Everyone does a ten best list, after all ten is a nice even number. But we like things that are just a bit odd, so we sat down and put together our Super Seven… and we figure it doesn’t hurt to have a little luck on our side.

7 - Camping it Up with Berkshire Creative

The Mission, Inc. team drew a standing-room-only crowd during Berkshire Creative’s November Bar Camp at the Berkshire Museum. The topic: “Dr. Minc Love OR How We Learned To Stop Sucking and Love the Berkshires.” The presentation centered on how nurturing creativity has grown our four businesses and could do the same for other businesses.

6 - James Burden becomes chef of Mission

While he can’t lay claim to the recipe for those sex-on-a-stick bacon wrapped dates, he has cooked up some seriously seductive soups, stews, and other Spanish surprises since he joined the team in October. Plus, he looks pretty darn saucy in this picture, don’t you think?

5 - Transom window revealed at The Market

Early in the renovation of our soon-to-be open corner store Jazu Stine decided to pry off the plywood atop the spaces’ façade. He discovered a few hundred pieces of individually framed corrugated glass, covered in multiple layers of paint. Now, instead of tapping the plywood back into place and running for the hills, Jazu, and Bart Dery, removed, cleaned and re-framed each piece of glass. To say the process was tedious may be the understatement of the year but the end result is the striking, sparkling transom on the corner of Bradford and North — 391 North to be exact. We hope to see you there often in the New Year.

4 - Minc House is Born

Minc House hit the Upper North scene in January and has cranked out stupendous designs – be it apparel, products for the home, or strictly graphic. Mission buddies and Word X Word headliner The Low Anthem didn’t waste any time tapping Jay Hallstein to design T-shirts for its Oh My God, Charlie Darwin album. The house of Minc has since printed more than 1,000 tees for the band, which are being sold at its U.S. and European tour venues as well as online.

3 - Mia Dyson send-off show

The start of the coming decade will see the Aussie native relocating from eastern Massachusetts to Southern California. In December, Mia played the Mission Window to a sell-out crowd. We wish her all the best, and suggest you properly archive the Mia merch you scored at Mission NOW.

2 - WordXWord Roof Top Rager

(Photo By Ogden Gigli)

In August, Jim Benson and crew launched the first annual Word X Word Festival in downtown Pittsfield. More than 40 poets, playwrights, and spoken word artists flocked to the heart of the Berkshires for six days that were devoted to words written, spoken, and sung. It all began with a steamy party on the roof of the Greystone Building.

1 - Getting to Know Our Neighbors

As much as we dig our 6 Maplewood Avenue office we’ve really enjoyed getting out of it to interact in the community, visiting our friends at Blue Q, selling products at the Live and Let’s Give, the Handmade Holiday Festival, and the Holiday Farmers Market or meeting with Downtown Inc. to name a few instances. In 2010, we’re looking forward to forging more partnerships, so don’t be surprised if we show up at your doorstep and feel free to knock on ours. We’re open to ideas – let’s collaborate.

This week I asked our FB friends to think about the Mission menu and dish on their favorite Tapas. The winner? “The Meatballs.”

For those unfamiliar “the meatballs,” — officially known as Albondigas — consist of spicy balls of meat served in a peppercorn cream sauce.

As if that weren’t scrumptious enough, we then top the dish with fried onions.

(When I say fried onions I don’t mean the kind that some folks serve from a vacuum-sealed can and place atop green bean casserole. … Don’t ask me how I am privy to this information about certain fried onions. Let’s just say I am and leave it at that, OK?)

Our fried onions are so good patrons have asked we give them their own slot on the menu and at least one has said we should charge a buck an O.

FYI - Craig, we are taking that into consideration.

Now then, when we posted the query seeking your top tapas those of us here at Mission Inc. guessed the answer would be our bacon-wrapped dates. After all, the sweet and savory wonders have been referred to as “sex on a stick.”

Believe me our dates taste even hotter than that phrase sounds. But I digress … Meatballs. We are talking about our spicy meat-a-balls.

I’ll have you know we appreciate that you took the time to share your thoughts. So, we thought it would be nice to share with you too.

Sharing is good. Everyone likes sharing.

Ok, maybe not everyone as I did need to wrassle the recipe away from chef James Burden. Being that I’m not much of a wrassler I surmised catching him off guard was a better bet for scoring the step-by-step instructions for the Albondigas.

Let me set the scene:

I waited until James was engrossed in pan-smoking croutons for our mushroom stew. You see, there is a fine line between smoked and scorched and I knew he wouldn’t be able to abandon his post at the stove.

