Maine Bicentennial, A Cookbook, and Me

 In our household, my husband is fond of dark meat, I like white meat. Hence, I eat the chicken breast, he goes for the thighs and legs. In deference to his tastes, however, I picked up a package of chicken thighs. I don't mind the darker meat, when there is sufficient flavoring, and this recipe promises flavor! My husband wrinkled his nose when he saw the jar of green olives. I knew what he was thinking...way too salty. Did you know, they sell low-sodium green olives? And that's what I bought. The recipe cautions to rinse the green olives and the raisins and the capers. Hmmm. Not seeing the need to rinse raisins, I just rinsed the olives and capers in a fine mesh sieve. I was concerned that these ingredients would still be too heavy on the salt, so I cut back on the amount in the recipe, maybe by a third roughly. The recipe does not call for a deglaze after browning and setting aside the chicken. But I rummaged in the spice cupboard and found some red cooking wine to deglaze t...

 Here's the thing. My family Thanksgiving gathering, with something like twenty plus people, always has mashed turnip. And I always passed it down the table. They didn't "do" anything to it. They just left it plain. And well, the flavor didn't appeal to me as a kid. So, when I discovered this recipe, with appealing additions (who doesn't love a veggie that has cream cheese?!), I was ready to to try it. *Sigh* To think that all those years, I could have been enjoying cream cheese mashed turnip at Thanksgiving. Ah well, now I can! One problem. Having never cooked turnip in my life, I grabbed one at the grocery and immediately dropped it. Yeah, dropped it like a hot turnip. Because it felt kinda wierd. I have since learned that turnips are coated with wax to protect them. I don't know, maybe they are fragile? Anyway, I had no idea how to cope with the wax. Do you melt it? Do you rub it off? What, exactly, does one do with a waxed turnip? Thank goodness for Fa...

 I saw the title of this recipe and I thought, oh dear, a loved one's recipe, and they want to remember his life by this wonderful meal. No, the dude did not die! The real story is hilarious and you just have to get the cookbook to enjoy it.  I rather like the anticipation that goes along with a marinade, don't you? You measure the one-two-three (in this case, five) marinade combo in a ziplock bag, pound the chicken breast and pierce it to absorb the marinade, drop the chicken breast in the bag with the marinade, seal, and squish it all over, then gently lay the bag on a plate in the fridge (I always put something under the bag to catch any drips...ziplocks don't always seal perfectly). Then you go about your life and tomorrow's supper is, well, "in the bag." My husband was busy cooking something else for his dinner tonite, so I just prepared one chicken breast, plus a side of Creamy Mashed Turnip (another fine recipe from MBCC) and some garlic bread for my me...

When a recipe dates to the turn of the century (1906) and there is no electric oven temperature, and you have measurements like this "flour enough to stir stiff enough to drop from a spoon"...it is time to do recipe research. I found an "Old Fashioned Hermit Cookies" recipe at www.thespruceeats.com. I compared it to the recipe in the MBCC, and it has nine ingredients that match the 1903 recipe, so I combined the best of each recipe to make these cookies happen. One of the quirks in the modern recipe that I like is a call for brewed coffee. Not much, but it does add a nice flavor twist. The original recipe calls for plain water. The other twist suggests adding chopped dates. But I opted for the original recipe option of raisins.  I remember making hermits when my kids were little. They gobbled up these spicy treats as fast as I could bake them. It is not such a popular cookie, these days, but I do recall my grandmother including hermits in her annual holiday baking, ...

 This recipe is intended to be made and poured over Cracked Wheat Pilaf. But I made Basmati rice which is equally delicious, especially when you use chicken stock instead of water to cook the rice. I shall have to try the Cracked Wheat Pilaf another day. I enjoyed making this recipe...a first for me, cooking leg of lamb, chopped into cubes. There are a few simple ingredients, and I only changed one thing. The recipe calls for oregano, but I thought liberal sprinkling of Herbes de Provence would lend a much deeper flavor. Sure enough, the Resident Archaeologist gave good reviews for flavor! This seems to me perhaps a nice dish for the crock pot, to allow the savory flavors to blend and so as the meat is not at risk to get tough in the skillet.  I ended up cooking things separately that the recipe wanted me to cook together. I felt I just couldn't properly cook the onions in and amongst the lamb chunks. The lamb just deserved a pan all its own. And the string beans, they just ne...

