In the Diner’s Journal blog in the New York Times, Sam Sifton came up with an apt description of the contrarian streak that lurks deep in the hearts of men and women, especially those who are obsessed with food. He wrote about the “usual backlash laws,” in reference to his three-star review of Marea, an “elegant Italianate restaurant Chris Cannon and Michael White opened this spring” in New York City. With tongue somewhat in cheek, Sifton suggested that even though readers who have eaten at Marea “hail its food and drink” and readers who haven’t “wonder what the fuss is about,” the reverse could soon be true. Thus the usual backlash laws.

Those backlash laws can strike unexpectedly, and indeed the term foodie, once used to describe those with a strapping appetite, has now, in some circles, come to have a negative, cliquish connotation, more appropriate for young teens than for adults. So it should come as no surprise that farmers’ markets and local food have also come under the crosshairs, so to speak, of the backlash movement.

Yet I was surprised. How could anyone find fault with Farmer Kev in his small stall in Winthrop, Maine, selling garlic and zinnias and cabbages and the sweetest little squash this side of the Mississippi? Or with any of the other small-time farmers in this state and across the country? These farmers work hard and long and often just barely break even, while contending with bad weather and pests that constantly threaten their crops. (This year, Farmer Kev lost all 250 of his tomato plants to blight.) How could we, the lucky public who reap the fresh, tasty benefits of this labor, have one harsh word to say about farmers’ markets?

Well, there are contrarians who are unable to make the best of anything, and James McWilliams, an historian at Texas State University, seems to be one of those people. In a recent column in the Times, McWilliams criticizes farmers’ markets, insisting they are only for the elite and are therefore not as benign as they might seem. McWilliams states, “[I]f there’s one thing you do not see at the farmers’ market, it’s socio-economic diversity…” In his opinion, the marginalized are even more marginalized because the food at farmers’ markets is too expensive for them, and the rich not only get to eat fresh, local food but also decide what kind of food is offered in a community. This, in turn, trickles down to undermine the middlemen, who benefit from the current system. Without giving any statistics, McWilliams seems to be suggesting that the big box grocery stores are laying off employees because the small-time farmers have so cut into their profits.

How to respond to this? Food justice is a subject dear to my heart, and it is my belief that all people, no exceptions made, deserve nutritious, delicious food. I could therefore write about this subject for many, many pages, and indeed I have for Wolf Moon Journal. But this is a food blog, and accordingly I will keep my comments relatively brief. Or at least try to.

First, in all fairness, it must be noted that there are, in fact, two food Americas—one for the affluent and one for the poor. Poor neighborhoods in inner cities are notorious for having food deserts, places with an abundance of fast food, convenience stores, and liquor stores, but nary a big box grocery store. Farmers’ markets hardly even come into this equation, and what residents of these food deserts long for are honest-to-God grocery stores that offer a variety of food.

Second, it must also be noted that poor people do struggle to feed their families, and they often don’t have enough money to buy good food. Processed food is frequently cheaper and goes further. In addition, much advertising money is spent promoting this food, and only those with the strongest willpower can resist the pull of advertising. Heck, I’m sometimes tempted by those chip and dip ads, and occasionally chips make their way into our house.

Now the counter arguments. How can McWilliams tell the socio-economic status of those who go to farmers’ markets? Is McWilliams so clever that he can tell just by looking at a person what his or her annual income is? Perhaps where he shops, people have stamps on their foreheads, R for the rich and P for the poor. Or maybe the clientele comes to the farmers’ markets in fur coats. I’m being facetious, of course, but I would suggest that gauging a person’s income level is tricky at best, and McWilliams should be careful when passing judgment.

Next comes the question, are farmers’ markets really only affordable to affluent customers? In my experience, the answer is sometimes. When it comes to meat, cheese, jam, and eggs, the prices are frequently higher than they would be at a big box store. (But remember, poor neighborhoods often don’t have big box stores.) However, when it comes to vegetables, the prices at farmers’ markets are usually very competitive. Consider what I bought recently at our local vegetable stand, which will soon be closing for the season. (I know. A vegetable stand is not exactly a farmers’ market, but it’s pretty close. It offers many of the same things for about the same price, albeit under one tiny roof, and the emphasis is on fresh and local.) I bought ten pounds of potatoes, four peppers, two heads of broccoli, carrots, two bunches of lettuce, and one butternut squash for the outrageous price of $14. That’s a lot of food for $14, and all of the food was local.

