Articles
Journal of an Island Kitchen: The social refrigerator
My friend Sharon called up one day and asked me if I had some canned water chestnuts on hand. I didn’t, but she was in the midst of making a Chinese dinner and found she was out of this particular ingredient and the store was closed. Sharon went to the social refrigerator looking for what
Journal of an Island Kitchen: A Moveable Party
A Moveable Party A neighbor just turned 60. At 8:00 on the morning of her birthday, her friends, all women of a certain age, clad in their p.j.s and bathrobes, drove down her driveway with their car horns blasting, to wish her a happy day. Car trunks were opened and out came four tables, tablecloths,
Fried clams don’t have to cost $1.27 each
You can smell fried clams at the summertime ferry line in Lincolnville if the breeze isn’t out of the southwest. Or if it is, but someone upwind in a car with open windows is happily devouring a pint of them. I suppose it is all those lobster pounds and small seafood take-outs along the coast
Journal of an Island Kitchen Grub and democracy at town meeting time
You wouldn’t think food would have much to do with democracy until you go to town meeting. Last year we didn’t even take a break at lunchtime, though some towns do a whole ham and baked bean spread. Still, there was food all over the place, all day long. Our town meeting comes in April,
Journal of an Island Kitchen A Warm Relationship
Last summer food writer Molly O’Neill had a piece in the New Yorker magazine about Viking ranges – those big, honking multi-burnered, chrome and burnished steel, all-gas-and-gorgeousness kitchen stoves that wealthy and sophisticated people (or the wannabes) purchase and install in their homes. Trophy stoves, she called them, next to which these same folks eat
Deer Meat
There are too many deer. There is not enough deer meat. It used to be many of my neighbors headed into winter with a freezer decently filled with deer meat steaks, stewing pieces and deer burger, and in the pantry several jars of mincemeat made from the neck and spare parts. How some of my
Riley water pickles
Ralph Gray’s sister-in-law Ruth Hartley used to have Ralph and Riley Water Pickles over for supper on Saturday night. Ruth would say to Ralph, “Do you want to have supper with us on Saturday,” and he’d say “Are you having beans?” because Ralph ate only baked beans at Satur-day supper. Ruth provided ham, hot dogs,
The all-island dinner
Mussels, new potatoes, green salad and a bowl of blueberries and raspberries – that was the first all Islesboro-grown meal we ate. That happened 14 years ago during the first July we lived here. No one heard much about “locally grown” then, except in special circles like the organic farmers organization or among die-hard back-to-the-landers.
Trickling out the fish
This is an off-island report, a home cook’s tour of that big, noisy, glitzy, event in Boston I went to a couple of months ago. Now the Boston Seafood Show has gotten so big that the small fisheries producers among us have to sell their firstborn to afford a tiny booth, so that eliminates all
Mud and Maple Sugar
April is the cruelest month. It is also the stickiest. Between mud season and the last gallon of boiling sap humming on the kitchen stove, my kitchen is a mess. No wonder God invented spring cleaning. Of course, if we weren’t having a drought the mud would be a sight worse than it is. Wondering