Despite my obsession with food—0h, yes, it’s an obsession, which makes dieting very difficult—when I go to a food event, I also like to get a sense of the people behind the food. After all, even simple vegetables come to us as the result of someone’s labor, and this is even more true with bread and pastries, which involve the extra steps of grinding, preparing, and baking. It is my feeling that we should always be aware of the people who are involved with our food, whether they are local farmers or migrant workers toiling in the heat in far away places such as California.

At the Bread Fair last Saturday in Skowhegan, I met many interesting people and vendors, and in this post I’m going to write about a couple of them who really stood out.

First, there was Lindsey Lewis from Snowy Hill Farm in Washington, Maine. Lindsey is a baker, and I had one of her chocolate croissants, which I duly, if grudgingly, shared with my husband, Clif. The croissant was very buttery, just as it should be, with a better than average chocolate filling. Now, I am getting to the age when anyone under 30 looks young to me—sometimes like a teenager. When I first met Lindsey, my impression of her was that she was a teenager, but she was so self-possessed and the croissant was so good I figured that it must be my old eyes and that Lindsey was really in her twenties. As it turns out, Lindsey is indeed young—she’s 15  years old—and I found out she’s been baking since she was 9.

“My mother and grandmother like to bake, and I learned from them,” Lindsey said.

“Do you plan to bake professionally someday?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lindsey answered. “I’d like to work in Rockland or Portland.”

When you come from Washington, Maine—population 1,300—going to Rockland or Portland is the equivalent of going to the big city.

I admire anybody who is handy and who can do something really well, but I especially love it when a person is young and filled with pizazz and is doing something out of the ordinary for his or her age group. Lindsey can take her place with our own Farmer Kev, who started farming when he was 17. Good luck to both of them.

Equally as impressive but in a different way was Matthew DuBois of The Bankery in Skowhegan, Maine. Matthew also looked young to me, as well as very smart in his white chef’s jacket. However, he did not look like a teenager, and when I visited The Bankery’s website, I learned that Matthew graduated from the Connecticut Culinary Institute. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a chance to talk with Matthew. There were too many people clamoring around The Bankery’s table. And for good reason. On The Bankery’s website, they describe themselves as “a traditional, from-scratch bakery. We use only high quality, all natural ingredients and specialize in wedding cakes, occasion cakes, and fine baked goods including breads, pies, and pastries.” They aren’t kidding. We had one of their cream horns, and it was one of the best we have ever had, with an incredibly flaky pastry and a filling that was a step above the usual filling used in cream horns.

“Did you use almond extract in that filling?” I asked Matthew.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling. “We use it in a lot of our cream fillings and toppings.”

I’m not sure whether I should be grateful or sorry that Skowhegan is about an hour north of here and too far for regular trips to The Bankery. Nevertheless, I will be scheming for reasons to go to Skowhegan. The Bankery serves soups, quiches, and croissants with various savory fillings, so a lunch outing is a real possibility, with dessert following, of course.

In September, there will be a grand opening of the Somerset Grist Mill, in Skowhegan. Clif and I hope to go, and if we do, you can bet we’ll be checking out The Bankery as well.

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.

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.

Last weekend was filled with friends and family, and I’m going to start with Sunday first because it was Father’s Day. (In the next post I’ll write about our Saturday get together and describe a luscious but oh-so-simple drink concocted by our friend Chuck.)

When the weather is fine on Father’s Day, my husband, Clif, always wants to head to Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park in Freeport for a hike and a picnic. Sunday’s weather couldn’t have been nicer, and so to Freeport we headed, where we met our daughter Shannon and her husband, Mike.

Wolfe’s Neck is a little gem of a park on the edge of a town that is dominated by a rather ugly cluster of chain stores. The park almost redeems this mess, and in Wolfe’s Neck there are trails that go by water and through woods. There is an osprey nest on a nearby island, and even without binoculars, the birds are visible. In late spring, the woods are abloom with lady slippers, and the smells of spicy evergreens and salt water are everywhere.

But before admiring the ospreys and walking the trials, we had to fortify ourselves with a little cheese and cracker snack that we had on one of the many picnic tables at the park. We also brought chocolate for dessert.

Thus fortified, off we went, and we got lucky with the ospreys. An enthusiastic young woman from one of the environmental agencies—can’t remember which one—was there with a high-powered telescope aimed right at the nest. Not only did we see the mother osprey, but we also saw her babies, their little heads just visible above the rim of the massive stick nest.

For two hours or so, we walked on the trails, and by then we were ready for the next part of Father’s Day, a meal of fried seafood at Day’s Take-Out on Route 1 in Yarmouth. Day’s Take-Out is small and white, the kind of nondescript place you would drive past if you didn’t know any better. In fact, not knowing any better, Clif and I have driven past it scores of time. But Shannon and Mike have been raving about the fried clams for quite a while, and Father’s Day seemed like the ideal day to check out those clams.

