Westport
in Brief!
EverythingWestport.com
Sunday,
October 26, 2014
photos/EverythingWestport.com except as noted
Quick
Article Index . . .
Phantom Gourmet gives Ten Cousins Brick Oven a “thumbs
up!”
Long time
editor of the Dartmouth/Westport Chronicle leaves the paper.
Streaky black-strained
roofs leave Westport home owners confused, frustrated, disgusted.
|
Phantom Gourmet gives Ten Cousins Brick Oven a “thumbs
up!” Situated
in the former home of the popular Fred and Ann’s Restaurant, and later the
proposed brick oven pizzeria named Goodfellows, Ten
Cousins Brick Oven impressed the impresarios at CBS Boston’ Phantom Gourmet
who interviewed and filmed a tasting at the popular pizzeria. Phantom Gourmet
article of October 10, 2014 Wednesday, October 29, 2014 Click here to
read entire article and view the CBS Boston video. In the food world these days, you hear the phrase ‘farm to table’ a
lot. But there aren’t a lot of pizza places that take the time and effort to
source all of their ingredients from local farms. Ten
Cousins Brick Oven in Westport is one of those places. The critique
and subsequent filming took place last August. Named for the ten grandchildren of the owner, this family friendly spot
has a bright, cheery dining room inside and a fun outdoor space complete with
plenty of picnic tables and outdoor games. Since they’re surrounded by farmland, Chef/Manager Nigel Olivier is
constantly cooking with ingredients that are as local as they come, all in a
massive wood burning oven.
Photo/EverythingWestport.com “It’s very hot and you have to be attentive at all times because a
pizza only takes about 5-6 minutes to cook and you have to rotate it half way
through so it gets a nice even golden crust . “It’s magical. You just take something, throw it in and you don’t even have
to wait. You can just sit there and watch the pizza rise and the crust brown.
I love it.” Situated in the former building
of the popular Fred and Ann’s Restaurant, and later the proposed brick oven
pizzeria named Goodfellows, Ten Cousins Brick Oven impressed
the impresarios at CBS Boston’ Phantom Gourmet who interviewed and filmed a
tasting at the popular pizzeria. All of Nigel’s exceptional pies come out crispy every time, topped with
farm fresh vegetables. And nothing says ‘just picked’ like a slice of the Farmer’s
Market Pizza. “It has everything you’d expect to find at a Farmers market: mushrooms,
onions, peppers, tomatoes, basil, everything. It’s for the person who loves
vegetables.”
Meat lovers will marvel at the Chorizo Pizza, loaded up with
lots and lots local sausage, bell peppers, red onions and a special variety
of cheese. “It’s Portuguese Cheese,” Olivier explained. “It has a different
texture. It’s a semi-soft with a lot of bold flavor and it melts perfectly in
an oven.” Since they’re proud members of the Westport community, the folks at Ten
Cousins decided to pay homage to two of their hometown’s favorite spots for
fishermen. “There’s a couple of fishing holes around here. One is called Sow &
Pigs. The other is called Hens & Chickens. So we wanted to make pizzas to
represent the local community,” Olivier said. “Sow & Pig has our
signature mango chipotle pulled pork, with roasted corn, cheese and onions.
The Hen & Chicken has caramelized onions, roasted chicken. It’s a simple
and classy pizza that has a lot of flavor.” Beyond pizzas, Nigel and his oven cook up all sorts of other
specialties.
There’s the ultra-addictive Brick Oven Wings tossed with lemon,
rosemary and caramelized onions, or the Blackboard Burger, a special
burger which changes weekly. And nothing is more awesome then Ten Cousin’s
so-called Awesome Nachos. “When you sit down to eat the Awesome Nachos it’s an experience in its
own self. You pick up a chip The Stuffed Quahogs are made fresh every day and overloaded with
fresh, local clams. “We roast it in the pizza oven, which gives them even more flavor,
seals it on and gives it a little crust on top,” Olivier explained. “You just
need a little bit of bread to hold it together. You don’t want to sit down
and eat bread that has clams in it. If you want that you get clam cakes. We
don’t have clam cakes; we have stuffed quahogs.” When it comes to meatballs, Nigel and his team don’t mess around. The “jumbo”
meatball is a true feast for the eyes. “It’s about the size of your fist,” he demonstrated.
These monstrous spheres of meat are made using an eight ounce ladle.
From there, the blend of beef, pork, and seasonings are breaded with panko
and baked until perfect. “We wanted something slightly different. Everybody has meatballs, but
we have jumbo meatballs. The bigger the meatball is, the more tender and
juicy it is when it cooks, so you get a nice, good, solid flavor when you
bite into it.” These home-style meatballs are also used in a sandwich Nigel refers to
as a Brickini. This over-the-top sandwich
starts with fresh pizza dough that’s baked until brown to make the ideal
roll. From there it’s stuffed with two piping hot, oversized meatballs,
sauced and served. “The meatball itself has sautéed onions and peppers and garlic and
onion in it. The bread is perfectly baked in the oven. The sauce is our own secret
recipe. It’s just a flavor combination you can’t get anywhere else,” Olivier
described.
