Blue is my favorite color, and I like every shade, from pale to dark blue. Today, the sky is a deep blue, a great day to hang my blue sheets and to go for a bike ride on Blue Beauty. But best of all, a couple of days ago, my cousin Linda brought me some eggs, some of which are—you guessed it—blue. I will save those eggs for last and use the brown ones first. I know. Eggs are eggs, regardless of the color of their shells, but those blue eggs, laid by Americana hens, are very special to me.

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a beautiful blue day.

On Saturday, my husband, Clif, and I—along with our dog, Liam—drove to South Portland to visit our daughter Shannon, her husband, Mike, and their dog, Holly. Before I go any further, let me make it perfectly clear that visiting with Shannon, Mike, and Holly is reason enough to go to South Portland, or SoPo, as it’s called. However, not long ago, a Frosty’s Donuts came to SoPo, not far from where Shannon and Mike live, and let’s just say that Frosty’s makes the trip even sweeter.

I have been a donut hound for many, many years. Oh, how I love donuts. But good, fresh donuts are not that easy to find, and, no, neither Dunkin Donuts nor Tim Horton’s has fresh donuts. (Once upon a time, Dunkin Donuts had fresh donuts, and each store employed bakers. But those days, alas, are long gone.)

However, Frosty’s, located in Brunswick, Freeport, and South Portland, make their donuts daily, and they are fresh, fresh, fresh. Melt-in-your-mouth fresh. So fresh that two of their raised glazed donuts—my favorite—can go down quick and smooth and leave you wanting a third. Because Frosty’s sells out of donuts so quickly, we are rarely in Brunswick or South Portland when they are open. Therefore, sometime last week, I casually wrote in an email to Shannon: “How about picking up some donuts from Frosty’s when we come down?” And Shannon, being a very nice daughter, agreed to do so.

The day was beautiful, and the trip flew by as donuts, donuts, donuts called to me. We always go to SoPo the back way, through Monmouth, Sabattus, Lisbon, Durham, and Freeport. The road twisted and turned, and lawns and fields were a bright, spring green. With daffodils and forsythia in bloom, Portland was a blaze of yellow, and finally we made it to Shannon and Mike’s home, where a box of Frosty’s donuts was waiting for us.

“Do you want some iced tea?” Shannon asked. “I just brewed it.”

Perfect.

Then we settled in her dining room for donuts and iced tea. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a Frosty’s donut—probably 5 years—but they are just as good as I remembered. There are new owners since I last went to Frosty’s, but they sure have mastered the art of making donuts, which is not that easy. Clif and I have made donuts at home, and we have had very mixed results, with more than our share of “lead sinkas,” as we Mainers put it.

“Well,” I said to Clif on our way home. “Frosty donuts need to be a SoPo tradition. We’ll pay our fair share, of course.”

“Of course,” Clif agreed.

And as we usually only go to SoPo once a month or so, the donuts won’t be too much of an indulgence. Besides, there are so many wonderful parks and walks in the area that we can head out with the dogs as soon as we are finished and walk off those donuts.

A finest kind of day.

Well, it doesn’t exactly look like spring at the little house in the big woods, and I certainly wouldn’t say the backyard is at its beautiful best, but the snow is nearly gone. Spring is coming, and I’m itching for the mud to dry so that I can do some yard work, which somehow always seems so much better than indoor work. There’s just something about being outside. Soon, soon…

March in Maine is not the most beautiful time of year. The snow is heavy and gray, and there is so much mud that it sometimes seems as though it is going to pull you down to some dark, unknown kingdom. In fact, last year on a walk, I had to help a young boy get his boot out of the mud at the edge of his driveway. He couldn’t pull it out by himself, and while he hopped on one foot, trying to keep his stocking foot from touching the dirty ground, I pulled and pulled and with great effort yanked the boot from the mud.

However, I live in a pondtown, where there are so many lakes, streams, and ponds that it sometimes seems as though Winthrop is an island. And where there is water, there is beauty. Even in March.

This Sunday is Maine Maple Sunday, and as far as I am concerned, any day that celebrates maple syrup is a great day. This year, unlike last year, promises to be a good year for maple syrup—plenty of warm but not too warm days and cold nights. From Maine Public Broadcasting, I learned that Native Americans taught European settles how to boil sap and make syrup. Thank you, thank you, Native Americans! I had never given the origins of maple syrup much thought, but it makes sense that the Native Americans would have come up with the idea many, many years before the Europeans arrived.

