Yesterday I made bread again. I had made two loaves of bread on Monday, but nonetheless we were nearly out of bread. No, my husband, Clif, and I did not go on a bread binge. I gave one loaf to our daughter Shannon, and the loaf we kept was down to one or two pieces, depending on thickness. Hence the need for more bread.

Last night, as I was discussing the bread situation with Clif, I said, “What is the point of making bread if you can’t give it away?”

“Exactly,” he said, and we both reflected on how this was a good metaphor for many things, for individuals, for towns, for counties, for states, for countries. Especially in a world with finite resources and an ever-growing population. In this country, we see two responses—the clenched hand that wants to hoard and the open hand that wants to share. I am convinced that the first response will lead to misery and that the second response is the one we should be aiming for.

Making bread and giving it away. I know. I’m getting philosophical here, with a decided tilt toward Buddhism. (However, I do want to point out that most religions, at their best, encourage giving and sharing.) What can I say? Having breast cancer has made me philosophical. But even before the cancer, I have been an advocate of cooking and sharing, and often gifts to family and friends revolve around something I have baked. I have done this for birthdays, for holidays, and for no reason at all other than I want to share what I’ve cooked.

Now, I don’t want readers to think I’m in the Mother Theresa category. I’m not. I’ve had my share of selfish moments and no doubt will continue to have them from time to time. But giving away bread as well as lemon-frosted shortbread, cinnamon pie knots, and peanut butter balls is good spiritual practice. It encourages generosity, both physical and spiritual.

Sandwich Bread
Adapted from a recipe from Sheila Lukins’s U.S.A. Cookbook

1 tablespoon of yeast
1 tablespoon of sugar
¼ cup of warm water
6 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1½ cup of milk, warmed to room temperature
4 cups of flour, plus a little more
2 teaspoons of salt

Since I buy bulk yeast and keep it in the refrigerator, the first step is to put a tablespoon in a small bowl and let it warm on the counter for an hour or so. After that, I combine the yeast, water, and sugar in the mixing bowl that goes with my little stand mixer, whisk them, and let the mixture get nice and fizzy. This will take anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes.

When the yeast mixture is fizzy, I melt the butter and let it cool. This only takes a few minutes. I put the milk in a glass measuring cup and microwave it for 40 seconds or so on high, until the milk registers 70ºF on a cooking thermometer. I add the cooled melted butter and the room-temperature milk to the yeast mixture and mix it thoroughly with my stand mixer with dough hooks. This could, of course, be done by hand.

Next comes the flour, the tricky part. I put the two teaspoons of salt with the flour and ever so slowly and in very small increments, I add it to the yeast/milk/butter mixture. The bowl spins, the dough hooks beat, and when everything looks smooth, I add more flour, repeating until the flour/salt is gone. This probably takes about five minutes. Then I add a bit more flour from the canister until the dough becomes soft and sticky but stiff enough to knead for a bit. This is a delicate balance, and unfortunately only with practice can a home cook really get it right. If the dough is too soft, the bread will fall. If the dough is too stiff, the bread will be coarse and dry. But the more bread you bake, the more you will get a sense of how sticky the dough should be.

Because my stand mixer is so small and because I do like to knead bread a little, I stop at about 4 ½ cups, turn the dough onto a floured counter, and knead the bread for about five minutes, adding more flour as necessary but taking care that the dough remains sticky to the touch and doesn’t get too dry. (The dough should stick to your hands but also pull easily away.) Those who are making the bread completely by hand will be kneading longer, at least 10 minutes to get a smooth, elastic dough.

Next, grease a large mixing bowl, form the dough in a ball, twist it around the bowl, and set the dough greased side up in the bowl. If the day is warm, I set the bowl on the back of the stove and cover the bowl with a dishtowel. If the day is cool, I put a 9 x 12 pan of hot water on a low shelf in the oven then put the bowl on the middle shelf. I let the dough rise until it is double, which takes anywhere from 1 to 1½ hours.

