This caramel corn is the kind that Mrs. Claus makes to send out with Santa. It is the easiest caramel corn recipe I have used in a long time and comes from island neighbor Sarah Wilbur, who got it from her mom, Susie, whom many of us remember… Read More
By this time next week, you will have had your Thanksgiving dinner, turkey and pumpkin pie and all. With luck you will have a turkey carcass to toss into a pot for soup to which you can add celery, onions, carrots, rice or pasta, and bits and pieces… Read More
Homemade granola is a great alternative to packaged cereal as far as both price and healthful ingredients are concerned. When I read the ingredients list on the average box of flakes, puffs or crunches and find ingredients I can’t pronounce and then see how few… Read More
The Page Farm and Home Museum in Orono held its Apple Fest on Oct. 25, and Gayle Crowly’s apple pie won the most votes in the apple recipes contest. Gayle, who lives in Bangor, added a bit of cream to the filling, and sweetened it with both white… Read More
In August, Gladys Paine of Hermon wrote to say that she used to make Cherry Winks for her children and would like to have the recipe again. Just as she thought, it was a Pillsbury Bake-off recipe that called for crushed cornflakes and was topped with one quarter… Read More
Mildred “Brownie” Schrumpf used to grace these pages and was my predecessor here at the Bangor Daily News. I supplied my own shoes to wear while writing this column, knowing I could never fill hers. Karen Tolstrup has written a biography of Brownie, and she… Read More
We finished digging potatoes out of our garden last week and our parsley is a mound of green, reveling in the cool and sunny weather. The two suggested to me a soup I had made a long time ago and thought would taste good. It did. Read More
Red Flannel Hash even sounds warm. A few weeks ago someone wrote to ask if anyone had a recipe for it and I thought, I know how to make that! An image of an old-fashioned New England boiled dinner floated before my mind’s eye. Corned beef and white… Read More
A few weeks ago when we featured good old baked beans in this column as an economical alternative for supper, Peggy Drinkwater in Greenbush was inspired to send along a recipe she likes that uses baked beans. Chuck Wagon Beans will remind you a little bit of chili… Read More
It was a while ago, but you may recall that I asked for a recipe for Butter Tarts. This is a Canadian sweet, one that my Ontario-born husband fondly remembered from his youth and he requested it especially. Mostly, truth be known, I hate making tarts, all that… Read More
Chocolate zucchini cake is pretty variable, it appears. A couple weeks ago, we offered a dark, rich zucchini cake recipe that came from two readers. Today’s offering is more like a sweet bread than the earlier version. Six readers sent along the same recipe for… Read More
Don’t put 2 teaspoons of salt in the Deep Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cake and please don’t worry that something was left out. That was a hiccup. Also, that nice Janine Pineo stepped up to say that it was she who first put that wonderful cake in this paper… Read More
You all have been very generous with your zucchini bread and cake recipes. It is an interesting lot. I heard from 11 of you and have six unique recipes, since one of those was repeated four times. I plan to do two weeks of recipes because as it… Read More
OK. We’ve been doing a lot of dessert lately; it’s time for some vegetables. Our garden drives the menu this time of year, and I suspect some people around this house wish there was more pasta or rice amongst all that zucchini, broccoli and green… Read More
A couple weeks ago, we asked for an open-faced blueberry pie recipe. The goal of this pie is to lighten it up a little by leaving off the top crust and to have a more intense blueberry-flavored filling. Lots of you sent recipes, and it seems to me… Read More
If the response to last week’s query is any indication, lots of people like the idea of an open-faced blueberry pie. So while I am pecking my way through all those recipes, we might as well get back to a smoked salmon spread I asked about back along. Read More
This week we have to talk about a wonderful dessert I met up with and also about frozen blueberries in cake. Dessert first. A couple of weekends ago, I was on Deer Isle wearing my food historian hat, speaking to a combination of folks from… Read More
Wild blueberry harvesting season is progressing north and eastward. Apparently it started in southern Maine last week, reached midcoast this past week, and is due to reach Down East next. So this is a good time to pull out the recipe that Sharon Frost from Calais sent last… Read More
“Eating beans” has been shorthand for “hard times” for a long while. I hear stories about people whisking pots of beans off the dinner table in embarrassment when unexpected company showed up. Then this week I was a reading a newspaper story about the economic difficulties with which… Read More
A couple weeks ago, our neighbors Mike and Jane Boardman came to teach me how to make fish tacos. Mike learned to love them when he lived in San Diego for a while, where for a couple of bucks he could buy them from street vendors for lunch. Read More
