ethan de Seife on a Ramp-Age; Living Without Sugar
Obituary: Arlene Morse Derosia
Mrs. Arlene Morse Derosia, age 80, died on April 27, 2014 after a long battle with Alzheimer disease and most recently, cancer. Arlene was born to Ferd and Dora Morse of Duxbury, Vermont on April 10, 1934. She married Roger Derosia on October 20, 1951. Roger predeceased her in 2006. Arlene is survived by her…
Under the Skin
Under the Skin is fated to be a divisive film. On the one hand, it’s a strange, stark creation, wedded to a deliberately off-putting aesthetic and plotless enough to inspire walkouts. On the other hand, it features Scarlett Johansson naked. Moviegoers who come for the latter spectacle, expecting it to appear in the context of…
Author Eve Schaub Talks About Her Year Without Sugar
A few years ago, Eve Schaub, a writer and resident of Pawlet, Vt., became convinced that sugar (specifically fructose) was toxic. Then she convinced her husband and two daughters to purge added sugar from their diet for all of 2011. The book she wrote about the experience, titled simply Year of No Sugar: A Memoir,…
News Quirks (4/23/14)
Capitalizing on Disaster Protesting Beijing’s choking air pollution, artist Liang Kegang returned from a business trip to France with a glass jar of clean, mountain air, which he auctioned off for 5,250 yuan ($860). The month before, tourism officials in smog-free Guizhou province announced plans to sell canned air as souvenirs. Tourism authorities in Henan…
Obituary: Yvonne Lillian Blondin, 1928-2014, Burlington
Yvonne Lillian (Pratt) Blondin, 85, passed away peacefully Tuesday April 24, 2014 with her loving family by her side. Yvonne was born August 30, 1928 in Winooski the daughter of Leo and Isabelle Pratt. She was married to Robert Blondin on November 4, 1950 in Winooski. As a young adult she was a member of…
Opinion: Justice for Cecily McMillan
The masculine control of women’s bodies is a good cop-bad cop game. The good cop is the law, promising protection and enforcing it with licit violence; the quid pro quo is feminine weakness and subordination. The bad cop is humiliation or violence for unfeminine insubordination, which might include flirting while drunk and still not wanting…
In Defense of Six Beers We’re Not Supposed to Drink
I like Budweiser. There, I said it. And while that statement might get me banned from the roughly 4,583 craft breweries here in the People’s Republic of Beer Snobs, I confess I do feel unburdened. Blasphemy is fun! So let’s try this on: While I think the Alchemist’s Heady Topper is a decent beer, I…
WTF: Vermont’s Maple Penis Sign? Chocolate Vaginas?
With spring’s long-awaited arrival, locals can finally follow the steam to Vermont sugar shacks, where sugar makers have been boiling down sap into maple syrup for weeks. As for tourists and other New England newcomers who wouldn’t know a sugarhouse from an outhouse, they can just look for the handy maple sugar industry signs that…
Why a State Obsessed With ‘Local’ Doesn’t Eat Vermont Fish
Ripe tomatoes, grass-fed beef, hearty kale — they’re all commonplace on the Vermont locavore’s plate. But what about yellow perch, lake trout and bullhead? Historically, Lake Champlain was an important source of sustenance for the people who lived on or near its shores. In part, it still is: While the lake no longer has any…
Chef Courtney Contos Shares Her Adventures in the Kitchen
Chef Courtney Contos, the owner of Shelburne’s Chef Contos Kitchen & Store, lives by a philosophy attributed to Joseph Campbell: “Follow your bliss.” Raised in Chicago’s high-end restaurant scene, Contos skipped a semester of high school to run a small eatery in Mexico, talked her way into a coveted internship at the legendary Charlie Trotter’s…
‘Frida Kahlo’ Talks About Guerrilla Girls Then and Now
Russia’s Pussy Riot may represent an explosive new form of feminism, but the masked punk-rock protestors have a clear antecedent: New York’s Guerrilla Girls. “Frida Kahlo,” pseudonymous cofounder of the group of art-world agitators that first appeared nearly 30 years ago, suggested such a lineage in a talk at Middlebury College last Thursday. Wearing a…
Vermont’s Top Pot Chef Bakes ‘Farm-to-Pharmacy’ Edibles
Each day, Bridget Conry takes on a food challenge that rivals anything you’ll see on a TV cooking show. Like a celebrity chef, she has to incorporate an unusual ingredient into an appealing and attractive dish. But her tasty edibles are also a powerful medicine for terminal and chronically ill patients, many of whom have…