 These brownies are for all the Chocolate Lovers of the World. While I still very much love the Bangor Brownies (circa 1910, by the Ladies Aid of the M.E. Church in Naples), reviewed on July 9th...the Bixby chocolate in these brownies is, well, perfect. I've never encountered baking brownies with parchment paper. That was a first for me. I guess it's not bad insurance, since it does lend an even baking to the batter and not a single edge of the brownies have burned or even overcooked. I loved the pop in my mouth when my tongue met the sea salt. I adored watching the beautiful extra-large chocolate baking chips melt gently into the butter. There are lots of eggs, lots of vanilla and yummy dark brown sugar in this heavenly mix. And sprinkled into the batter and on top? Bixby Bean to Bar Cocoa Nibs. Especially for those seeking Cocoa Nirvana. The one ingredient I wish we had on hand to make the experience even better? Yup, vanilla ice cream. A warm brownie topped by vanilla ice cr...

 Lemons. I remember when my son was a toddler, he adored lemons, of all things, and would make this cute little puckered-up-yet-happy face when he ate them. I like lemonade. I like lemon slices in a glass of ice water. I love those tall glasses of lemonade and strawberries that became popular about a decade ago in restaurants...great thirst-quencher.  But lemon bars and I have never really become acquainted until now. And I'm not sure this is my favorite experience with lemons. No offense, President Bush. Maybe it's the powdered sugar in the crust. The overall amount of sugar in this recipe sort of overpowers the lemon. And I was more expecting a happy lemon moment in my mouth. But the sugar won out. If I try this recipe again, I'll cut back on the sugar.

 As I read the ingredients for this recipe, I had a flashback to my childhood. My parents enjoyed having friends over, and my mother was not a chef by any means, but she would look for recipes that were easy to prepare for a crowd. This is one of the recipes she used to make.  I used to be a can-of-soup cook, like my mom, when a white sauce was called for. But since I learned how to do a bechamel, oh my, there is no going back. Not that there is anything wrong with an easy pop-top cream of mushroom soup once in awhile. It does the trick, and you just tuck this dish in the fridge overnight and do a three-hour bake the next day, which gives you time to focus on putting up party banners, or whatever, for your company. I'm not sure I care for the dried beef in this dish. Awfully salty. But the bacon, when you do a slow bake, smells fantastic for three solid hours. Can you say Anticipation?! I say, when you go big, go easy. Try this recipe for a crowd. You'll be glad you did!

 Yes, that's the name of this recipe. And the fellow responsible for naming it? The Humble Farmer, none other than Robert Skoglund. He is a writer and humorist, and just an all-around funny guy. It is worth buying this cookbook just to read his story behind this rhubarb crisp. Get ready to chuckle! Any crisp is worth making and eating. This one, especially so. I take back any negative vibes I've ever had towards Jello. A sprinkle of strawberry jello powder makes this a sweet eat. And, did you know that Mrs. Hannaford (okay, so I really mean the grocery store, not a real person, for those of you "from away") keeps rhubarb in the freezer for people like me, looking for it out-of-season? Love this crisp, as you can see from the photo. Normally, I would take a picture of the food in one of my vintage dishes. I sat down to the computer to update the blog and discovered that while I had eaten a serving of the crisp, I had not stopped to take a picture! Fortunately, there wa...

 Will miracles never cease?! I thought there did not exist a recipe in which I could find a way to love eggplant. I mean, it's okay, and I was raised to eat whatever is put in front of me, but it's never been my go-to food. This recipe, with a homemade "Arabic 7 spice" has made all the difference.  In this time of COVID, I try not to travel more than necessary. So when I couldn't find Arabic 7 spice in the local health food store, I googled how to make a substitute. You are gonna want to write this down. Ready? Ok: equal parts (I used 1/2 tsp measure) of ground pepper, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, cloves, and ginger. I had to run to the neighbor's to borrow some coriander. The meat in this recipe is ground beef, but when I did research online, I found that you could also use ground lamb. And I've taken a liking to lamb, thanks to this cookbook, so I used a pound of lamb mixed with maybe a 1/4 to a 1/2 pound of ground beef. The "kofta" i...

