Biological and cultural diversity in your backyard
This is a great time to be a gardener. Each year the choice of what ...
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Maine Dish
Syrup-laced muffins on tap
I keep a close eye on my pantry inventory these days; sorting root-cellared apples for ...
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Romesco sauce is good over fish and as a dip
My friend Susan Wells brought a bowl of bright red, chunky sauce surrounded with crackers and toast points to the garden club potluck. Smothering a cracker with the mixture, I popped it in my mouth. A taste explosion! Bright, tomato and sweet pepper flavors with rich undertones, a pop of acidity, hints of charred roasting …
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It pays to grow some herbs from seed
The herb garden needs a makeover. Some of the sage plants are so old and woody they look like a failed experiment with bonsai. Ornamental flowers of all sorts have stolen in. This year I want fresh new herbs and lots of them, so I can dry them, make herb vinegars, and have a plot …
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A feast for governors’ wives
What is your go-to dish for a special supper or festive potluck meal? A recent student query had me pause to reflect for several moments. My family enjoys eating a wide variety of foods, fruits, grains and vegetables. Our proximity to the coast and local farms allows us the luxury of plentiful seafood, fresh vegetables …
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In praise of kale
It’s easy to get someone to eat a tomato, but I’ve always found kale a tough sell — until I discovered the Tuscan kind. Even diehard kale-haters, once they try it, make it a regular part of their diet, and not just for its payload of vitamin C, folic acid, calcium and iron. It’s the …
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Cabbage touted for cancer-fighting benefits
The cabbage, which derives from the French word “caboche” (a colloquial term for head), was introduced to the Americas in 1541-42 by Jacques Cartier on his third voyage to Canada. Although the vegetable became an important New England crop that sustained many homesteading families, the first writing of its cultivation wasn’t recorded until over 100 …
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Beauty and bounty meet in the vegetable garden
There is a common perception that flower gardens are planted for looks, vegetable gardens for utility. But in fact, vegetable gardens are the place where beauty and bounty meet, and flower gardens have a higher calling to promote botanical diversity and sustain pollinators. The American home vegetable garden was once a farm in miniature, a …
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Dishing up Maine tradition
Last week was Arts Week at Deer Isle-Stonington High School, and the theme was a celebration of Maine’s bicentennial. Once part of Massachusetts, Maine became independent — very independent — in March of 1820. For the entire week, over 120 teenagers were engrossed in studying the history of Maine and Deer Isle and creating works …
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There’s nothing peewee about the kiwi
Fuzzy kiwi fruits burst on the American scene in the trend-hungry 1980s, but smooth-skinned hardy kiwis were there all along, hiding for much of the century beneath the leaves of Actinidia, an ornamental vine. Those became a hot item at about the same time, not as a commercial fruit crop but as a feature in …
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To bisque or not to bisque
On a recent foodie trip to Portland we enjoyed three delicious and innovatively different meals. No peeling vegetables, no chopping garlic, no mixing, baking, cooking, and no washing dishes. It was pure luxury. We dined on soul-bending bar food paired with locally brewed beer, Portland Harbor Hotel stylish Eggs Benedicts and champagne cocktails and a …
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Devising crop rotation plan makes fun winter diversion
Open any gardening book and it will tell you that crop rotation is a beneficial practice. The principle is a simple one. You don’t plant anything in the same place where it grew last year, and preferably not the year before that, or the year before that. Rotating results in healthier, better-yielding crops, partly because …