Last night, I went to a Food Writers Meet-Up hosted by Christine Burns Rudalevige. Maine is awash in all things food, from restaurants to farmers’ markets to speciality stores to community supported agriculture. In such a food-rich environment, food writers flourish, and it was certainly interesting to get together with people who are so passionate and knowledgable about food. Among other topics, there was much talk about the recent influx of good restaurants in Maine. In Brunswick alone, there are over 30, and Portland, the Babylon of Maine, is a haven for restaurants.

These conversations, of course, led me to think about food in Maine. While it is true that the uptick in good restaurants and speciality stores is a relatively recent event and does correlate to the immigration of those from away, food and cooking have always been of major importance to Maine.

Maine has a rich agricultural history. In the mid-1800s, the state produced so much grain that it was considered the bread basket of New England. Every town in central Maine—and other communities, too, I’m sure—had apple orchards, and remnants of these orchards can be seen in scattered trees by the side of the road. Sugaring and maple syrup have a long tradition in Maine, and in rural towns, many people, not just farmers, had big gardens. Even in the 1960s and 1970s, home cooking was the norm—most people did not go to restaurants—and as I have pointed out in a recent post, obesity was not a problem. We ate prodigious amounts, but we got a lot of exercise, which flowed naturally from our active lives. Then there was the sea, still bountiful, not yet overfished but heading in that direction.

I cannot deny that the food Mainers ate and cooked was plain and unpretentious, often made with eggs they raised and vegetables they grew. Biscuits, muffins, baked beans. Roast chicken, roast beef, corn on the cob. Lots of greens. Carrots and potatoes. Ham. This is the tradition I came from, and it has influenced the way I cook—plain, honest, and with real ingredients. (I will admit that I have jettisoned the tics of the 1960s—cream of mushroom soup and Veg-all. I still hate them, and I always will.)

At this food gathering, as a humble home cook, I felt a little like a plain Jenny Wren among cardinals, blue birds, and gold finches.  As the conversation turned to Julia Child and fancy cheeses, I realized that along with the Maine tradition of local food, my cooking affinities were with Moosewood and the organic movement. While I admire Julia Child, I have never aspired to cook in the “French Chef” style.

My favorite cheese? Cheddar. I might have added that a big block in the refrigerator is perfect when the wolf is at the door, which it has been and still is for many Mainers. Shredded cheddar in casseroles and in macaroni and cheese. Sliced for grilled cheese sandwiches. A lowly cheese, perhaps, but tart, tangy, and good for many things.

However, what I lacked in sophistication, I made up with appetite, and I think I earned my moniker as a good eater. I ate my way through potato and leek soup, glazed bacon, stuffed dates, sugared cranberries, delectable cheeses I was totally unfamiliar with, and a lemon honey so good I could have eaten it all by the spoonful. There was a brittle made with pine nuts and rosemary, so crunchy, nutty, and spicy that I felt as though I were a cat next to a bowl of catnip. (I knew I had overdone it with the gluttony when Christine asked me if I wanted to take the rest of the brittle home.)

While we all brought things, Christine provided much of the food—such as that wonderful brittle—and let’s just say that this woman  can cook. She teaches cooking classes at Stonewall Kitchen in York, and if you live within driving distance, then do not hesitate to take a class taught by Christine.

But just being at this gathering was an education for this home cook.

March is here, and with it slush and snow so dirty and heavy that it seems to weigh everything down. In Maine, even in good times, tempers are short in March, and in bad times, well, tempers are that much shorter. Unfortunately, this is also the time of year when Maine towns start addressing their yearly budgets, sometimes through town meetings, where everyone gets to vote, and sometimes through council meetings, which are open to to the public but elected officials do the voting.

Let’s just say that right now, times are not good for Maine towns. Unless the legislature takes action, state aid to towns is being drastically reduced, and towns, in turn, must either slash their own budgets and reduce services, or they must raise property taxes. The problem is, everyone likes services, but no one seems to want to pay for them. My husband calls this magical thinking—you can have it all and still have low taxes. Well, you can’t. Plain and simple.