When I walked down to the mailbox the other day, I noticed the blueberries growing in patches all over our yard were actually beginning to change color from bright green to a darker purple green. It won’t be long before we have blueberries to bake… Read More
The only people who haven’t noticed rising food prices are people who haven’t shopped for groceries lately. I have heard some pretty sad news stories about how folks are coping with higher prices, including some about families that have decided to give up on fresh fruits and vegetables. Read More
These chicken wings led Jamie and me off our vegetarian path one day years ago. We were visiting with a friend of ours who lived on Cape Cod, and she served them for lunch – nothing else – just the wings. We were hungry and we ate. Later… Read More
We have been wallowing in spinach heaven lately. This is because some of our spinach wintered over under that lovely coverlet of snow and leapt out of the ground as soon as the soil thawed. We have been eating heartily on it for a month… Read More
Creamed, curried eggs on toast sounded like a good idea to me last weekend for brunch Sunday. I added spinach to it because we have a lot, and it will bolt if we don’t eat it up. I didn’t think about putting it here in the paper until… Read More
This Rhubarb Crisp recipe is in honor of two friends and a radio station. Twenty years ago last month, when Jamie and I moved to Islesboro, the radio station WERU-FM had just come on the air. The early morning hours featured a program co-hosted by Karen Frangoulis and… Read More
Finger food for a graduation party might be on your mind, just as it has been for Paula Page. Paula, who lives in Hermon, is my dental hygienist and she is planning a party for her daughter who graduates June 7. She thought an artichoke and spinach dip… Read More
This week’s recipes started with a visit to the periodontist’s office in Bangor where nine women work, all of whom seem to like to cook, think and talk about food. My hygienist this time was Paula Page, who lives in Hermon, and before she had… Read More
The Community Chorus I belong to had a potluck after our concert Saturday to feed our mainland guests before they went back on the water taxi. This salad made by one of our altos, Carol Pierson, was so good that the people around our table were picking through… Read More
The ingredient list is long, but don’t panic: Most are seasonings. This recipe is for meatballs with a Greek accent, and we recently enjoyed the variation at our house. The original recipe called for a spicy tomato sauce to serve on these meatballs, one you… Read More
Perhaps you have dug your parsnips, or have seen fresh ones at the farmers or vegetable markets, or were lucky enough to have a neighbor give you a few. I think of them as both the last thing and the first thing out of the garden. Last because… Read More
Biscotti have got to be right up there these days with doughnuts as a preferred item for dunking in coffee. Biscotti are readily available in the store, of course, but I also found they were a good deal easier to make than I imagined. I began my biscotti-making… Read More
Here is a nice one-dish supper that I learned how to make from my friend Diane Ferris. The recipe calls for beef, but I had some ground venison I wanted to use, as well as some home-canned tomato sauce and tomatoes, and some of our own frozen corn. Read More
A hunter neighbor of ours kindly dropped off some cut, wrapped and frozen venison from the fall season. I am always so grateful for the meat – it puts a bit of variety in our menu. This year’s batch had a chuck roast, rather large, a bit much… Read More
Sally Pappas wrote this week asking about garlic mashed potatoes. “I have looked through a lot of my cookbooks but haven’t found one we like yet,” she said. As it happens, this is something I make all the time at home, as a way to vary mashed potatoes. Read More
I was looking for a fresh ground-meat recipe recently. Thumbing through a 45-year-old edition of Craig Claiborne’s “New York Times Cookbook,” I was reminded how much recipes have changed since I was a kid. I was in middle school when that book came out. In those days, my… Read More
Some of the best tasting dishes are the simplest. Sally Enman of Bangor wrote, “I’m hoping you can help me find a recipe my mother used to make. I’m thinking it had 8 slices of white bread (crust removed), applesauce and butter spread on the top layers of… Read More
Things were pretty desperate around here the other evening. I’d been immersed in a project all day, did nothing in the plan-ahead department, and so at 5:30 with a meeting to go to at 6:15, I looked in the fridge to see what I could find. Not much. Read More
Jennifer White, a neighbor, was telling me about a sauce she made and I thought, “That sounds so good.” We really like capers here, and we enjoy anchovies, too. Jennifer uses this sauce on all kinds of things: chicken, fish, even plain pasta. It would… Read More
You were generous with your salmon loaf recipes. The most interesting thing about them was how varied they were. Points of agreement were that one should use canned salmon, plus bread, milk, eggs, salt and pepper. The quantities were pretty variable, though, which means this recipe has a… Read More