Finally, all of this discussion about the elitism of farmers’ markets manages to overlook an essential but “inconvenient truth.” That is, the underlying reason for much of the poverty in the United States. The simple fact of the matter is that many of the jobs in this country just don’t pay people enough money for them to easily support themselves, to buy good food. Let me put it another way. The problem isn’t with the cost of vegetables at the farmers’ market. The problem is with low-wage jobs. The man who pumps your gas, the woman who checks out your groceries, the greeter at Walmart—in short, many, many working people—don’t make a living wage. They work for $7 or $8 an hour. Some lucky clerks get $10, but that is still not enough to live comfortably, especially when you consider many of these jobs don’t provide health insurance, and affordable housing is often difficult to find.

Pay people a living wage. Provide affordable health care and housing for all. Then, this discussion about the elitism of farmers’ markets becomes completely irrelevant. But there. It’s much easier to point the finger at farmers rather than reflect on how we, as a society, exploit the labor of poor people. In the end, perhaps the contrarian view is more convenient, more comfortable. One thing is certain; it sure illustrates the dangers of backlash.

Last night, I went to D. R. Struck Landscape Nursery again, this time for “A Ladies Night Out.” Nowadays, it seems, I am almost always ready for a night out, especially one that features wine tasting and samples of various dips and sauces. The event was held in Struck’s large retail store, and there were goodies galore as well as a woman giving massages and another woman playing the keyboard and singing.  

The wine tasting was set up on a counter at the back of the store, and The Lighthouse Wine and Seafood Market, just down the road in Manchester, supplied the wine. One of the owners, Bridget Palmer, was there to pour and give advice, and she was aided by Corinna Rodrigue. There were six wines to taste—three whites, one red, and two dessert wines. 

Allow me a slight digression. I am currently reading a book called Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, which my friend Roger Carpentter encouraged me to read, and he even let me borrow his copy. The book is about how various nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists, using creativity and intuition, have arrived at various truths about the brain, which have later been verified by scientists. As luck would have it, the wine tasting at Struck’s coincided with the chapter I was reading about Auguste Escoffier, the great French chef who wrote Guide Culinaire and discovered that we have a fifth taste, which has become known as umami. I’ll save the subject of umami for another posting because what is relevant to this piece are Lehrer’s observations about taste in general, especially when it comes to wine. It seems that with humans, there is great variability with taste and smell. What tastes good to one person does not necessarily taste as good to another person. Lehrer writes, “Science has long known that our sensitivity to certain smells and tastes varies as much as 1,000 percent between individuals. On a cellular level, this is because the human olfactory cortex, the part of the brain that interprets information from the tongue and nose, is extremely plastic, free to arrange itself around the content of our individual experiences. Long after our other senses have settled down, our sense of taste and smell remain in total neural flux.” 

The wine tasting gave firm proof of the variability of taste. Judy, a neighbor of mine, was also there, and we sampled wines together. Now, there were only three whites to choose from, but we each preferred a different one. She went with Gazela Vinho Verde, a wine that was sweet to her but slightly bitter to me. My choice was Austrian Pepper, which I thought had a smooth, fresh taste and none of the astringency of the Gazelo Vinho Verde. Judy’s response? It wasn’t sweet enough. 

More inconsistencies. As a rule, I am not very fond of sweet wines, but I have a weakness for dessert wines. Go figure. And while one of the dessert wines (B. Nektar Pyment) at the tasting remind me of cough syrup, I went gaga over Chocovine—yes, a chocolate wine. From Holland. It was so smooth, so good. A little like Bailey’s Irish Cream, and if someone offered me a glass right now, I wouldn’t refuse. 

Being weak when it comes to food and wine, I ordered a bottle of the Austrian Pepper and, of course, one of the Chocovine. After all, the holidays are coming, and ’tis the season of good cheer. 

