In Maine, summer is two thirds done. On our bike ride last night, my husband, Clif, and I lamented that we really only had one more month to go on long bike rides when he comes home from work. The older we get, the more we love summer, with its long, hot days and lovely warm nights. Unfortunately, much of the country is suffering from extreme heat and drought, and I expect more than a few people in the Midwest will be happy to see the end of summer.
However, in Maine, the season is sweet, and the crops are growing. Last week, Farmer Kev delivered new potatoes, baby carrots, garlic, sugar snaps, and other vegetables as well. “Corn is coming,” he promised.
We are waiting.
Here are some photos from my own little garden:
Tomorrow's lunchA visitorIn bloomLots of hardy sage, which survived the winter
Part Two: Sunday Brunch at Riverside Farm Market & Café
Central Maine, lovely though it might be with its lakes, woods, farms, and rolling hills, is not exactly a foodie paradise. Mostly there are chains, ranging from McDonald’s to Ruby Tuesday to Olive Garden. On the one hand, this means the area is not loaded with temptations the way places such as Brunswick and Portland are. On the other hand, when it comes to food, sometimes temptations are exactly what you want, and in central Maine, the pickings are slim.
However, there are a few notable exceptions, and Riverside Farm Market & Café in Oakland is one of them. What started out as a simple farm stand has expanded to become an elegant yet casual place with indoor seating, a specialty market, and a large deck that looks over a vineyard—that’s right, a vineyard—and a stream so large that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a river. On a fine summer morning, sitting on that deck is akin to having a little slice of the Mediterranean in central Maine. More important, the service and the food are so good that Riverside Farm Market all by itself almost makes up for the plethora of chains in the area.
Last week happened to be the week of the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF), and one of our long-standing traditions has been to join our film-buff friends for a Sunday brunch on the last day of the film festival. We’ve gone to various places over the years, but our favorite has come to be Riverside Farm Market, and that’s where we go nowadays.
There are usually 14 or 15 of us, and we know to get there early so that we can grab the large table on the deck overlooking the aforementioned vineyard and stream. For some reason known only to the gods, the weather is usually perfect that last Sunday of the film festival, and so it was this year.
The servers, who are so friendly and accommodating, have come to expect us on that last Sunday, and as soon as we tell them we’re from MIFF, they start dragging tables to add to the large table. Also, there is not a peep of complaint when we ask for separate checks, and everyone gets exactly what he or she ordered.
For me, it is always the same thing—eggs Benedict served with fruit slices and baby baked potatoes. In general, I am crazy about all things made with eggs, and Riverside’s eggs Benedict are particularly delectable. (I could have some right now.) Unlike my poached eggs, their eggs are perfectly poached into puffy pillows of perfection, which are then topped with a rich, smooth hollandaise sauce and served over toasted English muffins. I usually gild the lily by adding Canadian bacon. And then, because more is always better, I order a bloody Mary to go with this brunch, and let’s just say that as I sip my drink, eat my eggs, take in the view, and talk with friends about various movies, I am one happy eater. Truly, life doesn’t get much better.
Clif's breakfast of choice----Farmers BreakfastMy eggs BenedictThe view from the deck
Last weekend was the kind of weekend I like best. It centered on getting together with family and friends and having long, leisurely meals with plenty of good conversation.
On Saturday, which was a glorious summer day—not too hot and humid—my brother, Steve, his wife, Rose, and their son, Patrick came over for a barbecue. Patrick will be heading to college next month, and we wanted to squeeze in a gathering before he’s off to this next exciting venture in his life. Patrick, as well as his parents, are movie buffs, so the conversation gravitated toward movies, and we made tentative plans to go see Beasts of the Southern Wild when it comes to Railroad Square Cinema. (I am very keen on seeing this film and hope that my expectations aren’t too high.)
The menu for the barbecue was grilled bread, corn, potato salad, chicken breasts marinated with lemon and herbs, and, my absolute favorite, Shannon’s chickpea salad with mint, lemon juice, olive oil, tomatoes, and a kind of Spanish cheese whose name I can’t remember. (Shannon, can you help me out?) The salad was utterly delicious, and the cheese somehow managed to be both tangy and smooth.
The chickpea salad
We sat on the patio until dusk came and with it the mosquitoes. The orange cat periodically twined around our legs. The black and white cat, the shy sister, was encouraged to come over, but she declined the invitation. The dog, meanwhile, ignored both of them and did his favorite thing—begging for food. He was not disappointed, and various tidbits—especially chicken—came his way.
When the evening became too damp and the mosquitoes too plentiful, we went inside for ice cream pie made with homemade ice cream. One was chocolate and the other was raspberry, cool desserts on a hot evening. Although it wasn’t easy, I limited myself to half of a piece of raspberry ice cream pie. Patrick, who is tall and slender, helped himself to seconds, and we sat around the dining room table and talked some more as the sun set and night came.
