Monthly Archives: March 2022

See Hartford-based Resurgam Quartet on Stage for Essex Winter Series, Sunday

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The Resurgam Quartet features, from left to right, Harrison Kliewe (soprano saxophone), Colette Hall (alto saxophone), Michael Raposo (baritone saxophone), and Sean Tanguay (tenor saxophone.)

ESSEX/LYME/OLD LYME – On Sunday, March 20, Essex Winter Series (EWS) will bring the Resurgam Quartet to the stage for its third concert of the season, the annual Fenton Brown Emerging Artists Concert. These young, talented, Hartford-based musicians will offer an exciting repertoire of music by Borne, Piazzolla, Schumann and Schubert arranged for saxophone.

The concert is scheduled to take place at Valley Regional High School in Deep River, Conn. 

The EWS 2022 season will conclude on Dec. 18 with January 2022’s rescheduled concert featuring the world-renowned Brentano String Quartet and Mihae Lee, piano. 

Concerts begin at 3 p.m. and are general admission. For tickets visit www.essexwinterseries.com or call 860-272-4572.

As a precaution for our audience, artists and staff, health guidelines will be followed and may include, among other safety measures, the presentation of vaccination proof and mask wearing.

The EWS 2022 season – its 45th – is generously sponsored by The Clark Group, Essex Meadows, Essex Savings Bank, Jeffrey N. Mehler CFP LLC, Tower Laboratories Ltd., BrandTech Scientific, Inc., Masonicare at Chester Village and WSHU Radio. Funding also comes from the Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA), the Connecticut Office of the Humanities (CTH) and Community Foundation of Middlesex County.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Old Lyme EDC Hosts Ribbon Cutting at ‘The Stumble Inne,’ This Afternoon, All Welcome

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OLD LYME — The public is invited to a Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony celebrating The Stumble Inne this afternoon, Thursday, March 17, at 3 p.m. The ceremony will mark the opening of the restaurant’s new pool room.

All are welcome.

The Town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) is kickstarting its new ribbon-cutting program with The Stumble Inne, which opened last summer but has unveiled a new pool room this week.

“We have several new businesses we are offering a ribbon-cutting program to, but wanted to begin with The Stumble Inne, even though they opened several months ago,” said EDC Chair Cheryl Poirier. “The Caramante family has invested in Old Lyme, and we wish to support them in this endeavor.”

Jim and Cyndi Caramante, who also owned The Hideaway, opened The Stumble Inne in the summer of 2022 to capture a younger audience. The Stumble Inne features live music on the weekends, trivia and karaoke nights, and the new game room complete with a pool table. 

In addition to the EDC commissioners and barring urgent cancellations to schedules, Old Lyme’s three selectpersons and State Representative Devin Carney will be on hand to commend The Stumble Inne on its investment in Old Lyme.

Special for St Patrick’s Day, The Stumble Inne will be open from noon to midnight with menu additions including a corned beef dinner.

The Stumble Inne is located at 90 Halls Rd. in the Old Lyme Marketplace and can be reached by phone at 860-434-2342.

For more information about the venue, follow The Stumble Inne on Facebook.

A la Carte: It’s St. Patrick’s Day, So It Must Be Time For Corned Beef & Cabbage!

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Lee White

I had such a fun weekend watching the UConn women play basketball at Mohegan Sun. And as I write this column, the final game (UConn vs Villanova) is tonight. We had only one loss in the Big East, and that was to Villanova. I have my fingers crossed.

Friends Sue and Karen had extra tickets for me to see all the games. Frosting on the cake was the ability to see most of our women watching the game when they weren’t playing. In addition, five rows in front of me were R.J. Cole and Tyrese Martin, members of the UConn men’ basketball team watching the women play. This is the first time I have seen them watch each other’s games. By the way, the men are seeded three in the Big East games.

For two of the days, we ate at Tom’s Urban at the casino. I had a burger on brioche both meals. The better of the two? A burger with mushrooms, Swiss cheese and white truffle oil (or truffle butter). I also had tater tots, something I’d never tasted before. Meh.

What to make at home this week?

Of course, it is almost St. Patrick’s Day. While I love deli corned beef, regular corned brisket isn’t my favorite. What I do love, however, are the veggies: cabbage, potatoes and carrots. With just a whisper of salt and a pat of butter, I’m happy. And in less than 45 minutes in the Instant Pot, it’s dinner time.

Maybe enjoy a green beer with your corned beef this year?! Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash.

