Title: Girl Scout Cookie Creations
Location: Danversport Yacht Club, 161 Elliot St., Danvers, MA 01923
Link out: Click here
Description: Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts is excited to announce that the tastiest event of the season – Cookie Creations – is back! The annual Girl Scout Cookie Creations fundraiser invites the area’s top chefs to use our famous Girl Scout cookies and whip-up a delicious dessert. Join us for an evening of delicious treats and fun, while supporting a great cause.
Top chefs including Day to Remember Catering’s Shawn Bramble, Green Land Café’s Kali Hislop, I Dream of Jeanne Cake’s Jeanne Topham, The Landing’s Steve James, The Lyceum’s Dan Friley, Mad Maggie’s Ice Cream’s Steve Reppucci will design mouth-watering desserts for this fun event.
The desserts will be judged by Laurie Lufkin, host of Inspired Cooking with Laurie Lufkin for the Danvers event. TitleAttendees will have the opportunity to taste the delicious treats, mingle with local celebrities, network, participate in a fabulous raffle and help pick the crowd favorite!
Wednesday, February 16th from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $30 each or 2/$50. To purchase tickets, please visit www.girlscoutseasternmass.com, for more information: events@girlscoutseasternmass.org or call 857-453-5336.
Date: 2011-02-16
turesque slopeside hideaways. By Judy Koutsky
Hanson Financial Group offers comprehensive financial planning and investment management services with a focus on personal financial planning for retirees, and surviving and divorced partners. We work within our clients’ existing financial plans and work with other professional advisors clients may have to help navigate a clear path for their financial future.
Thomas T. Riquier, CFP®, CLU, is president of The Retirement Financial Center, a local CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional and a member of Ed Slott’s Master Elite IRA Advisor Group™. Tom constantly evaluates economic trends and recommends appropriate portfolio changes. In September 2008, Tom made the tough recommendation to his clients to liquidate all securities. At nearly the bottom of the market in early March 2009, Tom advised his clients to reenter the market by investing 40% of the portfolio. In June 2009, he followed with the remaining 60%. Recently, he again recommended a cautious reallocation. Tom believes “your financial success is not only determined by how much you make when the markets go up, it is also determined by how much you don’t lose when they go down.”
No group felt the impact of the 2009 recession more than those nearing or just entering retirement. As the financial markets gradually show signs of recovery, new questions and challenges arise: Will you need to work longer than planned? Do you need to increase savings or adjust spending? What can you do now to better protect your assets and your lifestyle in retirement?
Planning for retirement, putting together a savings plan for your children’s college education or just looking for better options to make your money work harder for you, Infinex Financial Group, located at The First National Bank of Ipswich, can help you create a plan to meet your long-term goals – at a level of risk that you’re comfortable with. Your First National Bank of Ipswich executive and Infinex Financial Group Representative, Tim Goland, will walk you through the financial planning process; establishing a supportive, helpful relationship with you that will continue to grow and evolve over time. Identify Your Goals and Implement Your Individual Plan
Investments doing poorly? Retirement on the horizon and you feel like your running out of time? Wondering what your options are? There are options. Perhaps your not talking to the right people? Maybe it’s time to talk to the retirementman™? We specialize in retirement planning. Over 30 years of experience, a degree in Accounting & Finance from Bentley College and we’re licensed and registered for all the investments you may need to get your investments back on track. I think you might agree, experience, experience, experience is probably what your investments need right about now. We are a full service financial services firm focusing on what you need to retire and how to do it most “tax efficiently”. Our motto is “it’s not what you earn that counts, it’s what you keep”. IRA’s, 401k’s, pension plans, 403b’s, annuities, insurance, all have important features and should be used properly for you to reach your goal in retirement.
After serving the Boston area as Investment Advisors since 1976, we decided to open our new suburban office at Unicorn Park in Woburn.
“I feel at home, man,” Matt Chewning says, smiling and taking in the hot North Shore summer air, the afternoon traffic in downtown Beverly rolling by. The 28-year-old is a long way from North Carolina, from where he moved with his wife and kids to start a new venture. It wasn’t a job transfer, though. It was the call of God. Chewning has traveled a long road in his 28 years, from a humble upbringing as a self-described “Jersey punk” to a Southern corporate climber to an impassioned leader of an Evangelical church he is planting on Massachusetts’s not-so-religious North Shore. “Out here, you get all these preconceived notions,” Chewning says, his relaxed Southern drawl contrasting with the rushed, Boston-accented conversations around him. “Christians shouldn’t have sex, Christians shouldn’t drink, or do this or that. Nah, that’s not it. People know what the churches are against, but what are the churches for? So we came here thinking we should let people know what we’re for.”
