We started with island apple wine and beer brewed in Lincolnville, sweetened rhubarb juice and currant shrub with appetizers of Bacon Bomb served on baked potato slices. (The Bacon Bomb recipe came straight out of the New York Times and is that outrageous item made of a mat of woven bacon slices overlaid with Italian sausage, rolled up and baked slowly slathered in barbecue sauce. Woof.)
Our first course was a grand pumpkin soup. Main dishes accompanied by more apple wine and beer included ham, a roasted chicken and a plate of highly seasoned balls of pork liver and meat. There was a cole slaw of green cabbage with pickles in it and another of red cabbage, apples, and red onion. A layered casserole of onions, bacon and apples, mashed potatoes laced with kale plus a platter of roasted turnips, carrots, and Brussels sprouts seasoned with garlic, plus a wonderful dish of white beets accompanied them. Pumpkin bread and lefse, a potato and flour flatbread, were our breadstuffs. For dessert we ate pumpkin crème caramel and peach sorbet sweetened with maple sugar.
For a dinner in the Great Recession, it was pretty sumptuous and not only that more than 95 percent of it came from Islesboro. We were aiming towards an all-island dinner, and we were excruciatingly close. The island’s lack of grain, dairy animals, and vegetable oils are the main impediments though these ingredients are produced in Maine and available nearby, though off-island. In a time when people speak of food miles, we talk about food feet. It’s fun and very sporting.
We have done this before. “We” are neighbors and friends willing to draw from their own stored food supplies or from Jamie’s and my cellar, or occasionally foraged from the islands wild edibles.
Once we had a country pate made from island-grown rabbit meat. There were mussels gathered in January, venison bourguignon, and an elegant hot kale salad. I have made little cookies out of maple sugar, ground island-grown hazelnuts and butter. Another time Jamie gathered a huge pile of little edible weeds that took me an hour and a half to wash and turn into salad. He also went after cattail roots in search of the flour that it is suppose to have. Thirty pounds of roots yielded half a cup. Little wonder humankind chose agriculture over foraging.
Long ago I decided that I didn’t care if we used spices from far distant countries, and I think drinking imported wine is one way to be a citizen of the world. Historically, Islesboro imported sugar, molasses, and probably wheat flour as well. The historic record tells us that we grew barley, but I don’t think it was used in soup. We also grew rye and corn for meal, and could again.
Lots of cows grazed on the island and could again. But not yet. I long for local milk, either cow or goat. Goat cheese would be divine, and someday that may happen, too, once the gentleman farmer who is in back of the operation quits messing in politics and buckles down to food production.
Still our recent all-island dinner was a far cry from the first one we ate 20 years ago that consisted of steamed mussels, new potatoes, salad, and fresh raspberries for dessert.
Locavore, defined as one who eats local foods, was chosen the word of the year in 2007.We’ve been locavores for years, and with the island’s distinct watery edge demarcating local for us, I’ve routinely amused myself by putting together meals made from as much island-grown or gathered food as I possibly could find. We are loc-isle-vores.
At our house, loc-isle-vore meals are actually a pretty common event. Our garden, pigs, and fruits and neighbor’s eggs meet up at breakfast, lunch, and lots and lots of suppers. Just last night we had Delicata squash stuffed with Spanish rice (rice from away plus local tomatoes) sesame potatoes, asparagus and green beans, and canned peaches for dessert. I made today’s lunch soup based on roasted pumpkin, to which I added island water, green beans, carrots, onions, garlic, and tomatoes all from our garden, and even seasoned with thyme, parsley, basil, and oregano I grew and dried.
When I open the local circumference up to include within 100 miles, it gets easier, and if we declare an all-Maine meal, well, it is a piece of cake. Picking the perimeter of what you call local is the sporting part of it and we islanders derive particular satisfaction coming up with a pleasing variety of food from our spot in the bay.
This is a good time of year to think about next year’s dinner as we put together seed orders and consider our near future agricultural activities. This year (oh, joy!), we add chickens to our list of responsibilities. A lovely hen house is under construction to be inhabited soon by egg layers and a few birds destined for the freezer. This summer I hope to make currant wine from the beautiful red currants that my bushes produce so abundantly.
This is the time to invest in our real economy-the economy of our households, gardens and communities. It is less about money than thought and effort. You can make dinner from scratch or stick a tomato plant into a container to grow on the back deck. Or more ambitiously plant a fruit tree, create or revive a vegetable garden, learn to make pickles and bread and to prune fruit trees, take soup to a neighbor. We might not receive money for our work but we see the tangible, material, edible results of it.