Instant Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage

From Real Simple, March, 2022, page 114

Yield: Serves 8

1 3 ½ -pound package uncooked corned beef brisket with spice packet
1 cup unsalted beef broth (or 2 tablespoons More than Bouillon stirred in 1 cup water)
1 ½ pounds yellow baby potatoes (I love the Little Potato Company brand)
4 carrots, sliced into 2-inch pieces (about 2 ½ cups)
1 head green cabbage, cut into 8 wedges, core intact
2/3 cup cups sour cream
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon lemon zest plus 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (from one lemon)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, divided
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided

Select sauté setting on a multicooker (such as an Instant Pot). Remove brisket from package, reserving spice packet, rinse brisket in cold water and pat dry. Sprinkle both sides of brisket with contents of spice packet. 

Place brisket, fat side down, in cooker; cook for 2 minutes. Flip and add broth, using a wooden spoon to scrape up any browned bits. Lock lid and turn steam-release handle to sealing position. Cook at high pressure for 30 minutes.

Quick-release the pressure. Remove lid and add potatoes, carrots and cabbage in layers on top of brisket. Lock lid and turn steam-release handle to sealing position. Cook at high pressure for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, stir together sour cream, horseradish, lemon zest and juice, 1 tablespoon parsley and ½ teaspoon pepper in a small bowl.

Quick-release the pressure. Remove brisket from pot and thinly slice against the grain.

Serve with vegetables, topped with remaining 1 tablespoon parsley and ½ teaspoon pepper. Serve with sour cream.

About the author: Lee White has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant. She currently writes ‘Nibbles’ and a cooking column called ‘A La Carte’ for LymeLine.com along with the Shore Publishing and Times newspapers, both of which are owned by The Day. She was a resident of Old Lyme for many years but now lives in Groton, Conn. Contact Lee at leeawhite@aol.com.

Free Community Mapping Sessions Contrasting Old Lyme with New London Offered Saturday

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Briana Harlan

OLD LYME — On Saturday, March 19, Public Art for Racial Justice Education (PARJE) hosts a free Community Mapping workshop in three sessions, which will look at opportunities and resources in Old Lyme and New London with an emphasis on equity.

Community engagement specialist Brianna Harlan will lead three sessions to discuss in-depth how the town of Old Lyme (a homogeneous, primarily white community) contrasts with New London (its neighboring, culturally-diverse city).

The first session is from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. and is for New London residents.

The first session is from 12 to 1 p.m. and for Old Lyme residents. Register for this free, virtual session here. In this event, participating residents will identify assets and opportunities in their neighborhoods, create “maps” of their community, and discuss hyper-local examples of racial inequity. This event is specifically for Old Lyme community mapping.

Th final session is from 1 to 2 p.m. and will bring all the participants together in a virtual environment.

These sessions will foster a deep understanding of where attendees live in relation to their neighbors. Local residents will gain a sense of responsibility for their resources and become informed advocates for equitable communities.

Harlan is an artist and activist best known for her work Black Love Blooms, which she performed at last year’s New London Dream Market. She is also a trained community leader, working with AmeriCorps, NeighborWorks America, Creative Capital, and Adobe.

Harlan currently works as a creative, community organizer and strategist for several community initiatives around the country including City University of New York’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Incubator.

For more information, visit www.racialjusticeart.org/map

St. Patrick’s Day in the City, Where Every Heart Beats … Green!

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Editor’s Note: Linda Ahnert lives in Old Lyme now, but for more than 30 years she lived and worked on Manhattan. She wrote this column for LymeLine.com in 2008, but we think think it resonates now as much as it did back then … especially with the full return of the NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade this year after two years of pandemic-related disruptions.

green_shamrockI was a New Yorker for 30 years and, although I love living in a quiet Connecticut town today, there are still aspects of city life that I miss.  There are the small things like being able to walk everywhere – to the supermarket, to the dry cleaner, to the movies.  And then there are the big things …

One of those is a grand old New York tradition – the celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day.  I’ll bet there are not many ex-New Yorkers (and there are a number of us in the area) who don’t get a little farklempt when calling to mind March 17th’s spent in the city.

After all, is there any better place to toast the Emerald Isle than on the island of Manhattan?

In the lyrics of the Irish-American showman, George M. Cohan, “Every heart beats true for the red, white, and blue.”  But in New York, on Saint Paddy’s Day, the city goes all out for the wearing of the green, starting with the green stripe painted on Fifth Avenue.