His relationship with Jesus wasn’t the only meaningful one Chewning found in college. It was at Eastern Nazarene that he also met a girl, Beth, who would become his wife. Beth was from Warwick, New York, a New York City suburb not unlike the New Jersey town in which Chewning was raised. Beth grew up just 30 minutes away from where Chewning’s father lived, and they were introduced by mutual friends. Matt was a freshman and Beth was a sophomore. But all was not blissful at first. Beth was not all that impressed with Matt or his personality.
Planting a church is not to be done haphazardly; about 80 percent of new churches fail in their first year. So Chewning planned carefully and used his corporate networking skills in his new quest. He joined a church-planting network out of Seattle called Acts 29, which specializes in training pastors and assessing their ability to start churches. They tested him in theology, doctrine, and leadership ability and examined the strength and virtue of his marriage. Eventually, Acts 29 suggested he serve as an intern with an existing church to become more adept at ministry. So Matt served as an intern at 1.21 Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, an Evangelical church referencing first-century teachings in 21st-century life.
wouldn’t be an easy road, though. Finding housing proved to be a nightmare. They spent months looking for a home they could afford. After seeing a Craigslist ad for a house to rent, Matt drove up to the North Shore to check it out, but another tenant beat the Chewnings to it. The only other house, on Pierce Street in Beverly, was in deplorable condition.
If you like a good laugh, look no further than Hamilton’s own Bo Burnham. Born Robert Burnham in August of 1990, Bo has taken his inherent talent to perform, along with a weekend passion for crafting clever online videos, and turned them into a satirically raw and successful comedic career.
Want to put some excitement back into that same-old, carved-in-stone, been-eating-it-since-the-Ice-Age traditional holiday dinner? Simple. Invite nine North Shore A-list chefs to your house and ask each one to bring a dish to share. Not only would dinner be a breeze, but you’re guaranteed a mind-bending spread of tasty, imaginative interpretations of the well-worn but immortal classics. However, just in case the chefs can’t make it, here’s the next best thing: their recipes. Most of these will produce leftovers, another must-have for every holiday dinner. Dig in!
Chef Stephen Ryan, The Grand Café at Emerson Inn By The Sea, Rockport
Serves 8
Corn Bread & Sausage Stuffing 
Spanish-Style Haricot Vert 
The superb mushroom-and-goat cheese tartlet appetizer is built of house-made pastry dough that is filled with cheese and roasted mushrooms and finished with truffle oil. The entrée of fresh, artisanal rigatoni is dressed with an intensely umami sauce of lamb, veal, pork, and San Marzano tomatoes, the legendary Italian sauce tomato renowned for its exquisite flavor and exorbitant (but worthwhile) cost.
And then, just when we thought crème brulée was getting boring, along comes Nine Elm’s version, with its gently sweetened, silken custard and extra-thick crisp caramel top that shatters into crunchy candy.
Winter is upon us, which means a fire in the fireplace, snow on the lawn, and, with a little luck, the occasional day off from work or school. More importantly, it also means a whole new crop of substantial winter brews to choose from at local markets, bars, breweries, and pubs.
Where she works: A small space rented from Timothy S. Hopkins Catering in Essex. Why cookies: “It was really a fluke. I was more or less retired from my career in corporate marketing and wasn’t looking for anything else to do when [my daughter] Nicole started making these rich, spicy chocolate cookies. I brought them to a little gourmet shop one day and asked if they would consider selling them. Those cookies later became our award-winning Cha-Chas, though we went through four different names first.”
“I love telling stories in which I’m the star and that make people laugh,” says Phoebe Potts. She also loves drawing, the incomparable light of her adopted Gloucester, and the gutsy way stand-up comedians bare their souls.
and-white comic strip images, Potts takes on far more. She deftly addresses the education of American women in 2010; the nourishing, exasperating, ever-changing, never-changing nature of family ties; the crippling darkness of depression; making art versus holding down a “soul-shrinking, all-for-the-benefits job”; the discovery of religious faith and community; and the fragility of self-esteem. Lovingly, she honors the primary importance of friends, therapists, hairdressers, a friendly local coffee shop, a supportive husband, and a cat with an inner life and an outsized personality.