Two more observations. First, my daughter Shannon came to the wine tasting, and her taste exactly matched mine. According to Jonah Lehrer, this is no surprise, as what we have grown up eating and drinking influences what we like. But those who like Ring Dings and Gallo wine can take heart. Taste is not fixed, and if we change what we eat and drink, our appreciation of what is good will also change. And second, the white wine that most of the women liked was neither the Gazela nor the Austrian Pepper. Instead, it was Working Girl White, a wine with an admittedly snappy name but for me, at least, with a taste that was too bitter. Obviously, other women didn’t agree. But I wonder, could the name have also influenced the choice? Lehrer states that labels do indeed matter, even with wine experts who should know better, and he cites an experiment where identical wine was served in two different glasses. Wine experts were told one glass was an expensive wine, and the other was a cheaper one. Guess which wine was chosen as the best wine? Hint: It wasn’t the so-called cheap wine.

All in all, last night’s wine tasting was as illuminating as it was fun, and best of all, I have two bottles of wine to look forward to drinking. With some help, of course.  There is a limit to how much good cheer I want at one time.

This morning, I heard the New York Times columnist Gail Collins on National Public Radio, where she was promoting her new book, When Everything Changed. The subtitle is The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, and this will give readers a pretty good idea about the subject of the book. On NPR, Collins spoke about how after World War II, a family was able to live a comfortable middle-class life on one income, a life that included a house, a car, vacations, and college for the children. This changed in the 1970s, when the economy could no longer support a middle-class lifestyle with only one salary. Women, in great numbers, began to work outside the home so that their families could continue to live the good life. (Of course, it must be noted that many women were itching to get out of the house, and for these women this was a golden opportunity.) 

Most women today expect that they will have careers as well as a family, and by and large this is a good thing. The days of the bored, trapped housewife, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, are over, and good riddance, too. Being trapped is never a good thing. Unfortunately, as Collins noted, our American society has not kept pace with the changes. From maternity and paternity leave to childcare to vacation time, the United States is far more parsimonious than most industrial countries. And what are the results? Well, women are no longer bored. Instead, they are stressed because what they now lack is time to be with their families, take care of the house, and, yes, cook. (Some headway has been made with getting men to pitch in and do their fair share around the house, but more progress could certainly be made on that front.) Fast food—from McDonalds to frozen pizza—is a temptation that most busy families succumb to at least some of the time. 

Recently, Michael Pollan wrote a piece about how America loves to watch cooking shows, but when it comes to actually cooking, not so much. Naturally, he disapproved. For a dissenting view, Matthew Yglesias, on the blog Think Progress, suggests that we have better things to do with our precious time than cook, activities such as “read a blog, download an MP3, get a movie from Netflix on Demand.” He’s tired of all the foodies and celebrity chefs hectoring the general public about the evils of fast food and the glories of cooking, which he seems to feel are overrated. 

So back and forth we go, ricocheting between cooking shows and really cooking; fast food and home cooked meals; watching a movie after work or cooking dinner. And amidst the ricocheting, two things are true: we Americans have too many demands on our time, and we have lots of media distraction. 

Yet despite the lack of time and the distractions, it seems to me that many people are cooking and are even enjoying it. Maybe these home cooks are more Mark Bittman than Julia Child, but some people, at least, are taking the time to prepare simple, nutritious, delicious meals. Are they are a majority or a minority? I really couldn’t say, but they certainly are a presence on blogs on the Internet, and in Maine, anyway, interest in cooking and food has probably never been greater. 

I’d like to end on an upbeat note. Now, I realize that my family probably has a greater interest in cooking and food than many families do, but here is how my daughter Shannon and I chose to spend Columbus Day, a day off for both of us—we made an apple pie together. We could have done any number of things with our time. We could have gone out to lunch. We could have gone to a movie. We could have gone shopping. These are all fun things to do, and I don’t look down on any of these activities. Instead, we chatted as we peeled apples and made a piecrust. As the pie baked, the kitchen was filled with the sweet smell of apples and cinnamon. When the pie was done, we made tea and had warm pie with ice cream. My husband, Clif, who had been working on outside projects, came in and joined us. 

Did we think this was a good use of our time? We certainly did. And the pie was pretty good, too.

Yesterday, Clif and I went to D. R. Struck Landscape Nursery in East Winthrop to witness an apple pie judging contest. Struck’s, as it is known locally, is an oasis of loveliness on Route 202, a very busy road. As its name suggests, Struck’s offers trees and perennials and garden ornaments, not only for landscape customers but to the general public as well. There is also a good-sized retail store with all kinds of temptations—food, garden gifts, snappy cocktail napkins, and other assorted goodies. Every fall, Struck’s has a fall festival, which includes an apple pie judging contest.

