Your guide to the heart of Litchfield County:
Discover local stories, hidden gems, and must-know events.

The Ringling Brothers of upstate film programming

If you’ve never attended a Boondocks Film Society event, prepare to be dazzled this Friday, August 12 at South Farms in Morris. And not in a three-card monte kind of way.

The five-plus-year-old, semi-immersive pop-up film event series is venturing deeper into Litchfield County than it ever has before to present Peter Bogdanovich’s acclaimed 1973 black- and-white Depression Era road movie about a con man and an orphan swindling and squabbling their way across 1930s Kansas.

 
While the film will be the star of the evening, Boondocks and South Farms have much more in store—including live 1930s gypsy jazz by Echoes of France, movie-themed food by Chef Paige DeFeo of New Milford’s Bleu on Bank, and an exciting collaboration with Instagram rising star @cinemixologist that has resulted in two exquisite Paper Moon-inspired craft cocktails.

 
Boondocks Film Society has built a cult following over the years due in large part to its creative kitchen-sink approach to building an evening around a beloved film. Drawing from the deep well of talent in the Litchfield Hills, Berkshires and Hudson Valley, they have built one-of-a-kind moviegoing experiences that include a pre-film happy hour, complete with themed live music, film-inspired chef-created food, movie-themed craft cocktails, décor, costumes and more—as well as their signature take-home artist-designed commemorative poster.

 
Whether it’s Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso screened next to two Piper planes in an airplane hangar, a screening of Adventureland complete with carnival games, Frances Ha with a live dance performance involving the film’s choreographers, or the original Mad Max with a live rock score and metal sculpture exhibit, you can rest assured that this filmgoing experience is a cut above Netflix.
 
“From the beginning, we set out to share films we love with our friends and the larger community in a way that brings excitement and discovery back into a night out at the movies,” says Cindy Heslin, co-founder of Boondocks Film Society. “Boondocks events are a chance to experience a new venue, check out a new band, meet new like-minded people, and eat and drink well while you’re at it.”

For Paper Moon, the Boondocks crew is thrilled to be working with South Farms, one of the most striking venues in Northwest Connecticut, a fast-growing cultural presence in the area, and the ideal backdrop for a film set in the farmlands of Kansas.

 
“We hope that people will join the fun as we celebrate this truly remarkable and beautifully shot film in a one-of-a-kind backdrop,” says Boondocks co-producer David Ruchman.

Tickets are still available at boondocksfilmsociety.org and on the night of the event, with doors opening at 7pm August 12, and Paper Moon screening at dusk.

Does your dog suffer from anxiety? There is currently an open call to all dog owners in the area with an interest in enrolling their pets in a clinical study involving an innovative hemp derived option. 

Local resident Karan Madan is the chairman and founder of Animal & Plant Sciences (APS), a company that will be holding a clinical study focused on anxiety in dogs. The study will start screening dogs at Aspetuck Animal Hospital (located in New Preston) which is led by Michael Gorra (DVM) and Patricia Grinnell, DVM, CVA on August 15.

The clinical study is called “Efficacy & Tolerability of a Full Spectrum Hemp-Derived Product for the Control of Anxiety in Dogs” and was designed by Dr. Trina Hazzah (DVM, DACVIM (Oncology), CVCH Veterinary Medical Cannabis Consultant and Educator, Co-Founder and President of the Veterinary Cannabis Society) and CMO of APS.

Cannabis Sativa L has an extensive history of medical and therapeutic use. The growing interest in the utility of cannabinoids, especially CBD for medical indications including behavioral disorders, has led to its legalization in at least 14 countries, as well as the regulatory approval of cannabis extract preparations, synthetic cannabinoids and analogs.

Despite extensive availability, there are limited studies evaluating the efficacy and appropriate dosing of hemp-derived products on anxiety in dogs. This study will evaluate just that.

Enroll your dog now! Contact Aspetuck Animal Hospital at: 860-868-2973 or email info@aspetuckvet.com

By Joseph Montebello

Chef and owner Samantha (Sam) Tilley has always been ahead of the curve. From her early days at the Tollgate Tavern to opening MBK in Bantam she has created eclectic dishes, incorporating local produce and her love of exotic spices and flavors. The menu evolves according to the seasons and what becomes available in the restaurant’s Tenth Acre Urban Farm—a variety of vegetables, fruits, fresh eggs, and flowers produced with methods that protect the environment and promote healthy living and eating. On Saturdays this one-acre oasis is the place to shop.