We still have pumpkins in storage. In February I watch them very closely for signs of little black spots, because since they are living plants, I know that inside the pumpkins there are seeds seriously thinking about how to sprout and are hoping the orange flesh around them… Read More
The cost of fuel has pinched just about everyone. If you heat with oil, you see that oil truck in the yard with alarming frequency, and if you have firewood stacked up, the pile is shrinking faster than it has done in some winters past. It is harder… Read More
Brown bread, baked beans, coleslaw and codfish cakes made supper for us last weekend, a real Yankee meal. I asked for a brown bread recipe here last week but, alas, I guess no one makes it anymore because no one sent in a recipe. (That is a challenge.)… Read More
Maybe Green Rice would be better for St. Patrick’s Day, but what the heck. This is a tasty way to use rice, eggs and cheese. The recipe calls for parsley, but you can bury green peas in it, finely chopped kale, or blanched and squeezed spinach. Or you… Read More
Just for a change, a white chili seemed like a good idea. Instead of the usual red meat, red kidney beans and tomato sauce, here is white meat – chicken, white beans – Great Northerns or even Maine grown Yellow Eyes, jazzed up with chopped chile peppers. Read More
This turned out to be a good pumpkin year for us, and we still have a few stashed away that we better get serious about eating soon. Generally speaking they don’t improve much with age. We grow a standard pie pumpkin, small and sweet, one pie per pumpkin,… Read More
My neighbor Alice Girven invited Jamie and me to a good-luck dinner on New Year’s. She grew up in Harrisburg, Pa., near the Pennsylvania Dutch area of Lancaster County where her German neighbors ate pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s for good luck and prosperity in the coming… Read More
My friend Susan Hess, who lives now in Georgetown, made this marvelous mixture a few years ago and served it with wine as an appetizer before dinner. Another friend and I had just attended a Christmas concert in which Susan had sung, and despite her preoccupation with the… Read More
This vegetable side dish caught my eye someplace because we actually grow three of the major ingredients: leeks, bacon and hazelnuts. I’ve been trying to think of interesting things to do with leeks besides put them in stew or soup. So this appealed to me. Read More
For the past two weeks, the kindly spirit of Marjorie Standish has been wafting over eastern Maine handing out recipes for Needhams. Marjorie’s recipe is about as famous and popular as those Jordan Marsh Blueberry muffins are. Even people who have never made or eaten… Read More
Fruitcake gets some undeserved bad press. Personally, I love the stuff. A slice can evoke the holidays in me like nothing else, except maybe for the Norwegian Yule Cake my friend Anna makes with a lot of cardamom and fat juicy sultanas in it. This… Read More
I think a lot about cake this time of year because beginning in early October and going through to the week before Christmas, it seems that everyone in my family and close circle of friends celebrates a birthday. I turned 60 this week and my husband, Jamie, had… Read More
Twice I started out to experiment with making a Green Lasagna. Twice circumstances intervened and I thought, OK, I can take a hint, it must be that instead of lasagna this recipe is supposed to be something else. That something else turned out to be a spinach, ricotta… Read More
Early October was cooking contest time. The Old Fashioned Apple Fest at the Page Farm and Home Museum, University of Maine in Orono, featured an apple-cooking contest, and in Belfast the fifth annual Pie and Storytelling Festival yielded 28 pies. In both contests participants from the public tasted… Read More
Cauliflower Chowder can be a great way to use cauliflower or a handy recipe for any vegetarians among your collection of friends and relatives. I first had this in Nova Scotia. I wasn’t looking for a vegetarian chowder among the choices offered at a box… Read More
Red pepper jelly, and look, Ma, no pectin! I can’t remember when I first had red pepper jelly, which I know will sound like a really bad idea to some of you. I loved it. It was served over cream cheese, and we spread it… Read More
The Maine Rebekahs have done it again. Some time ago, you may recall, I wrote that there was another Rebekah cookbook in the offing, and now it is available. This is one of Maine’s longest-standing series of community cookbooks, published and updated all through the 1900s and now… Read More
We were talking fish last weekend at a foodie event in Camden. The second Maine Fare was held in places around town, and before I was done I had taken a survey about potatoes from the University of Maine, sampled chocolate, sausage, pizza, Maine-made gin… Read More
Among the many vegetables marching into the kitchen these days are cabbages, red and green. We have been regaling ourselves on corn and cucumbers, chard, spinach, and summer squash, and with cool drizzly weather early this week, I was thinking about cooked cabbage. Because I keep all the… Read More
Here is a breakfast recipe for you. It comes from Louise Park of Brewer, who, bless her, showed up to watch me make chowder last weekend at the American Folk Festival. I was so surprised to see so many of you. There must have been at least a… Read More