Boott Cotton Mills Museum
The Bennett E. Merry Train Gallery runs nine model trains in various gauges by push button. Curator Rob Flanagan will show you how to set up a model train, create scenery, and keep the trains running. Through February 20, the Train Time exhibit fills the museum with train models, including the New England Limited passenger train of 1891, which was nicknamed the Ghost Train for its white cars and high speeds as it traveled the twilight route between Boston and New York.
The Addison reopened in September after a two-year renovation and expansion project. A new 13,000-square-foot education center funded by Andover alum Sidney R. Knafel has a library, a classroom, storage, offices, a loading dock, and the first green roof in Andover, carpeted in sedum and “Black Niijima Floats” by glass artist Dale Chihuly. The graceful rotunda has been restored, and Paul Manship’s Venus fountain now gurgles water. All the galleries have been restored but otherwise unaltered. “We weren’t going to change the small, intimate feel of the gracious and welcoming galleries,” says museum director Brian Allen. “People can very easily take ownership of the spaces and we don’t want to tamper with that.”
Mark Mcdonough is perched at the edge of a couch at Latitude 43 Restaurant and Bar in Gloucester, excitedly flipping through a binder filled with charts and graphs about the sustainability of Gloucester fishing. Yes, he’s a 70-hour-a-week restaurateur at the helm of Serenitee Restaurant Group. Yes, he has degrees in business, family therapy, and philosophy and religion from MIT, Antioch New England, and Vassar. But the way he expounds passionately about biodiversity and dragger nets makes you think that Gloucester fishing is in his blood.
By 2010, McDonough and Cala had indeed done it again and again, opening not only Alchemy and Cala’s, but Hale Street Tavern, Sushi and Oyster Bar in Beverly Farms; Latitude 43 in Gloucester; 15 Walnut in South Hamilton; and most recently, Backstage Bistro at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly.
But when the economy tanked, both Cala and McDonough had to relearn what it meant to run a restaurant. As McDonough says, all of their restaurants “failed” because people stopped going out to eat. “We had to reinvent ourselves and our restaurants, fast,” Cala says. “Because nobody was going to Boston for high-end foods, and they sure as hell weren’t going to high-end restaurants on the North Shore.”
That’s not to say the food’s not important. According to Cala, a lot of their vendors are former chefs or sommeliers who really know their food. Cala keeps up with trends, not just in the United States, but also around the world. They have a commercial fishing license, which allows them to buy right off the docks. And just because food is local and familiar doesn’t mean that it’s boring. “People want it authentic; they want it simple, but they don’t want it made with Hellman’s the way mom did,” McDonough says. “They want aioli.”
That lifestyle is one that’s based on community and bringing people together, and it’s what McDonough has been trying to achieve for most of his career. In addition to once working as a family therapist, he also built the website and was a major funder for TimeBanks.org, an organization that facilitates a barter economy by encouraging people to do things for others in their community. He’s a co-founder of 
From that unforgettable scene in the 1983 classic A Christmas Story to events as recent as Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing (YouTube.com search: “Elena Kagan Chinese food”), Chinese cuisine has been woven into the cultural fabric of the American holiday season for decades. One of the North Shore’s most notable restaurants and a classic in its own right, Kowloon offers not only delicious and festive Chinese fare, but an extensive menu of more than 500 Szechuan, Cantonese, Thai, and sushi dishes, plus a constant shuffle of entertainment. Kowloon’s head chef, Stanley Lem, has manned the kitchen at the Saugus restaurant for 52 years, while the eatery itself celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2010.
Fashioning an identity around the word for a reanimated corpse can make spontaneity tricky. Of course, when your last name is Zombie, people come to expect certain things. Luckily, Rob Zombie—the Haverhill-raised shock rocker, horror film director, comic book author, and sometime amusement park ride designer—has pretty much always lived up to his chosen moniker.
Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, and Liv Tyler; the next installment of his latest comic book series, The Haunted World of el Superbeasto; and prepping for his next writing and directing project, which he’s not ready to announce, though he describes it as “pretty weird, pretty out there.” He’ll also be touring through the fall with Alice Cooper, his old childhood hero (October includes a performance in Worcester, as well as in Portland, Maine).
Architect and designer Sebastian Carpenter turned a once-forgotten Wenham house into the daring and contemporary home of his dreams. By Regina Cole, Photographed by Eric Roth
With the holidays approaching, now is the time of year when our thoughts turn toward turkey. For Raymond “Jim” Rischer, however, the birds are a way of life. Rischer’s parents started Raymond’s Turkey Farm in Methuen 50 years ago with 24 birds. Today, he runs the business with his wife, Patt, and their three grown children. Together, they raise 20,000 Broad Breasted White Holland turkeys a year, nearly half of which will soon head to a holiday table near you.
