It’s 6 on a Saturday night. You’ve got guests coming for dinner in an hour. You open the fridge to find: one moldy piece of cheese, one questionable bottle of milk and a jar of peanut butter. Things are looking grim. Then you open the cabinets. Same deal: a ratty looking ginger root, a head of garlic, a bottle of soy sauce.

Looks like it’s time to make reservations. Or, if you’re Ann Marie Orr, time to make dinner. Minus the cheese and milk, of course.

That’s how Ann Marie’s Secret Sauce – a Maine-made marinade with a cultlike national following – came to be. Orr was living in San Francisco at the time. She and her best friend decided to throw a dinner party, but they didn’t have much in the way of food. Orr, who was working as a marketing director with occasional forays into catering, scoured her friend’s kitchen. She pulled out a few ingredients, mixed them all together, poured them over pork and – voila! – party time.

“That was all she had in her refrigerator,” Orr explained, laughing, over lunch in the Bangor home she shares with her partner, Mark Sampson. “Since then, the sauce has given me confidence to do catering jobs that I normally wouldn’t have done. I knew whatever I cooked with it would be extraordinary.”

Word caught on among her friends in California, and when she moved to Bangor five years ago to be closer to Sampson, Orr’s sauce – and her dinner parties – were an immediate hit here as well.

“My partner here, Mark, and my family insisted on me making my sauce and selling it,” Orr said. At the time, she was working as a speech therapist, but a year ago, she decided to get serious about marketing her sauce. “That’s really my love – cooking for people. I don’t really like to cook for myself, but for everyone else, you know. I said, ‘What the heck? I’ll try it.'”

And it worked. Anyone who knows Orr understands why – she has a magnetic, outgoing personality, a wide smile and boundless energy. Add free samples of marinated pork or meatballs to the mix, and you’ve got a winning combination.

“She’s just so enthusiastic and positive you can’t help but at least try it,” said Laurie Schweikert, co-owner of The Grasshopper Shop in Bangor, where Orr can often be seen passing out nibbles at the door.

Once people try it, they’re hooked. A softball team in Southern California loved the sauce so much, they hired Ann Marie to cater a post-game barbecue this spring. A little closer to home, the sauce was named one of the best new products at the 2005 New England Products Trade Show in Portland.

“The people who were working there came over every day to ask for more pork,” said Orr’s friend Julia Munsey, who helped her at the show. “The reaction was really positive.”

It was a last-minute decision for Orr to attend, but she’s glad she did. Among all the lobster items, blueberry jams and balsam pillows, her sauce really stood out.

“It’s a different kind of marinade,” Munsey said. “There’s blueberry this and barbecue that, but hers was different, so it made it easy for us to talk about.”

Munsey said people seemed to appreciate its versatility – it tastes different on salmon than it does on steak or pork.

“You go to the grocery store and there are a million different sauces. It’s hard to know how to choose,” Munsey said. “The combination of flavors seems to really work well together. It enhances whatever you put it on. A lot of time you put sauces on meat and all you taste is the sauce.”

For Orr, good taste comes naturally – in her hands, even a simple meal of marinated pork, salad and bread becomes a flavorful feast. Simple is what she does best.

“Everything I make is as easy as it gets. It doesn’t need to be elaborate,” Orr said. “It’s as simple and as easy as possible. Otherwise, it’s drudgery. And the flavor, it has to be savory, savory, savory, savory.”

It has to be pretty, as well. At home and on catering jobs, she brings vases of flowers from her extensive gardens, coordinates the linens and plates, and makes sure each course looks as good as it tastes.

“It’s all about color for me,” Orr said.

Though the architecture of her home is fairly modern, the dining area has the feel of an airy Tuscan villa, with terra-cotta-colored walls and an antique stained glass window as the focal point. A small cafe-style table is set with plates in shades of mauve, butter and sage, with buttery yellow napkins. Upstairs, her home office echoes the color and pattern of her labels – deep maroon, pale yellow and pumpkin orange in a bold geometric pattern.

“She takes the time to set it up and make it really pretty,” said Cindy Smart, the receptionist for the executive offices of Affiliated Healthcare Systems in Bangor.

Smart organizes the company’s monthly sales meetings and asked Orr to cater a luncheon last year. It was such a hit, Smart has hired her for every event since, and has booked her for the remainder of 2005. The only complaint she has is that they always run out of food – there’s never a crumb left.

For each event, Orr comes up with something unique – a hot dog smorgasbord (which was much more exciting than it sounds), marinated pork roast with roasted potatoes, roast chicken with a variety of fruit and pasta salads. A recent meal had a wedding theme, and Orr wowed the sales crew again.

“She paid attention to every little detail,” Smart said. “She even brought white flowers from her garden.”

For Orr, attention to detail is one of the most important ingredients. Otherwise, why cook?

“One of the secrets about my sauce and my cooking, it’s not a job for me, it’s a love. It’s about the ingredients, color, who’s going to eat it,” Orr said. “When you infuse it with love, it tastes better.”

Ann Marie’s Secret Sauce is available in Bangor at The Grasshopper Shop, My Maine Bag, World Over Imports, Natural Living Center and Saturdays at the European Farmers Market at Sunnyside Greenhouse; John Edwards Market in Ellsworth; Bar Harbor Inn Gift Shop, The Country Store and My Maine Bag in Bar Harbor; Blessed Country Creations in Searsport; Cappy’s Chowder House in Camden; and State of Maine Cheese Co. in Rockport. For information, visit www.annmarieskitchen.com or call 947-5885.

Mini Fruit Tarts

1 tube sugar cookie dough

1 bar cream cheese

1/2 6-ounce container of plain yogurt

1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar

Assorted fruit (Orr likes strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and bananas)

Cut sugar cookies and bake according to package directions. Combine cream cheese, yogurt and confectioner’s sugar and blend until smooth (you may need to add more yogurt). When cookies are cool, spread with cream cheese mixture. Top with berries in an appealing pattern. Serve.

Blueberry Cream Cheese Pie

1 premade pie crust shell

2 8-ounce bars cream cheese, softened

1 cup sugar

1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix cream cheese, sugar and blueberries with a spoon. Spread mixture in pie shell and bake for 20-25 minutes, until filling is bubbling. Allow to cool. When ready to serve, top with fresh whipped cream and garnish with berries.

Cook’s note: You can substitute a jar of Polaner All Fruit for the sugar and blueberries.

Baby Spinach Salad

1 bag baby spinach leaves

Feta cheese (to taste)

1 Macintosh apple, chopped

Dried cranberries

Caramelized walnuts

Balsamic vinaigrette

Toss all ingredients just before serving.