Actually, as far as this blog goes, vacation ended last week. After a much-needed two-week vacation, I found I really missed writing for the blog, and I “came” back early to post some pictures and a recipe. However, during those two weeks, I talked to family and friends about the blog, and their advice was the same: Stick with A Good Eater, keep food at the center of the blog, and digress whenever you feel like it. Their feelings were that I had a bit of name recognition as well as a nice little readership, and it would be too bad to give that up.
With a couple of qualifications, I have decided to follow their advice. Food will indeed still be the center of this blog, but until I reach my goal for losing weight—25 more pound to go!—recipes will be far and few between. As I’ve mentioned before, those last pounds are coming off maddeningly slow, and my daily eating routine is, well, a little predictable and not very exciting. When I reach my goal weight, I will still have to be careful, but I will have a little more leeway, and while I might never go back to my prediet rate of posting recipes, I do plan to experiment with recipes at least occasionally. (Blueberry crisp is on my mind.)
As for digressions….I have added a new category called Notes from the Hinterland, and when I digress from food to write about nature, community, and nonfood books and movies, then that is the category I will use. Notes from the Hinterland will also be used as a subtitle for the piece, and it will serve as a sort of flag that I am digressing from food.
So onward onto my third year. Despite the dieting, there are several food events that I’m looking forward to—the Maine Artisan Bread Fair, the Winthrop Rotary’s first annual barbecue and gumbo dinner, and various gatherings with friends and family. Thank goodness for cheat day, the one day of the week when I can cut loose from dieting. Without that day, I doubt I would have stayed on the straight and narrow for so long.
Not long ago, my Facebook buddy Sarah Fuller wrote about the abundance of sugar snap peas this time of year, and she suggested I might want to share a good recipe or two for them on A Good Eater. Well, as it happens, I have a favorite way of fixing sugar snaps, and it’s so simple that it hardly qualifies as a recipe. In addition, the recipe, if you want to call it that, is wonderfully adaptive to other vegetables—broccoli, zucchini, carrots, bok choy, sweet peppers, and summer squash. Cooked chicken, beef, shrimp, or tofu could also be added, but the vegetarian version is so tasty that the protein additions aren’t necessary. Finally, this is a perfect summertime recipe. It’s all cooked on the stove top, which means there will be no heat coming from the oven to add to an already hot house.
Parboiling the sugar snapsA few basic ingredientsMaking a well for the garlic. Adding it last keeps it from burning.
In spring, summer, and fall, our backyard is one of my favorite places to be. It is not large—only a half-acre or so—but it is surrounded by trees, there are flowers and birds, and there is always something to notice. Here are some photos from yesterday—Wednesday, July 11th.
Ms. Watson on her favorite perch---the compost bin
I’m still “officially” on vacation, but I’m edging back to blogging. I thought I’d post some pictures of the blooming beauty around my house and on my road. Definitely food for the soul.
I know. I’m supposed to be on a vacation from this blog. But I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of this sign at Fast Eddie’s, a retro restaurant and food drive-in not far from where we live. A sign of summer, indeed, and it couldn’t be more true.
Come August, this blog will be three years old. It’s been an eventful three years, punctuated by my daughter Shannon’s wedding as well as breast cancer and the resultant treatment. However, the biggest event, as far as this blog is concerned, is my decision to lose weight.
I’ve written quite a bit about it in previous posts, so I will be very brief: Last year, when I went for my annual physical, I was the heaviest I’d ever been, and I decided the time had come to lose at least 80 pounds. So far, I’ve lost 50, and the last 30 are coming off at a maddeningly slow pace. As a friend of mine who is also dieting put it, “Your body wants to hold on to its weight.”
Yes, it does, and I have redoubled my efforts to lose those last 30 pounds. I am hyper-vigilant about the number of calories I consume in a day, and I have decided to increase the mileage of my bike rides. Right now I go about 11 miles a day, and I would like to go 20 or maybe even 25 miles.
Unfortunately, what this also means is that my cooking has become very proscribed. Our main meals consist primarily of grilled chicken, baked fish, salads, turkey burgers, and more grilled chicken, with an occasional veggie stir-fry thrown in for variation. There is not much experimenting with new recipes, and these days, I hardly ever improvise my own dishes. Because with experimenting and improvisation come tasting and more tasting, and with tasting comes unwanted calories, even if the dish is low in calories.
In short, when it comes to food writing, dieting is a real wet blanket. Yet what can I do? To be 80 pounds overweight is not good, and while I’m lucky that my blood sugar and cholesterol are fine, I do have osteoarthritis, and the heavier I am, the less easy it is to do basic things like, say, go up and down stairs or walk any distance or go up hills.
Therefore, I am committed to dieting and to losing weight—I’ve even given away all my too-big clothing—and this means I have to make a decision about this blog. Clearly, it can no longer be a venue in which to share my cooking adventures. While I did write about other things, cooking and experimenting with recipes were at the center of this blog.
So now what? Do I change the focus of this blog to describe my struggles with losing weight? Sounds like a real drag to me. Do I focus on food issues and write profiles of people who are doing interesting things with food in Maine? A possibility. Or, do I leave this blog and go on to create a more general-purpose blog where I can write about nature, books, movies, social issues, the environment, and all the other things that interest me, including food? Another possibility, and I have even come up with a potential name for this blog—Notes from the Hinterland.
