News

Ending Vacation with a trip to the Red Barn in Augusta

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Our vacation is over, and what a good one it was. We went to two movies—the excellent Beasts of the Southern Wild and the very good Safety Not Guaranteed. We went to the Theater at Monmouth and saw 4 plays in 3 days, and one of the plays—The Glass Menagerie—was so good that I think it’s safe to borrow a phrase—“alchemy in the theater”—from the late great Canadian writer Robertson Davies and apply that phrase to The Glass Menagerie. On the night we went, by the devastating yet poetic end, the audience was completely quiet. No coughing, no shifting, no unwrapping of paper. Just silence. As of today—August 14th—there are two more productions of The Glass Menagerie at the Theater at Monmouth. One is on Wednesday, August 15th at 1:00 P.M., and the other is on Saturday, August 18th at 7:30 P.M. I encourage readers who are within driving distance to come to Monmouth and see this terrific production.

Our daughter Dee, from New York, was here for the week, and what she wanted to eat were fresh vegetables, especially corn. In August, Maine gardens are pretty much at their zenith, and we had new little red potatoes, boiled; corn on the cob; grilled zucchini, summer squash, and broccoli; raw carrots and tomatoes; cantaloupe. All of this came from Maine, as well as the eggs we had for breakfast and the syrup we had on our waffles and French toast.

Midweek, our friends Judy and Paul Johnson invited us over for dinner, where there was more corn on the cob as well as grilled chicken with Moorish spices and a quinoa and kale salad. The evening was fine and we ate outdoors, and when the meal was over, Judy’s two young granddaughters ran and played in the fields surrounding the house.

Finally, we had a gathering of film buff friends over on Saturday for a pasta dinner with Clif’s famous grilled bread. For dessert there was homemade ice cream pie. I want to note that Shannon’s sauce with meat balls is well on its way to becoming famous and is certainly one of her specialties. She got the recipe from Cook’s, so I can’t share it, but it’s so good that Clif made sure we helped ourselves to some of the leftovers.

Dee left on Sunday, and after all the hubbub of the week, Clif and I felt letdown.

“Let’s go to the Red Barn,” I suggested, “for an end of vacation splurge.”

Clif didn’t argue, and although the day was overcast, we were able to eat outside. I had a lobster roll, Clif had fried chicken, and we both had a child-size soft-serve ice-cream cone for dessert. As we ate, we talked about our vacation—in reality a “staycation.”

“What did you enjoy the most?” I asked Clif.

“All of it,” he said. “I wish we could have had another week. One is not really enough.”

I couldn’t argue. And what better place to be in August than in Maine?

 

 

News

Cookies and Ice Cream Pies and Plays and Movies: On Vacation

Our daughter Dee is visiting from New York, and we have a busy week planned: Four plays in 3 days at the Theater at Monmouth; a movie—Beasts of the Southern Wild—at Railroad Square Cinema; a gathering of friends on the weekend; meals on the patio; homemade chocolate chip cookies; and homemade ice cream pie. With its blend of the rural and the cultural, central Maine is a great place to be in August, when the days are usually hot but dry and the nights are cool.

Anyway, I’ll more or less be on vacation until next Monday.

 

 

People

Two People I met at the Skowhegan Bread Fair

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.

Lindsey Lewis, young baker extraordinaire

“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.

The Bankery's table. Unfortunately, I was so besotted with the pastries that I didn't get a photo of the chef.
The Bankery’s table. Unfortunately, I was so besotted with the pastries that I didn’t get a photo of the chef.

“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.

 

 

Food for Thought

Quotation from Rhonda Hetzel from her blog, Down to Earth

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“Now there is a more realistic understanding that we all do some form of house work, that home is our haven, that it’s a much safer and sustainable option to reduce the number of chemical products we use in the home, we understand the concepts of seasonal and local produce, developing community, solar and wind power, self reliance, recycling and the wise economy of restraint. We are still tough on women who ‘stay at home’ but I’m hopeful that too will change. Soon.”

Book Cover: Down to Earth

Environment, News

THE 2012 BREAD FAIR IN SKOWHEGAN, MAINE

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On Saturday, my husband, Clif, and I went to Skowhegan, Maine, to the Bread Fair, which is part of the Kneading Conference presented by the Maine Grain Alliance. The first Kneading Conference was held in 2007, and according to their website, the conference “began with a group of Skowhegan residents who were motivated by the need to address wheat production as an important cornerstone of a growing local food movement.” Right now, most of our wheat comes from places such as Kansas or North Dakota, but it wasn’t always this way. Until the mid-1800s, wheat production in Somerset County—Skowhegan is the county seat—fed over 100,000 people each year, and central Maine was known as one of New England’s breadbaskets. Now, “less than 1% of Maine’s wheat demand is actually grown in Maine.”

Those from away, who associate Maine with the rocky coastline, could be forgiven for wondering how in the world Maine could have produced so much wheat. While it’s true that our coastline, as a rule, has thin soil, this is not the case with central Maine, which is farming and dairy country, and it is especially not the case with Aroostook County, where so many potatoes are grown. In Maine, there is a huge swatch of land with deep, rich soil, and although our growing season is shorter than it is in other states, it is certainly long enough to grow an abundance of food, including various grains. And, we have a trump card that might be especially important as we deal with the ravages of climate change—abundant rainfall, at least for now. But more about that later.

A bit more history about the Kneading Conference, which again, was taken from their website: “2011 was a milestone year: we received nonprofit status as the Maine Grain Alliance; we helped organize the first Kneading Conference West in Mount Vernon, Washington; and we purchased a portable wood-fired oven to use for school and community educational workshops and for fundraising.”

For the past few years, I have wanted to go to the Bread Fair, but something always came up, and I wasn’t able to go. This year, however, the calendar was clear, and off Clif and I went, north to Skowhegan, which, as it happens, was where my mother and father grew up.

Any kind of event that features lots of food vendors in one place, an event where you can go from table to table, sampling their wares, is my kind of event, and I had a great time trying various bread and pastries. The Bread Fair was rather small, with about 50 vendors, and there were hundreds of people rather than thousands and thousands, the way there are at the Common Ground Country Fair. In truth, the smaller size of the Bread Fair was much more to my liking than the jammed Common Ground Fair. At the Bread Fair, it was easy to talk to the vendors, buy this and that, and find a place to sit down to enjoy what you just purchased. And while the Bread Fair was small, it was lively, with a nice mix of bakers, crafters, and informational tables along with some vendors offering professional products.

The crowd at the Bread Fair

So what did Clif and I eat? I’m almost a little embarrassed to list how much we ate: Sour dough bread from Borealis Bread; a chocolate croissant from Snowy Hill Bakery; and from Good Bread a pretzel that tasted as though it had been boiled but wasn’t—I was told it was cooked “the way it’s done in Germany.” A cupcake and a cream horn from The Bankery as well as a slice of pizza baked in Maine Grain Alliance’s wood-fired oven. Another pretzel from another vendor, The Bread Shack. Not surprisingly, by afternoon Clif and I started to hit a bread wall after a morning of carbs, but readers, all of it was very, very good.

Pretzels and…
A cream horn and…
Pizza, oh my!

In my next post, I’ll focus on some of the people I met at the Bread Fair, but I’d like to conclude with an idea I touched on earlier in this piece. That is, with climate change, the resurgence of growing wheat in Maine can only be a good thing. The withering droughts in the United States spell nothing but bad news for food prices in the upcoming years. It makes sense to grow food in places such as central Maine where the soil is good and where there is abundant rainfall. The same is true for livestock and poultry, but this is a piece about wheat and bread, so I’ll leave that topic for another time.

No one, of course, knows what the future will bring. Maybe the drought will be a one-time event, and next year will be a better growing season for America’s bread basket. But maybe it won’t. According to climate scientists, droughts, in some parts of the world, are to become more and more common as the planet heats up. If those scientists are right, then in the upcoming years, Mainers, and perhaps even those in other New England states, will be very grateful that there was “a group of Skowhegan residents who were motivated by the need to address wheat production as an important cornerstone of a growing local food movement.”

Maine just might become a bread basket once more.

Food for the Soul

VISITING A FRIEND

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Keepers of the rocks

This afternoon, I went to Cushing to visit my friend Terry. Her house overlooks the St. George River, which is so tidal that the air has a lovely, salty smell. The day was everything a summer day should be—warm but not too hot with a bright blue sky. Terry bought lobster rolls that were chock-full of lobster meat with just a hint of mayonnaise to hold it together. I brought grapes and sparkling water. As we ate our feast outside, we talked about her parents, who were farmers, and gardening and growing old. Her three cats swished around us. One of them, a big orange tiger, nearly caught a red squirrel.

“Go!” I said to the squirrel.

“Good!” Terry said when I told her the squirrel had gotten away.

For his part, the orange cat let out one frustrated yowl and sharpened his claws on a nearby log. You could almost hear him saying, “Next time, you little fiend!”

After lunch, we walked around the house and admired the many gardens that Terry’s daughter tends. Here are some of the photos I took:

The view from the front yard
Poppy pod against yellow
Blue and green
A serene place to rest

 

Food for Thought

HIS AND HERS

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When we have pasta, someone in our house uses this bowl and usually goes back for seconds:

And someone in our house uses this bowl and never goes back for seconds:

A little perspective on size:

Another perspective:

Final note: The one who uses the little white bowl is losing weight, but so is the one using the big green bowl and going back for seconds. I think readers can guess which bowl Laurie uses and which bowl Clif uses. This definitely comes under the category of “Life is not Fair.” 😉

 

News

LATE JULY GARDEN

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND

In Maine, summer is two thirds done. On our bike ride last night, my husband, Clif, and I lamented that we really only had one more month to go on long bike rides when he comes home from work. The older we get, the more we love summer, with its long, hot days and lovely warm nights. Unfortunately, much of the country is suffering from extreme heat and drought, and I expect more than a few people in the Midwest will be happy to see the end of summer.

However, in Maine, the season is sweet, and the crops are growing. Last week, Farmer Kev delivered new potatoes, baby carrots, garlic, sugar snaps, and other vegetables as well. “Corn is coming,” he promised.

We are waiting.

Here are some photos from my own little garden:

Tomorrow's lunch
A visitor
In bloom
Lots of hardy sage, which survived the winter

 

 

 

News

THE FINEST KIND OF WEEKEND: RIVERSIDE FARM MARKET & CAFÉ

Part Two: Sunday Brunch at Riverside Farm Market & Café

Central Maine, lovely though it might be with its lakes, woods, farms, and rolling hills, is not exactly a foodie paradise. Mostly there are chains, ranging from McDonald’s to Ruby Tuesday to Olive Garden. On the one hand, this means the area is not loaded with temptations the way places such as Brunswick and Portland are. On the other hand, when it comes to food, sometimes temptations are exactly what you want, and in central Maine, the pickings are slim.

However, there are a few notable exceptions, and Riverside Farm Market & Café in Oakland is one of them. What started out as a simple farm stand has expanded to become an elegant yet casual place with indoor seating, a specialty market, and a large deck that looks over a vineyard—that’s right, a vineyard—and a stream so large that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a river. On a fine summer morning, sitting on that deck is akin to having a little slice of the Mediterranean in central Maine. More important, the service and the food are so good that Riverside Farm Market all by itself almost makes up for the plethora of chains in the area.

Last week happened to be the week of the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF), and one of our long-standing traditions has been to join our film-buff friends for a Sunday brunch on the last day of the film festival. We’ve gone to various places over the years, but our favorite has come to be Riverside Farm Market, and that’s where we go nowadays.

There are usually 14 or 15 of us, and we know to get there early so that we can grab the large table on the deck overlooking the aforementioned vineyard and stream. For some reason known only to the gods, the weather is usually perfect that last Sunday of the film festival, and so it was this year.

The servers, who are so friendly and accommodating, have come to expect us on that last Sunday, and as soon as we tell them we’re from MIFF, they start dragging tables to add to the large table. Also, there is not a peep of complaint when we ask for separate checks, and everyone gets exactly what he or she ordered.

For me, it is always the same thing—eggs Benedict served with fruit slices and baby baked potatoes. In general, I am crazy about all things made with eggs, and Riverside’s eggs Benedict are particularly delectable. (I could have some right now.) Unlike my poached eggs, their eggs are perfectly poached into puffy pillows of perfection, which are then topped with a rich, smooth hollandaise sauce and served over toasted English muffins. I usually gild the lily by adding Canadian bacon. And then, because more is always better, I order a bloody Mary to go with this brunch, and let’s just say that as I sip my drink, eat my eggs, take in the view, and talk with friends about various movies, I am one happy eater. Truly, life doesn’t get much better.

Clif's breakfast of choice----Farmers Breakfast
My eggs Benedict
The view from the deck

 

 

Animals - especially dogs, People

THE FINEST KIND OF WEEKEND—GATHERINGS WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

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Part One: A Saturday Barbecue

Last weekend was the kind of weekend I like best. It centered on getting together with family and friends and having long, leisurely meals with plenty of good conversation.

On Saturday, which was a glorious summer day—not too hot and humid—my brother, Steve, his wife, Rose, and their son, Patrick came over for a barbecue. Patrick will be heading to college next month, and we wanted to squeeze in a gathering before he’s off to this next exciting venture in his life. Patrick, as well as his parents, are movie buffs, so the conversation gravitated toward movies, and we made tentative plans to go see Beasts of the Southern Wild when it comes to Railroad Square Cinema. (I am very keen on seeing this film and hope that my expectations aren’t too high.)

The menu for the barbecue was grilled bread, corn, potato salad, chicken breasts marinated with lemon and herbs, and, my absolute favorite, Shannon’s chickpea salad with mint, lemon juice, olive oil, tomatoes, and a kind of Spanish cheese whose name I can’t remember. (Shannon, can you help me out?) The salad was utterly delicious, and the cheese somehow managed to be both tangy and smooth.

The chickpea salad

We sat on the patio until dusk came and with it the mosquitoes.  The orange cat periodically twined around our legs. The black and white cat, the shy sister, was encouraged to come over, but she declined the invitation. The dog, meanwhile, ignored both of them and did his favorite thing—begging for food. He was not disappointed, and various tidbits—especially chicken—came his way.

When the evening became too damp and the mosquitoes too plentiful, we went inside for ice cream pie made with homemade ice cream. One was chocolate and the other was raspberry, cool desserts on a hot evening. Although it wasn’t easy, I limited myself to half of a piece of raspberry ice cream pie. Patrick, who is tall and slender, helped himself to seconds, and we sat around the dining room table and talked some more as the sun set and night came.

A blog about nature, home, books, movies, television, food, and rural life.