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Showing posts from 2013

Locals Know Where to Eat in the Berkshires

The road to  John Andrews Restaurant  (224 Hillsdale Road, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 413/528-3469) twists and turns through woods and farmlands. We arrived at dusk while there was enough light to sit outside on the wooden deck that backed up against a grassy hill. What looks like the decayed remnant of a hundred year old shed leans perilously to one side. Inside, the restaurant has the cozy feeling of an English road house. The floor to ceiling windows in the dining room open out onto the deck and hill in back. In the summer, visitors come to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts to escape the heat and congestion of the city.  Offering opportunities to relax and catch up on your reading, a string of small towns with B&Bs cuts through the expanses of woods and farmlands. With music at  Tanglewood  and dance at  Jacob's Pillow , historical sites like Edith Wharton's home,  the Mount ,  the   Berkshire Botanical Garden   and innovative exhibits at  MASS MoCa

Looking for Good Reasons to Travel, Visit Northern Spain and Morocco

Summer's almost here and it's time to think about planning vacation travel. Wanting to ease some of the difficulty traveling, I applied for and received a  Global Entry  pass so at many airports I breeze through domestic security (thank you  TSA Pre ) as well as international points of entry. I would definitely recommend Global Entry to everyone who travels more than a few times a year. The cost is minimal ($100 for 5 years) and the online paper work isn't too time consuming. Email me and I will give you all the details. Last fall I took a trip to Morocco on a press trip with half a dozen other journalists. We traveled from Fez in the east to Marrakech and the High Atlas Mountains in the west and then to Essaouira on the coast. In the High Atlas Mountains, we arranged for a cooking lesson in the kitchen of a local cook. To get to her home on the grounds of a remote boutique hotel, we walked underneath walnut trees up  a steep dirt switch-back trail we  shared with

What's Up With Spam Comments?

You'd think part of the fun of posting online is hearing back from readers. The whole internet-is-great-for-community-building notion seems like such a good idea. The reality is kind of different. For articles I wrote for NY TImes Dining and Huffington Post, some people would contribute thoughtful responses. But there were always those people who clearly had a pent up need to vent and my article gave them the opportunity to rant and rave anonymously. Reading those comments was no fun. The other sort of weirdness that comes from writing on the web are the spam-comments, sent for nefarious purposes (if you click on the link will your computer become infected and turn into one of the digital zombie hordes enlisted for god-knows-what-purposes?) or to do I-don't-know-what. And how did the individuals or the bots behind their comments choose my web site and the specific articles? Why did   Easy-to-Make Rotisserie Chicken and Roasted Vegetables   attract so many spam-comments?