As nice as it is to wake up in a New England village on March 17, it could just as easily be February 17 or April 17.  In New York, as soon as you walk out the door on St. Patrick’s Day, there is absolutely no mistaking which day of the year it is.

There’s always electricity in the city air, but on March 17, there is a festival mood along Manhattan’s avenues and streets.  There are vendors selling green and white carnations, businessmen on their way to work sporting green ties, and teenagers with shamrocks painted on their cheeks or with shocks of hair dyed green for the day.  In short, it’s easy being green.

And the great thing about New York is that whether you’re full-blooded Irish, a little bit Irish, or nowhere near being Irish … it makes absolutely no difference.

Everyone loves a parade.  And as you get close to Fifth Avenue, you see families on their way to the parade and you start seeing parade participants.Oh, those kilts and tartans and tam-o’-shanters!

It might be a long way to Tipperary but on the streets of New York, I learned the names of many of Ireland’s counties.  These names are emblazoned on banners carried at the head of each county society.  Counties Cork, Clare, and Kilkenny were already familiar to me.  But I soon discovered that there are other counties with the names like Armagh, Donegal, Mayo, and Sligo.

New York City Holds Annual St. Patrick's Day ParadeUnlike New York’s other great processional, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, there are no floats and balloons, no vehicles or commercial aspects to the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.  It is truly a “people parade” with about 150,000 participants marching up Fifth Avenue.

The parade steps off at 11 a.m. from Fifth Avenue and 44th Street and, generally, the last of the groups pass by Rockefeller Center and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral around 5 p.m.  The marchers include military units, top high school bands, drum and bugle corps, members of Eire-based societies, New York’s finest and New York’s bravest … and, of course, any politician who is running for office in the tri-state area.

A fun thing to do is to walk along the side streets off Fifth Avenue where the various groups are whiling away time as they wait their turns to fall into the parade route.  Many of them are practicing and drilling and it’s like attending a giant muster on the city sidewalks.

Pipers_St_Patricks_Day_Fun_in_NYC_3-8-13

And, when those units step out on Fifth Avenue and begin the march uptown, there is nothing like the sound that they make.  The skirling of the bagpipes and the percussion of the drums echoing off the buildings thrills and stirs the soul.  Spectators give appreciative cheers as a band plays a rousing version of “McNamara’s Band” or break into spontaneous song when they hear “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

There were years when I spent hours at the parade and other years when I could only spend a few minutes, but it was always a special time.

If many New Yorkers are tucking into dinners of corned beef and cabbage or lamb stew on Saint Patrick’s night, I’ll always associate the holiday with another Irish specialty.  In my early years in the city, a woman I worked with always brought Irish soda bread to the office on Saint Paddy’s Day.

Kay was from an Irish family in Brooklyn and when she served the bread, she always put out a crock of butter with it.  I can still remember my first taste of that bread.  And today, even though I bake a mean loaf of Irish soda bread myself, nothing can ever quite compare with Kay’s.

StPattysDayBeerThe Irish pubs and saloons in the city are, of course, packed to the gills on the holiday.  And that is another great thing about New York – each neighborhood has its own Irish watering hole.  On my block of East 34th Street, the pub was Brew’s and it was where we ate at least twice a week.  It was the kind of place where you didn’t have to order your drinks because the wait staff already knew what you drank and automatically brought a round to the table when you came in the door.  Richie Brew, the pub’s owner, was warm-hearted and gregarious and called most of his customers by their first names.

We spent many memorable Saint Patrick’s nights at Brew’s.  One time, as we were arriving, a contingent of bagpipers, who had marched in the parade, were getting into formation and tuning up on the sidewalk.  Then, kilts swirling and bagpipes wailing, they marched themselves into Brew’s to the cheers of all the patrons.

The coda to the day’s festivities was watching “The Quiet Man” on TV.  One of the local New York stations (Channel 9 or 11) always screened this movie on Saint Patrick’s night.  (It was akin to airing “It’s a Wonderful Life” at Christmas.)

The movie, which stars John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara and Barry Fitzgerald, is a valentine to Ireland.  With its stunning scenery and depiction of life in the village of Inisfree, the movie always had me longing to jump on the next Aer Lingus flight back to the old countryThis Saint Patrick’s Day, I won’t be in New York.But I’ll still bake Irish soda bread and put on a CD of “The Irish Tenors.”  I’ll listen to songs about sweet Molly Malone, Dublin in the rare old times, and the last rose of summer.

And I’ll drink a toast to the green isle of Erin … and to the great island of Manhattan.