My home base is the region called Central Massachusetts. It's fly-over country, and that's good. There are beautiful farms on rolling hills, which in general means world-class fresh food, and we are lucky enough to have large markets nearby to support organic agriculture. Northeast Organic Farmers Association/ Mass is centered a couple miles down the road at the moment, so there are all kinds of workshops and other kinds of farming related activities close to home. Most of all, there is a real thriving culture of producing good food.
After writing a blog about food around Albany, New York for several years I moved to Massachusetts. It takes a while to figure out the food scene in any given place, so I have been roaming around Massachusetts for a few years - enough time to begin writing about what's happening here. My project is to prowl around the state and report about farms, food, and restaurants. Since Massachusetts is so tiny, I'll be going beyond the immediate region to explore as much as I can of this adorable little state.
The restaurant scene bears some study. The state of Massachusetts doesn't have big theme parks and gaudy vacation spots so much as charming New England villages with commons and little boutiques. Tourists tend to want quick food but also the extraordinary, so I'm looking forward to sampling and writing about all of that. But I've also been living in a region where hardscrabble farmers and working people aren't really interested in the fancy stuff and have inherited a disdain for ostentation.
I'm hoping to write stories that will describe all our foodways, modern and not so modern. We've got everything from the awful to the glorious in Massachusetts, so my mission is to help readers enjoy learning about what is here. There will be reviews of restaurants, reports of food festivals, tasting tours of the region by types of food, farm tours, reviews of farm stores and stands and probably things I can't even imagine at this point.
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