Crab is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Maine seafood. Still, we have some of the best-tasting crab anywhere, and if you know a lobsterman, you might even get a bucket for yourself. Lobstermen are usually happy to take a few of… Read More
Zucchini squash are sprouting and swelling as we speak. As soon as the heat hit, our plant – we grow only one, one way to keep the supply down to a dull roar – doubled in size in one week, and I saw it was setting. So far,… Read More
This is blueberry time in Maine. I am watching the blueberries in my yard, where more and more are blue every day. There are blueberry festivals planned. At the Union Fair, Aug. 24 is festival day. In Machias, the Center Street Congregational Church sponsors its 32nd Blueberry Festival… Read More
If you read this column regularly, you know by now that we have a big vegetable garden and that I put food by, as I suspect many of you do, too. I am rapidly entering the season when, if I am not paying attention to menu planning, the… Read More
This is a good recipe for summer crowds or to divide and freeze for quick meals later. My friend Libby King of Falmouth and Islesboro makes this when her numerous children and grandchildren descend. I made it at our camp because it has easy to keep-on-hand ingredients and… Read More
Believe it or not, we still had carrots in storage from last year’s garden only two weeks ago. There weren’t many, and I had to put them in the refrigerator because the cellar was warming up enough to encourage magnificent sprouting. At this season, they are a tad… Read More
A couple of months ago, our island community chorus traveled over to Camden to sing in a concert with Quasimodal Chorus. Last year Quasi came to the island, and we sang, then we gave them a potluck supper. This year they treated us, and what a spread. Among… Read More
Last Friday, while I was on the mainland, I stopped by the Belfast Farmer’s Market. Once a month they set up in the street between the Post Office Square and what used to be Waldo County’s only stop light at the intersection of Main and High Streets. There… Read More
All this summer weather has been making me think of chicken salad. It never even occurs to me in winter. A nice old garden-variety chicken salad made with celery, onion, boiled eggs and mayonnaise is a lovely thing, all piled up on a bed of lettuce and trimmed… Read More
Back in February, we did a column on cinnamon twists, the puff-pastry sort, which was fairly long and involved, what with creating several layers of fluffy pastry and oozing with cinnamon and sugar and all. At the time, I heard also from Barbara Leeman of Bangor, who sent… Read More
If you aren’t lucky enough to live where you can go gather your own mussels (as long as there isn’t any red tide to be aware of), you can buy farm raised ones in many fish markets and chain stores. I am fond of mussels, and even like… Read More
I don’t know about your rhubarb, but mine unfolded its dark green leaves, and lengthened out its red stalks in about a week and a half. We can eat just so much rhubarb crisp which we dearly love, and so last year when Lucile White in Bangor sent… Read More
Our asparagus is sprouting nicely. The first few shoots I harvest, steam and drape artfully over some chicken or rice, and we eat them appreciatively, savoring each one. It isn’t until we have been eating a big pile of stalks three or four times a week that I… Read More
Once a week, on average, Jamie and I have what I nicknamed Fast Food Friday, and sometimes it actually comes on a Friday. That is the night when I thaw refried beans and we have nachos or tacos for supper, or I try to make pizza, or we… Read More
Nobody asked for this, but I thought some of you might enjoy a quick, easy-to-make bread. We in Maine are pretty lucky in the bread department. There are a fair number of small, local bakeries making good hand-made bread so no one has to eat soft and fluffy… Read More
Sharon Ray in Brewer wrote to ask if we had a recipe for Waldorf salad sufficient for 50. I thought maybe someone would come up with one for 10 that we could multiply. But no one did, even though I know there are a lot of you out… Read More
The buttercup squashes that we grew last summer kept awfully well this winter, no soft spots and their flavor was still very good until last week when I used the last of them in a casserole that we love. Now if you don’t happen to have buttercups (a… Read More
Here is a posh meatball recipe, good for one of those dress-up-for-company dinners. It came from my neighbor Maryanne Tucker, back when I asked you all for a good meatball recipe. This is no ordinary meatball. It deserves elegant pasta – perhaps a nice fettuccine… Read More
Whoopie pies may be a semiuniquely Maine dish. The Pennsylvania Amish and their neighbors make them, and for years summer visitors to Maine have been looking forward to their annual whoopie pie treat. There is considerable controversy about their origin, but this may be one of those things… Read More
Around here it is “quick-eat-all-the-stored-vegetables-before-they-get-punky” season. That includes squashes, pumpkins, carrots, rutabagas and beets. The potatoes I don’t worry about too much, except to rub off the sprouts when they appear like magic, even though I keep the vegetables in the dark and cold. But we have to… Read More