When the dough has doubled, punch it down, form into two loaves and set the dough in two greased bread pans. Again, if the day is warm, on top of the stove goes the dough. If the day is cool, I empty the 9×12, refill it with hot water, set it on the lowest shelf, and put the bread pans on the middle shelf. I cover the pans with the dishtowel and let the dough rise until the loaves have crested the pan (probably an inch or so). Like the first rising, this takes 1 to 1½ hours.

When the dough has risen, I uncover the bread pans, remove them from the oven, remove the pan of water, heat the oven to 350ºF, and return the pans to the oven to cook the bread for 25 or 30 minutes. The bread should be nicely brown and make a little thumping noise when you hit the bottom with your knuckle. Cool on a rack. But do help yourself to a slice of warm bread. And remember, share a loaf once in a while.

Between my daughter Shannon’s wedding and my breast cancer diagnosis—with all its attendant doctors’ visits, surgery, and stress—there hasn’t been much time or energy for cooking in the past two months. But yesterday was my husband, Clif’s, birthday. Now that things have settled down, at least a little, I decided it was time to get back to some heavy-duty cooking. 

There would have to be cake, of course. Unfortunately, cakes are not my strong point, and given my druthers, I’d much rather make a pie or cookies. But what is a birthday without cake? Fortunately, for reasons known only to the gods, I can make a pretty good spice cake, which, in another stroke of luck, just happens to be Clif’s favorite kind of cake. 

So spice cake it was. I tackled this project first thing in the morning, just in case I had lost my touch with spice cake. Success! The cake rose just the way it should, and there was no falling in the center as it cooled. (My cakes have an irritating tendency to fall as they cool.) All it would need is a good butter cream frosting, which I knew I could easily whip up. 

From cake it was on to barbecue beef. In our house, the tradition is for the birthday boy or girl to choose the meal, and since we seldom eat beef, Clif was in the mood for roast beef slow-cooked with barbecue sauce. We bought a rather expensive hormone-free, antibiotic-free roast from Whole Foods in Portland. We have made a commitment to eat as organically/hormone free as possible, even though it costs more to do so. On the other hand, while the roast might have been expensive at $4.99 a pound and thus $20 for the size we bought, we knew it would easily feed four on the night of Clif’s birthday.  Add a couple of sides, and the whole meal would cost no more than $25. Now, where can you get that kind of meal for four people for $25, with the possiblity of leftovers? Nowhere that I know, even in central Maine. Roast beef from Whole Foods is not something we could afford to do for every meal, but it is well within our budget for special occasions. 

I made a simple barbecue sauce from a New York Times recipe and browned the roast on all sides. Into the crockpot, set on high, went the roast, which I then covered with the sauce. With any luck, in six or seven hours, I would have a delectable roast to serve for Clif’s birthday. 

Finally, there was the matter of bread. For the past two months, Clif and I have been eating store-bought bread, and we have not been very happy about this. Oh, we have mixed in artisan bread and English muffins with the blah sliced bread available at our grocery store, but it would be a gross understatement to say we missed homemade bread. 

After two months, would I have lost my touch with bread? (So many worries!) I took out my little mixer and began making bread, using a recipe I have adapted from Sheila Lukins’s U.S.A Cookbook. 

Again, success! The bread rose the way it should, and it was moist with a satisfying yeasty flavor. Visions of toast danced in my head.

At the risk of bragging, I must say that everything came out just as I hoped it would—the tender spice cake; the roast beef, which I was able to cut in perfect slices; and the bread. (No more store-bought bread for us.) Even the baked potatoes were soft on the inside and had lovely crunchy skins. 

It was good to be cooking again.

As I’ve mentioned many times in this blog, I live in the woods, which means I’m very limited when it comes to growing vegetables, especially tomatoes, a particular favorite of mine. However, a few years ago, I inadvertently came across a variety—Juliet—that actually does pretty well in my partly shaded backyard. This variety produces small fruit and is considered to be a “saladette,” but it is much like a plum tomato, perfect for sauces as well as for salads. This year, with its abundant sunshine, brought me more tomatoes than I could eat by myself. 

