Maine Bicentennial, A Cookbook, and Me

 At first, I thought this recipe might be similar to Shepherd's Pie, as it has meat and potatoes. But the Shepherd's Pie I'm familiar with has mashed potato spread over a meat base. This recipe calls for encasing all the meat and potatoes inside a bottom and a top crust. And I do like the look! The top crust is so inviting, all golden brown.  Now, I'm rather a fan of Jimmy Dean sausage, myself. The spices are just right, and do not overwhelm the meat. I noticed that this recipe calls for adding spices to plain ground pork. I admit I was tempted to buy Jimmy Dean and skip the recipe spice list, but then I decided I should really try it once as it is written. I discovered that the spices are a little strong, and a little unusual.  I remember using cinnamon  for a lamb dish, and it actually tasted fine, but in this dish, I was just hankering for a simple meat and potatoes meal. I'm afraid the cinnamon confused my taste buds (I usually associate cinnamon with a sweet). ...

 I learned something new with this cake! As I skimmed the ingredients, I saw yogurt. Then I read more carefully. Coconut yogurt. Non-dairy. As in, yogurt made from coconuts. And here I've been living under the impression that yogurt requires the help of a dairy cow. BTW, this recipe also calls for vegan butter. Well, I can assure you, no dairy cows were employed for the ingredients in this cake! The poppyseed reminded me of the lemon poppyseed muffins I like at the church camp I volunteer at in the summer. But this is heavier than muffins, more like the density you find in a pound cake. I was a little concerned that the end result would be dry. No worries! The frosting slathered on the top adds to the moisture of the cake, but the interior is plenty moist. Don't bake it the full 40 minutes the recipe suggests, tho. I always undertime a cake on the first bake. Glad I did for this one. It only needed 30 minutes. Not an overly sweet cake, the raspberry frosting lends a natural swe...

 I'm still getting my donut feet under me, so to speak. I am not as fluent in working with the dough and the hot oil as I'd like to be. There is a certain ease that comes, I'm sure, with experience--rolling out a dough not too sticky but not overly floured; dropping the dough into the hot oil without a splash; timing the flip of the donut so that it doesn't overcook on one side. I'll get there, but I'm not sure I reached the pinnacle of expertise with the batch I made today. I have a ways to go before I make the Perfect Donut. They turned out tasty, but just a tad too crispy, I think. Of course, it would help if I didn't have an ancient fryer. It does not have any temp gauge on it, so I can't regulate the heat. And were I to try the stovetop, the nature of a glass-topped electric oven is that the heating elements cycle on and off, so it is very hard to keep a consistent heat. (If I went on about this in my blog about Hester's Donuts, forgive me. Noth...

This recipe comes from a woman who grew up in the Netherlands and now lives in Maine. The dish features potatoes, as the name of the recipe suggests, but also has sausage and vegetables. I'm not fond of kale, so I substituted Swiss chard. Note to self, it does not take very long to saute chard. Should have waited for the other veggies to cook, and then tossed in the chard for the last few minutes. In the end, the veggies and sausage get draped over the mashed potatoes. A few generous spoonfuls of sweet chili sauce lend a little spice to the meal. Quick, inexpensive, easy-to-prepare meal. And who doesn't love mashed potatoes? One of my fav comfort foods!

 Ployes are made from buckwheat flour. If you live in Northern Maine, you are likely already familiar with this food. Living in the mid-coast, it took me a little time to find buckwheat flour, having to go to a food co-op for it, since the major grocery stores did not carry it (in this era of COVID-19, it's not easy scoring any kind of flour and we learn to make do with whatever is on the store shelf). The buckwheat flour that I purchased comes from the Bouchard Family Farms, established in 1871 in beautiful Fort Kent, Maine. I like to research my food, if it is new to me. Buckwheat is technically an herb or fruit, related to wild rhubarb. So, it is gluten-free. It has twice the B vitamins of wheat flour. And just how did this crop become popular in the St. John Valley? Well, in the 1830s, wheat crops were devastated in the Northeast by an insect called the wheat midge, and a disease called rust. The wheat farmers turned to oats and buckwheat. By 1850, buckwheat became the most pop...

Diane Mann contributed this recipe and she won a blue ribbon for it at the Blueberry Festival in Machias.  Is it a coincidence that I chose to make this pie during the week that we would normally have held the Maine Wild Blueberry Festival/Union Fair here in Union, Maine, were it not for COVID-19 precautions?  I am pleased to note that this recipe is the 100th recipe I have made from the Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook. In theory, that puts me halfway to the finish line...except that there are actually a few more than the 200 recipes the cookbook claims on its cover. Which is fine by me, since I consider extra recipes a bonus! I love that blueberries are so deeply a part of the Maine experience, and I wanted to celebrate that by baking this pie as my 100th recipe. I can see why the pie won a blue ribbon. It has a surprise when you bite into it. You may be expecting a baked blueberry pie, when in truth, underneath the cooked blueberries hide loads of fresh wild Maine blue...

 Ben Diaz contributed this marinade. He says he never wrote it down until his church youth group was gathering recipes for a cookbook. Those are always the best recipes, aren't they? The ones we know by heart. Until someone comes along and urges us to write it down, so others can enjoy it too! It has a good flavor. I chose to do a beef and veggie stir fry. It was so easy to toss the ingredients in a shaker, shake it all up, and put it in a zippered plastic bag with the pieces of beef, for about four hours. The recipe suggests overnight, but I just didn't have the schedule to do that. So the flavor is sort of mild. To deepen the flavor, overnight would be best.