Burlington Choral Society to Perform Long-Forgotten Gossec Requiem
As a musical form, the requiem tends to inspire composers to high drama. The occasion practically requires it: Requiems are the Catholic Latin Mass for the dead, usually sung by a choir and soloists with full orchestra. Why hold back when you’re setting to music, say, verses on the “Day of Wrath” (“Dies Irae”) —…
Small Coffee Roasters Look to Expand in Keurig Green Mountain Country
With more than 10 roasters within its borders, Vermont is home to a robust local coffee scene. But in a small state, where obtaining certain wholesale customers can make or break a coffee company, the competition can be cutthroat. Four years ago, brand new Waterbury-based Brave Coffee & Tea landed what one local coffee expert…
White River Indie Festival Keeps Dual Focus on Film and ‘Transmedia’
The most iconoclastic media festival in Vermont hits the Upper Valley this week. Just don’t call it a film festival. The White River Indie Festival is celebrating its 10th year in White River Junction with a longer duration, expanded scope and focus on “transmedia” artworks. Sure, the fest presents plenty of interesting films, but it’s…
Place Creative Company Finds a Niche With Vermont Food Brands
Picture yourself walking down the aisles of City Market, Healthy Living, Hunger Mountain Co-op or wherever you go to buy your favorite Vermont food products. Imagine the local items you reach for. Did you think of packages stuffed with thick slabs of Vermont Smoke and Cure bacon, the words “DAMN FINE” emblazoned on the nifty…
Cursive Coffee Goes to Bricks-and-Mortar
Scout Coffee Company isn’t the only caffeinated business finding a stable home. In just a few months, Jim Osborn and Sam Clifton have gone from working as baristas at Burlington’s Uncommon Grounds Coffee and Tea to opening pop-up coffee stop Cursive Coffee to owning their own café. Osborn says he hopes to open Cursive’s permanent…
Art Review: Polly Apfelbaum, BCA Center
Wallpaper isn’t exactly making a comeback in the average home, but it is a major component of the latest exhibit at the BCA Center in Burlington, an installation by Polly Apfelbaum titled “Evergreen Blueshoes.” Every wall of the gallery, front room and back, is covered with a repeating pattern on wide sheets of paper. When…
Phoenix Table and Bar Opens in Stowe
For Jack Pickett, his new restaurant on Stowe’s Mountain Road has been a long time coming. “The plumber finished last week,” says the restaurateur best known for the now-closed Frida’s Taqueria and Grill. “He cut his first pipe two years ago.” This Saturday, Phoenix Table and Bar, Pickett’s collaboration with Frida’s co-owner and chef Joshua…
I’m in Love With a Much Older Woman, But I’m Worried
Dear Athena, I think I’m in love with someone 16 years my senior. I’m 27. I met one of the managers where my friend works out one night and we really hit it off. She’s funny and smart and really sexy. We ended up going home together, and started seeing each other right away. I…
Europa Chef Jérôme Ferrer Talks Food Presentation
The server leaned forward, a wooden box in his hands. “Madame, would you like a cigar?” he asked. It was barely 15 minutes into dinner. Maybe this is a Montréal thing I’ve never encountered before, I thought. When I politely declined, the server opened the box anyway; inside was a lone cheese “cigar” that had…
Free Will Astrology (4/23/14)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If for some inexplicable reason you are not simmering with new ideas about how you could drum up more money, I don’t know what to tell you — except that maybe your mother lied to you about exactly when you were born. The astrological omens are virtually unequivocal: If you are…
NYIKO, Always Always
(Self-released, vinyl, digital download) By day, Nyiko Beguin is a credit analyst at a Burlington bank. By night, he is NYIKO, a multifaceted artist with a gentle voice whose recent mixed-media release, Always Always, has been a year and a half in the making. While taking a break from the stage, NYIKO wrote and carefully…
Smokin’ Mirrors: Shumlin’s $116,000 E-Cigarette Lesson