On Maine Maple Sunday, Clif and I plan on doing our bit to celebrate this sweet substance. For breakfast, there will be either pancakes or French toast served with plenty of maple syrup. I’ll be making some homemade vanilla ice cream so that later in the day we can have ice cream with maple syrup and roasted walnuts for dessert. Best of all, in the afternoon, we’ll be meeting with our friends Chuck and Erma, who will be bringing some of their own maple syrup for us.

It promises to be a very sweet day.

Well, we finally made it to the Red Barn on Sunday. The $25 gift card that I won was absolutely screaming to be used, and use it we did, splurging on the Barn’s famous lobster BLT as well as an order of mixed seafood, homemade chips, and a whoopie pie to share. (Clif and I do have our limits, broad though they might be.) Adding 2 small drinks, the grand total came to $31, which seemed like a very decent price for all that luscious seafood.

The lobster BLT came on homemade whole wheat bread, which certainly jazzed up the whole sandwich. So much so, in fact, that I would be tempted to order a plain BLT on another visit. But what did I think about the lobster BLT? I liked it, but I didn’t love it, which was a little surprising when you consider how keen I am on lobster rolls and BLTs. Somehow, though, the strong, smokey taste of the bacon overpowered the sweet, subtle lobster. Now, if I had lobster on a regular basis, I think I might have enjoyed the combination a little more. But, for me, lobster is a treat, something that I only have very occasionally, and when I do have it, I really want to taste that lobster. I don’t want tomato sauce with it. I don’t want spices. I just want lobster. In the future, I will stick with a plain old lobster roll.

But it was fun to try the lobster BLT. And the chips and the mixed seafood—shrimp, scallops, fried clams, and fix—were their usual delectable selves.  For dessert, the whoopie pie was moist and chocolatey—everything a whoopie pie should be.

All in all, what a meal! We left feeling full, content, and happy, and ready to return on another cheat day.

Well, I got two of my wishes for Storm Nemo: We didn’t lose our power, and I didn’t catch Clif’s cold. (At least not yet.) My third wish wasn’t granted—I had hoped for 12 inches of snow or less, and we got about 20 inches—but you can’t have everything, and the wishes I did get were really the two most important ones.

But what a lot of work this storm was! First there was the getting ready and then came the big clean-up. Clif couldn’t help because of his broken wrist, so it was me against the elements yesterday, with Liam to bark his encouragement. I spent about three and a half hours moving snow, and thank goodness for the electric snow thrower Dee got us for Christmas. I still had to do a bit of shovelling, but mostly I used Little Green, as I’ve come to call the snow thrower.

After three and a half hours of moving snow, I was just plain pooped. How nice it was to come in for tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches that Clif had fixed and then settle in my cozy bed for a little nap. But my real reward for all that hard work was Clif’s homemade pancakes for supper. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Clif’s homemade pancakes are the best, so good that I’m seldom tempted to order pancakes when I go out for brunch. When I do, I’m always disappointed.

Although I got most of the clean-up done yesterday, I still have more to do today—probably an hour and a half or so. But the sun is shining, we have our power, I don’t have a cold, and the worst is behind me. The Red Barn is also calling—I have that $25 gift certificate. All in all, a good ending to the big storm.

In between cleaning the driveway and the yard, I did find time to take the following pictures:

Today the sky was a deep blue, and although the weather was brisk, it was pleasant being outside. But another one of those storms seems to be making its way toward the Northeast, and this one even has a name—Nemo. Therefore, I duly went to the supermarket—before the rush—to pick up a few things. I didn’t have to buy much. I make it a point to stockpile a fair amount of food, which means I usually have basic supplies on hand. (There is a difference between stockpiling and hoarding, and perhaps in another post I’ll write about the difference between the two.)

I hauled quite a bit of wood for the furnace, and this included sledgehammering some of the bottom layer of frozen wood stuck in the ground. While I did get a wheelbarrow full of wood from my sledgehammering, I must admit that I’m not very good at it. Many of my attempts amounted to nothing more than a few flying splinters of wood, with the log remaining frozen firmly in place. Lastly, using a little handsaw, I sawed some fallen branches I had hauled in from the woods, and got a nice bucket of small logs for my efforts. I am amazing myself with all the things I am learning to do now that my husband, Clif, with his broken wrist, can’t do heavy chores anymore. By the time summer comes, I’ll have arms and legs of steel.

