What do you think? Come visit… www.evenfallrestaurant.com
Tonight: Truffled Mini Cheeseburgers $3
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For our loyal blog readers and fans on twitter and facebook, we are running an off the menu special tonight… $3 Truffled Mini Cheeseburgers… and well they are delicious and not that mini. Evenfall is thrilled to have you following us and want to say thanks by doing these Off the Menu specials for you. Remember you have to ask for these they won’t be on the menu or offered by the servers… only you know!
and now for a closeup:
My Farm Stand
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In case you think I just started loving local produce, check out the picture below:
So from 1981 till today I have been trying to provide the freshest, local produce to my community… I am not just saying it because it is trendy now! Hope this gave you a little chuckle. -Spiro
Summer Wine Pick…
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In the midst of this summer heat we often look away from the red wines to the whites, but their is a seldom ordered alternative, Rose. I wanted to take a moment and offer a suggestion from our list here at Evenfall, the Domaine Ott Bandol Rose, it as Robert Parker wrote, is everything a rose should be. I had the chance to drink a bottle this past week with my family as we celebrated my father’s one year anniversary of receiving a kidney transplant, and it worked very well with all our meals and exhibited the mark of a great rose with its softness, a remarkable mouth feel, and astringent finish.
Hand-picking, extremely selective sorting and delicate pressing of the grapes, and finally maturing in oak barrels, are just some of the reasons why Domaine Ott Rose has a reputation of being “the finest rose in the world.” A delicious blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache and Cinsault.
Before the summer ends come try this remarkable wine.
Introducing: “Off The Menu” items, or simply OTM
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As our internet following grows between the incredible email list that hears about our menu updates, themed events, and special deals, our facebook friends, and our twitter followers, there are a bunch of ‘Insiders‘ who we feel more connected to and in turn who we want to hook up once in a while.
So we are introducing some OTM items, that will be publicized primarily the day they are offered, and soley via these internet channels… so if you haven’t joined our email list, or become a friend on facebook, or perhaps followed me on twitter… choose one.
The OTM deals start tomorrow 8/19/09 and the only way to hear about them is by being on one of those lists.
The deals will be unique one day only items, and very good deals, for our friends…
www.evenfallrestaurant.com
Say No to New Meals Taxes in Haverhill and Andover
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Editorial: Meals tax is another hand in your pocket
Some leaders of Massachusetts communities will stop at nothing to drive consumers into New Hampshire. And, while doing so, they claim this will make things better for their city or town.
What are they thinking?
The residents of Andover and Haverhill have been struggling, like residents everywhere, with a recession that has left the fortunate ones with frozen wages, unpaid furloughs and increased health insurance premiums, and the less fortunate ones with no job at all. They have been hit with a 25 percent increase in the state sales tax that includes a brand-new, 6.25 percent tax on alcohol. They will soon be hit with a major fare increase to use the MBTA.
Local businesses have been struggling as well, as people with less to spend are spending less in their shops and restaurants.
And the response of officials in Andover and Haverhill? Hit them again with a meals tax increase.
Andover voters will decide the matter at a special Town Meeting on Aug. 31. In Haverhill, Mayor James Fiorentini is waiting to bring the matter to the City Council until he is sure he has the five votes to pass it. Depending on who is doing the estimating, the meals tax hike of 0.75 percent will bring in $300,000 to $440,000 to Haverhill.
Maybe. But it is more likely that it will send millions of dollars in restaurant business across the state line into Plaistow, Salem or other New Hampshire communities.
Fiorentini notes that the increase amounts to pennies per meal, and says he doubts that will send diners into New Hampshire. After all, he adds, New Hampshire has an 8 percent meals tax, more than in Massachusetts even if a local meals tax hike is approved.
But there are several flaws with this thinking.
Haverhill is relying in large measure on its restaurants to boost a recovery of the downtown. Why give diners an incentive — any incentive — to take their business elsewhere? Shoppers are already flocking into southern New Hampshire to buy other products. That means it is already more convenient for them to stay there for lunch or dinner. If the meals tax in Haverhill keeps inching closer to the level in New Hampshire, that will make those shoppers even more inclined to stay north of the border to eat.
It is also not about just “pennies” on the dollar. That is the same argument officials use when they claim a new tax will cost only “a cup of coffee” a day. The problem is that it is pennies on top of pennies on top of nickels, dimes, quarters and dollars — all the other ways government, from the federal level to the city, uses to extract money from its citizens.
The problem is that spending is out of control, most of it on public employee contracts that are too generous and unaffordable. These pennies will simply lead to a demand for more pennies.