I tapped his left shoulder. He reflexively responded to the tap, gazing back in that direction. I dodged right. (Uh-huh, I used the classic tap-and-dodge. A bit predictable but it works.) Then I nabbed the nearby recipe book …

Wait, that is a total lie.

James likes sharing, too. He forked the recipe over willingly.

Here it is:

—

Meatballs

5 lbs ground beef

3 lbs ground pork

1 onion finely chopped

1/4 cup chopped garlic

1/2 cup chopped parsley

1 tbsp smoked paprika

1 tbsp cumin

1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs

2 tbsp ground pepper

2 eggs

 

Combine beef, pork and all seasonings in large bowl

Cover breadcrumb with milk and allow to absorb completely

Add eggs and breadcrumbs/milk to meat

Mix until uniform

Add salt to taste, about 3 tbsp

Form into 3/4 oz balls on sheet pan with wax paper

Bake for 15 minutes

 

Peppercorn Cream Sauce

1 small beef tenderloin chopped

1 tsp oil

2 tbsp butter

1 1/4 cup white wine

1 cup shallots

3 cups beef stock

1 cup of cream

1 cup Blue cheese

Brown pan and deglaze with butter and 1/4 cup white wine

Add one cup of shallots and a cup of white wine

Reduce and add beef stock

Reduce again slowly and add cream while stirring

Simmer

Put ingredients in food processor and add 1 blue cheese.

Top meatballs with cream sauce and savor the smoke and spice of the dish.

—

Invite cute friends over. Serve our Albondigas. See what happens.Maybe you’ll get so good at making them friends will want to wrassle you for the recipe.

 

Post on our FB page and fill us in, won’t you?

The picture atop this blog is the view from my desk at Mission Inc. Go ahead, blink twice; you’re seeing just what it appears to be — an oversized, dirty, sweat sock. It’s a work by local artist Brent Whitney. (More on that in a bit.)

I updated the Facebook community on Monday that I was embarking on a new endeavor as Director of Communications at Mission Inc.
It’s a great feeling to have been wished well and congratulated by so many people. My sincerest thanks!
At the same time, some folks commented with questions:
“What or who is Mission Inc.?”
“Where is it? Is it a catering company?”
“Details!?!”

Having spent the majority of my career asking the questions – first as a newspaper journalist and then a bureau chief for WAMC – a local NPR affiliate – it’s odd answering questions. I’ll also admit up until this point I have balked at the concept of blogging. It seemed to me the equivalent of offering up my diary for the world to read.
By the way, “the world” herein is defined as the handful of people I intend to bribe to follow this blog.
Anyway, I used to keep my diary locked and tucked between my mattress and box spring. (I’ve since relocated it. And no, I’m not telling you to where.)
Given my highly guarded nature, why the heck would I willingly disclose my innermost, deep, meaningful and top-secret thoughts to the masses?
Completely absurd!
And yet here I am, two days on the job, willingly – yup WILLINGLY – blogging.

Those disclosures made, I believe I can commence:

I’m writing from high atop what we like to call The Tower of Minc, formally known as the Greystone Building – 6 Maplewood Avenue, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Suite 46.
Mission Inc. – Minc - is a working title for four businesses. And in my humble opinion they are really cool business. But the reason I signed on to this gig was the creative team attached to those businesses.

It began just over a year ago with Mission Bar and Tapas. Incidentally, the tapas part of the name occasionally prompts scuttlebutt about a “topless” bar on North Street. Let me dispel that rumor by saying our bar most certainly has a top.

Now then, owner Jim Benson’s hip nightspot – one of just a handful of places in the Berkshires that serves food until midnight - has quickly become home-away-from-home for a number of up-and-coming musicians.

Enter designer extraordinaire Jocelyn “Jay” Hallstein. She created a logo for Mission followed by hand silk-screened t-shirts. And before she knew it she was heading up Minc House Designs.

Next, lemme tell you about Jazu Stine. The former Mission Bar and Topless, er, I mean Tapas chef is hard at work on The Market. The Market is a soon-to-be open corner store that will specialize in high quality food and convenience goods that won’t break the bank.

And then there is the WordXWord Festival, which is Jim’s brainchild and the result of the summer’s hottest roof party. Seriously. It was 90-plus degrees the day the festival opened and we danced and made merry on the top of the Greystone building ushering in a week of events in August devoted to words written, spoken and sung.
The festival is how I first came into the picture, as Jim asked me to program the theater portion.

That’s our story – seriously over-simplified – but it’s merely an introduction.
There are a few more folks on our team. I’m eager to tell you about them and more from here on out.

In the meantime, back to the view from my desk. Let’s talk about that glorious sweat sock, shall we? Sure, it looks stinky, however, this joint — Mission Inc. is anything but.

- Dir Com
a.k.a Carrie Saldo