MBK is noted for its Asian influence, from global street food appetizers, which include mushroom spring rolls, pork dumplings, and tempura shrimp to Chinese cabbage salad, Waterfall Thai beef, and Farmer’s Cobb. Mouthwatering main courses include Thai Curry Noodles, Spring Seared Cod, Ray’s Golden Fried Chicken, and Cacio e Pepe. 

And tacos! Sam has turned Taco Tuesdays, now observed in many places across the country, into a must-attend event. Reserve a seat at the bar and order a margarita (or two). Choose from oyster tacos, Baja fish Tacos, pulled chicken tacos, braised pork tacos, lamb barbocoa, and tim jim beef tacos. No restaurant does it better.

MBK is open for dinner Thursday through Saturday from 5:30 to 8:30pm.

By Charles Dubow

There you are, sunning yourself on your dock on Lake Waramaug and you feel a bit peckish. What do you do? Well, you could maybe go inside and fix yourself some lunch or, better yet, order a lobster roll and wait for it to be delivered. By boat.

A fantasy? Not any longer. That’s because this summer Margaret Colangelo, owner of The Po Café on the Washington Green, has opened The OutPOst in Lake Waramaug State Park. All you need to do is go online, select your order, make your payment, and then sit back and wait for her son Nic to drive over in his motorboat with your food. 

In addition to lobster rolls and burgers, The OutPOst will also be offering a slimmed-down version of The Po’s regular menu—think pastries, cold salads and sandwiches—as well as fresh-squeezed juices and mixers for your favorite cocktails. (Sorry, state law prevents them from selling alcohol.) Planning a get-together with friends? With their partners New Curds on the Block and To the Gills, The OutPOst can also provide charcuterie and cheese boards, shrimp cocktail, oysters, and more. 

Of course, you don’t need to live on the lake to take advantage of The OutPOst. If you want to drive yourself there, by car or boat, that’s fine too. Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Closes at sunset.

30 Lake Waramaug Road, New Preston

By Pamela Brown 

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then Blueprint CT Kitchen is at the heart of your lifestyle. Ideally located on the Litchfield Green, the delightful shop offers the best local and globally conscious-made, organic, non-GMO products. “The impetus for the store was to add to the kitchen concept—to not only provide a service to the community but help people expand their repertoire,” says owner Louis Lemieux who also owns Louis CT, an interior shop & design studio. “Today, people are coming together with family and friends around the dinner table to experience something new.”

Blueprint CT is a collaboration between Lemieux and his mom, whose friendly, welcoming demeanor is reflected in her nametag, ‘Therese, a.k.a. Mom.’ “She and my dad were true adventurers, serving overseas in the Foreign Service for 36 years and their influence is felt in the shop,” says Lemieux. The shop is a global smorgasbord inspiring every imaginable culinary adventure. “We offer customers access to items they’ve never experienced—an experiential opportunity to dazzle their senses. They can increase the range of their palate and have a full-on experience in a particular culture,” says Lemieux. Having traveled through 45 countries, he introduces customers to a vast selection of specialty foods and kitchen products ranging from oils and vinegars, pesto, herbs, and pasta, to linens, small appliances, Sardel pots and pans, stunning handmade chopping and presentation boards, and more. A Gift Basket program allows customers to pick-and-choose items for any occasion. Lemieux also features CT-based items, including house-made scones and breads from nearby Mockingbird Kitchen and Bar and locally-sourced farm fresh eggs.

New this year at the shop is a spice market featuring Lemieux’s private label. “It’s really exciting,” says Lemieux who just returned from Thailand and Dubai with a plethora of exotic spices. Stop and stay awhile in the whimsical Tea Room, complete with cozy furniture and butterflies dotting the ceiling, to browse a global tea collection, including JusTea, farmer-direct tea from Kenya that creates sustainable employment for small-scale Kenyan farmers. Most of the shop’s products are sourced from purpose-focused vendors. For example, the manufacturer of The General’s Hot Sauce creates jobs for veterans and donates a percentage of profits to veterans. Apolis bags are handcrafted in Bangladesh by mothers who receive Fair Trade-certified wages, and Sustainable Threads provides micro loans to women artists all over the world to create hand-blocked linens. “When we sell the products, it refunds the program for another woman artist,” notes Lemieux. “We raise social consciousness around quality ingredients and natural products that go toward improving the quality of life.”

