News

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

Today is the anniversary of the birthday of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest English writers of all times. While his stories can be maddeningly slow—I just finished reading David Copperfield and oh how I chafed at the pace—there can be no denying that Dickens was a brilliant writer who came up with vivid, memorable characters that still have a hold on us today. (Scrooge, Fagin, Tiny Tim, and Uriah Heep come to mind, but there are many others.)

Food, especially the lack thereof, thrums through many of his novels, and this is a good reminder for modern readers that it’s only very recently that food has been so abundant in western countries. In Dickens’s time—early to mid-1800s—poor people were frequently hungry, and in David Copperfield, Dickens writes movingly of young David’s hunger as he tries to buy enough food with his meager salary and doesn’t always succeed. (David is ten years old, virtually abandoned by his cruel stepfather, and is working in a factory.)

However, perhaps the most famous food scene from a Dickens’s novel comes from Oliver Twist, when young Oliver, who lives in a horribly grim workhouse asks, “Please, sir, I want some more.”

What Oliver wants is more gruel, which he, of course doesn’t get.

Here is a snappy version of that scene from the 1968 movie Oliver!

 

My favorite lines? “Food, Glorious food. Don’t care what it looks like. Burnt, underdone, crude. Don’t care what the cook’s like.”

Happy birthday, Mr. Dickens!

 

Food for Thought, News

ON BEING FAT: PART IV—YOUR BODY REALLY DOES WANT TO HANG ONTO THAT FAT

2 Comments

“Nobody wants to be fat. In most modern cultures, even if you are healthy…to be fat is to be perceived as weak-willed and lazy. It’s also just embarrassing.” –Tara Parker-Pope, the New York Times

Over the holidays, I met with a friend who has struggled with her weight for nearly as long as I have. Right now, she is close to her ideal weight, and she has worked hard to get there. As we were talking about weight and dieting, she told me about an article in the New York Times—“The Fat Trap” by Tara Parker-Pope. (I started this On Being Fat series by linking to it.) My friend also mentioned how discouraging the article was, but that she was going forward with an optimistic attitude about her own weight, and I said I would be doing the same with mine. (I’ve lost about 45 pounds since May.)

This is exactly what we should do, but let’s face it, the odds aren’t in our favor. My friend and I both have a long history of losing weight and then gaining it all back, and we aren’t alone in our struggle with fat. According to MSNBC, “more than 80 percent of people who have lost weight regain all of it, or more, after two years.” My own patterns of gaining and losing certainly verify this, and the same is true for many people I know.

Why should so many of us who really and truly want to be trim gain weight back after losing it? Parker-Pope provides some answers in “The Fat Trap.”  In brief, studies indicate that genetics and hormones make it difficult for many people to lose large amounts of weight permanently. It seems our bodies don’t like shedding pounds, and when an obese person loses weight, his or her body pumps out a hormone called ghrelin, which stimulates the appetite. At the same time, the dieting body will produce less of peptide YY and leptin, which suppress appetite.  “A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels.”

Parker-Pope notes: “For years, the advice to the overweight and obese has been that we simply need to eat less and exercise more. While there is truth to this guidance, it fails to take into account that the human body continues to fight against weight loss long after dieting has stopped.”

She movingly recounts how her mother struggled with being overweight, and how, as her mother lay dying, “[i]t was her great regret that in the days before she died, the closest medical school turned down her offer to donate her body because she was obese.” In turn, Parker-Pope struggles with her own weight, and by her own admission, she is at least 60 pounds overweight.

Parker-Pope then goes on to describe some people—the happy few—who have indeed managed to keep their weight down for many years. Readers, I have bad news that will come as no surprise to those of you who have a history of dieting. It takes constant vigilance and will power for a formerly obese person to maintain a healthy weight. Such people can never not think about food, how much they have eaten and how much they will eat. It also requires exercise—at least an hour a day, seven days a week.

Is it any wonder people just give up? I have done so many times in the past when I have just plain gotten tired of always monitoring every bit of food that has gone into my mouth.

However, I do have some good news. I have found a system that has made losing weight and keeping it off a little easier. (Not easy, mind you. Just easier.) I stumbled across it by accident fourteen years ago, and I had more success with this method of losing weight than I have ever had with any other system. Unfortunately, after keeping off the weight for two years, I gained it back, and the reason is fairly simple. My husband and I started a small literary magazine called Wolf Moon Journal, which occupied so much of my day that I couldn’t focus on keeping track of everything I ate, and I no longer had time to exercise.

