Somehow, despite the heavy snow in central Maine on Wednesday, everything went just the way it should on Thanksgiving day. Shoveling the wet snow was arduous, but Clif and I got it done without collapsing. We didn’t lose our power, and our daughter Dee made it to Maine from New York with nary a delay.

Thanksgiving Day itself was bright and sunny, and to South Portland (SoPo) we went, to our daughter Shannon and her husband, Mike’s, house where, for the first time, they hosted Thanksgiving dinner. Into our little Honda Fit we packed green bean casserole, pumpkin bread, and frozen gravy, made several days earlier. (I wrote about the gravy in a previous post and wondered if I had made it too thick.) Our dog, Liam, came along as did Mike’s mother, Gail, who added an apple pie and a chocolate cream pie to the bounty going to SoPo.

Shannon and Mike rent an apartment in a lovely old house, and they have the whole first floor, complete with a dining room and China closet. As soon as we walked in, we were met by the wonderful smell of turkey and herbs. The buffet in the kitchen was ready for the food, and the dining room table looked so pretty with its fall place mats and napkins.

I know this is going to fall under the category of braggy old Mom, but Shannon and Mike did a bang-up job of cooking their first Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was delicious, and ditto for the stuffing. The sweet potato casserole was creamy, and Shannon’s homemade yeast rolls, made ahead of time, frozen, and cooked right before the dinner, were an absolute delight. The cherry on the sundae, so to speak, was when Shannon announced, “90 percent of this dinner is local, and at least half is organic.” Words to make a foodie mother proud.

As for the gravy…it was exactly the right thickness for my husband, Clif, who likes it very thick indeed, and it was not too thick for the rest of us. (The gravy thickened during the freezing process.) For those who would like a thinner gravy, I would suggest 8 tablespoons of fat and 8 tablespoons of flour, rather than 10.  As I wrote in that previous post, this really is an exceptionally good gravy, time consuming but well worth the effort for one (or perhaps even two) special days a year.

As we gathered around the table, we toasted Shannon and Mike and their first Thanksgiving dinner. We also toasted the dedicated volunteers at the Winthrop Food Pantry who braved the extremely slippery roads on Wednesday so that they could open the food pantry for eleven families who were in need of food.

Truly, it was one of those Thanksgivings that will stand out in our memories.

Addendum: Braggy old mom got the numbers wrong. It was 90 percent organic and 50 percent local. Great numbers however you look at it!

The snow has come as predicted, and suddenly it looks like winter. My husband, Clif, and I will have plenty of shoveling to do as we shovel everything by hand. Nature’s gym, as we like to say. The dog will be in snow-dog heaven. He likes nothing better than to leap at the snow as we shovel, and by the evening, even his Sheltie energy will be spent.

So far, we still have power, and we are hoping for the best. But we are prepared. Clif has started a fire in the wood furnace, we have plenty of water set aside, and we bought extra batteries for the portable radio. We’ve even downloaded an audio library book—The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear—on Clif’s tablet so that we can listen to it tonight if the power is out. Squinting to read by lantern light has become too arduous for these old eyes. With the audio book, I can listen and knit. Clif and I are thinking that even when there is no threat of a power outage we might start listening to audio books on his tablet as a pleasant way to spend the long, dark evenings of winter.

This morning, in the New York Times, I came across a piece by Tamar Adler that should be of interest to everyone. It’s called “Thanksgiving Thrift: The Holiday as a Model for Sustainable Cooking.” Adler’s basic premise is that we should cook like it’s Thanksgiving all year round, not so much in terms of amounts but rather in the way we delight in using and eating all the leftovers. Not only would cooking this way be thrifty, but it would also a real time saver as we wouldn’t have to come up with a new meal every single night.

Hear, hear! Yesterday, I wrote about making gravy. What I didn’t write about is what I did with the stewed meat from the turkey legs and the leftover stock. Some of the turkey was put in the refrigerator, and for two nights we had a meal of shredded turkey in barbecue sauce over rice. The rest of the turkey was tucked in the freezer, as was the stock, and with them I am planning to make a turkey and rice casserole with mushrooms and peas. I was hoping to use sage from an outside pot, but I think the snow has dashed my hopes of doing that.

Adler has written a book called An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, which I have just ordered through interlibrary loan. Although I try very hard to make good use of our food, I am always keen to learn new tips and techniques. Also, sometimes things slip by, and I’m hoping An Everlasting Meal will inspire to me to be even more vigilant.

Now, on to this snowy day!

Yesterday, disaster struck at the Flaky Tart in Winthrop—at noon there were no triple-decker bacon, egg, lettuce, and tomato half-sandwiches with tarragon mayonnaise. The reason? The Tart’s supplier, who was supposed to come early in the morning, hadn’t show up. This was a legitimate enough reason, but still, as the saying goes, I was cast down. All morning long, I had been looking forward to that sandwich with its homemade bread, crispy bacon, and sliced hard-cooked eggs. The tarragon mayonnaise, applied with a light touch, brings it all together.