Lemieux’s mission is to bring people together. “We like to talk to customers, give them recommendations, explain about a product, share our histories, and get to know them. The shop is very interactive. Strangers meet and talk, neighbors come in, and it creates a sense of community and inclusion. After COVID, people are seeking that,” he says, grateful to offer such a positive space. “There’s an old railroad bench I repurposed and it’s in the entry. People sit and take it all in. Food is universal and connects people.”      

43 West Street, Litchfield, shopblueprintct.com, 860-361-6789

By Charles Dubow

In the staggeringly competitive world of cookbook publishing—there were more than 21 million printed in the U.S. alone in 2020, according to the New York Times—you need more than good recipes (and a little bit of luck) to stand out. You need something else, some kind of gimmick or hook to appeal to the ever-growing legion of home cooks. For some it is name recognition—think Ina Garten or Daniel Boulud. For others it is a unique approach to food that may not have been previously explored. That is the route that Brian Levy has taken with the publication of his first cookbook, Good & Sweet.

Difficult as it might be to conceive of a method of cooking that hasn’t yet been trapped between a dust jacket—sous vide, Afro-Kosher, cannabis, plant-based meats, et. al.—Levy has had a remarkably smart and simple idea: Making desserts and baked goods without sugar. 

Impossible, you say? Isn’t the whole point of these foods to provide us with a sugary high? No one gobbles down a glazed cruller for its health-giving properties, after all. Not so fast, says Levy. “You can still get the sweetness you crave. You just don’t need to use sugars to do it.”

He does it by choosing sweet alternative ingredients to more traditional products like refined sugar, honey, agave, and even maple syrup. “When you bite into a mango, you get this incredible natural sweetness, right? But it’s all contained in the fruit itself. You don’t need to add anything else to make it sweet. It not only tastes great, it’s also better for you.” 

To achieve his sweetness goals he focuses on natural substitutes, such as fresh, juiced, and dried fruits, as well as freeze-dried corn, apple cider, coconut cream, and even miso paste. “It took me years to come up with the right ingredients. There was a lot of experimentation. I even used it as the basis for some of my food recipes that my mother made in the ‘70s.”

The results speak for themselves. Readers can find recipes for such goodies as Sticky Toffee Pudding, Chestnut Ricotta Ice Cream, Granola, and a Black and White Milkshake. 

Levy is more than just a weekend dabbler. He spent years as a pastry chef at Babbo, where he was mentored by James Beard Award-winner Gina DePalma. “I wasn’t a big baker as a child,” he admits. “I did have a sweet tooth but I fell into cooking by accident. After I graduated from college I tried to get a job at Gourmet magazine. So I thought that maybe if I got a kitchen internship that would help my chances. I landed an unpaid gig at Babbo. After a couple of months one of the girls left and I was hired full-time.”

After that he worked as a private chef in Spain and France, and toyed with the idea of turning his recipes into a book. Then, during Covid, he got the opportunity. Now his book is coming out from Penguin Random House on July 22. That’s pretty sweet. 

Celebrate the launch of local pastry cook Brian Levy’s debut cookbook, Good & Sweet, at House of Books on Saturday, July 30 at 6pm.

By Clementina Verge

Lake Waramaug’s crystalline surface reflects not only sunsets and seasonal splendor, but centuries of history shaped by those fortunate enough to have witnessed its beauty. 

Connecticut’s second largest natural lake—whose expanse touches Washington, Kent, and Warren—is a “striking microcosm of the American story,” notes Christine Adams, whose family has kept a cottage on the lake for five generations. “It has allowed itself to be reinvented while retaining its character.” 

The natural features of this “quintessentially New England” lake formed when the last Ice Age glacier melted have remained unchanged, transcending time and anchoring many cultural and social shifts, from the Indigineous people who first called it home, to Colonial settlers who arrived in the 1680s, followed by decades-long residents, vacationers, and weekenders.

“The Indigenous people are unique in that they have experienced the entire history of this lake first hand,” reflects Adams, who serves on the Lake Waramaug Task Force Board of Directors. “They make up the longest serving stewards of Lake Waramaug,” named after the chief of the Wyantenock tribe that encamped, hunted, and fished here in the summer. 

More than ten Native American archeological sites found within two miles of Lake Waramaug emphasize the importance of remembering that the land was “the ancestral home of many who from millenia came before us,” Adams highlights.