Two years ago, we stopped publishing the journal. Over a year ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and was told not to diet during radiation treatment, and it was open season on chocolate and sweets, my weaknesses. Last May, after radiation treatment was over, I went for my yearly exam, and I found I had gained 13 pounds over the winter. I was at my heaviest. Yikes!

The time had come to take another shot at losing weight, to return to the system that had worked so well for me 14 years ago. That system is called controlled cheating, and in my final post On Being Fat, I’ll describe the system and the roundabout way I came across it.

News, People

MAPLE SYRUP SEASON APPROACHES!

Today, I should be writing the next installment in my series On Being Fat. (I promise that the next installment will be coming soon.) Instead, I’m going to write about maple syrup. I just can’t help myself. I am so keen on maple syrup that even the merest hint that the season is about to begin sends me into a fever of anticipation. I love the whole process—the tapping of the trees, the boiling of the sap, the great wood fires, the steam, and finally, the glorious substance itself—maple syrup, which can also be made into sugar or a soft spread to be used on toast. (My mouth is watering as I write this.)

I’m not the only one who loves maple syrup. There are a couple of sugar shacks in the area, and when the season is in full swing, those shacks are packed on weekends.

As it happens, there is a sugar shack—Mike’s Maple House—not far from our house, probably not more than three miles away. Yesterday, as I was taking the dog for a walk, I saw a man hauling logs out of the woods, and they came from a dead tree he had just cut up. It was Mike Smith, owner of Mike’s Maple House, and his face was very red from the exertion of pulling the logs with tongs through the snow.

Naturally, I stopped to talk with him. “That’s a lot of work.”

“It is,” he said, wiping his sweating face. “But I’m about done and am ready to throw the wood into my truck.”

I nodded, seeing the truck parked a little ways down the road. “Looks like pretty good wood.”

“Yup,” he replied.  “Three weeks in a shed or a barn, and it will be ready to burn. I don’t dare leave it here until tomorrow. I’m afraid someone will take it.”

“I can see your point. Do you use it to heat your house?”

“No, this is for making maple syrup.”

Ah, maple syrup! Beside me, the dog sat down and resigned himself to waiting until the conversation was over and the walk would resume.

Mike continued, “The season’s coming right up. Hope it’s as good this year as it was last year. I actually ran out of wood to boil the sap. But who knows how it will be? It’s been such a weird fall and winter.”

Yes, it has.

Then Mike went on to tell me a couple of maple syrup stories. “One year, someone drove by, saw flames shooting into the sky from my sugar house, and called the fire department. Must have been somebody new to the area who didn’t know me. When the fire department came, they told me they figured it was just me. You should have called me first, I told them, before coming out here.”

Indeed they should have.

“Lots of new people on this road and a lot more traffic, too. When I first moved here, I could let my children take oxen down the road to haul wood out of the forest. Wouldn’t do that today. Too much traffic.”

He is certainly right about that. The dog and I have to constantly watch for oncoming cars, and occasionally, we even have to stop and move over if one seems to be coming too fast and too close.

“Well,” I said, “I’d best be on my way. But I’ll be seeing you soon. In the next month or so?”

“I hope so,” Mike said.

The dog and I continued our walk. The sky, which had been gray when we started out, began to clear, the cloud cover rolling back like a receding tide, leaving blue sky in its wake rather than a sandy beach. A dusting of snow covered the evergreens and the bare branches of the trees, and as the sun emerged, the branches glittered and sparkled.

“It looks like a fairyland,” I fancifully told myself.

But thoughts of maple syrup quickly returned to replace thoughts of fairyland. On my way back, I saw that Mike had loaded the wood into his truck, and he waved to me as he went by. I waved back. Maple syrup season is almost here. And I can’t wait.

 

 

 

 

People

TALKING ABOUT SOUP AND ANNATTO WITH ROSA AT THE FLAKY TART

5 Comments

Yesterday was a gray winter day, raw with spitting snow and slippery underfoot. My friend Claire picked me up late morning for lunch at The Flaky Tart in downtown Winthrop, and as I walked to her car, I slipped in my own driveway. Fortunately, I did not fall, but it made me extra careful. (Later that day, when I took the dog for a walk, I was sure to wear my grippers.)