Among the few new taxes to win the Vermont House’s seal of approval last month was a pair targeting popular tobacco products. One would raise roughly $700,000 by taxing snuff and smokeless tobacco at a rate comparable to cigarettes. Another would raise $500,000 by creating a new, 92 percent tax on electronic cigarettes, a nicotine-based…
Waylon Speed, Kin
(Crow on Ten Records, CD, digital download) A few months ago, I was at the release show for Kelly Ravin’s last solo record at the Higher Ground Showcase Lounge. With a spare backing band and a collection of lovely, even sparer songs, it was a treat to see the lanky, inked-up guitar slinger in a…
Obituary: R. Birdie MacLennan, Winooski
R. Birdie MacLennan of Winooski, age 57, died after a brief illness on March 10, 2014. Birdie began working in the University of Vermont’s Libraries’ Cataloging Department in 1990, after working at Harvard University and Merrimack College and receiving a Master of Library Sciences from Simmons College. Since 2008, she served as Director of the…
![Lila The Tattoo Lady [SIV350]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/episode350-4-e1755139694393.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Lila The Tattoo Lady [SIV350]
4/11/14: Lila Rees opened Rock City Tattoo in Barre 5 1/2 years ago and has been leaving her mark on Vermonters’ bodies ever since. Her shop has the feel of a Victorian sitting room and Lila’s other passions are on full display: her paintings and 58 pieces of taxidermy. Eva spent the afternoon with Lila…
Letters to the Editor (4/23/14)
Dumb Law A very low level of science literacy is reflected in the strong legislative support for GMO labeling reported by Paul Heintz [Fair Game: “Label to Table,” April 16]. In fact, every living thing, including you and me, is a genetically modified organism (GMO). Evolution has taken place because the genetic code shared by…
Dwight & Nicole Shine On
Dwight Ritcher and Nicole Nelson are like a couple out of a Richard Linklater movie. Sure, they love each other — they’ve been together for nearly a decade. But hanging out with them in their sunny Burlington apartment overlooking a train yard and Lake Champlain, even for just a couple of hours, it’s hard not…
Obituary: Wayne E. Beam, 1960-2014, Burlington
Wayne E. Beam, 54, died unexpectedly on Saturday, April 12, 2014, at his home, following complications from diabetes. He was born on March 9, 1960, in Bellows Falls, the son of Erwin and Barbara (Lawrence) Beam. Wayne worked for Transition II as the supported employment coordinator for over 16 years. He had previously worked for…
Soundbites: Record Swap at Speaking Volumes, Grand Point North Lineup Announced
Busy Bees Two of the area’s most popular acts, Dwight & Nicole and Waylon Speed, are both releasing great new records this week and throwing release parties on Friday, April 25, at ArtsRiot and the Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, respectively. This despite my official, scene-wide decree that multiple awesome things are no longer allowed to…
Le Week-End
Certainly it’s a coincidence, but the fact is Roger Michell hasn’t made a single feel-good film since September 11, 2001. Note the contrast: In 1999 he made Notting freaking Hill. Is there a more charming movie? In 2002, he followed that with Changing Lanes, quite possibly the bleakest picture in recent memory. It’s an entire…
A Writer Gathers Wild Leeks by the Roadside
On a recent Tuesday, I clambered down a hillside that had somehow escaped the worst of the rains that had engorged the White River, which raced just a hundred feet below me. The soil was, fortunately, not too slippery, damp or crumbly, providing the ideal growing conditions for the object of my quest: ramps. I’d…
How Prolific Restaurateurs Keep Their Pots From Boiling Over
Last Wednesday, the Church Street basement restaurant long known as Three Tomatoes Trattoria was abuzz. Pascolo Ristorante, the latest member of the Farmhouse Group, will open in that space in a few weeks. In preparation, Farmhouse managing partner Jed Davis kept busy on his laptop while several men circled through the recently renovated building. Peter…
Scout & Company Café Opens in Burlington
Burlington’s New North End has a fresh place to get coffee and pastries. Scout & Company opened on Monday, April 21, at 237 North Avenue in the Packard Lofts apartment building. The airy café is a collaboration of Thomas Green of mobile espresso unit Scout Coffee Co. and Andrew Burke, a former Misery Loves Co.…