 This recipe is popular in Beirut, Lebanon, where the recipe donor learned it. I have had lentils and rice and onions before, and I know how it lends itself to most anything one wants to add to it. So I fried some bacon and then cooked the onions in the bacon fat. I know, not heart healthy. But it certainly makes for a flavorful dish! It is a very easy dish to throw together, and keeps well, even improving in flavor over a few days.

 Another first for me, cooking with dried apricots. The recipe does not indicate how long to cook the apricots after "plumping" them with hot water.  And, the suggestion is a low heat, but I cooked them at a medium heat, having chopped them up first, and just watched them closely. This recipe was a hit with the Resident Archaeologist. We both ate it warm from the oven, me, wishing for a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top-but the store was closed by the time it came out of the oven. He decided to pour light cream over his serving, which was a very good decision. I cut the recipe in half, so it fit in an 8x8 pan. I only had one package of dried apricots, which happened to be about 4 ounces shy of what a 1/2 recipe called for. I was a little worried that there would be insufficient apricots! No need to worry, however. The apricots spread over the oatmeal-based dough and covered the surface well. You get delicious apricots in every bite of every square. This is a delicious dessert...

This is an older recipe, and has a very narrative style to it, giving amounts such as "add a bit of cream." No precise measurements, which tells me that Great Grandmother Ethel Hamden Crockett must have cooked it so many times that she just knew what the right amount looked like! I think all good cooks have that natural sense of what amounts are just right. And you don't need to identify exact amounts because you have to see how the ingredients come together on a given day. What artistic freedom in cooking! Speaking of artistic freedom, I did not follow all of the recommended ingredients. I'm partial to vegetables in a chicken pie, and couldn't bear to have the pie be veggie-free. So, I tossed in some vegetables. The recipe also calls for something I've never seen in a chicken pie...Boston Commons crackers. I went looking online, and evidently you can still get them, but not where I live. So a substitute of saltines can be used. It felt strange putting cracker...

 There is something satisfying about making the "original" snack food, way before a company figures out how popular it is, homemade, and starts selling it in polypropylene bags. As a kid, I remember the fun of making this easy snack, when the recipe was printed on the cereal box, and you couldn't buy it all pre-mixed in a bag. The recipe donor, Brenda Kerr, remembers her grandmother making it for the holidays only. Her grandmother apparently got the recipe from the TV. I remember my grandmother clipping newspaper recipes. Brenda's grandmother tried to keep up with the times, adding a new cereal, Crispix, in the early 80's when she herself was in her 80's. You can use store brand or Chex brand cereal. The butter and the spices make it all taste snack-bowl-terrific. When my mother moved to an assisted living home, in the last years of her life, she took a hankering to this particular snack. As you may know, when a person lives in one room, there are few material...

 If elegant and easy ever paired perfectly, this would be the recipe for such a happy marriage. I saw the minimal ingredients, and thought to self: "This is where the quick hors d'oeuvres meet the 'oh wow' from the guests, with the hostess barely lifting a finger, except to sip some wine." Now, that's my kind of hors d'oeuvres! Slice the very fresh scallops into thin circles. Drop them into fresh lemon juice to "cook." You are also supposed to slice the avocados into circles, to mirror the scallops, but mine ended up being whatever shape the avocado chose. I don't argue with avocadoes about their shape, I just eat them and am grateful they choose to show up on the plate at all. The recipe calls for a few shakes of hot sauce on each scallop slice. I used Cholula Sweet Habanero Hot Sauce.  This is a fabulous appetizer that will impress your friends and family!