After the disappointing news, I was faced with the question, what to eat? The chicken tarragon salad on a croissant tempted me, but I knew it would be too fattening for a noncheat day. (I promise there will be more about cheat days in an upcoming post.) Ditto for the quiche. So that left the minestrone soup, and I ordered a big, steaming cup chock full of vegetables and just the right amount of pasta and grated cheese.

I won’t lie. The soup wasn’t as good as those bacon triple-deckers of which I’ve become so fond that I daydream about them in odd moments, but the soup held its own. With its flavorful, tomato-based broth, it was both spicy and soothing.

As I ate, I sat at one of the tall tables by the window. Patrice Putman, who belongs to my book group, came for lunch, and we chatted a bit about our current book—The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Patrice left, and outside, a man in an electric wheel chair rolled by the window. Across the street, two workers wearing hard hats paused from their labor. A woman with a big, pink plastic case hurried across the street to Potato, a store that features Maine-Made crafts, and I wondered if she was bringing something for the shop to sell.

In between eating and watching the street, I read a piece by Calvin Trillin in the current issue of the New Yorker, which just happens to be the food issue. As always, with his witty, ironic humor Trillin made me laugh out loud as he recounted his rather limited cooking repertoire.  “Estimates have ranged from three to eight [dishes],” Trillin writes, and he only cooks them when he is at his summer home in Nova Scotia. One of the dishes from Trillin’s rather limited range includes the wonderful scallops found off the coast of Nova Scotia. I am guessing they are similar to the scallops served in Prince Edward Island, not so very far away. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve tasted them, but, quite simply, they are unforgettable. In size they are somewhere between a bay scallop and a sea scallop. In taste, they are incomparably sweet and tender. Maine might have its lobsters, but our scallops don’t come anywhere near to those Maritime scallops.

By the time I was ready to leave the Flaky Tart, the soup and Calvin Trillin had improved my mood, which for various reasons that had nothing to with the bacon triple decker, had been as gray as the November sky. I was ready for a bike ride and to face the rest of the day.

On Sunday, JoEllen Cottrell, the executive director of the Winthrop Food Pantry, set up a table at the alternative craft fair at the Winthrop Center Friends Church. At that table, she offered donation gift cards to be purchased on behalf of family and friends. The idea, which many nonprofit organizations use, is to encourage people to make donations that are also gifts to family and friends, and JoEllen had put together some lovely photo cards that included a short note of explanation. I bought a donation card on behalf of a family member, and this will be tucked in among other goodies in that person’s Christmas package.

JoEllen asked for volunteers to help staff the table, and as I was planning to go to the craft fair anyway, I volunteered to join her for a couple of hours. The Friends Church is a lovely white old-fashioned building with stained-glass windows that make the interior rather dark, but somehow, most appropriately for a Friends Church, the effect is peaceful and tranquil rather than gloomy.

Being fellow foodies, JoEllen and I chatted about food and the food pantry. Business was not exactly brisk, although we did make a few sales, but the time was pleasantly spent. More important, we got the food pantry out into the community, and it is our plan to do more of this. As I have written in previous posts about the food pantry, this is a critical moment for our food pantry. Because of the hard economic times, more people need to come to the food pantry yet affordable food has become very difficult to find. For now, at least, getting most of what we need from the Good Shepherd Food Bank for 16 cents a pound seems to be a thing of the past. I will quote Craig Hickman yet again: The excess in the system is drying up.

This means we have to diversify if we are to keep the food pantry running, and part of that strategy involves being ever more present in the community. So to fairs and events we will go, spreading the word about our mission to feed people. There are even plans afoot to march in the holiday parade. Ho-ho-ho!

Thanks to Mark Bittman and the New York Times, I came across this piece by Jane Black about land trusts in Maine and how they are connecting farmers with land. Even in Maine, land is terribly expensive for new farmers who are not part of a family farm, and land trusts purchase land either to rent to farmers for a reasonable fee or to sell the land for less than the purchase price. (I love Maine Farmland Trust’s philosophy, which is to “buy high and sell low.”)

Also, here is a rather shocking statistic from Black’s piece: “In Maine…75 percent of farmland has vanished since 1950. What’s left is often worth more as future house lots than as a farm…”

So let’s hear it for the various Maine land trusts that are working so hard to buy land that in turn will go to the next generation of farmers. With the price of oil going up (and not likely to come down), we need local farmers and the food they produce more than ever.

As I am fond of pointing out, Maine, in the 1800s, used to be the bread basket of New England. While the soil along some of our coastline can be thin, there are plenty of places both inland and by the coast where the soil is rich and deep.

Perhaps sometime in the not so distant future Maine can go back to being the bread basket of New England.