As regular readers know, The Flaky Tart is new in town, and with its good food and warm, snappy decor, it has become one of Winthrop’s hot spots. Claire and I meet there once a week or so, and I always look forward to our outings. Often, we see people that we know, and the two owners, Kim and Rosa, are so friendly that they make the Tart even more inviting.

Rosa, who was on duty yesterday, does much of the cooking. Not long ago I had had one of Rosa’s bean soups, which was delicious. Kim happened to be working that day, and I asked her about the spicing. “Cumin,” she answered. “And a bit of allspice.”

Allspice! I had never used this in soup but after tasting Rosa’s, I decided to try it in some of my own soups. So far, I have had great success with it in two soups—a sausage, bean soup and a creamy, curried tomato soup with chickpeas and roasted cauliflower. (A recipe for the latter will be forthcoming. I still need to tinker with it a bit and to record the exact amounts of what I used.)

But back to yesterday. After lunch, I chatted with Rosa and told her how her soup had inspired me to branch out with my own. I described the creamy, curried tomato soup and mentioned that while it was perfectly good with just the curry, it seemed somewhat flat. When I added the allspice—and some coriander—the add spices seemed to give the soup that little something extra.

“Yes,” Rosa said. “The spices gave it another dimension.”

Rosa, who is from Venezuela, described what she asks for when she goes back home for a visit.

“Not Italian shoes,” she said with a laugh. “Instead I want spices and good cocoa.”

“Good decision!” I agreed.

Rosa then went to to tell me about one of her favorite spices—the annatto seed—which gives food a bright color similar to saffron. “When you sizzle it in oil it is so beautiful, and it has a spicy but not hot taste.”

“Where you can get it around here?” I asked.

“Whole Foods, I think, and maybe Harvest Time in Augusta.”

This morning, I Googled annatto and found a description of it in the blog the epicenter: “slightly sweet and peppery.” There are also some very good instruction on how to use annatto—in hot liquids (soups!) as well as in hot oil. Apparently, the seeds jump in hot oil, so keep the pan covered.

Lately, I have become quite the dedicated soup maker. They are economical, and they warm the soul as well as the body. In the past, I have wondered if soups were too humble and common to serve guests, but my friends seem to love being invited over for a soup night. (And bread, too, if I don’t broil it.) I must also admit that soup meshes well with my improvisational style of cooking.

At any rate, although I am somewhat obsessed with the Tart’s bacon and egg sandwiches on homemade bread, I have decided that from now on I will always try the soup of the day. Rosa has already taught me some new tricks about soup, and I expect there is much more to learn.

 

 

 

 

News

BROILED BREAD

On Sunday, we invited our friends Jim and Dawna Leavitt over for one of our simple suppers of soup, bread, and salad. In the freezer, I had a turkey carcass leftover from Thanksgiving, which would be the base of a soup that would also include potatoes, carrots, and additional meat from roasted chicken thighs. The carcass was huge so I made a lot of stock—this meant we had plenty of soup for our supper as well as enough to send some home with Dawna and Jim.

I also made bread. In December, our old stand mixer stopped working, and we ordered a new one from Westinghouse. The old stand mixer was not a very good one—it didn’t have much power—but I had learned how to make good bread with it. The new stand mixer is much better, but my technique has had to change. In addition, since it is more powerful, I have changed recipes so that my loaves are bigger. (I now use the recipe from King Arthur’s Flour.) As a result, it has taken me a couple of months to adapt to the new mixer and to make decent bread with it. Funny yet instructive to think of how someone who has made over 100 loaves of bread last year would have a learning curve with a new mixer, but that’s the way it worked.

After two months of using the new stand mixer and getting used to the King Arthur recipe, I have pretty much gotten it down, and yesterday’s dough came out especially well, moist and perfectly spongy and rising just the way it ought to. I had high hopes for that bread.

Sunday ticked by as my husband, Clif, and I got ready for Jim and Dawna. By 4:30, the soup was all done and simmering on the stove. It had been deemed “Not bad,” by Clif, which in his Yankee parlance is high praise. All the components of the salad were prepared so that putting it together at the last minute would be easy, and I had timed the making of the bread so that it would be baking while we all had wine and cheese and crackers.

The Leavitts came over, and as soon as they were settled in the living room with their wine, I preheated the oven, put in the bread, set the timer for 30 minutes, and went to join the others in the living room. When the timer went off, I checked the bread, and to my horror I saw that the tops were burnt.

“What’s up with the oven?” I said to myself, trying not panic as I removed the bread from the oven.

