Our vacation is over, and what a good one it was. We went to two movies—the excellent Beasts of the Southern Wild and the very good Safety Not Guaranteed. We went to the Theater at Monmouth and saw 4 plays in 3 days, and one of the plays—The Glass Menagerie—was so good that I think it’s safe to borrow a phrase—“alchemy in the theater”—from the late great Canadian writer Robertson Davies and apply that phrase to The Glass Menagerie. On the night we went, by the devastating yet poetic end, the audience was completely quiet. No coughing, no shifting, no unwrapping of paper. Just silence. As of today—August 14th—there are two more productions of The Glass Menagerie at the Theater at Monmouth. One is on Wednesday, August 15th at 1:00 P.M., and the other is on Saturday, August 18th at 7:30 P.M. I encourage readers who are within driving distance to come to Monmouth and see this terrific production.

Our daughter Dee, from New York, was here for the week, and what she wanted to eat were fresh vegetables, especially corn. In August, Maine gardens are pretty much at their zenith, and we had new little red potatoes, boiled; corn on the cob; grilled zucchini, summer squash, and broccoli; raw carrots and tomatoes; cantaloupe. All of this came from Maine, as well as the eggs we had for breakfast and the syrup we had on our waffles and French toast.

Midweek, our friends Judy and Paul Johnson invited us over for dinner, where there was more corn on the cob as well as grilled chicken with Moorish spices and a quinoa and kale salad. The evening was fine and we ate outdoors, and when the meal was over, Judy’s two young granddaughters ran and played in the fields surrounding the house.

Finally, we had a gathering of film buff friends over on Saturday for a pasta dinner with Clif’s famous grilled bread. For dessert there was homemade ice cream pie. I want to note that Shannon’s sauce with meat balls is well on its way to becoming famous and is certainly one of her specialties. She got the recipe from Cook’s, so I can’t share it, but it’s so good that Clif made sure we helped ourselves to some of the leftovers.

Dee left on Sunday, and after all the hubbub of the week, Clif and I felt letdown.

“Let’s go to the Red Barn,” I suggested, “for an end of vacation splurge.”

Clif didn’t argue, and although the day was overcast, we were able to eat outside. I had a lobster roll, Clif had fried chicken, and we both had a child-size soft-serve ice-cream cone for dessert. As we ate, we talked about our vacation—in reality a “staycation.”

“What did you enjoy the most?” I asked Clif.

“All of it,” he said. “I wish we could have had another week. One is not really enough.”

I couldn’t argue. And what better place to be in August than in Maine?

Our daughter Dee is visiting from New York, and we have a busy week planned: Four plays in 3 days at the Theater at Monmouth; a movie—Beasts of the Southern Wild—at Railroad Square Cinema; a gathering of friends on the weekend; meals on the patio; homemade chocolate chip cookies; and homemade ice cream pie. With its blend of the rural and the cultural, central Maine is a great place to be in August, when the days are usually hot but dry and the nights are cool.

Anyway, I’ll more or less be on vacation until next Monday.

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND

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:

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.

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.

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 Saturday, we invited some friends over for a little “greens” party, which featured dishes made with the lettuce, spinach, and other leafy vegetables so abundant in Maine right now. We invited Chuck and Erma as well as Steve and Margy, who brought a delightful young man named Dareen—I’m not sure if I’m spelling it right—a student from the Ivory Coast.

This gathering followed the course of all our summer gatherings when the weather is nice. We started with appetizers on the patio, at around 2:30 P.M., and we finished with dessert, inside to escape the mosquitoes, at about 7:00 P.M.. My husband, Clif, and I take our cues from the French and the Italians, who love to host long, leisurely meals with friends.

Let’s face it. We live in a rushed, hectic world where everyone is pretty much on screech most of the time. If people aren’t working, they are doing chores around the house. If they aren’t doing chores, they are checking their emails and Facebook. Or sending instant messages. Or twittering. Or talking on their cell phones. At our gatherings, all those things are set aside for several hours so that people can eat, relax, and socialize. Basic human stuff that too often gets lost in busy schedules.

Clif served his grilled bread, which is always a hit, and the greens, made into salads and spinach pie (spanakopita), were also pretty tasty. But the real star of the gathering was a drink Chuck made that was so simple and delicious that we were all amazed we had never had it anywhere else or had thought to make it ourselves.

Here’s is what Chuck did: Using his own maple syrup, he poured about 1/4 of cup of it in a large glass. He added sparkling water and ice and stirred everything up until the drink had a lovely amber hue. And that’s it. Except this drink is so unabashedly good—it’s like drinking essence of maple—that we all raved and marveled for quite a while.

Margy said, “I’ve never had anything like this, and I’ve never seen anything like this in a store.”

“You could start a business,” Steve added, and Chuck smiled modestly. “But what would we call the drink?”

Several names were bandied about, but when “Maple Revolution” came up, everyone agreed this was a splendid name. Then, for the title of this piece, I added “Uncle Chuck’s,” and Clif thinks that’s a fine addition to go with “Maple Revolution.” He can visualize a logo where Chuck, somewhat defiantly, raises a glass of Maple Revolution. Perhaps there could even be the tag lines: “It’s time for a maple revolution. It’s sweet, it’s natural, and it comes from trees.”

So, readers, at your next gathering, make your own Maple Revolution. You will need three things—real maple syrup, sparkling water, and ice. I suggested using 1/4 cup of maple syrup, but this amount can be fiddled with according to taste. Once the drink is made, sit on your deck, patio, or lawn, and make a toast to summer and all good things that come from the earth.