Another rainy Friday. But the weather forecast promises—I say, promises—to be good this weekend. I sure hope so. There’s lots to do, including making some soup for a friend who recently broke her elbow. I’ll also be helping out at the Dave Mallet concert, which will be at the Winthrop High School Performing Arts Center this Saturday at 7:00 p.m. It’s a benefit concert for the library expansion. In between, I plan to get some bike riding in. Have a terrific weekend!

From the New York Times: Great news for someone like me who loves fruit—it’s really good for you, and the sugar in fruit is not equivalent to the sugar in soft drinks or candy. So eat that fruit!

From NPR’s the salt: “After three months, $330,000 and a high-profile media blitz, the world’s first hamburger grown in a lab made its worldwide debut Monday.” The verdict? “[T]he burger was edible, but not delectable.” A modest suggestion: maybe we should eat mostly vegetarian, with a bit of meat now and again to jazz up our diets.

From Farmers Market Coalition: This is National Farmers Market Week. I don’t have to tell you where to get your local food, do I?

From the Portland Press Herald: As someone who loves pie, I didn’t think it would be possible to improve on this delectable dish. However, Meredith Goad writes about hand pies, a new (yet old) trend popping up in southern Maine. Give me a couple—one for each hand.

From the writer Ben Hewitt: “Fin and Rye have reached the age at which they are eager to prove they are growing into the young men they will become, and there is perhaps no better proof of such a thing than successfully driving a herd of 30 milk cows across a high, green hayfield and down into the barnyard below.” A beautiful piece about time, change, and the rural life.

From Eat Maine Blog: Kathy Kelleher’s review of Small Axe food truck in Portland, Maine.

Another rainy Friday, but at least we had several days of fine weather this week. High summer is here, and I’m hoping for a lot more of that fine weather. In the meantime, today will be a good day to make cinnamon pie knots for a friend who fell while hiking. She’s recovering from surgery, and we both agreed that those pie knots would be just the thing to cheer her up.

From the Bangor Daily News: How Skowhegan became Maine’s breadbasket.

From the New York Times: Too much rain in the South means a very poor crop of fruits and vegetables. This is bad news for all of us who live in the eastern United States.

From the Portland Press Herald: Brunch is one of my favorite meals, and French toast is one of my favorite brunch items. Brooke Dojny gives a recipe not only for Maple French Toast but also for a Mostly Summer Fruit Compote. I could eat both right now.

From NPR’s the salt: Workers at fast food restaurants went on strike last week. Their demands? That they be paid a living wage of $15 an hour. Good luck to them! Every working adult deserves a living wage.

From the blog Craftivist in the Kitchen: Shari might be “from away,” as we Mainers call those who live in Maine but aren’t born here, but her fish chowder is fast becoming legendary in the Brunswick area.

August is here, and at the little house in the big woods, it is a month of promise. So far, it has been a terrible summer with either too much rain or too much heat. However, the past few days have been lovely—hot, dry days and cool evenings—and it has felt as though the end of July was getting ready for August, usually one of the most beautiful months in Maine. My husband, Clif, and I sure hope August will be true to form this year.

Because of the weather, we’ve hardly ridden our bikes, but with the first of August, we are filled with determination—that we will ride most every day and then plan a couple of long treks at the end of the month. We’ll pack our granola bars and our lunch, and off we will go. This year we want to ride around Lake Cobboseecontee, which spans 5 towns—Manchester, Winthrop, Monmouth, West Gardiner, and Monmouth. It’s a long, long lake, but what makes this ride a challenge isn’t the distance but rather the hills. It’s got some big ones, that’s for sure.

We also want to host a couple of gatherings on our patio. Fresh vegetables are coming into their own, and I have plans for grilled zucchini stuffed with feta, fresh thyme, and honey. Our friends Steve and Margy are coming over on Sunday, and we hope to have a leisurely afternoon on the patio, starting with grilled bread and ending with dessert.

Right now in the backyard, the bee balm is in bloom as are the dwarf snap dragons. The flowers are abuzz with insects, some beneficial to the garden—the bees—and some not so beneficial—the Japanese beetles. Hummingbirds whizz from the trees to the feeders, and grasshoppers pop from the flowers to the patio. In my little vegetable patch, there are cucumbers and tomatoes, which I will have with my lunch today as I sit on the patio and read my New Yorker.

Why can’t August last longer?

August is right around the corner, and the crickets and grasshoppers have begun their late summer songs. I love sitting on the patio and being surrounded by those songs. With the swirl of voices, the backyard feels so alive.

However, there is not much time for sitting on the patio today. My husband, Clif, and I are hosting a potluck gathering for some of the people he works with. One of them even offered to bring lobster for lobster rolls. How could I refuse an offer like that?

Soon, I’ll be making potato salad and getting the house ready. It looks as though the weather is going to be good. Could it be that we will actually have one whole day without rain? Maybe so. After all, August is usually one of the loveliest months in Maine. With the way this summer has gone, all bets are off, but I’m hoping this August will be true to form, and we will have hot, dry days and lovely cool nights.

Rain, rain go away. Don’t come back until the gardens dry out. Not too dry, of course. Neither extreme—too dry or too rainy—is desirable. But enough already with the rain. For the first time in the nearly 30 years we’ve lived at the little house in the big woods, our front steps were covered with green mold, and my husband had to scrub them. Here’s hoping that the weekend is warm, but not too hot, and sunny.

From the New York Times: Gary Paul Nabhan writes about drought, climate change, and food shortages. He also lists some commonsense solutions.

From the Kennebec Journal: A piece about the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, Maine. There’s a real renaissance in grain growing and bread making in Maine, and the conference is a reflection of this.

From the blog treehugger: A description of Ben Greene’s Farmery, an “innovative sustainable agriculture project” where food is grown and sold at the same place. A vision of the future or just another one of those good ideas but…?

From NPR’s the salt: In New York City, doctors in a new program are now proscribing fruits and veggies to overweight patients. Could be the beginning of a promising trend.

From the Portland Press Herald: Anne Mahle’s take on pancakes, with some wonderful suggestions for a berry topping and a syrup. (Ah, pancakes! How I love them!)

From the Guardian: Two excellent pieces that are related. One is about a young mother in England who lived in poverty, had a tiny budget for groceries, and blogged about it. The other is about the rising cost of food. While both feature the United Kingdom, both are relevant to the United States.