Danvers native Brian Kelly is steady at the wheel of his homegrown auto empire, within which top-quality products—and family—matter most. By Lauren Carelli
Kelly also holds that providing reliable and economical transportation is important to people in the community, and he trusts all of the cars that he sells. “I believe in driving the product that I sell,” he says. “I trust all of the cars [on the lots], and I wouldn’t sell something that I didn’t believe in.” In case you’re curious: Kelly himself drives an Infiniti M.
m the most joy.
Founding director of the new art new world cooperative and artist in residence at unity on the river, Amesbury
The sun has set on another summer, meaning tall, frosty cocktails and weekends at the shore are now merely memories. But fret not; with mercury falling and sunlight becoming scarcer each day, patrons can cozy up to the bar at Bin 28 in Andover for the ultimate autumn cocktail.
Hale Street Tavern, Beverly Farms. favorite of: Sam Hunt, chef, 15 walnut, Hamilton.
J.T. Farnham’s, essex.
favorite of: Peter Capalbo, chef, tryst, Beverly.
the selection is.”
Tacos Lupita, lynn. favorite of: Matt O’neill, executive chef, the blue ox, Lynn.
is the best around and the presentation is fantastic!” he says.
served with drawn butter.”
n Beverly. I love anything they make for Sunday breakfast, especially the frittata.”
Landry is amazed by how smoothly the ingredients in his favorite dish go together. “It’s really not fancy,” he says. “In fact, it’s pretty straight-ahead. But it’s so well-balanced—the sweet, the sour, the salt, the fat. And the ingredients complement each other perfectly. I don’t like dishes in which ingredients just don’t go together, like mashed potatoes with wasabi. They don’t belong in the same dish. These ingredients definitely do.”
Meet the Candidates Governor Deval Patrick and gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Baker break down their candidacies—right down to their caffeine intake—in a warm-up for Super Tuesday. By, Andrea Fox
Next: the potato leek soup topped with crispy smoked bacon. This is a hearty, rustic soup flavored with leeks, Yukon Gold potatoes, chicken stock, cream, herbs, and a little bacon fat—very satisfying, with an earthy, potato taste.
he main course was the chicken morel with wild mushroom cream sauce, potato pie, and broccolini gratin. The skin of the boneless chicken breast is beautifully crisped, while the meat is moist and quite flavorful, which, according to Chef Demers, is the result of two days of brining in spices, herbs, and brown sugar. The dish pairs nicely with the Sonoma Valley Murphy-Goode Fume Blanc that smells of stone fruit (peaches, plums, and the like) and tastes crisp and dry, with hints of pineapple.
In the mid-1980s, an immigrant boy was sent by INS to be examined by an orthodontist to determine his age. His Cambodian birth records were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, the Communist supporters whose movement and power grab killed millions in Cambodia. The orthodontist guessed that the boy was born between 1970 and 1972; the boy settled on the latter as his birth year.
Sam meas, born sombo, also knows about loss. His journey began in the Kandal Province of Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge invaded his village and took his father away for “re-education.” Meas assumes his father was executed. Young Sombo was sent to a refugee camp along the Thai-Cambodian border with his mother and her sisters, but when Vietnamese Communists invaded that camp, Meas was separated from them. His cousin grabbed him and together they escaped, along with other refugees, to Thailand’s Kao I Dang, yet another refugee camp.
In addition to having English spoken around him at all times, Meas was able to further master the language through television—particularly soap operas. “I know all the stuff about ‘General Hospital,’ ‘Days of Our Lives,’ you name it. I know the whole thing,” Meas says. “One day, I mustered enough courage to ask my foster sister, ‘Rachel, how come there’s no ending to any of these stories? It goes on forever.’ And she just started laughing.”
In 2008, meas’s political passions were ignited. Actually, he had been an interested observer of American politics since the 1992 Democratic presidential primary, when he watched a debate between Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and former Senator Paul Tsongas. While in school, Meas met Tsongas, which sparked his interest in politics.
“So one thing led to another, and I said, ‘You know what? We are fighting two wars at the cost of a trillion dollars so the people in Afghanistan in Iraq have the right to choose their representatives,’” Meas says. “I decided I wanted to do something.” With a flare for the dramatic, Meas woke his wife up in the middle of the night and told her he was going to run for Congress.
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