And since the Ten Cousins team is getting it all locally, they’re able
to keep the food fresh, the portions large and the prices low – something
that makes customers quite happy. “When our customers leave we want them to have three things: good food,
a good time, and have a full stomach, and be completely satisfied. To tell
their friends, ‘hey, you want a good food, good time? Go eat at cousins.’” You can find Ten Cousins at 977 Main Road in Westport, and online at tencousinsbrickoven.com. Watch Phantom Gourmet
on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 and 11 a.m. on myTV38. Go to their website. Visit the Ten
Cousins Brick Oven website. Like Ten Cousins Brick Oven facebook page.
Photos courtesy of Ten Cousins Brick Oven facebook. EverythingWestport.com Friday, October
31, 2014 Dear
Editor: The
Westport Fire Department has a simple but powerful reminder for all members
of our community this weekend. When you change your clocks for daylight
saving time on November 2nd, change the batteries in your smoke alarms and
carbon monoxide detectors, and please remind your friends, family and
neighbors to do the same. “27 years ago,
Energizer and the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) recognized
a disturbing trend that many home-fire fatalities were taking place in homes
without working smoke alarms.” Westport Fire Chief Brian Legendre
According
to the National Fire Protection Association, 71 percent of smoke alarms which
failed to Working
smoke alarms cut the risk of fatalities in reported home fire structures in
half. As a 26-year fire service veteran, I have witnessed firsthand the
tragedy and devastation of home fires. Overall, almost 66 percent of
home-fire deaths in this country occur in homes without working smoke alarms.
Residential
fire deaths peak in winter months, so it’s critical to check and change your
smoke alarm batteries each fall. We
hope you’ll join our fire department, Energizer and the International Association of Fire Chiefs in sharing this
lifesaving information with your readers and encouraging them to help make a
difference in our city and across the country. Sincerely,
Brian
R. Legendre Westport
Fire Chief Long
time editor of the Dartmouth/Westport Chronicle leaves the paper. EverythingWestport.com Saturday,
November 1, 2014 By ROBERT BARBOZA,
Editor
Above: Outgoing Chronicle
Editor Robert Barboza bonds with Nickels, the BankFive mascot, at the Dartmouth 350 Parade September 7,
2014. SUBMITTED PHOTO Note: It is this website’s opinion
that Robert Barboza is one of the last and best of
the old time reporters/editors who brought accurate and ethical journalism to
his paper’s readers. His penchant for thoroughness and dedication to getting
the job done right no matter how long it took will be missed. The declining
popularity of printed media, and the shrinking profits derived therefrom, has
sounded the death knell for newspapers, driving men of Barboza’s
character and skill to retire or to write for on-line new sites for salaries
that are shameful to men and women of hiscaliber. –
EverythingWestport.com “Sitting in the
front row of Dartmouth’s Fall Town Meeting last week, my thoughts turned to
the remarkable display of democracy in its purest form, and I marveled at the
historic traditions that the whole town meeting process represents, largely
unbroken since the seventeenth century. Government of the people, by the
people, and for the people is a beautiful thing to see in practice. Retiring
from the position as editor of The Chronicle, I thought it would be
appropriate to file one last report on the impartial spectator’s view of
Dartmouth at its finest, before and after the big meeting where so many kind
members offered me a round of applause for my work here. “It’s ‘thank you,’ not
goodbye.” Robert Barboza For the past two
weeks, I have been saying my goodbyes to many of the town officials and town
employees I encounter, ending more than 10 years of cooperative effort to
bring The Chronicle’s readers as much news and information as we could cram
into one weekly edition. Here is my public thanks
for all the help, information and cooperation that your public officials and
public employees in both Dartmouth and Westport have provided this newspaper
so that we could pass it on to you, our faithful readers. I know you will
afford my successor, Phil Devitt, the same professional courtesies when he comes calling, and he will help you as best he can, as I
did. The same e-mail address (editor@chroniclenewsonline.com) and phone
number (508) 979-4418 will still put you in touch with The Chronicle editor. Both communities
are blessed with dedicated, hard-working municipal employees who do a great
job keeping their municipal operations running as smoothly as possible. They
help us journalists do their work on your behalf every day, all the while
doing their best for you every day. Personally, I have never had a public
employee deny me the information, good or bad, that I asked for on my
readers’ behalf. I have nothing but grateful thanks to all of those on and
off town payrolls who helped me over the years, in and out of the office,
serving the residents of Dartmouth and Westport with full honesty and
transparency. Both Dartmouth
and Westport are likewise blessed with volunteer and paid elected and
appointed officials. When town meeting time comes around, you realize how
many volunteer hours go into the running of town government, day in and day
out, and at times like town meeting, you are reminded that we should
occasionally thank all the selectmen, Planning Board members, school board
volunteers, Conservation Commissioners, library trustees, etc. — all
those who keep town government functioning efficiently and economically for
us every day. I believe they and town meeting members are the heart and soul
of these communities they serve. And lastly, a tip of the cap to all the hundreds of volunteers for the
organizations who make these two communities such great places to live, work,
raise a family and enjoy life. The volunteers who do fundraising and the
daily yeoman’s work for scholarships, for education, for libraries, for music
programs, for athletic leagues, and all the rest ... I have had great fun
helping you good people do good things in the community, and for the good of
the community, and for the generations of Dartmouth and Westport residents to
come. It has been a pleasure for Christina Styan
and I, and our associates, to help you keep a chronicle of these shared
times. It’s not goodbye.