I popped one of the loaves out of the pan, flipped it over, and it proceeded to sink lower than chapati. As it turned out, the top might have been burnt but the bottom was underdone. I popped the other one out but left it upside down. It did not sink—not right off anyway—but its bottom was as underdone as the first, and I did not have a good feeling about it.

What could be wrong with that oven?, I asked myself again, and I begin fiddling with the temperature dial to see if somehow it was out of whack. It wasn’t. Then I looked at the dial where you select bake, except it wasn’t on bake. It was on broil, and sure enough, when I opened the oven I could feel the heat coming from above rather than below. (Now, why hadn’t I noticed that error when I put the bread in to bake? The simple answer is that I just wasn’t paying attention.)

For five minutes, I tried baking the second loaf that hadn’t fallen, but the damage was done, and it, too, fell. I had to face facts—I would not be serving that bread with supper. What to do? Soup without some kind of bread just didn’t seem right to me. Luckily, the solution came quickly—ordinarily I am not a quick thinker—and that solution was biscuits.

I explained the bread situation to Clif, Jim, and Dawna, and the Leavitts were their usual gracious selves. “Oh, don’t make biscuits. We’re fine with just soup.”

Nevertheless, I made biscuits, and they came out exactly the way they should—light and fluffy and perfectly cooked. (And I managed not to broil them.)

As we sat down to eat, I thought about the broiled bread disaster. I had never done such a thing before, and I hope I will never do it again, that’s for sure. Yet, in a way, I was lucky our guests were Jim and Dawna. We’ve been friends for so long—nearly 30 years—and we are so comfortable with each other that the bread debacle was less of a horror with them than it would have been with guests we hadn’t known as long.

How wonderful to have such friends! But next time they come over, I’ll be especially careful not to broil the bread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News

JANUARY 27, 2012: BITS AND BOBS FROM THE INTERNET

From Bloomerg: A piece about food waste worldwide. It includes this sobering statistic: “The FAO has said global food output must rise 70 percent by 2050 to feed a world population expected to grow to 9 billion from 7 billion.” Food not wasted would go a long way toward achieving this goal.

From the New York Times: A look at Mormons and food, specifically, their desire to feed people. Mormon households are encouraged to set aside three months’ to a years’ worth of food. Very interesting, and leaving aside the green Jello and other powdered foods, there are some good tips in this piece.

From the Portland Press Herald: A short but cogent article by Anne Mahle about the importance of serving “honest” food to children. That is, not hiding the fact that you’re, say, serving vegetables. Just serve the vegetables. Mahle suggests that dishonest, sneaky approaches do the child no favor. I agree.

From National Geographic: Popcorn, that snack of snacks, was eaten 6,000 years ago in Peru. I wonder, is there any other modern snack, other than fruit, that has been around as long?

From the blog Henbogle: As Ali has put it, the climes they are a-changing. The USDA has released a new climate zone map, which shows that the Northeast is a half a zone warmer than it was when the previous map came out in 1990. I know. A half a zone doesn’t sound like much, but it has real implications—some good and some bad—for farmers and gardeners.

 

 

Food for Thought, News

ON BEING FAT: PART III—WHAT’S UP WITH WILL POWER?

4 Comments

When it comes to weight, there are various types of people. First, there are the people who are naturally slim and have been since they were children. They can eat like truck drivers and never put on a pound. My sister-in-law, Rose, falls into this category, and she is as pretty and as trim now as she was 20 years (or so!) ago when she married my brother. I sincerely hope that naturally slim people start each day giving thanks that they don’t have to worry and obsess about every single mouthful of food they eat. They hit the jackpot with body metabolism, and while I don’t exactly begrudge these people their good luck—all right, I’m a little bitter—I’m certainly envious.

Then there are the people who have small appetites. Somehow, they just don’t want to eat that much. They get full very fast, and their bodies seem to have an internal gauge that prevents them from overeating. These people are a complete mystery to me, and I have watched in astonishment as small-appetite friends have left half their desserts uneaten. (Guess who often eats the other half?) People who have small appetites don’t appear to struggle with portion control. It just comes naturally to them, and like their sisters and brothers blessed with fast metabolisms, I hope those with small appetites start each day giving thanks for this gift.

Next come the people with will power. They like to eat, but they are firm with themselves. One friend, in particular, comes to mind. She is well into her 60s, and what a terrific figure she has. She likes to cook, she likes to eat, and she has a good appetite, but she knows how to say no to herself. It’s not that she won’t eat dessert or chips; she just doesn’t eat them very often. I view this friend with something like the awe that I would reserve for a Zen master.