A new tax will not solve the problem. It will only make it worse.
Article from CNN.com on growing local food movement
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ELBERTON, Georgia (CNN) — In a parking lot in suburban Atlanta, customers mill in the summer heat, waiting for freezer bags full of beef, pork, chicken and other meats.
Tim Young raises cattle, pigs, chicken, turkeys and more on his “beyond organic” farm.
The draw that pulled them away from their grocery store and to the tailgate of a packed freezer truck? The meat is from animals raised naturally on a small family farm just two hours away.
“By supporting local farmers, we are essentially voting to support the local economy,” said Anthony Chan, a member of a group that gets its meat monthly from Nature’s Harmony Farm in Elberton, Georgia.
Nature’s Harmony is a member of a growing local-food movement, often referred to as Community-Supported Agriculture.
The CSAs, as they’re called, are a model in which consumers pay for their food in advance and receive it directly from the farmer. Working much like a magazine subscription, customers pay for a period of usually at least six months and receive packages either at the farm or at established delivery locations like the one in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Although thousands of farms have sprung up over the past two decades selling fruits and vegetables using the system, experts say there are probably only a few dozen that, like the Georgia farm, offer meat.
Farmers Tim and Liz Young raise cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys and lambs on their 76-acre farm in northeast Georgia, near the South Carolina state line.
The couple describes their farming technique as “beyond organic,” saying they use no artificial fertilizers, growth hormones or antibiotics and don’t keep their animals penned up.
Life on their property — where cattle and sheep graze in open fields and chickens follow along to clean up after them — looks much like the classic image of a family farm. But the couple say they consider themselves healers to both their customers and, according to their Web site, a food system that “had become a machine with little regard for food safety, food taste and animal welfare.”
“People are becoming very disconnected from the food system,” Liz Young said. “Buying from a local CSA or just shopping at a local farm, you can see where it’s coming from. You can talk to the farmers and figure out how the animals or the produce is raised.”
The couple has 50 subscribers, plus a waiting list, and say 2,000 people receive a newsletter on the farm’s activities.
Members of the nation’s handful of meat CSAs, and the thousands of others, offer a list of reasons.
The food is healthier and tastes better, they say. They like supporting their local economy. Eliminating cross-country delivery is better for the environment, as are the sustainable farming techniques the farmers tend to use.
“Being part of a CSA means that I know the first names of the people who are raising the meat I eat,” said Andrew Johnson of Kansas City, Missouri, a member of the Parker Farms meat CSA in Richmond, Missouri. “Whereas, with the meat I buy from the grocery store, I don’t know where it came from or who raised it.”
Others say they appreciate that animals from the usually small family farms don’t spend their lives in processing plants, conditions that advocates call inhumane.
Because CSA members deal with the farmers directly, they are able to visit the farms and see exactly how their food is produced. The transparency, they say, creates an incentive for farmers to raise their animals as naturally as possible.
“If we have any questions about how it is being grown, we can simply visit the farm ourselves,” said Kristen Johnson, Andrew’s wife.
Robert P. King, a professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, said that although community-supported agriculture “provides a good opportunity for farms that want to use sustainable practices to actually do well in the marketplace,” it’s nowhere close to challenging conventional agriculture’s domination of the food market.
King said geographic availability can be limiting to CSAs. Generally, they require a rural area suitable for farming near an urban area that provide enough customers to make it work.
And then, King said, there’s the cost. Operating on a smaller scale and avoiding mega-farm practices designed to cut costs and improve yields almost always mean higher prices.
A six-month Nature’s Harmony membership ranges from $360, or $40 a month, for a poultry-only delivery to $840, or $140 a month, for 20 pounds of a variety of meats.
“Is it as cheap as the lowest-price chicken in the grocery store? Absolutely not,” Tim Young said. “But with our prices and the prices of any sustainable farmer, you’ve got everything baked in: the cost to the environment, the cost to the health care system, the cost of producing that animal [in a humane way].”
Johnson said that any difference in prices at the Missouri farm, which charges a $1,150 annual fee, are worth it.
“I don’t think it is significant, but if it does end up costing a bit more, it is still important to us to make this a priority,” he said. “There are other expenses I am willing to give up rather than give up a safe, trusted food source.”
The Youngs hope more people will get the chance to choose.
“There’s a big, burgeoning demand out there for local meat, for local food, for organic foods and we’d like to see more famers step up to fill that demand,” Tim Young said. “We’re trying to do that but we can never meet the demand that’s out there.
“We’d love to see more farmers try to do what we’re doing.”