On the second Friday of the month, except for July and August, the Winthrop Congregational Church hosts a fish chowder luncheon. For $7 you get a bowl of homemade fish chowder, made fresh that morning and chock full of fish and potatoes. With the chowder you also get homemade biscuits, pickles, a piece of pie, crackers, and coffee and tea. If that isn’t what we Mainers would call a wicked good deal, then I don’t know what is.

Therefore, on Friday, I took out my trusty bike, which I’ve dubbed Blue Beauty, and pedaled to the Congregational Church, which is about a mile from my house.

When I got to the church, a nifty little sign assured me that I was indeed coming on the right day.

As I was locking my bike to a post, I could smell the rich fish chowder. But when I went in, what did I immediately see? The pie table, that’s what. Fish chowder is good, but to a Mainer, there is no lovely sight than a table full of pies.

I saw my friend Lee Gilman cutting a piece of pie to add to the table.

Resisting pie—it was a mighty struggle—I went to one of the tables to wait for my friend Claire Hersom.

At last came the chowder, and it tasted just as rich and good as it smelled.

From Grist: Philadelphia has been subsidizing healthy food with its Philly Food Bucks, which “offers food stamps recipients a 40 percent subsidy at farmers markets.” Apparently, the program has been a huge success, but—no surprise!—they are running out of money. Truly, more money should be going into programs such as this.

From the Guardian: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall makes an eloquent case for eating more vegetables and less meat. “To summarise, we need to eat more vegetables and less flesh because vegetables are the foods that do us the most good and our planet the least harm.” Yes, indeed!

From the blog 2 Minutes to Dinner: Chef Ronna Welsh has published a letter from a New York farmer who was hit hard by Hurricane Irene. Very moving and a reminder of how extreme weather can destroy livelihoods as well as homes.

From the Portland Press Herald: Pizza, pizza, pizza! Made on a mobile wood-fired oven that might be coming to a town near you.

From Salon.com and Felisa Rogers’s blog Scavenger: A good piece about how thrift and creativity can and should be combined.

From the Bowdoin Daily Sun: Great photos of their organic garden. Wow, that garden is a beauty. I am especially envious of their basil. (Mine did so poorly this year.) How heartening it is to see a college growing some of the food that is fed to its students.

Last weekend, I found out some sad news: Saturday, September 3 was the last day of the Winthrop Farmers’ Market. They are closing shop early this year because supplies are running low. I’ll miss my Saturday morning bike rides to the farmers’ market—buying fresh food and talking to the vendors. (However, I still have an “in,” so to speak, with Farmer Kev for vegetables. He has surplus to sell to his CSA customers.)

I admit that this early closing caught me off-guard. On this blog, I had planned to feature a profile of each of the Winthrop Farmers’ Market vendors, and as the market usually runs until October, I thought I had plenty of time to include them all. Wrong! I missed two of the vendors, and I hope to write about them next year.

But I did manage to talk to Richard Reed of R & L Berry Farms on 22 Berry Road in Readfield. As the name of the farm suggests, Richard and his wife, Leane—hence R & L—specialize in berries, blueberries and raspberries, but they grow vegetables as well. Berries are sold at the farmers’ market, and at their farm, when the berries are in season, Leane and Richard allow customers to pick their own. In addition, Leane makes berry pies,  jellies, banana bread, and zucchini bread to sell at the farmers’ market.

They also sell honey, and right now they have 20 hives. Leane and Richard plan on adding 10 more hives and want to focus on honey and honey products: creamed honey, honey sticks, honey hand-creams, combed honey, and, of course, jars of honey. With honey having a much, much longer shelf life than fresh berries, it is easy to understand why the Reeds want to increase their honey production. And, honey is certainly delicious. On oatmeal. In green tea. On toast. In bran muffins. There are lots of good ways to use honey.

Leane and Richard have been growing and selling berries and vegetables for seven years.  To further diversify, Richard has been learning how to make beef jerky, with much guidance on safety issues coming from the University of Maine at Orono. He plans to buy beef from Wholesome Holmstead, one of the vendors at the Winthrop Farmers’ Market and a farm that has been featured on this blog.

