Cheese of the Month: Red Cat

If you’re looking for a bold cheese to pair with beer, reach for Red Cat from Birchrun Hills Farm. This classic washed-rind stinker from Sue Miller isn’t as bossy as a ripe Epoisses—a pungent French delicacy—but it has the same creamy texture and beefy character. Think of stewed meat and bitter greens. The slightly astringent

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1 min read

Food: Plum Rush

Get out your granny cart and head to the farmers market for 10 pounds of plums (ask for discounted “seconds”), because this is the summer you’ll make sour fruit beer.

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1 min read

Recipe: Whole Grain Beer Mustard

These days you can find any number of novelty beer mustards at boutique grocers, but nothing will be as delicious as the one you make yourself with a favorite local brew. Choose a bright, flavorful beer like Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale or Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA and your mustard will taste like biting into

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1 min read

Food: Baked With Buzz

Beer is often called liquid bread, a nod to both grainy origins and covert calorie content. At Betty’s Speakeasy, owner Liz Begosh and pastry chef Adriane Appleby reverse the process, transforming locally brewed liquids into covetable cakes and fudge. “We don’t like to make overly sweet sweets,” says Begosh, a former pro cyclist-turned-pastry queen. “The

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1 min read

The Modern Cocktail Garden: Presenting 18 plants to grow (and drink) this summer.

Herbal cocktails have evolved beyond the mojito. Why should the garden be any different? All across town, smart bartenders are mixing sophisticated summer elixirs with leaves, flowers, berries and buds of locally grown flora. Since you, savvy gardener/drinker, already have the mint-and-basil basics mastered, we thought we’d help you diversify your imbibe-able herb portfolio. Muddle

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3 mins read

Curd is the Word: You don’t need a dairy to make farmer’s cheese.

Resembling a pot of creamy, green-flecked pebbles, the addictive herbed farmer’s cheese made by Sue Miller of Birchrun Hills Farm materializes unpredictably enough to make its every farmers market appearance memorable. Sweet, milky and deliciously versatile, farmer’s cheese is just a bottle of milk and a squeeze of lemon away when you can’t get your

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2 mins read

Upper Crust: Pie, demystified

For most of my life, I believed that pie was special occasion food, reserved for big family dinners and primary holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because of that, I developed a parallel opinion that making pie was extraordinarily hard. Why else would it be trotted out only once or twice a year?

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2 mins read

On Tap: Frecon’s Hard Cider

Dry, aromatic and alcoholic, cyser (pronounced sizer) is a type of mead made by fermenting honey in apple cider. According to Hank Frecon, humans have been keen on the stuff since ancient Babylon. His family’s orchards in Boyertown provide the raw material for Frecon’s Hard Cider, an all-local line of fruity ferments made for Kutztown’s

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1 min read
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