Now, anything involving food attracts A Good Eater’s attention, and I called Struck’s to see if Clif and I could photograph the event and feature it on the blog. Robin Struck, one of the owners, gave us permission to do so, and we learned that after the pie judging, slices of the competing pies would be available to the general public for $2 a slice, with proceeds going to the Winthrop Food Pantry. (Full disclosure: I volunteer at the food pantry, but I brought no preconceived notions to this event, only a stack of one-dollar bills and my prodigious appetite.)

In Maine, October can be a temperamental month, and the day before the event had been quite rainy. But the day of the fall festival was sunny and crisp with a bright blue sky. Robin had set up the pie judging event in a clearing of potted trees and trees with moss-covered root balls. The judging table was up front, and there were benches and chairs set up for the public. Between the cornstalk-decorated entrance posts and the bales of hay with red, yellow, and white mums, the little impromptu amphitheater looked pretty enough for a fall wedding.

The judges were State Representative Pat Flood; Carla Noyce, from White Flour Catering in Hallowell, Maine; and Dennis Price, from the Theater at Monmouth. All three brought a winning combination of eagerness and seriousness to the contest. As Dennis Price put it, “Anytime is a good time for pie.” Exactly. There were five pies to judge, and the criteria included aroma, presentation, tenderness of crust, and overall taste. Each criterion was to be rated on a scale of one to five, with five being the ultimate score. There was, of course, a cup of water for each judge so that they could cleanse their palates.

At this point, pie enthusiasts might be wondering why anyone would need to cleanse the luscious taste of pie from the palate. As someone who has lately made it her mission to go to events and sample as much food as possible, I can tell you from experience that it doesn’t take the palate long to be overwhelmed by varied and various tastes. This in turn affects how the food is perceived, and food tasted last will be at a decided disadvantage. There is no help for this, but it is something to be aware of.

The tasting and judging ensued, with Robin Struck cutting and serving the pies. Each pie had its own distinctive look. One had elegant pie-dough leaves decorating the top; another had little pie-dough apples. Comments were made, pies were considered, and the judges marked their assessments on slips of paper, one for each pie. As Robin tallied the scores, there was much discussion of the merits of the various pies. First place went to Chase Robbins, second place to Billian Dolby, and third to Morgan Beland. And, interestingly enough, Chase Robbins’s pie was the first pie tasted.

When the judging was over, and the pies were brought onto a counter in the retail store, it was time for Clif and I to do our own judging. Readers, I must admit that Clif and I tasted each pie. We couldn’t resist. However, there are two items I want to present in self-defense. One, we had extremely small pieces, which we shared. Two, we paid the full price anyway, even though we took half slices. After all, the money was going to a good cause.

Our conclusions? Clif agreed with the judges, and Chase Robbins got his vote. I liked Chase’s pie, but it was a bit too tart for me. Some like it sweet, which is why Morgan Beland’s pie, the third-place winner, got my vote. Well, that’s how it goes sometimes. Taste is subjective, and most of us can’t help but have a preference for our own.

Now that this event is over, I have apple pie on my mind, and I know it won’t be long before I’ll be making one of my own. Apple pies are a sweet fall ritual, Not only do they please the taste buds, but they also fill the house with a wonderful aroma.

I am Franco-American, and as far as I know, all of my forbears, maternal and paternal, came from France, settled in Canada, and gradually made their way to Maine, either to farm or to work in the factories. My story is not unusual, and indeed Franco-Americans are one of the largest ethnic groups in Maine, comprising about 30 percent of the population. However, because those quiet and reserved Yankees are more dominant than they appear, they so successfully stirred Franco-Americans into the Maine melting pot that there is very little left of our culture. Indeed most people from away are shocked to learn how many Franco-Americans live in Maine.

But one Franco-American tradition has survived the Yankee meltdown, and that is tourtière, a meat pie—sometimes savory, sometimes sweet—that is traditionally served at Christmas but is available year round in many supermarkets in Maine. The Encyclopedia Britannica calls tourtière one of Canada’s national dishes. The origin of the word goes back to France, where it was a baking pan, originally with legs to set over a fire, and it was used to make a “tourte.” Gradually, the term came to mean the pie as well as the utensil, and when the French settled in Canada, they brought tourtière with them. Then, in turn, tourtière came with the French Canadians when they immigrated to Maine and to other New England states.

