Articles
Rye
An accidental crop of 31 pounds of whole rye grains safely stored in large glass jars rests on my pantry floor. In our island’s history, I am hardly the first to grow rye. Not only did early settlers grow it for a bread grain, but it was needful for at least one sort of whiskey
Desserted: Recipes and Tales from an Island Chocolatier
Yep, stuck on a tiny Maine island with chocolate. Chocolate for breakfast, chocolate with your roast chicken. Chocolate pudding. Chocolate just for instance. Let the wind blow and ferry and mailboat stop running. All you need is this book plus a supply of chocolate, preferably bittersweet, a stove and the usual flour, sugar, butter, spices,
Potato Wealth and Bean Beauty
“We’re rich!” exulted a third grader while his classmates huddled around the next spot in the row of potatoes about to be overturned with a spading fork. Each time the fork pushed up a potato, six small hands made a grab at the emerging potato and three voices exclaimed, “There’s one,” or “Look at that
Island Food Pantries Extend Helping Hand
Neither island residents nor their cats and dogs have to go hungry as Maine’s seasonal economy leaves them on the edge financially in long winters, a situation exacerbated in the past few years by the economic downturn. The good news is that when times are tough, most island and nearby mainland coastal communities have food
Islesboro Votes to Tackle Tick Problem
“Once people heard guns, they didn’t hear anything else,” said Laura Houle, chair of the Islesboro Tick-Born Disease Prevention Committee. Concern about a special controlled hunt—with firearms—in a town accustomed to bow-hunting, in order to reduce the deer herd as a disease-prevention method, may have accounted for the solid turnout at special town meeting held
Islesboro Debates Solution to Lyme Disease
How could there be any controversy about eradicating Lyme disease on Islesboro? The evidence from Monhegan is clear: no deer, no disease. Yet the recommendations of Islesboro’s Tick-Borne Disease Prevention Committee for reducing the deer population to 10 per square mile with a special two-week shotgun hunt is generating a lot of debate. At an
A Week in an Island Kitchen (and Garden)
Vigorously sprouting potatoes, a super-abundance of frozen green beans, combined with a busy schedule, a changing cast of visiting characters, and a certain level of personal laziness, drove menu choices this week at my house. There was a lot of potato salad around here and an every-other-day granola or eggs breakfast pattern. Then there were
One Great Pot of Beans
I used my dark brown and tan earthenware pot. It’s full of rich dark brown Marifax beans, bubbling gently. The top of the beans glisten lightly with fat freed from the salt pork and the pork itself, pulled to the surface, is browned here and there. The beans smell savory when I spoon them out,
A trip to North Carolina
Some people in Maine have been doing this for a long time. Right across East Penobscot Bay in Harborside, Barbara Damrosche and Elliott Coleman have been doing it for years and teaching everyone else how. Finally, this year, out in the new garden past the barn, we, too, have a moveable, unheated green house. A
Journal of an Island Kitchen: The Generosity of Apples
Apple trees are so generous and right now they are throwing tons of apples on the ground for any comer. Islanders deliberately planted some of these trees long ago. By now many have acquired statuesque proportions, and largely unattended, produce apples of remarkably good quality. Creatures planted some accidentally, skinny ones stuck in woods or