A shoreline transformation was underway by the 1730s; Lake Waramaug became an industrial landscape when residents like Daniel Averill and Edward Cosgrove discovered the iron ore on the west shore. The lake began to serve “as a holding pond” for 21 water-powdered industries, including an ironworks grist, sawmill distilleries, and various factories manufacturing everything from tools and furniture, to clothing and grain sacks. 

As the Civil War culminated, steam power replaced hydropower, and the community morphed again. The population dropped 20 percent between 1850-1920 as cities attracted workers, but the lake enticed many back, entering “a heyday of sorts, becoming a summer community, an artist haven,” and likely the site of the first campground in America. 

“The times were lively,” shares Adams, a researcher at the Gunn Historical Museum. 

By the 1920s, 300-400 guests arrived at the Preston train station on Bee Brook Road every summer, traveling Flirtation Avenue in horse-drawn covered wagons while being transported to one of the 17 lakeside inns. Steamboat tours, concerts, and plays at Pavilion Hall, antique car rallies, dances, fireworks, water sports, and regattas became the social norm. 

And then, the shoreline transformed again. Some buildings burned between the 1960s and 1980s; others were demolished or sold, making way for today’s waterfront residences. 

Lake Waramaug State Park offers public access to swimming, camping, and boating. Beyond those boundaries, the shoreline of the 625-acre lake is privately-owned. 

“Although the use of the lake has changed, the inherent sense of place conceived by all that dwell here is constant. Its culture has shifted with every generation, but a unique sense of attachment and belonging is felt by all who know and love Lake Waramaug,” remarks Adams, who speaks from experience. 

In the final stages of writing a book, Homespun, she chronicles the history of a centuries-old cottage she recently purchased along East Aspetuck River, whose source is the lake on which her great grandfather built his home, and where her ill father chose to spend his last summer.

“The DNA of this place has interlaced with our own and although each generation has nurtured the lake very differently for more than 10,000 years, its beauty and power to inspire and connect us are constant.”

By Linda Tuccio-Koonz

Ian MacRae was six when he first tucked his feet into a pair of water skis, gripped the tow rope, and waited to feel its pull. 

“My older cousin was in the water helping me keep my skis straight,” he says. “My dad was driving the boat. After about 20 tries I finally got up on the skis.” 

Soon MacRae was flying across the lake, begging his parents to go out on the water whenever possible; he was hooked. At 19, while still in college, he started his own business, Connecticut Watersports. He and his Bantam Lake crew offer everything from tube rides to wakeboarding and water skiing.

“Our specialty is teaching; we have a lot of families that come out. Oftentimes parents will say, ‘I haven’t water skied since I was a teenager but I’m ready to give it a try and show the kids that I still have it,’ or something along those lines. Usually, they’ll be back up on skis by their first or second try. That’s always fun to watch. Their kids are usually shocked to see it too!”

Even if you’ve never skied, MacRae says give it a try. His favorite way to get beginners up is with a “body board.” Would-be skiers “can lay on the board and gently be pulled along at speeds as slow as five mph, just to get comfortable…” Next you try kneeling, then work on standing.

But if you’d rather just enjoy a boat ride or be pulled in an inner tube, that’s cool, too. MacRae says when kids “get off the tube and tell their parents, ‘This is the best day ever,’ it’s a great feeling.”

MacRae started Connecticut Watersports from his dorm room at Arizona State University (ASU). His roommates couldn’t understand why he was on the phone for hours a day; he was researching everything from insurance to which boats were best for teaching. The business entrepreneurship major (and four-year member of the ASU Water Ski Team) graduated this spring. 

Having a talented, upbeat crew helps make Connecticut Watersports successful. “We all wear many hats and beyond just taking people out on the boat and teaching water sports, we each have our own specialties,” MacRae says.

“Phil (DeRienzo) is great with people and talking to customers, Kelly (Hill) manages a lot of our social media, my sister Alyssa (MacRae) is a great help with our summer camp program, and Jesse (Choate) does a little bit of everything, just to name a few. It’s a lot of hard work but we keep it fun.”

Hill, who lives on Bantam Lake, has been skiing since she was one (she and her sister are competitive skiers). “We are a young crew, the oldest is 24,” she says. “We have kids who are graduating high school this year; they are great drivers and instructors.”

Just as he did that first day when he was six, MacRae continues to challenge himself in the water. Only now, he does it barefoot. “The boat goes about 35 mph and you plant your feet in the water so you’re actually skiing without skis! It’s quite difficult and the falls are tough, but it’s a fun challenge. I try and do that at least a few times each summer.”