A few nights ago, my husband, Clif, and I went to a town meeting where we learned that if the current state budget is approved, our town will have to deal with a $650,000 shortfall, chump change by some standards but serious money for our small town. So cut, cut, cut. Cut the budget to the rec program. Cut the budgets for police, fire, and ambulance departments. Cut the budget for plowing the roads. Cut hours to the town hall. Cut hours to the transfer station. Cut the budget for the library. This is a horrid example of trickle-down economics at a time when people and towns are struggling and need more aid rather than less aid. And the bigger the pool, the easier it is to come up with that aid.

What to do during these gray days? Go to town meetings, of course, and speak up where it is appropriate to do so. Write letters to state senators and representatives.

For me, a homemaker, it is a time to cook and clean and chop wood. Keeping busy and physically active helps. Today, I’ll be making crackers and a cream cheese spread to take to a Maine Food Writers Meet-up in Brunswick. Tomorrow, homemade pizza and granola cookies. When I go out with the dog, I scrounge the woods for good-size branches that have blown down, branches I can saw into pieces for the wood furnace.

But beneath this activity is an anxiety that things won’t come together, that the scrooges will have their way, that we won’t all pitch in to make sure that cities, towns, and people have the services that make life comfortable and indeed, in some cases, worth living.

Spring and summer are coming. The sap is running, and it promises to be a good year for maple syrup. There are glimmers of hope. But in the meantime, gray, gray, gray.

Yesterday and today, we had a wet, heavy snowfall. The day is gray and drippy, and everything outside has a soggy, discouraged look. (However the birds have begun their jaunty spring songs, so better weather is ahead.) Heavy snow, of course, means heavy shoveling, and my husband, Clif, and I got up early so that we could clean enough of the driveway to allow him to get the car out and thus go to work. He used Little Green, our electric snow-thrower, while I used my trusty blue shovel.

When we got about two-thirds of the driveway done, I said, “That’s enough. I’ll finish the job, probably in two shifts.” Shoveling this snow is truly an example of nature’s gym, and I figure by the end of the day, I’ll have  burned off enough calories for an extra piece of chocolate, some popcorn, and some other little tidbit.

So in we went. Clif got ready for work, and I took my tea, toast, and orange into my office, where I read the New York Times. Immediately, a piece by Mark Bittman caught my attention, and in this piece he rails against sugar, even going so far as to write:”Sugar is indeed toxic.” Apparently, according to some studies, the major cause of modern obesity is sugar, and the feeling is that this sweet substance is making us sick and fat.

Before I go any further I should make two things clear: First, I am a huge fan of Mark Bittman, and his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is a cookbook I use often. Second, I am also someone who loves sweets. Chips and salty things I can resist without much effort, but when it comes to candy, cookies, and donuts, I am putty.

After breakfast, I went out to do more shoveling and to ruminate about the statement, “Sugar is indeed toxic.” Is it really? Is sugar responsible for the current spike in obesity? Or, did Mark Bittman overstate the case? I considered the issue as I threw shovelful after shovelful of slushy snow, and the dog leaped, barked, and twisted until he was panting. (I’m not the only one who burned off calories this morning.)

Well, I thought, as much as I love sweets, I can’t deny that too much sugar isn’t good for a person. But then again, neither is too much bread, butter, and pasta.  Many things should be enjoyed in moderation, even the current darling, red wine. Too much wine can lead to alcoholism, a damaged liver, and other miseries just as surely as beer and mixed drinks. Yet, a glassful with a meal is considered beneficial to a person’s health.