My husband, Clif, for some inexplicable reason, does not like raw tomatoes. Silly man! But fortunately he likes them cooked, and I knew that some kind of sauce was in our future. I’ve sizzled fresh tomatoes in a fry pan with a bit of garlic, basil, and olive oil, and this makes a perfectly good topping for pasta. However, this year, I was in the mood for something saucier, and when I read how Ali, at Henboggle, had roasted her tomatoes for a sauce, I knew that’s what I wanted to do as well. 

Strangely enough, even though I’m a big fan of roasted vegetables, I had never roasted tomatoes before. I wanted a simple sauce that involved roasting, blending, and simmering, and I found a recipe at Epicurious that looked promising. 

This particular recipe called for two pounds of tomatoes, which I had. (In fact there are even a few left to go with salads.) Roasting them couldn’t have been easier. I washed and dried the tomatoes, cut them in half, tossed them with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, then set them cut side up on a greased cookie sheet. I sprinkled the tomatoes with a bit of coarse salt and a tablespoon of oregano leaves, which grow well in a pot in my backyard. It even winters over. Into the oven went the tomatoes, at 375°F, for about an hour. Oh, the smell as they cooked. It was wonderful. 

The taste was even better, and after I whirred the tomatoes in the food processor, I was reluctant to add the ¼ cup of tomato paste suggested in the recipe. Why muck with perfection? However, I did add the paste, along with two cloves of garlic and a little more olive oil, all of which I simmered in a big fry pan on the stove for a half hour or so. It turned out my instincts were right. The paste made the sauce too thick for pasta (but perfect for pizza). I had to add about ¼ cup of pasta water so that the sauce would be right for pasta. Another change I would make would be to chop the oregano leaves before sprinkling them on the tomatoes before they are roasted. 

Nevertheless, this is one of the best pasta sauces I have ever made or even tasted—smooth, tangy, perfectly spiced. It is good enough to warrant actually buying fresh tomatoes—expensive though they might be—to make this sauce. That is what I intend to do, once a week or so, while tomatoes are in season. But unless I plan on making a sauce for pizza, I will hold the paste and chop the oregano, and savor this simple sauce while fresh tomatoes are in abundance. 

Here is my revised recipe: 

Roasted Tomato Sauce 

2lbs of tomatoes, washed, dried, and cut in half
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Coarse salt for sprinkling
1 tablespoon of oregano leaves, chopped 

In a bowl, toss the tomatoes with the olive oil and then place the tomatoes, cut side up, on a greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with the salt and oregano and roast at 375°F, for about an hour. (Check at 45 minutes.)

The tomatoes are done when they are soft and slightly brown. Take them out and let them cool. Then, in either a blender or food processor, purée them until they are smooth. 

Next, chop 2 cloves of garlic, and in a big fry pan, heat 2 tablespoons of oil. Sizzle the garlic for about 30 seconds and add the puréed tomatoes. Let simmer for 30 minutes or more, so that everything is nicely blended. If the sauce still seems too thick, a little pasta water can be added. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! You can only get this kind of sauce once a year, when the tomatoes are fresh. 

If you want to use this as a pizza sauce, then add ¼ cup of tomato paste to the fry pan with the puréed tomatoes. I expect basil or thyme could be substituted if you don’t have oregano. Add a little cooked shrimp to the sauce, and you have a meal elegant enough for even the most discerning guest.

Yesterday, in my post about my daughter Shannon’s wedding shower, I mentioned that I had asked guests to bring a family recipe to be included in a recipe book I had bought. Shannon received many good recipes, and we thought it would be nice to post one (or perhaps more) on the blog.

Shannon picked a zucchini bread recipe brought by her future mother-in-law, Gail Hersom, and it is a good choice. A slice of moist, spicy zucchini bread is very fine indeed. (I can taste it right now.) So fine that the bread alone should be enough to redeem zucchini from the rather bad reputation—unfairly, in my opinion—it has gained over the years.