I love berries and honey, but what I really love are Richard’s whoopie pies, which he, rather than his wife, makes. Small—just the right size as far as I’m concerned—moist, often studded with mini-chocolate chips and thick with cream, these whoopie pies have become a Saturday treat, and I will miss them. I can and probably will buy Wicked Whoopee Pies at the grocery store, and Wicked Whoopies are very good. But Richard’s are better. He has a knack for making them, and I hope his enthusiasm for beef jerky doesn’t interfere with his whoopie pie production.

I’ll be looking for whoopie pies next spring when the farmers’ market opens.

Yesterday, the weather was humid and hot, but the rain held, and my husband, Clif, and I were able to spend the afternoon in one of our favorite places—on the patio in our backyard. Our daughter Shannon and her husband, Mike, joined us as well as our friend Claire, who just happens to be Mike’s aunt.

We decided to try cooking two small whole chickens on the grill, with indirect heat, and the results were mixed. We used a big roasting pan, and one chicken was set flat in the pan. The other chicken was propped upright on a little wire rack Clif bought at Home Depot, a rack that has space for an open can of beer onto which the chicken is placed. Supposedly, this makes the chicken moister, but unfortunately, the chicken set directly in the pan took longer to cook than the chicken on the rack. We probably should have taken the chicken off the rack as soon as it was done, but we didn’t, and it was disappointingly dry. On the other hand, the chicken cooked flat was quite good.

For both chickens, I had made a butter, garlic, sage mixture to rub under the skin—one stick of softened butter, four cloves of chopped garlic, and fifteen sage leaves, also chopped. This gave the meat a very good flavor, and I will definitely use this mixture again, for both cooking on the grill and cooking in the oven.

I will say that both chickens were brown and beautiful, but to paraphrase Dr. Who, good looks are no substitution for good taste.

Clif and I have decided we will try the rack and beer method again, but we will only cook one chicken and remove it as soon as it is done according to a meat thermometer. If at first you don’t succeed…

Despite the dry chicken, it was a lovely day on the patio. Courtesy of Claire and Shannon, we hand bang-up appetizers—a tangy Irish cheddar cheese with crackers; prosciutto and basil on slices from a very fresh baguette, and homemade tortilla chips from Whole Foods. Along with some salsa, of course.

Courtesy of farmer Kev, I served corn on the cob, green beans with browned butter, and red roasted potatoes with olive oil and rosemary.

Talking about books, movies, and family, we stayed on that patio until about 7:00. As evening came, the air cooled nicely, and Clif and I could hardly bear to go inside to clean up after our guests left. Surrounded by the forest, we listened as birds called to each other, the voices of woodpeckers, chickadees, and finches coming together in conversation.

This is a map of our Labor Day bicycle ride. It turned out to be a bit over 30 miles, and my wife, Laurie, and I were lucky that the rain held off until we returned home.

View My Saved Places in a larger map

The whole ride took about 3 hours, including two short stops. Our average speed was a little over 10 mile an hour.

Whoops! Summer sped by at such a busy blur that I forget to post my July Let Them Eat Bread Report. For new readers, here’s a brief recap: My project this year is to bake and give away at least one loaf of bread each week in 2011. I’m doing this as a personal protest against the selfishness in our society. In a time of shrinking resources and an ever-growing population, we must learn to share. The bonus: It’s good spiritual practice.

As they would say on the NPR show Marketplace, let’s do the numbers: In July, I gave away 4 loaves of bread, and the same is true for August. This makes a yearly total of 42 1/2 loaves.

Last week I gave a loaf to my friend Debbie Maddi. Because of our schedules, I gave the bread to her the day after it was made, and homemade bread, of course, is best the day it is made. Because there are no artificial preservatives to keep it fresh, homemade bread dries out much faster than store-bought bread. I duly apologized to Debbie and suggested it would make good French toast.

With a laugh, she replied, “This is not going to be used for French toast, let me tell you.”

A nice thing to hear!

But I must say, my bread does make very good French toast, and it is becoming a Saturday treat in our house.