My mother often told stories of her extended Franco-American family, in Skowhegan, Maine, and how on Christmas Eve they would go to Midnight Mass, come home, open presents, and eat tourtière pie. By my estimate, they would be eating this rich, heavy dish at about 3:00 A.M., and I can only marvel at my relatives’ digestive fortitude. Our present-day family is made of much weaker stuff, and we eat tourtière on Christmas day, well before bedtime.

My mother, who was the maker of the Christmas tourtière, died last May. I am now the matriarch of the family, and making tourtière has become my responsibility. Last Christmas was the first time I had ever made tourtière by myself, and I was more than a little nervous, even though I like to make pies. Would mine be as good as Mom’s? After many anxious moments and a couple of trial runs using her recipe, I can proudly say that my tourtière passed the family taste test and was proclaimed a success. Phew! I felt the same relief that Mrs. Cratchit, from A Christmas Carol, felt when her husband tasted the Christmas pudding and gave it his unqualified approval.

Tourtière is essentially simmered meat enclosed in a two-crust pie. There are many, many ways of making it, and among Franco-Americans there is a hot debate about what constitutes a real tourtière, but my family has used a combination of ground pork and ground beef, spiced with thyme, sage, and onion, and then thickened with mashed potatoes. Not exactly a healthy dish, especially the ground beef, which over the past year in particular has gained a bad reputation for increasing the risk of both cancer and heart attacks. Would it be possible, I wondered, to make a healthier tourtière, one that used ground turkey rather than ground pork and beef? The main question, naturally, is what would it taste like?

I therefore decided to make two tourtières—one the usual way and the other with ground turkey. We have two friends, Bob and Kate Johnson, who are as keen about such foodie folderol as I am. They live in New Hampshire, about a two-hour drive from here, and I invited them to come sample the two different tourtières and then give their opinions.

Other than the meat substitution, I made the two pies using identical ingredients—the same amount of water, the same amount of onion, the same amount of thyme and sage, and, perhaps most important, the same amount of simmering time—an hour and a half. Then using the same pie dough recipe, I tucked the meat fillings into the crusts. Since I am the sort of cook who repeatedly tastes what she makes, I had formed a strong opinion regarding the two fillings, but I didn’t say anything, not wanting to influence anyone’s conclusion.

The big day came. Clif, our daughter Shannon, Bob, Kate, and I gathered around the dinning room table. (Mike was home sick with a cold.) The whole house had the wonderful aroma of tourtière, and we were all ready to eat. We tasted one pie; then we tasted the other. Not surprisingly, the decision was unanimous—the rightful tourtière won the contest, and it wasn’t even a close call. While the usurping turkey tourtière garnered the faint praise of being “not bad,” it just couldn’t compare with the beef and pork tourtière. Somehow, the turkey tourtière was both too bland and too spicy. It was as though the thyme and the sage just sat on top of the meat, never really becoming integrated. The pork and beef tourtière, on the other hand, had a terrific taste, smooth and spicy, yet subtle, and Bob compared it to a Bolognese sauce, without the tomatoes, of course. And herein lies the possible explanation as to why the spices reacted so differently. It’s my guess that the pork and beef simmer and break down in a way that the turkey does not, and that this breakdown is what, in part, gives tourtière its special, distinctive taste, mellow and spicy at the same time. That’s my hypothesis, anyway. Readers, any thoughts about this?

An interesting note. We had leftovers, and a few days after the great tourtière test, Clif had a piece of the turkey tourtière. He observed, “This really isn’t too bad, especially when you don’t have the real one for comparison.”

That might be the case. However, Christmas comes but once a year, and for the other 364 days most of what we eat revolves around poultry, fish, and vegetables. The turkey tourtière doesn’t even begin to compare with the traditional one, and there will be no “healthy” substitutions this Christmas. Or on any other Christmas for that matter. For us, it will be tourtière with ground pork and beef.

This morning, around 9:00 A.M., my friend Claire called and asked me if I would like to go to Slates Restaurant in Hallowell for lunch today. “There’s someone I would like you to meet. Her name is Sybil Baker. She goes to my church, but she’s lived in New York, and she’s acted in theater.” Banishing the list of chores that danced in my mind’s eye, I said, “I’d love to.” After all, why let the chores, which fortunately were without immediate deadlines, get in the way of meeting someone new and eating at one of my favorite restaurants in central Maine? 