How to put this delicately? Zucchini is, shall we say, prolific. Very prolific. One hill can produce a lot of zucchinis, and when they are at their peak, yielding more than is seemingly from such a modest-looking plant, desperate gardeners often resort to desperate measures. Bags of zucchinis are abandoned in unlocked cars and on doorsteps. They are foisted on unwilling relatives who don’t have the heart to say no. In short, the zucchini is often considered to be the irresponsible floozy of the vegetable world, and to make matters worse, its abundant offspring have a taste that could kindly be called delicate and might rudely be called boring or bland.

Yet consider the many different ways zucchini can be prepared. There is the aforementioned zucchini bread, and raw zucchini can be grated and frozen in packs to be used for fragrant bread in the winter. Zucchini gives a pleasing bulk to spaghetti sauce. Small zucchini can be sliced and eaten raw with a dip. It can be slightly steamed or sautéed, then used, perhaps with other vegetables, as a topping for rice with a drizzle of tahini. Zucchini can be added to any stir-fry. It can be stuffed. Then there is my favorite way—grilled with other vegetables and stirred into pasta that has been tossed with olive oil, garlic, and chopped herbs. This is good hot or cold, and in the summer my husband, Clif, and I eat it once a week.

Zucchini can be used so many ways that home cooks should embrace this dark green squash rather than recoil in horror from a plant that never seems to stop producing.

So here’s to zucchini in all its glorious abundance.

Zucchini Bread
From the kitchen of Gail Hersom but from her mother

Beat 3 eggs until frothy
Beat in 2 cups sugar, 1 cup of vegetable oil, and 1 tsp of vanilla
Beat until thick and lemon colored
Stir in 2 cups loosely packed coarsely grated zucchini – skin and all
Add 2 cups flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1 cup of chopped nuts
Bake in 2 loaf pans well oiled and floured
Bake 350 degrees for 1 hour
Cool 10 minutes before removing from pan

Freezes very well

Phew! The heat came with July, but life hasn’t slowed down to keep pace with the hot weather. Instead, it’s speeded up, with all sorts of folderol to keep me busy: Fourth of July, a magazine article to work on, my daughter Shannon’s bridal shower, and the usual household and gardening chores, which always seem take more time than they should.

Today I’m going to be making cinnamon pie knots for the shower, and tomorrow it will be lemon-frosted shortbread. In between, I’ll be brewing gallons and gallons of iced tea. As I’ve written in previous posts, I am lucky to have so many women who are willing to help with this shower. They will be baking, making sandwiches, and helping me setup at the Grange in East Vassalboro, where the shower is to be held. After the shower on Saturday, there will, of course, be pictures and more details. So stay tuned.

In the meantime, here is a recipe from my mother’s best friend, Esther Bernhardt, who will also be helping me with the shower. (Mom passed away two years ago, and how she would have loved being a part of the festivities.) It’s a berry pie recipe, in Esther’s own words, and as berry season is upon us, there is no better time to make this pie. Frozen berries make a perfectly good pie, but fresh berries make an even better one.

ESTHER’S “ABOUT” BERRY PIE

I call it an about pie.

Mixed Berry Pie.  9 inch
About 3 1/2 cups of berries. I used strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. Raspberries sweeten the pot. A generous 1/2 cup of sugar (but not too generous perhaps an extra generous tbls. I go by looks and feel so much), 3 tbls of flour. Mix these together then mix into the berries—this way there are no lumpies. Pour into pie shell and cover with top crust, crimp and vent in any design one desires.  Bake about 3/4 hr.  I immediately take a pastry brush and gently brush the hot top with butter. The hardest part of this pie is facing the brambles, mosquitoes and keeping one’s brow dry.  I happen to enjoy this sort of exercise but today one can purchase mixed berries in your freezer section at most groceries stores. Mix and Match I guess.

Yesterday, Election Day, was fine and sunny, and so to town I went on my bike—first to do my civic duty and vote and then to do other errands. After I had voted, ever mindful of the cars, I rode down Winthrop’s small Main St, past the soon-to-be-opening Tubby’s, and to the Food Pantry, where I volunteer, to drop off some paper work. Then, it was on to Dave’s Appliance, to get a new front burner for the stove. The night before, we had quite a little flare-up as the burner decided to self-destruct. For a moment, I even considered going for the fire extinguisher, which has been on the wall for so long that I’m not even sure if the darned thing works. Fortunately, the fire went out before I had to put the extinguisher to the test.