As the name of the recipe indicates, this savory soup comes to us from Czechoslovakia. Our local health food store fortunately carries dried porcini mushrooms. This is an essential ingredient for the depth of flavor of this soup, altho the recipe calls for your everyday mushrooms from the grocery store, too.  I came to love mushroom soup in a somewhat unusual way. As a preteen, I was invited to sit for an oil painting at an artist's home, and we would take a break from the painting and she would feed me mushroom soup. I remember thinking it an odd food, mostly because my mom never served it at home. But it became rather a special food for me, to share with this artist. The porcini mushrooms must be hydrated and then they simmer for what seems like forever (2 hours).  It makes the kitchen smell delectable. I brought my work to the kitchen island just so I could enjoy the simmering wonderfulness of mushrooms. It will improve in flavor over time (keeps up to a week in fridge). Bu...

 This is the first of seven recipes from the Preserves chapter. Frankly, I'm surprised there are not more recipes. For instance, not a single marmalade in the bunch, and I grew up on my grandmother's pear marmalade. Maybe I'll put Grandma Bailey's pear marmalade recipe in the front of this cookbook. They have a page for you to put your own. The thing is, how do you choose just one?! Well, at least I've learned my lesson when I see a recipe from circa 1800s, in this cookbook. I go and look for a modern recipe to make sure I have all of the instructions needed.  This recipe comes out of an 1877 cookbook, "Fish, Flesh and Fowl: A Book of Recipes for Cooking" published by the Ladies of State Street Parish in Portland, Maine. Another church recipe, which I'm sure was good in its day. However, I'm going to substitute a modern recipe, with a nod to the Ladies at the State Street Congregational Church in Portland (where I took some of my seminary classes, ...

Isn't it fun to name a recipe because you can? This one has a story behind it, and yes, you'll need to buy the cookbook to hear the full story. It's a good one! But I'll tell you the secret to the recipe. It's a hoot. The cook says she often bakes the beans from scratch, for a special Labor Day Weekend event with family and friends, but sometimes, if she doesn't have time, she...opens cans of B&M pork and beans and doctors it up a bit. And, of course, puts it all in a bean pot! Very clever!  And so, I was short on time, myself, Saturday night, when I chose this recipe. My favorite part of the meal? The way my husband slices the onions razor-thin and cooks them just right, to pile onto the beans and the dogs. And he always butters and toasts the hot dog buns, which makes for the perfect hot dog...or should I say, red dog! This recipe rates right up there with Stephen King's Lunchtime Gloop. I am all for opening a can to make the meal preparation easier an...

This recipe would be absolutely delicious in the hands of a chef more skilled than myself. It was submitted by the chef at the Blaine House. Enough said... I learned a couple of things, being a cook not accustomed to making fancy meals. I have no idea if the mushrooms I used were oyster mushrooms or not. Yes, I looked up pictures of them, but still not sure. Don't let me go hunting for wild mushrooms, I could probably kill somebody with my lack of identification skills. My husband surprised me by bringing home scallops from the grocery store. I didn't even remember there was a scallop recipe in the cookbook (most of the recipes require a combination of seafoods). But there it was, when I went searching. A nice surprise. I thought I'd scoured this cookbook, since I made a master list of somewhat harder to find foods, like oyster mushrooms. And I do love scallops. So I collected the other ingredients, as best I could. We didn't have any seafood stock, so I substituted mus...

When my kids were little, I was an at-home mom doing freelance writing for a local paper. We lived out in the country on a dead-end dirt road in a small log-sided 2-bedroom home with a Jotul woodstove. I did a lot of home cooking, to save on grocery/restaurant costs, but also because I loved making sure my family ate healthy food. I especially loved to bake bread. There is something so relaxing about baking bread. Maybe it is the joy of witnessing that mysterious life that the combination of yeast and just the right temperature of warm water offer.  Perhaps it is the repetitive motion of stirring that yeast mixture with the flour, until the magical moment when it comes together in a ball and you turn it out onto a floured surface to rest. Yes, to rest.  Then there is the kneading, which needs to be steady and strong for a full ten to twelve minutes, to get the dough to that yielding softness that marks its readiness to rise. Greased and covered with a cloth in a draft-free, wa...