Now, it must be said that although quaint and Maine are often paired, central Maine is seldom included in that mix. Although the area has lakes, hills, farms, orchards, and woods, central Maine also has a string of mill towns, gritty and edgy, with abandoned factories, some of which have been pressed into alternative uses and some of which just stand empty and decaying, a sad reminder of better times. Accordingly, while we have some culinary bright spots, what we mostly have are chains with their mediocre food. 

Hallowell, however, has somehow pulled itself up from the abandoned mill doldrums to become, well, funky and arty, even. Running along the edge of the Kennebec River, the short main street, with its brick buildings, is a contradictory blend of old New England with a touch of European and a dash of freshness. Hence the funkiness. The city might be small—with a population of about 2,500, perhaps the smallest in the country—but it sure has a lot of restaurants, and Slates, which has been in Hallowell for at least twenty-five years, serenely presides over them all. Slates is the best place to eat in the area, and it seems to me that it has reigned supreme for most of its twenty-five years. 

I suppose the best description of  Slates’s food would be progressive American, with an eclectic borrowing of various cuisines—French, Mexican, Italian, to name a few—which are often combined. For example, today I had crêpes with roasted chicken in an Alfredo sauce made with enough garlic to send the crew from Twilight running for dear life. The crêpes were utterly delicious, and they came with bread and a salad. (Clif is on his own for dinner this evening. Fortunately, there are leftovers in the refrigerator.) I have eaten many meals at Slates, which also has a bakery that makes all its breads, pastas, desserts, and ice creams, and their croissants are the only food I have been able to find fault with, soft and chewy rather than flaky. I have learned to avoid them. 

But who needs croissants when you can have such splendid crêpes? And the company was as good as the food. Sybil Baker is one of those astonishingly vital elders who makes growing old look fun. In her younger days, she had an interesting life, working in theater, television, and newspaper, and she continues to have an interesting life—traveling, writing, and, of course, eating. Sybil has a lively mind and a keen sense of humor, and when the meal was over, we decided we all must meet again in the near future. 

Naturally, the chores were still waiting for me when I got home—chores are like that—but I was pleased I had pushed them aside for a couple of hours. A very good decision that led to good food and good conversation, two of the greatest pleasures in life.

Correction: Sybill does not go to Claire’s church. They met through a mutual friend.

Yesterday was the kind of day that foodies dream of—a whole afternoon devoted to food, friends, and family. As I mentioned in a previous post, my friend Kate Johnson, my daughter Shannon, and I planned to meet in Portland for a belated birthday celebration for me. We all looked forward to spending the afternoon together, but we were also eager to try some of the places mentioned in a recent New York Times piece. Since I was the “birthday girl” I got to choose where we would go. 

Now, even though I’m a right-brained person and, as a rule, rather disorganized, when it comes to food, I am sharp and focused. I’ve learned the hard way, through some miserable meals, that eating out is too important to leave to chance. Using the Times piece as a guide, Clif helped me put together a little personal foodie trail map through Portland. We would start out at Paciarino, an Italian restaurant, make our way to Standard Baking Company. for dessert, and then proceed to the East End to visit Rabelais Books, Deans Sweets, and Micucci Grocery Co., which specializes in Italian food. (I’m sure readers will notice a decided preference for Italian food, which I must admit is one of my favorite cuisines.) 

We all met at Paciarino, a small, friendly place on Fore St. Their lunch menu is quite limited, and on the day we went, all the sauces were tomato based, and ravioli was prominently featured. So, I ordered ravioli with a meat sauce, and what a dish that turned out to be! My mouth waters as I remember it. Never have I tasted such smooth ravioli and such equally smooth tomato sauce. Really, if I had been by myself at home, I would have been tempted to lap my plate. As it was, I asked for more bread so I could sop up the rest of that wonderful, mellow sauce, lighter than I would have believed possible for a sauce made with tomatoes. Kate also had the ravioli, and she called the filling “delicate” and the meat sauce “savory” with “such depth.”  Shannon had an unfilled pasta—whose name escapes me—with some of the same sauce we had on the ravioli. The next day, Shannon would remark that she was still thinking about that pasta and sauce, remembering the taste. 