“Well, that one burnt right out, didn’t it?” the clerk at Dave’s asked when I handed him the old one. Before setting out on my bike, I had tucked the old burner in my trusty knapsack, so that I would be sure to get the right replacement.

“Yes, it did.”

“Unfortunately, this burner is one of the expensive ones to replace.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

“Well,” I said, digging in my knapsack for my wallet, “seeing as how we bought the stove in 1991 and have never had to replace the burner, I guess we got our money’s worth.”

“I guess you did,” he said, smiling.

After being warned that the burner’s connector might be going as well—the plug-in end of the old burner was a telltale black—I headed home. The new burner worked just fine, and I was all set to make dinner for our friend Diane Friese, who would be joining us that night.

Diane lives in Brunswick and works in Augusta, which means that it makes more sense for her to come here after work than to make a special trip from Brunswick. In doing so, she saves both time and gas, which ultimately means less carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere.  And if she’s going to come after work, then she might as well stay for dinner. After all, my husband, Clif, and I have to eat, too.

I decided to serve grilled vegetables over pasta. As far as grilling is concerned, Clif and I have come late to grilled vegetables, and we really only started with them last year. But, as the saying goes, better late than never, and Clif and I are now grilled vegetable fiends. Last year, we only had one pan for grilling vegetables, and it really wasn’t big enough for more than a couple of servings. However, this spring, I saw one on sale for half-price at Hannaford Supermarket, and I scooped it up, knowing that with our new-found love of grilled vegetables, it would get a lot of use.

Now, I don’t like to brag, but Clif is already known far and wide for his grilled bread—which we also made last night—and with this additional new pan, I expect he will soon become known for his grilled vegetables. Naturally, there are many possibilities with grilled vegetables, but last night I used mushrooms, sliced thick: broccoli, cut small; sweet red peppers, also cut small; and zucchini, sliced fairly thick.

Onto the grill they went, and Clif came up with a system for cooking them that verged on being an algebraic equation, based on the cooking time of the various vegetables. Since I’m horrible at math, I only partially understood what he did, but it went something like this: After slathering the vegetables with olive oil, he started the peppers and the zucchini in one pan and the mushrooms in another. When the mushrooms looked pretty much done, he dumped them in a bowl and then put the broccoli in the pan. (Note: While Clif was juggling the mushrooms and broccoli, the zucchini and red pepper continued to cook.) Clif let the broccoli cook for just a few minutes because, as he puts it, they tend to get a little too charred otherwise. When the edges of the broccoli began to get black, Clif put them in the bowl with the mushrooms, finished cooking the zucchini and red peppers, and then dumped the mushrooms and broccoli on top of the zucchini and peppers, to warm them a bit before dumping everything into the aforementioned bowl. The heat was on high for the entire time, and Clif estimates cooking time was ten minutes or so from beginning to end.

Phew! I’m exhausted just writing this description, but readers, all the vegetables turned out exactly as they should have—a little charred, a little crunchy, but not too charred and not too crunchy, and most important, none were overdone. What can I say? Alchemy on the grill.

Diane, Clif, and I tucked into those vegetables as though we hadn’t eaten vegetables in years.

“What is it about grilled food?” Diane asked.

I couldn’t answer that question, but one thing is certain, food always seems to taste better when it’s cooked over some kind of flame.

Grilled Vegetables over Pasta

(I’ve already outlined the cooking technique for this dish. What follows is another somewhat inexact recipe for getting to the grilling point and then what to do afterward. What can I say? That’s how I cook much of the time.)

1 very small head of broccoli, cut small
1 sweet red pepper, chopped in big pieces
1 small package of mushrooms, sliced thick
1 very small zucchini, sliced thick
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 or 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh basil (Or more, depending on how much you like basil. To me, it is food of the gods.)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Grated cheese
12 ounces of pasta (I used penne.)