I will be around. So don’t be surprised when I pop up at the coffee shop, or
Town Hall, on DCTV or Westport Community Cable, or on my new Twitter feed, @bobbarboza7, where I will keep on
helping good people do good things, working on producing some positive change
for all of us on the of us on the South Coast.”
Streaky
black-strained roofs leave Westport home owners confused, frustrated,
disgusted. EverythingWestport.com Saturday,
November 1, 2014 Over the past several
years Westport home owners have seen unsightly, streaky, black strains
develop on their asphalt roofs. Algae, mold-like discoloration, and lichens
seem to thrive on their damp, west and northwest new roof surfaces after as
little as 7 years. Many wonder what’s
going on. Some think global warming is causing the phenomenon; others are
convinced the stains are caused by pollution from the Brayton Point Power
Station. Rest assured,
neither one of the above is the cause. What is the root of
the problem can be traced directly back to asphalt shingle manufacturers who several
decades ago introduced limestone and fillers Shingles were
once manufactured with large amounts of asphalt or oil content. This gave the
shingle its life. Today’s shingles
have very little asphalt (10-30%) and have as their major component limestone
and fillers. Click here to learn more about failed roof shingles
and your options. The cost of the
shingle was kept down as oil prices rose tenfold over the last 20 years. The
result is a very dry shingle that fails rapidly and exhibits streaks of black
mold-like algae and moss that feeds on the limestone. Some manufactures
now offer a 5- to 10-year warranty against algae growth on their algae
resistant shingles, but after that period you will have to deal with
the algae. Algae and moss
are not believed to damage asphalt shingles, but they may be aesthetically objectionable.
If homeowners attempt
to use power or pressure washer to remove the offensive growth they may
damage the shingle surface because the algae is imbedded in the shingle’s exterior. Algae spores are
carried by the wind (and we have plenty of that in Westport!) and can quickly
spread from one rooftop to another. That is why it is common to see algae
growth on rooftops throughout an affected neighborhood. The same is true for
apartment or condominium complexes, townhouses or row houses. There is no
scientific evidence that algae is damaging to asphalt shingles, although it
certainly affects the aesthetics of a roof. "The (economic)
pressures placed on large, public companies to maintain profitability brought
forward good old American ingenuity; reduce fiberglass mat weight (fibers
were expensive) and increase filler content (asphalt was also
expensive.)" - Dwain Bouton, President of Certified Roofing
Consultants There are
solutions that are easy to implement and not very expensive. Different
treatment methods can be used to remove and prevent future discoloration due
to algae growth on the roof as moss feeds on algae and any other debris on
the roof. Moss and debris which remains
on the shingles will cause premature deterioration and should be physically
removed from the roof with a copper sulfate, zinc chloride or other solution
carefully applied and thoroughly rinsed. To prevent the future growth of
algae and moss install zinc or copper strips or wire at the ridge and every
four to six feet down the roof. Black algae
growth can also be cleaned with a bleach solution. The Asphalt
Roofing Manufacturers Association recommends soft-washing
versus power-washing for your roof.
Local Westport Company offers softwashing
techniques to clean your roof. Revolution SoftWash located on American Legion Highway (Route 177) is
New England’s only SoftWash Sysytems
Authorized Master Business. They are also New England’s first UAMCC
Certified Roof Cleaner. Contact Bill
McMahon at 774.294.2805 or email: mailinfo@RevolutionSoftWash.com
for more information. Other companies providing roof cleaning: http://www.allproroofclean.com/ http://newenglandroofcleaners.com/
http://www.roofcleaningma.com/ http://www.coastalsoftwash.com/MA/Dartmouth-roof-cleaning.html
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