Paciarino also sells pasta and sauces to go, and for $13 I bought a package of Ravioli Milano as well as some of that smooth tomato sauce, this time enhanced by meatballs. I figured Clif deserved a treat as well, since he was working at home while I was munching my through Portland. The official name of the sauce is Sug O Di PolPettine. There was enough sauce and ravioli for two generous portions, and as Kate pointed out, this was a very affordable treat. “Not much more than a meal for two at McDonald’s,” Clif would say later. But oh, so much better, which proves that delicious food can also be affordable. 

After good wine and a good meal, we were all in a jolly mood, and  we headed to Standard Baking Company for dessert. The sun was shining and the weather was crisp but warm. A perfect day for dawdling and detours. Into a kitchen shop we went, to look longingly at expensive kitchenware, less expensive gadgets, and other cooking folderol to tempt a foodie. Then we wandered into Gelato Fiasco, at my insistence, to “sample” some of the finest, creamiest gelato made in Maine. Naturally, we did more than sample. Finally we arrived at Standard Baking Company for tea and pastries, a chocolate hazelnut torte for me, just as rich as it out to be. 

Now, at this point, I should have been “full as a tick,” as my father would have said. Kate and Shannon certainly were. But being a prodigious eater as well as a good one, I was ready for more, especially as we took a bit of a break by walking to the East End to Rabelais Books, a shop that specializes in food-related books. Here again, there were many temptations, and although the store is small, within a span of five minutes I saw about ten books I would have liked to add to my growing library of food literature and cookbooks. I settled on Far Flung and Well Fed by the late R. W. Apple Jr., whose work I have long admired. 

Next door to Rabelais Books is Dean’s Sweets, which sells dark chocolate truffles. Did I have one? Of course I did, a maple-filled one, a perfect little mouthful. 

Onward we went, to the astonishing Micucci Grocery Co., a good-sized store chock-a-block full of imported Italian food, some of it familiar and some of it quite exotic, at least to this central Maine eater. To dazzle and tempt the palate there were pastas, cheeses, olives, bread, canned tomatoes, and much, much more. I bought a wonderfully soft bread, made at the store, and a flaky orange pastry. The big squares of pizza were also tempting, but enough was enough, even for me. My plan is to return to Portland in the very near future, and start with Micucci, so that I can spend quite a lot of time there when my stomach is not so full. I’d love to start sampling some of the various imported food and perhaps even have a piece of the pizza. 

Even after the eating day we had, there are so many places in Portland we’ve yet to try: Two Fat Cats, Bresca, Evangeline, and The Front Room, to name a few. I wish them all well, and I hope they can make enough to thrive in this uncertain economy. 

At the end of this happy day, after I said goodbye to Kate and Shannon, I walked around the city for a little while, carrying my bags of goodies, things I had bought and presents from Kate, lovely placemats with autumn leaves and a banana bread with roasted pecans. (No, I was not too full to have some of this delicious bread when I got home that night. However, I did abstain from the ravioli and the sauce.) 

The autumn light was slanting between buildings old and new, on pavement and on cobblestones. Fallen leaves, mostly yellow, lay scattered between empty black café chairs and tables, which will soon be stored until next summer. Autumn in Maine, a lovely but melancholy time of year, a dazzling end to summer that with increasing each year feels all too short. What a comfort to think that none of the places we visited are seasonal, that they will be there through gray, austere November, through the deep cold of winter, to our fitful spring, and to the brief warmth of summer, and finally back to beautiful but melancholy autumn. Food to delight the palate through every season and to comfort us as well.

This might be October 2^nd—and a bright and beautiful sunny one at that—but to me it feels a bit like Christmas Day. For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading about all the great restaurants and shops in Portland, and today I’m actually going to this blessed foodie town to eat at some of the places featured in a recent New York Times article. I’ll be meeting my friend Kate Johnson and my daughter Shannon, and we’ll be munching our way down Fore and Commercial Streets, gradually making our way to the East End. We won’t be able to hit every good place, and I thank my lucky foodie stars that there are too many hot spots for that. But we will make a good start, knowing that we will have to return for more. I expect next time the two husbands and the fiancé will be in tow, but for today it will be a “girls” day out, a belated birthday celebration for me. (We had originally planned to do this in mid-September, but family matters called Kate to Pittsburgh.)

Oh, the anticipation! I had a light breakfast, and as soon as I’m done writing this, I’ll be on the exercise bike. To borrow a phrase from President Obama, the good eater is all fired up and ready to go.