This is a dish that requires team effort—one person to grill and one person to tend to the pasta and garlic. While the vegetables are being grilled, start cooking the pasta according to the directions on the package. (The vegetables and the pasta should take roughly the same amount of time to cook.) When the pasta is nearly done, sizzle the garlic in a small frying pan in a tablespoon or two of olive oil just until the garlic starts to turn a nice golden brown. (Don’t let it burn! Remove from heat if the timing isn’t quite right and the pasta still needs more time to cook.) When the pasta is done, drain and rinse with hot water, and dump the pasta back into the pot. Add the garlic and olive oil and put the cover on the pot. When the vegetables are ready, put the pasta into a large bowl, and add the vegetables and the basil. Salt and pepper to taste. Bring the bowl to the table along with a little plate of hard cheese and a grater. Dig in. And as you eat, give thanks for summer, for friends, for grilling, and for vegetables.

The lovely month of May sped by, bringing us June and another first Wednesday lunch at my house. The first Wednesday guests always vary, depending on schedules, and this time Sybil couldn’t join us. This zesty senior was helping a friend with the opening of a nightclub in Hallowell. Now, Hallowell, population 2,400, seems an unlikely place for a nightclub, but in central Maine, Hallowell is quite the little swinging place. It has The Wharf, a rowdy bar that features music; a pub (The Liberal Cup): a reasonably good Chinese restaurant (Lucky Gardens): a quite good restaurant that serves “progressive” American Food (Slates):as well as other sundry places to eat and drink. So who knows? This new nightclub—Club 223—might be a huge success.

However, even though we lost Sybil, we gained Roger, Alice’s husband. This is the first time Roger has been able to join us. Popular man that he is, someone is always clamoring to have lunch with him on first Wednesdays. This time we got lucky, and Roger was free. Claire almost couldn’t come because of a last-minute mailing that her boss requested, but she tucked to, as the saying goes, and was able to join us, albeit a little late.

Alice brought a cool, crisp mint-infused three-pea and bean salad—snow peas, sugarsnap peas, and green beans as well as leeks, chives, mint, and lemon. The recipe recommends serving this dish hot, but Alice decided to serve it at room temperature, and we all agreed it made a fine salad that was a perfect accompaniment to the tarragon chicken salad that I had prepared. Homemade bread, corn chips, and cherry parfaits rounded out the meal. There was also plenty of hot coffee and iced tea.

Food is a central part of these lunches, but the conversation is also equally good, and one topic was human genetic diversity, a topic that should be more broadly discussed. Even in America, we tend to think of ourselves as belonging to a specific group. Sometimes it’s ethnic—I consider myself to be a Franco-American and Claire considers herself to be Irish American. Sometimes it’s by color. We are white or we are brown or we are black. But, as genetic testing has shown us, there may be little surprises in our background, and especially for those of us who are of European descent, we are most often a complete mix of ethnic backgrounds with nary a whiff of “racial purity.” Even those from other parts of the world are often not what they seem. I remember reading in the New York Times that a prominent African American—whose name escapes me—discovered a Chinese ancestor in his family tree. Nobody in his family had any memory of this Chinese ancestor, but genetic testing revealed that this ancestor was indeed part of their family history.

Roger spoke of his own family history and of his surprise in discovering that some of his forebears had come from the Baltics. When I talked about my Norman ancestors, he mentioned how they were a combination of the French and the Norse, who had zipped down from Scandinavia to invade France. Thus we get “Norseman” hence Normans, who would later invade England and conquer the Anglo-Saxons, with whom they shared a common ancestor—those marauding Norse. (This was back in the Dark Ages, long before Scandinavia became one of the most peaceful and progressive places in the world.)

Oh, what a tangle! It’s high time to dispense with any notions of ethnic or racial purity. Most of us are “mutts,” whether we know it or not, and as time goes by, we’re getting even “muttier.” Science is showing us the reality of our ancestry, now it’s up to us to broaden our horizons and accept the broad sweep of humanity that comprises homo sapiens. Then, maybe we can move on to accepting the value of other species.