Finally—and I know the above list is not all inclusive—there is the majority, I think, people who love to eat and who have bodies that love to put on weight. Will power is touch and go; sometimes we have it, but often we don’t.

What’s up with will power, anyway? In the New York Times, just in time for the new year, John Tierney wrote a piece called “Be It Resolved.” The piece is about New Year’s resolutions in general and will power in specific, and there is good news and bad news. I always like to begin with good news: Those who make resolutions are much more likely to “make improvements than someone who hasn’t made a formal resolution.” It seems that a statement of intent really does make a difference. Here’s the bad news, which will come as no surprise: “By the end of January, a third will have broken their resolutions, and by July more than half will have lapsed.”

It all comes down to will power, to staying on course and not giving up. But according to Tierney, here’s the fascinating thing: Social scientists have come to believe that will power is not just a metaphor but rather “a real form of mental energy, powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which is used up as you exert self-control.” And “ego depletion” is what happens when you “exert self-control” over an extended period of time. In other words, you just plain get tired. (Doesn’t anyone who has ever dieted instinctively know this? You just plain get tired of keeping track of every single thing that you eat and of constantly saying no to yourself.)

But there are ways to deal with flagging will power—“ego depletion”—and Tierney suggests “that the way to keep a New Year’s resolution is to anticipate the limits of your willpower.” It seems that people who  have the best will power arrange their lives so they are not constantly tempted by their favorite things. “They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can.”

As Tierney notes, this is especially relevant for dieters. The more people diet, the less glucose they have in their systems, which, in turn, affects their will power. It really is a nasty cycle.

Tierney goes on to list a series of strategies to deal with the problem of will power, and, among other things, they range from setting a clear, single goal to precommitting yourself to finding ways of rewarding yourself when you reach a goal.

Tierney’s article is thought provoking, and it illustrates why people often fail to achieve the goals they really and truly want. Even for those who have never struggled with such things, the article is insightful, and I highly recommend it as I have only touched on its key issues in this post.

As for me and losing weight—I have adopted a strategy that instinctively takes flagging will power into consideration. But before I describe “my” system—actually it was developed by a man named Fats Goldberg—in the next post On Being Fat I want to write about another pitfall of dieting that science has recently shed light on—that is, how the body doesn’t like losing weight.

 

 

 

 

Environment, People

A BUSY WEEKEND, ENDING WITH A LECTURE BY HABIB DAGHER AT UMA

A very busy weekend, that started with a bang. On Friday evening, our friends Debbie and Dennis Maddi joined Clif and me for soup and homemade bread. I decided to be bold and try to reproduce the soup I had made out of odds and ends in mid-December. (Here is the post where I describe what I did.) I am such a seat-of-the-pants cook that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do it. But, the soup was so good that it was worth a try. Readers, I succeeded, and the soup—made with beans, sausage, ground beef, and various spices—came out just as well as it did when I first concocted it. Another reminder of how I really need to transcribe and then gather my recipes in a book.

With the soup and bread, I served a simple winter salad of romaine lettuce, toasted walnuts, crumbled feta, and mandarin oranges, dressed with a homemade vinaigrette. Debbie thought the salad was so pretty that she urged me to take a picture of it, which I did.

Debbie and Dennis are interested in many of the same things that we are—politics, books, movies, and the environment—so the conversation hummed right along during the evening. One topic of discussion was the Senior College at the University of Maine at Augusta. The Senior College offers noncredited courses for, well, people over 50. There are Senior Colleges at the various universities throughout the state, and they add so much to the intellectual life of our communities. Maine has an aging population, the highest in the country, I believe. I am certainly in that category, and as there are so many of us in Maine, we had better darned well be useful and keep our wits sharp. Senior Colleges do much to facilitate this.

Debbie and Dennis are actively involved with the Senior College at the University of Maine at Augusta. They take courses, and they also volunteer to help with a nifty lecture series called Forum on the Future. As it turned out, on Sunday there was to be a lecture given by Habib Dagher, a professor of Civil and Structural Engineering at the University of Maine at Orono. Even before we had invited Debbie and Dennis over for supper, Clif and I had made plans to go this lecture.

The nuts-and-bolts title of Professor Dagher’s talk was Energy, Economic Growth, and Jobs, but the lecture was anything but pedestrian. Slim, dark, and animated, Professor Dagher’s enthusiasm for his subject—offshore wind energy in Maine—made the lecture engaging as well as informative.