I’m not sure which direction I want to take, so for the next few weeks, I will be on vacation while I consider my options. As soon as I make my decision, I’ll let readers know.
In the meantime, have a wonderful summer. The roses are in bloom, and their glorious scent reminds us of why we love this season so much.
On Thursday, on a hot but splendid day, I headed to Portland to join my daughter Shannon and our friend Kate for one of our thrice yearly birthday luncheons. This time, Kate was the birthday girl, and as our tradition goes, she chose the restaurant—the Green Elephant, which none of us had ever been to.
Whenever I try a new restaurant, there is always a little hum of anticipation, much the way there is when I go to the theater and the house lights drop just before the play begins. I so want to like the food (in the case of the restaurant) or the play (in the case of the theater), but I know very well that not all restaurants serve good food, just as I realize that not all plays are done well.
Still, with both plays and restaurants I am always hopeful, and now that I have started my Good Eater Seal of Approval, I, of course, wondered if the Green Elephant was going to make the list. “Cool it,” I told myself as I approached Portland. “Don’t prejudge. Let the food speak for itself.”
I also had another worry, and that worry was my diet. Over the past year, as I have noted in this blog, I have lost 50 pounds. Very good. The problem is I have 30 more to go, and my weight loss has stalled. I know this is normal, but at the same time, I feel a little like Moses overlooking the Promised Land. I can see my goal shimmering on the horizon, but getting there has proved to be difficult.
This diet worry had a couple of different threads. First, it is difficult to keep the calories at reasonable level, say, 300 or 400 per meal, when you are eating out. Even good restaurants often serve too much food, and if food is on my plate, then I will eat it until it is gone. This led to worry number one: Would I eat too much?
A friend of mine has come up with a good way of dealing with this. She asks for a takeout container as soon as her meal is served, and she immediately divides it in half. If it’s not on her plate, then she’s not as tempted. I decided I would do the same thing and ask for a takeout container, but thus came worry number two: By yapping about my diet and asking for a takeout container as soon as the meal was served, would I be a wet blanket at Kate’s birthday?
“No,” Shannon said when I broached the subject to her as we walked to the restaurant. “You are doing what you need to do to lose weight, which isn’t easy.”
She got that right. Very good, I decided, I will ask for a takeout container when the meal is served, and then, I resolved, the subject of diets would not pass my lips for the rest of the meal. Well, I broke that resolution, but I don’t think either Kate or Shannon minded.
The Green Elephant is a charming little restaurant on Congress Street not far from the Portland Museum of Art. Apropos of the restaurant’s name, above the door there is a canopy with a green elephant. Inside, the restaurant is small but not cramped, and the decorating style is what might be called eclectic. One wall comprises yellow bricks, and chandeliers hang over the tables. Much of the art on the wall involves spoons and forks. It sounds like a strange mix, but it works.
The Green Elephant bills itself as a vegetarian restaurant featuring “Asian-influenced cuisine.” I ordered stir-fry vegetables and and tofu in a brown sauce; Kate ordered a tempura asparagus salad with coconut milk-peanut dressing; and Shannon ordered a vegetable noodle dish. For starters, we ordered Indian style flatbread with a curry dip.
Then came the dreaded question. “I am on a diet,” I told our server, an engaging young woman. “Would you bring me a takeout container when you serve the meal so I can divide the meal in half?”
“I sure will,” she replied cheerfully.
There! That was that. No more talk about diets at Kate’s birthday meal. Except that when our food was served, the server (or the kitchen) had done something so remarkable that it left the three of us amazed with admiration. My plate had half a serving of the meal.
“The other half is in a container in the kitchen, and I’ll bring it to you when the meal is done,” our server said.
“Wow!” I said when she left.
“That is so sweet,” Kate put in.
“Great service,” Shannon added. She’s worked in a restaurant and knows the ins and outs of good service.
After we enthused about the service and talked about diets for a few minutes, the time had come to taste the food. Would it live up to the service?
Readers, I am happy to report that it did. My stir-fry had crispy vegetables and tofu with a tangy sauce—ginger and garlic, I think—served in just the right amount. There were also a few pieces of tempeh, off to one side, and they provided a tart counterbalance.
The stir-fry---half an order
Kate’s salad was both delicate yet substantial, and Shannon’s noodles and vegetables had a sauce that tasted as though it had fish sauce in it but probably didn’t, as this is a vegetarian restaurant. Whatever the case, the sauce was very tasty. (Shannon let me have a bite.)
And the bread? Well, that was delicious, too.
At this birthday meal, four things were ordered, and all four were very good.
“I love this place,” Kate said, and Shannon and I concurred.
The Green Elephant definitely gets the Good Eater Seal of Approval, for food, atmosphere, and service.
As for our server…well, you can bet that she got a generous tip.
Laurie, Kate, and Shannon
A blog about nature, home, books, movies, television, food, and rural life.
Notes From the Hinterland 