When I read the recipe for this dish, I thought, “Whoa, that is one weird lasagna.” And then I wondered, “Who the heck is Al Brown?” As it turns out, my neighbor Midge Welldon sent this recipe to me. I called her up and said,… Read More
A little while ago, Marguerite Gallison in Bangor asked for a recipe for a pie crust made with oil instead of the usual hard shortening like butter, lard, or one of the hydrogenated fats that many of us use. About 15 of you kindly sent… Read More
When you have eaten your fill of boiled corned beef and cabbage, wiped the last crumb of Irish soda bread off your chin, and drained the last drop of green beer in your glass, maybe you’d like a nice chicken dish with fresh lemon flavor to brighten your… Read More
That blast of real winter weather we had this week drove me into soup-making mode. The recipe I used is one I have had for 36 years and was, believe it or not, one of the first things I ever cooked on a fireplace hearth. I can’t even… Read More
Jamie and I had salmon and peas on toast the other night for supper, and Jamie said, “This would be a good one for your column.” And I said, “Yeah, you’re right. In fact, I was just thinking about that.” Well, if the truth be known, I am… Read More
I was visiting in Alexandria, Va., a week or so ago, and my friend and hostess Shirley Cherkasky put this beet relish on the table for lunch one day. Instantly I thought this was a good one to share with you. It is very easy and really delicious. Read More
After a couple of weeks off healthful eating, we need to get back to eating cabbage, kale and other more serious greens. There are two cabbage recipes in the queue: One is a genuine casserole from Martha Wolford, and the other would qualify, I think, as a stir… Read More
Back in December, we had a query from Jean Swain in Garland. She wrote: “We have been looking for a recipe for a cinnamon twist or stick … When we visit friends in Massachusetts, we always stop at a little bakery/sub shop called Rose and Vickies in Manomet… Read More
What a wonderful bunch of “cabbage and” recipes you all have sent along. We were talking about brussels sprouts awhile ago, and the beauty of these recipes is that they are good for cabbage and brussels sprouts, too, and possibly other items in the cabbage family. In fact,… Read More
I didn’t think it had a chance, but the kuchen came out all right anyway. I was visiting in my kitchen with my friend Kristina King and we were making supper together. I really wanted to do something with some of our own canned peaches from last August. Read More
What fun to find out that there are other Brussels sprouts fans out there. A couple of weeks ago, I told about learning how to love sprouts after my discovery that they are tastier after a freezing. I heard from Jane Jennings in Brunswick and Karen Wulffraat in… Read More
By the time early January rolls around, an awful lot of us are cutting back on the chow a bit to see if we can knock off some of the Christmas splurge that collected on our waistlines. My slender friend Sharon Daley, who has been managing her cholesterol… Read More
Brussels sprouts get a lot of bad reactions. I remember not liking them either, until I finally had ones that had been through a fairly heavy frost. A friend cooked them up and only put butter on them, and I thought, “Uh-oh, I am going to have to… Read More
Each holiday season, our town library has a recipe swap. Anyone can bring something to sample (though I haven’t seen a roast beef or candied sweet potatoes yet) and the recipe for it. This year was the 11th annual recipe exchange, so this past Sunday I stopped by… Read More
Creton is one of several French-Canadian dishes that show up around the holidays, or at last when the weather turns cold. The flavorful combination of ground, spiced pork and pork fat cooked with onion and spread on bread is just the ticket for breakfast on a day that… Read More
Here is a savory little item to keep in the fridge during the holiday season to whip out at the last minute and wow the guests with, or to give as a present or house gift. My friend Marcy Congdon made these for an open house she had… Read More
During the holidays, I suspect we are more likely to get out old family recipes, dust them off, and make dishes that trigger all kinds of memories. These Swedish cookies bring up childhood memories for my younger sister and I. Our grandmother was born in… Read More
So you have leftover turkey, right? I’ve heard some people complain about that, but many families only have turkey on Thanksgiving (and Christmas) and hardly ever any other time. I have never been able to figure out what the problem is with a couple of pounds of cooked… Read More
This weekend my neighbor Melissa Olson taught me how to make pulled pork, an ideal way to use a fresh pork shoulder. It strikes me as a good supper for busy people to make: It cooks for a long time but you can ignore it for hours. Read More
We raced around this week gathering up the last few apples off wild and abandoned trees mainly for the purposes of cider, sampling as we went, and when I came home and saw our butternut squashes in a basket in the kitchen, I was reminded of a squash… Read More