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Food and Drink (All)

Napa, Sonoma ... and now North Beach

You don’t have to travel to California, nor even to Virginia, to get to Wine Country. Maryland is fast making up for lost time as a grape-growing, wine-making region.     “There are 50 wineries in the state, and their production is booming,” said Regina McCarthy, Maryland Wineries’ marketing coordinator.     In Calvert County, old tobacco soils are proving the Patuxent Wine Trail is ripe for the picking.     Eat Drink Go...

New logo directs you to what’s local on Annapolis menus

If you think you’re eating at a farmers market when enjoying a dish at an Annapolis restaurant like b.b. Bistro or Level because of the freshness of the food, you’d be close.     These restaurants and others are spearheading the city’s Green Plate Program, featuring ingredients grown within 300 miles. These 50 percent-plus delectables will be noted on the menu with a Green Plate icon plus the names of the farm of origin.     Green Plates “...

Follow these local chefs out of the kitchen

Wilting weather is not dampening the prodigal enthusiasm of vine, branch and stalk.     Bursting into ripeness are apples, beans, cukes, eggplants, figs, grapes, honeydews, interesting squash, jalapenos, kohlrabi, limas, melons, nectarines, onions, peaches, root vegetables, sweet corn, tomato, varieties of hot and sweet peppers, watermelons, yams and sweet potatoes, zucchini.     They’ll never taste better than they do now, when their abundance puts them at...

The Parole Rotary Foundation’s inaugural Naptown barBAYq contest and festival is sure to wet your appetite

Anticipation is such an alluring spice that I can smell it already.         By the very early hours of Saturday, May 14, you’ll smell it too. The smokey scent of the Parole Rotary Foundation’s inaugural Naptown barBAYq contest and festival will curl into Arnold, Edgewater, Crownsville, beckoning you to the grounds of the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.     Here’s why you — and all you others beyond the reach of that...

Chesapeake Country Chefs share their recipes for signature Thanksgiving side dishes — and more

There’s going to be turkey, you can bet on it, writes Richard Whelan, general manager at Pirates Cove. Whether you’re going to a friend’s or relative’s house, or, maybe they are all coming to your house, chances are there is going to be a big fat roasted turkey in your future come Thanksgiving. That’s why we call it Turkey Day. Maybe even a ham. A good, salty, country ham if you’re lucky. But what makes the difference between grandmom’s house, your best...

South of the Mason-Dixon line, ham rules the Thanksgiving feast

Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of green eggs — or ham. In spite of Sam’s urgings, I say ham is a good chunk of pork wasted, no matter if it’s smoked, spiced, spiraled or, heaven forbid, stuffed. Stuffing belongs in turkeys. Maybe a pork chop. But never a ham. Try it? No way, I sniffed.  Even after more than two decades living in Calvert County, I still turned my nose at the locally celebrated gastronomical confusion known as Southern Maryland stuffed ham. I never...

Maryland chefs show you how to keep your cool when the mercury bubbles

It’s too hot to cook. Yet the heat that’s stewing us is sugaring the peach, sweetening the corn, swelling the crab.That’s summer’s dilemma. The heat that cooks fruits and vegetables — even Maryland seafood — to perfection is the same heat that’s stewing you. Nobody knows this better than the chefs whose joy and job torture them with the best raw materials when kitchens are hellishly hot. Except perhaps the farmers, condemned to reap in July what they...
  Some people collect wine the way that others collect records or baseball cards. This weekend, at the fifth annual International Great Grapes! Wine, Arts & Food Festival, the vinophiles among you get to add to your collection. “The festival is an inexpensive way to taste hundreds of wines right in your own backyard,” said Greg Nivens, president of The Trigger Agency, the event’s promoter in partnership with Mill’s Fine Wine and Spirits of Annapolis. “It...
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