Chicken Tarragon Salad

(This is the type of recipe that my husband, Clif, and my daughter Shannon hate. It is one without any exact measurements. Still, even a beginning cook should be able to figure it out.)

The meat from one small roasted chicken, say 4 or 5 pounds. I usually cook the chicken the night before and remove the meat from the bones so it is ready the next day. You could also use a precooked rotisserie chicken from a supermarket.

Sour cream, about a cup

Mayonnaise to taste

Chopped celery, anywhere from ½ cup to 1 cup. It all depends on how much you like celery.

1 teaspoon or so of dried tarragon or 1 tablespoon or so of fresh tarragon, if you have it

Salt and pepper to taste

Roasted almond slivers, ½ cup or so

Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks and put in a large bowl. Add chopped celery. (Onion lovers might want to add some chopped onions at this point, but I am not an onion lover.) Add the sour cream, a bit at a time. Add a few tablespoons of mayonnaise. Mix until you get the consistency you like. I like mine a little on the dry side. You might like a moister salad, which means you would add more mayonnaise. Add the tarragon. Taste. Add more if you think it needs a little more zip. Ditto for the salt and pepper.

Arrange a bed of lettuce on a large plate. Make a nice mound of chicken salad on the lettuce. Cut up some tomato triangles and edge the salad. Cover the top with roasted almonds. Take a few minutes to admire this pretty salad. Serve with bread, crackers, or corn chips.

Yesterday, my husband, Clif, and I celebrated our thirty-third wedding anniversary. What a strange thing to think that we have been married to each for over half our lives. We are way past the ten-year mark, and, indeed, in seven more years we will hit the forty-year mark. Holy guacamole, as our daughter Dee would say. Clif and I are both getting up there, that’s for sure.

We briefly considered going out to eat to celebrate our big day, and we even had coupons for a buy-one-entrée-get-one-free deal at a local restaurant that’s not too bad. But being a frugal couple, we started doing the math, and we figured that even with the two-for-one deal, we would end up spending between $40 and $50, depending on what we ordered. In addition, Augusta, Maine, is not known for its fine dining. Maine has many first-rate restaurants, but they are at least an hour away, and, along with our budget, we are always conscious of our carbon footprint. We knew we could do much better cooking our own special meal.

“What would you like?” I asked Clif.

He did not hesitate. “”

Clif’s love of scalloped scallops rivals his love of roast turkey, and it is what he asks for on special occasions. He recently declared, “It is the best scallop dish I have had. Ever.” The scallop recipe I use is based on an old Yankee recipe from our 1930s The Boston Cooking School Cook Book by none other than Fannie Merritt Farmer. Over the years, especially now with the foodie revolution well underway in the United States, Yankee cooking and Fannie Farmer have become, shall we say, a little déclassé. Oh, those boring garlic-averse, white-sauce-loving Yankees. What is the use of their recipes? But here I find myself defending Yankee cooking. While it is true that Yankee cooking is not known for its spices, and some of the food is downright plain, it is also true that when the ingredients are topnotch, plain food cooked well is, in fact, utterly delicious. (And if a Franco-American can defend anything Yankee, then there is hope for the Israelis and the Palestinians. Let’s just say that in Maine, the relationship between the Francos and the Yankees has not always been as smooth as the white sauce those Yankees loves so much.)

When it comes to scalloped scallops, I completely agree with Clif—they are damned good, and they are simplicity itself. Here is the list of ingredients: scallops (naturally!), cracker crumbs, breadcrumbs, butter, salt and pepper. Milk or cream. And that is it. Cook them for forty minutes or so, and you have yourself a pretty good meal.

So scalloped scallops it was, and along with them we had homemade bread, baked potatoes, and a cabbage, carrot, and toasted almond salad with a cider vinegar and brown sugar dressing. Now, I don’t like to exaggerate, but as the saying goes, Clif tucked into those scallops like there was no tomorrow. I did get a decent-sized spoonful, plus a couple of extras, but he ate at least half the scallops, and by the time he was done, there was just a small serving leftover for lunch the next day. Clif was definitely the good eater last night.