This recipe comes with a full page of memories about Grammy Minnie Trueworthy, born in 1888, who lived in Porter, Maine. I was delighted to be able to bake-off her recipe along with the other two molasses cookie recipes in this cookbook, in order to compare and enjoy. (See Nana Louise's Molasses Cookies and Grammy Shreder's Molasses Cookies blogs) This is one of those molasses cookies that must be washed down with a glass of cold milk for the perfect combo. I was surprised to find that Grammy used just a small amount of brown sugar. The other two recipes use plenty of white sugar. When you use such a small amount of sugar, the taste of the molasses comes through full force (which is why my husband was NOT a taste-tester for this molasses cookie bake-off, because he does not appreciate the wonderful flavor that is molasses).  This dough requires chilling. And it also requires a rolling pin. Hence the flour you see on the cookies (it's a rather sticky dough, in spite of chill...

 I think the story behind these cookies are just as sweet as the cookies themselves. Not to give too much away (what, you haven't purchased this cookbook yet?!), but the family gave a handwritten copy of this recipe to all attendees at her funeral, with a picture of Grandma Shreder at age 18. I've already shared in "Nana Louise's Molasses Cookies" how I have made all three molasses cookie recipes in this cookbook, to compare them, so you can go read that blog. This cookie requires chilling the dough, preferably overnight. I didn't have overnight, so I chilled it for an hour (Grandma's handwritten instructions say that an hour will do). It comes out of the oven a little puffy and very cake-like. I guess I was hoping for the crinkly-topped soft, moist flat cookie that Nana Louise makes. But the combination of a great deal of flour and shortening and molasses makes it a much heavier and drier cookie. Which a lot of people like, and given a busy day, I can see...

There are three molasses cookie recipes in the Bicentennial cookbook. I compared all three to see what the differences were. Nana Louise is the only recipe using vanilla extract. She also uses a very small amount of molasses, more baking soda, less flour, and smaller amounts of spices than the other two recipes. If you are completely curious, go and buy a cookbook. Spoiler alert, this recipe is my favorite of the three. I baked all three recipes and taste tested them on the same day, in order to compare flavors, textures, and the amount of Nana/Grandma/Grammy-love imbued in each recipe. Why is this recipe my favorite? Who doesn't love the cookies that remind one of one's Grandma? My father's mother loved to bake cookies for her grandchildren. And we obliged by eating every single one, happily. My Grandma Bailey made a molasses cookie very much like this one, with a soft, moist interior and a little sugar on top. The picture shows my Grandma Bailey's cookie jar, which wa...

For such a delicate little cookie, you might want to refer to them by their French name: Langues de Chat. Sounds a little more elegant than cat tongues! This recipe is submitted by Phyllis Siebert, a former Blaine House chef. She says they were a favorite at Blaine House receptions. I wonder if that is because they are so small and light that you could probably picture them as completely calorie-free! Per usual for cookie recipes, I made a half-batch. If you make a half batch, you must still go with the full 2 large egg whites to get the right consistency of batter for your pastry bag. While we are talking large eggs, have you noticed that hens are laying smaller eggs? I always buy large eggs, and like every other product on the shelf, it seems they are shrinking. Maybe just my imagination? The recipe calls for a pastry bag, but being as how I don't own one, a ziplock baggie with a corner snipped off works perfectly. You don't want to re-use a hot cookie pan for laying out new ...

I think it was the vanilla that fooled me. If I had seen almond extract in the recipe, I would have recognized this old friend. But it had been years since we had seen one another, and I didn't know her. Of course, this round little cookie rolled in powdered sugar could be none other! Except that years ago, she wore a delicious almond perfume that made her the alluring cookie I've had the pleasure of knowing all these years. The only dish suitable for display of such an elegant cookie (even sans almond extract) had to be the Penelope Noritake tea set that my dad brought home from Japan. And you can be sure that we'll meet again, perhaps at the Christmas holidays, and she'll be wearing that almond perfume! All kidding aside, this is a beautiful cookie that melts in your mouth, literally. I made a half batch and wish I had made more. (This recipe is submitted by one of Patrick Dempsey's sisters, Mary. Their mother used to make these tea cakes every December. And yes, ...