The electric snow-thrower Dee bought us for Christmas is ready, and we even have a 100-foot cord that will allow me to reach the end of the driveway. Downstairs, there are two big buckets of water for the toilet should the power go out, and tonight I’ll be filling my stock pans with water to set on the stove. (If the power does go out, then I’ll be doing a lot of scooping and shovelling.)

But the most important thing I did was to make homemade granola cookies. I figured I needed something to keep my strength up as I shovelled, snow-blowed, and hauled more wood in. Yesterday, I made a big batch of nutty, crunchy granola, using a Mark Bittman recipe, and what should pop into my mind but granola cookies, which I have never made. I had a basic idea of how it should be done—essentially chocolate chip cookies with granola replacing a fair amount of the flour. When I went online to look for a recipe, I discovered that my hunch was right, and I decided to go with this recipe from allrecipes.com. You might call these cookies glorified oatmeal cookies, but the emphasis should be on “glorified.” My nutty, crunchy, coconutty granola gives these cookies a special twist, and I think they just might be my new favorite cookie, beating out plain chocolate chip cookies and gingersnaps. (This last statement is tantamount to heresy in my house, but I like these granola cookies so much that I’m not recanting.)

So come on, Storm Nemo, we’re ready for you. If the gods are smiling on us, we won’t lose our power, I won’t catch Clif’s cold—so far, so good—and we won’t get more than a foot of snow.

One thing is certain, we won’t be going to the Red Barn tomorrow night for supper. That will have to wait until the storm has passed. In the meantime, I can console myself with a granola cookie or two. I’ll have earned them.

The title of this post says it all! On Monday, I won a $25 gift certificate to one of my favorite places to eat—The Red Barn in Augusta, Maine. (I put my Good Eater business card in a bowl for their monthly drawing.) I’ve written about the Red Barn before, about how their seafood and chicken are so good and so fresh and about how the employees are actually paid a living wage. The employees, in turn, are friendly, cheerful, and efficient, which is not always the case with those who work in service-sector jobs. Being paid a decent wage really affects morale, and employees that feel valued give better service. It’s as simple as that. In addition, Laura Benedict, the owner, frequently makes the Red Barn available for fundraisers for area charities and organizations.

Although you can get a lobster roll or grilled fish or chicken sandwiches at the Red Barn, they specialize in fried chicken and seafood, and it is my restaurant of choice for my weekly treat day, where I let myself eat as much as I want without worry of calories. Sometimes I get fried chicken, other times it might be shrimp, but I always order a side of their crisp homemade chips. And to guild the lily, Clif and I often split a homemade whoopie pie for dessert.

Then there are the prices—$10.95 for a lobster roll, $8.75 for a pint of chicken, and $12.25 for a pint of shrimp. I have become so spoiled by the Red Barn’s prices and the quality of their food that I can hardly bring myself to order seafood anywhere else.

Yesterday, I went to the Barn to pick up my gift certificate. The smell of fried seafood, chicken, and chips was so enticing that I could barely restrain myself from ordering right then and there. But I did. Clif has a cold and quite rightly didn’t want to eat out last night. Also, my cheat day is on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday, and while I could have ordered one of their grilled sandwiches, I had something a little richer in mind. So using all my self restraint, I collected my gift certificate, and as I tucked it into my pocketbook, I glumly reflected on our supper that night—spicy lentils over rice. Now, lentils are very good in their own way, but they certainly can’t compete with the Red Barn’s food. I hurried out the door and didn’t look back.

“Friday,” I said to a sniffling Clif as I picked him up from work—his broken wrist still prevents him from driving. “If the weather and our health allow, we’ll go out to eat on Friday, which, after all, is the start of the weekend.”

Nodding, Clif blew his nose and agreed that by Friday, he should be ready for a meal at the Red Barn.

So until then, I will be daydreaming, at odd moments, about our Friday meal at the Red Barn. I’ll be getting something rather over-the-top, something I’ve never ordered before—a lobster BLT. (Susan Poulin, are you reading this? I know you’re as wild about bacon as I am.) How will lobster go with bacon? I have no idea. Stay tuned, and I’ll let you know.