Then I thought of my childhood, where everyone—adults as well as children—gobbled sugar with a lusty, guilt-free abandon that is shocking to consider by today’s standards. We ate cookies, cakes, brownies, whoopie pies, Ring Ding Juniors, Devil Dogs, and cream horns. Donuts and turnovers. Just down the street from where I lived was the corner store, where my friends and I would go daily to get a bagful of penny candy. But here’s the thing—despite the wanton sugar consumption, hardly anyone was fat, and again this applied to adults as well as children. There was one fat family on the street I lived on, and they were the exception. The rest of us were either slim or normal, and except for one of my uncles, nobody that I knew of had type-2 diabetes.

But, we lived in a rural community, and we kids ran, biked, skated, played baseball, threw chokecherries at each other, went sliding, played tag, climbed trees, and rode ponies. Seldom were we in a car—I even walked to school. The adults were pretty active, too. When time allowed, they played outside with us. They also worked in big gardens, helped neighbors with the haying, cleaned out the chicken coop, and took walks on Sunday afternoons. I know memory is unreliable, but in my memory we were always moving.

This leads to me wonder: Is it really sugar that is making us sick, or is it that we, as a society, sit too much and move too little? Maybe cars are toxic. And computers. And machines such as leaf blowers that make life too easy for us.

I will be interested to see what future studies reveal about sugar. In the meantime, I will enjoy sweets in moderation and get plenty of exercise.

On Wednesday, I took my dog, Liam, for a walk in the woods. The day was mild, and in my imagination, I caught a faint whiff of sap being boiled into maple syrup. I am always eager for maple syrup season to begin. First of all, I love all things maple, including candy, butter, sugar, donuts, you name it. Second, when it’s maple syrup time, it means that spring is not far away, and despite the mud and the black flies, spring is most welcome in Maine after many months of dark and cold.

The woods in winter are stark and quiet, yet they have their own beauty. Purple shadows slant across the snow between the trees, and the muted colors—dark green, brown, and white—have a pleasing austerity. It’s as though nature has put away her palette and paints and is giving herself a good rest before taking them out again for the exuberance of spring, where the riot of colors—green, yellow, pink—bedazzle the senses.

Liam ranged ahead and then behind me. He seldom stayed by my side. On the snow, he found many interesting things to sniff, and at one point, he found something so enticing that he rolled and rolled and rolled in it. He must have picked up an odor—fortunately I couldn’t smell it—because my cat Sherlock certainly gave him the once over when we returned.

As I walked in the woods, I thought of my son-in-law Mike’s 30th birthday party on Sunday, and what a curious sensation I had while I was there. As Mike blew out the candles on his cake, it was as though I were my mother, instead of myself, watching him. Now, my mother has been dead for nearly 5 years, and I think of her often. But this was different. It  really did seem as though I were her, a bookend, if you will, to E.B. White’s lovely essay, “Once More to the Lake,” when he identified so strongly with his son that he could actually feel what his son was feeling.

I suppose, in a way, it’s not surprising. My husband and I are now the older generation, and as such we are no longer the center of the family, busy juggling career, children, and home. Quite rightly, Shannon, Mike, and our other daughter Dee now hold that center position as we move to the outer edges, watching them deal with the joys and challenges that life brings. In a way, it’s a little sad, but it is also fitting. One thing ends, and another begins.

As I was having these deep thoughts and watching the dog and snapping pictures of the winter woods, my left leg suddenly sunk to its knee in the thawing snow, and it tipped me enough off-balance so that I fell. Fortunately, I was not hurt, and because I am 65 pounds lighter than I once was, getting up was not a problem.

So onward we went. Unless we have another deep freeze, I probably won’t walk in the woods again until the snow is nearly gone. Nobody likes falling, and the older you get, the less you like it. (My husband can certainly attest to this.)

We made it home without further incident, and after tea and some cozy time on the couch reading the New Yorker, I made corn bread and a shrimp, broccoli, garlic and zucchini stir-fry with soy sauce and sesame oil. On top of the stir-fry were ground peanuts and a splash of a ginger marinade.

A very good way to end the day.

Here are some pictures from the walk: