Actually, as far as this blog goes, vacation ended last week. After a much-needed two-week vacation, I found I really missed writing for the blog, and I “came” back early to post some pictures and a recipe. However, during those two weeks, I talked to family and friends about the blog, and their advice was the same: Stick with A Good Eater, keep food at the center of the blog, and digress whenever you feel like it. Their feelings were that I had a bit of name recognition as well as a nice little readership, and it would be too bad to give that up.
With a couple of qualifications, I have decided to follow their advice. Food will indeed still be the center of this blog, but until I reach my goal for losing weight—25 more pound to go!—recipes will be far and few between. As I’ve mentioned before, those last pounds are coming off maddeningly slow, and my daily eating routine is, well, a little predictable and not very exciting. When I reach my goal weight, I will still have to be careful, but I will have a little more leeway, and while I might never go back to my prediet rate of posting recipes, I do plan to experiment with recipes at least occasionally. (Blueberry crisp is on my mind.)
As for digressions….I have added a new category called Notes from the Hinterland, and when I digress from food to write about nature, community, and nonfood books and movies, then that is the category I will use. Notes from the Hinterland will also be used as a subtitle for the piece, and it will serve as a sort of flag that I am digressing from food.
So onward onto my third year. Despite the dieting, there are several food events that I’m looking forward to—the Maine Artisan Bread Fair, the Winthrop Rotary’s first annual barbecue and gumbo dinner, and various gatherings with friends and family. Thank goodness for cheat day, the one day of the week when I can cut loose from dieting. Without that day, I doubt I would have stayed on the straight and narrow for so long.
Not long ago, my Facebook buddy Sarah Fuller wrote about the abundance of sugar snap peas this time of year, and she suggested I might want to share a good recipe or two for them on A Good Eater. Well, as it happens, I have a favorite way of fixing sugar snaps, and it’s so simple that it hardly qualifies as a recipe. In addition, the recipe, if you want to call it that, is wonderfully adaptive to other vegetables—broccoli, zucchini, carrots, bok choy, sweet peppers, and summer squash. Cooked chicken, beef, shrimp, or tofu could also be added, but the vegetarian version is so tasty that the protein additions aren’t necessary. Finally, this is a perfect summertime recipe. It’s all cooked on the stove top, which means there will be no heat coming from the oven to add to an already hot house.
Parboiling the sugar snapsA few basic ingredientsMaking a well for the garlic. Adding it last keeps it from burning.
In spring, summer, and fall, our backyard is one of my favorite places to be. It is not large—only a half-acre or so—but it is surrounded by trees, there are flowers and birds, and there is always something to notice. Here are some photos from yesterday—Wednesday, July 11th.
Ms. Watson on her favorite perch---the compost bin
I’m still “officially” on vacation, but I’m edging back to blogging. I thought I’d post some pictures of the blooming beauty around my house and on my road. Definitely food for the soul.
I know. I’m supposed to be on a vacation from this blog. But I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of this sign at Fast Eddie’s, a retro restaurant and food drive-in not far from where we live. A sign of summer, indeed, and it couldn’t be more true.
Come August, this blog will be three years old. It’s been an eventful three years, punctuated by my daughter Shannon’s wedding as well as breast cancer and the resultant treatment. However, the biggest event, as far as this blog is concerned, is my decision to lose weight.
I’ve written quite a bit about it in previous posts, so I will be very brief: Last year, when I went for my annual physical, I was the heaviest I’d ever been, and I decided the time had come to lose at least 80 pounds. So far, I’ve lost 50, and the last 30 are coming off at a maddeningly slow pace. As a friend of mine who is also dieting put it, “Your body wants to hold on to its weight.”
Yes, it does, and I have redoubled my efforts to lose those last 30 pounds. I am hyper-vigilant about the number of calories I consume in a day, and I have decided to increase the mileage of my bike rides. Right now I go about 11 miles a day, and I would like to go 20 or maybe even 25 miles.
Unfortunately, what this also means is that my cooking has become very proscribed. Our main meals consist primarily of grilled chicken, baked fish, salads, turkey burgers, and more grilled chicken, with an occasional veggie stir-fry thrown in for variation. There is not much experimenting with new recipes, and these days, I hardly ever improvise my own dishes. Because with experimenting and improvisation come tasting and more tasting, and with tasting comes unwanted calories, even if the dish is low in calories.
In short, when it comes to food writing, dieting is a real wet blanket. Yet what can I do? To be 80 pounds overweight is not good, and while I’m lucky that my blood sugar and cholesterol are fine, I do have osteoarthritis, and the heavier I am, the less easy it is to do basic things like, say, go up and down stairs or walk any distance or go up hills.
Therefore, I am committed to dieting and to losing weight—I’ve even given away all my too-big clothing—and this means I have to make a decision about this blog. Clearly, it can no longer be a venue in which to share my cooking adventures. While I did write about other things, cooking and experimenting with recipes were at the center of this blog.
So now what? Do I change the focus of this blog to describe my struggles with losing weight? Sounds like a real drag to me. Do I focus on food issues and write profiles of people who are doing interesting things with food in Maine? A possibility. Or, do I leave this blog and go on to create a more general-purpose blog where I can write about nature, books, movies, social issues, the environment, and all the other things that interest me, including food? Another possibility, and I have even come up with a potential name for this blog—Notes from the Hinterland.
I’m not sure which direction I want to take, so for the next few weeks, I will be on vacation while I consider my options. As soon as I make my decision, I’ll let readers know.
In the meantime, have a wonderful summer. The roses are in bloom, and their glorious scent reminds us of why we love this season so much.
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.
The stir-fry---half an order
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.
On Saturday, we invited some friends over for a little “greens” party, which featured dishes made with the lettuce, spinach, and other leafy vegetables so abundant in Maine right now. We invited Chuck and Erma as well as Steve and Margy, who brought a delightful young man named Dareen—I’m not sure if I’m spelling it right—a student from the Ivory Coast.
This gathering followed the course of all our summer gatherings when the weather is nice. We started with appetizers on the patio, at around 2:30 P.M., and we finished with dessert, inside to escape the mosquitoes, at about 7:00 P.M.. My husband, Clif, and I take our cues from the French and the Italians, who love to host long, leisurely meals with friends.
Let’s face it. We live in a rushed, hectic world where everyone is pretty much on screech most of the time. If people aren’t working, they are doing chores around the house. If they aren’t doing chores, they are checking their emails and Facebook. Or sending instant messages. Or twittering. Or talking on their cell phones. At our gatherings, all those things are set aside for several hours so that people can eat, relax, and socialize. Basic human stuff that too often gets lost in busy schedules.
Clif served his grilled bread, which is always a hit, and the greens, made into salads and spinach pie (spanakopita), were also pretty tasty. But the real star of the gathering was a drink Chuck made that was so simple and delicious that we were all amazed we had never had it anywhere else or had thought to make it ourselves.
Here’s is what Chuck did: Using his own maple syrup, he poured about 1/4 of cup of it in a large glass. He added sparkling water and ice and stirred everything up until the drink had a lovely amber hue. And that’s it. Except this drink is so unabashedly good—it’s like drinking essence of maple—that we all raved and marveled for quite a while.
Margy said, “I’ve never had anything like this, and I’ve never seen anything like this in a store.”
“You could start a business,” Steve added, and Chuck smiled modestly. “But what would we call the drink?”
Several names were bandied about, but when “Maple Revolution” came up, everyone agreed this was a splendid name. Then, for the title of this piece, I added “Uncle Chuck’s,” and Clif thinks that’s a fine addition to go with “Maple Revolution.” He can visualize a logo where Chuck, somewhat defiantly, raises a glass of Maple Revolution. Perhaps there could even be the tag lines: “It’s time for a maple revolution. It’s sweet, it’s natural, and it comes from trees.”
So, readers, at your next gathering, make your own Maple Revolution. You will need three things—real maple syrup, sparkling water, and ice. I suggested using 1/4 cup of maple syrup, but this amount can be fiddled with according to taste. Once the drink is made, sit on your deck, patio, or lawn, and make a toast to summer and all good things that come from the earth.
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.
Clif and "the kids"
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.)
Delectable fries and clams
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.
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.
A blog about nature, home, books, movies, television, food, and rural life.
Notes From the Hinterland 