In brief: Right now, between electricity, fuel for the car, and heat for the house, Mainers spend about $10,000 a year on energy costs. (In Maine, the average family income in Maine is $45,00 to $50,000.) Twenty percent of our income goes to gasoline and oil, and as Professor Dagher warned, this will only go up as time goes by. So, he suggested , why not reduce uncertainty, and perhaps costs, with multiple sources of energy produced in Maine? Professor Dagher listed opportunities for Maine that included wood, tidal, and hydro, but his passion is offshore wind power, and off the Maine coast, the wind blows hard enough and consistently enough to produce a lot of power.

How much power? Professor Dagher’s estimate is that when you take into account that even off the coast the wind doesn’t blow all the time, there is still enough wind to produce 60 gigawatts of energy. Now, if you’re like me, you have no idea how much energy this really is. But Professor Dagher made it easy to visualize: One nuclear power plant produces 1 gigawatt of energy, which means we have the equivalent of 60 nuclear power plants blowing in the wind over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine.

In Maine, we have the wind in our backyard. With it, we could heat our homes and power our cars. According to Professor Dagher, as many as 15,000 jobs could be created to support the industry.

Now, let’s hope the powers that be support offshore wind power.

 

News

NEWS ALERT: FROSTY’S IN BRUNSWICK TO REOPEN

6 Comments

News alert from the Bangor Daily News! Scrap the diets and head to Brunswick where Frosty’s Donuts will soon be reopening for—get this!—seven days a week. Frosty’s fans will recall that this shop, which made incredible melt-in-your-mouth honey dip donuts—had what might called flexible hours. Toward the end, they were open so infrequently that I had been disappointed many times to find them closed during their posted opening times.

Now, the new owners, Nels Omdal and Shelby St. Andre, are being tutored by one of the old owners, Bob Frost, but there is knack to making donuts just as there is a knack to making most everything. Will the new Frosty’s be as good as the old one? There is only one way to find out, and I intend to do my bit in the name of donut research. I will be going to Brunswick soon. In fact, I might have to go several times, just to be sure.

News

JANUARY 20, 2012: BITS AND BOBS FROM THE INTERNET

From grist: Tamar Adler’s and Kurt Michael Friese’s gentle but firm appeal for Americans to get back in the kitchen. Tamar Adler is fast becoming one of my heroes, and I will be reading more of Kurt Michael Friese.

From Rob Hopkins’s blog Transition Culture: A map of Guildford, England, back in 1793, when food was grown everywhere in and around town. While I’m not one who longs for the old days, I agree with Rob Hopkins when he suggests: “Perhaps it’s just me, but a walk of the imagination around the landscape captured in this map is not just a look back into our past, but also, in many ways, a look forward into our future.”

From the Worcester Telegram & Gazette: An article about a bill in the Massachusetts’s legislature to remove the risk of liability to restaurants that want to donate leftover food to various food agencies.  Obviously, some care will need to be taken to ensure food safety, but a lot of restaurant food is wasted, and what a great thing it would be to keep even a portion of this wasted food out of the landfills.

From the New York Times: I have as an unreasoning aversion to modernist cuisine (aka molecular gastronomy) as I do to the Danish director Lars von Trier. However, Melissa Clark’s piece, where she describes adapting some of the less esoteric methods of modernist cuisine for a dinner party, has made me reconsider my position. Mind you, I’m not about to rush out and get a sous vide machine.

From the Kennebec Journal: After seven months of being without a permanent home, the Hot Meals Kitchen is back at St. Francis Xavier Church Hall in Winthrop. Special thanks to Craig Hickman, who opened his home to the town for preparation of free Wednesday meals so that people could get a hot meal even though the Hot Meals Kitchen was closed. (Hickman is secretary for the Hot Meals Kitchen’s board.)

From MPBN: From the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine, a report about food insecurity in Maine. In Maine, “about one in five kids under the age of 16 live in a food insecure home. Maine also has a 25 million pound gap of food that’s needed to feed the hungry.” And, here’s a surprising statistic: “Maine imports more food than any other state in the lower 48.” Especially when you consider “There was time when Maine produced most–if not all–of the food it needed. In the Civil War, New England was considered the wheat basket. The beef industry was developed in Kennebec County before it shifted west.” A timely and fascinating report, and kudos to Muskie School of Public Service.

 

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