The only stumble came with dessert. I made a pie I have never made before—Marjorie Standish’s Lemon Sponge Pie. (I decided if I was going to go Yankee, I might as well go all the way.) It’s basically a lemon custard pie, and like all custards you bake it hot for fifteen minutes or so. Then, you turn down the oven and finish baking it. The initial blast of heat stops the crust from becoming a soggy mess. Dutifully following the instructions, I baked the pie at 425° F for fifteen minutes, turned the oven down to 325°, and baked the pie for another twenty-five minutes. When the timer rang, and I opened the door to check on the pie, I was disconcerted to see that the top was dark brown—almost burnt looking—and I immediately removed the pie, fearing the top would indeed burn if I left the pie in any longer. Unfortunately, the middle wasn’t done, and it was soupy, but ironically, the top tasted very good, reminiscent of a crème caramel. Perhaps leaving it in for another five or ten minutes would have been just fine, but I won’t be making this pie again to find out. Its flavor was not as lemony as we would have liked, and I’ll be experimenting with other lemon pies. Still, all was not lost. We were able to drain off the excess liquid and have a pie that was reasonably tasty.

Despite our disappointment with the pie, we both enjoyed our home-cooked anniversary meal. Even with the scallops, which admittedly are a little pricey, we estimated that the entire meal cost us no more than $17, a far cry from the $40 or $50 we would have spent going out.

We were so pleased with ourselves, that we’ll probably do the same thing—minus the lemon sponge pie—next year.

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:5]

This time of year in Maine, when you go into a grocery store and see people looking at the ground pork, it can only mean one thing—tourtière, the meat pie so beloved by Franco-Americans. The English have turkey or goose for Christmas. We Francos have our tourtière, and the holidays just wouldn’t seem right without them. Because Francos are a gregarious bunch, unlike the more taciturn Yankees, it is very easy to strike up a tourtière conversation with complete strangers in the grocery store. This I have done, and in each conversation, we have all marveled at the tourtière variations—all pork, ground pork mixed with ground beef, ham, potatoes, no potatoes, and for those who yearn for that 1960s touch, potato flakes. There are lots of variations, and some of them are better than others. However, I think a comment from the website Chowhound got it exactly right. That is, the best tourtière pie is the one your mother made. 

This past October, I wrote a fairly long post about tourtière—its history and my unsuccessful attempt to make a healthy tourtière. Interested readers should go to my “A Tale of Two Tourtières,” posted October 8^th, 2009. 

I do want to add a little about the pronunciation. Franco-Americans who settled in central Maine call it “toochay” pie. However, the correct pronunciation is “tor-tē-yā,” and the first time I heard it said that way, I had no idea what the word meant. I have also read that in some parts of New England it is pronounced “tout-care.” 

However it is pronounced, tourtière can be made ahead and frozen (unbaked), which is a real blessing this time of year, and right now there are three tourtières in my freezer—two for Christmas Day and one for a gift. However, there is still time to make a tourtière or two, and below is the recipe my mother and I developed over the years. 

Joyeux Noël and bon appétit! 

Rochelle’s Tourtière Pie 

1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground pork
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
1½ teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon dried sage
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 cup water
1 cup plain mashed potatoes, with no butter and no milk

Pastry for a 2-crust 9-inch pie 

In a saucepan combine beef, pork, seasonings, onion, and water. Cover and simmer for one-and-a-half to two hours. Uncover and cook ten minutes. The mixture should be moist but not runny, and if it isn’t, then drain the excess liquid. Add the mashed potatoes.

Heat oven to 425° F. Put meat mixture in crust and then bake for about 30 minutes. (Foil wrapped around the edges of the piecrust helps prevent excessive browning.) 

As I mentioned in the piece above, these pies can be frozen, unbaked. Then, in a 350º oven, bake unthawed pies for an hour, or longer, until the meat is bubbly and the crust is brown.