As the name suggests, Day’s is a take-out, and while there are a number of picnic tables on a grassy point overlooking a lovely marsh, there is no inside seating. Clif and I ordered a pint of clams and a large order of fries, and let’s just say that we will not be driving past Day’s Take-Out anymore. The fries were hand-cut, the lightly-breaded clams were fresh and just the right size, not too big and not too small. Both were fried to perfection, crispy but not overcooked. The prices were reasonable—under $30 for the clams and fries—and we’ll be heading back to Day’s sometime soon. In fact, the food is so good that it gets the “Good Eater Seal of Approval.” (Chuck, whom I mentioned above, has recommended that I start a Good Eater Seal of Approval list, and so I have, with the first being Day’s Take-Out.)

After those delectable clams and fries, we went to Mike and Shannon’s apartment in South Portland, where we gilded the lily and had strawberry shortcake made with fresh Maine strawberries from Cape Elizabeth.

All I can say is, what a day!

For the past 35 years, it has always gone this way: I struggle with losing weight, with controlling my rather glutinous appetite. I diet, I exercise, I eat more fruit than a spider monkey, and I am a fiend when it comes to portion control. And lo and behold, I lose weight. It comes off slowly, but it comes off, and as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, over the past year I’ve lost 50 pounds.

But whenever I diet, there is someone else who loses weight right along with me, and that someone is my husband, Clif. On my current diet, Clif has lost weight with a vengeance, and when he recently weighed himself, he observed that his weight is the lowest that it’s been in a long, long time.

Now, in terms of absolutes, I am pleased for him. While Clif has never been hugely overweight, the way I have been, he has carried, from time to time, an extra 10 or 15 pounds that he’d rather not have, and it is good for him to lose this weight.

However, I must admit that it irritates me, just a tiny, teensy bit—all right, maybe a little more—that he loses this weight without the struggle I go through when I lose weight. With him, it just seems to come off.

“I’ve been careful,” he protests when I confront him with this unfair aspect of life.

“Yeah, right,” I reply. “You carefully go back for seconds almost every night at supper.”

“I don’t take that much.” Now there is a decided whine to his voice.

“And what about that bowl of peanuts you get every night?”

“It’s a small bowl. And besides, it’s better than having chips.”

I can’t argue with this logic. Nevertheless, it is galling to watch him eat more than I do and still lose weight. I suppose I have to lump the fact that men just tend to have faster metabolisms than women do. But, still.

At this point, it is time to stop my own whining and to put in a plug for the way we eat, which is essentially a plant-based Mediterranean diet with a bit of fish once or twice a week. We rarely have meat, and when we do, it is usually mixed in with the meal rather than served as the main event. We use lots of olive oil.

Just as important, we go biking almost every night and weekend, when the weather and the schedule allow.

And voilà! Off comes the weight. More easily for some us than for others, but off it comes, just the same, which is a very good thing.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Earth Day—Sunday, April 22—was my daughter Shannon’s birthday, and a while ago, I asked her if she and her husband, Mike, would like to spend that weekend with us for a little extended birthday celebration. The answer? Yes, indeed, they would like that very much.

So here was the itinerary. On Saturday, we went to the Red Barn in Augusta for some of their delectable seafood and fried chicken. I have often extolled the virtues of the Red Barn—the quality of their food, their prices, and their service. (A lobster roll, chock full of claw and tail meat, is $11.95.) The Red Barn also pays their help a decent wage, a rarity in the restaurant/retail world. Now, their food definitely falls into the treat category, but a healthy diet can include a once a week treat. I am a testament to this regime. (Over the past year, with a once a week treat day, I have lost 50 pounds.)

At the Red Barn, Shannon and I had lobster rolls, my husband, Clif, had mixed seafood, and Mike had chicken. Oh, how good it all was. After this feast, we headed to Waterville, to Railroad Square Cinema, to see Coriolanus, with Ralph Fiennes acting the lead role and also directing. While this fierce, intense movie was neither fun nor pleasant, it was certainly well done and worth seeing. I would count it as one of the best movie adaptations of a Shakespeare play. But be warned! The movie is bloody and violent.

On Sunday—Earth Day and Shannon’s birthday—we had a waffle brunch. In my humble opinion, Clif makes some of the best waffles in central Maine, and we had them with Kate’s Butter and Mike Smith’s maple syrup. A real Maine breakfast, as we also had bacon from Wholesome Holmstead. After brunch, we went on a walk, played a movie trivia game, and then settled in for the main event—fish on rice drizzled with a ginger-garlic marinade and baked in a foil packet in the oven. Unfortunately, the picture does not do justice to this elegant but easy meal. This fish dish is a Moosewood recipe, and it is one of our favorite celebratory meals. Clif and Mike had haddock, and Shannon and I had salmon.

Presents followed as well as cake and ice cream. All too soon the weekend was over, and it was time for Mike and Shannon to go back to South Portland.

It’s funny how the passage of time really does seem relative. When life or events are boring or, worse yet, hard, the minutes and hours just drag. However, when a weekend is filled with fun events, the time seems to rush by faster than it should.

That was the case with this weekend, a delight from beginning to end.

Happy birthday, Shannon!