End of summer 2012 highlights reel

The Lobster Festival and the Union Fair

Four different houseguests, three days of sailing, two family gatherings, and a waxwing in the crabapple tree

Foggy Jonesport

A sailing trip Down East to Canada, just Himself and a friend from Outward Bound

Tostitos the Fish succumbed to galloping fungus and went to be with Jesus

Thing One had a fantastic summer as an apprentice on the schooner American Eagle

The mother of all seventh-grade-girls' sleepovers, aboard this 142' charter yacht whose captain happens to be Thing Two's friend's dad

Back-to-school shopping (ouch)

Three cords of wood delivered and needing to be stacked

And much, much more... but I've run up against my storage limit on this account, and life has changed enough since I started this little endeavor:  the kids are busier, my job is more demanding, and when the dishes are cleared and homework is done and I'm finally able to sit down of an evening, usually around 8.30 or 9, someone else is invariably using the computer.

So the blog is slowing down.    The occasional recipe or knitting project or shameless plug (which reminds me, I have one of those to share soon) or random thoughts.  

Thanks for following.

Family Affair

My mother was the oldest of five siblings.

She is survived by two brothers...

...and two sisters.

One brother and one sister are sort of local; one sister lives in South Carolina and one brother lives in Rhode Island.  Despite the distance, it's a tightly-knit crew.









Because of the distance, though, and careers and busy lives and kids and grandkids, it's rare to get everyone - especially with their spouses - together in one spot.

They were all here last weekend, though, and they spent an entire precious afternoon at my place.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to family history.  Much of the lore is fairly common knowledge; some of it, though, comes out in bits from this person and pieces from another, depending on who talked to whom over the years.

There's great-great Uncle Buzz, born in 1893, who worked as a cook on a schooner on the Maine to Bermuda route.  On one trip, the captain died, and Buzz, being the most qualified of the crew, brought the schooner home.  Apparently he also had fair certain knowledge of the whereabouts of buried treasure (the existence of which along the Maine coast has long been rumored), which he took to his grave.  Who knew?

Then there's my great-great-grandmother Maude, who was widowed young in 1897 and whose only daughter became the object of a custody battle with her late husband's family over an imagined inheritance (they lost).   There are shadow stories of a second pregnancy which was forcibly terminated by the late husband.

Or how about my great-great-great-grandmother Etta, who is the first woman in the family who experienced clairvoyant dreams and visions?  One of Etta's sons nearly lost his life in a terrible storm at sea - the details of which Etta could describe accurately before the son even came home to share his tale.  (This gift is shared by my grandmother and one of my aunts, but skipped my line, thank heavens).

Someday we shall write a book.

A Room with a View

I was in Portland last week for a manufacturing conference, which was held at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.

My room was on the fourth floor and it did, indeed, have lovely (if somewhat distant and fog-shrouded) views of Portland Harbor.

One was somewhat distracted, however, by the view in the foreground of the second-floor roof.

Which was a regular hangout for, and covered with the waste of, those pestilential herring gulls.

A small drama has been playing out in Rockland recently between an old dingbat who insists on feeding gulls, her neighbors, and the city fathers.

Said dingbat doesn't just toss out the odd crumb every now and again.  No.  We're talking cases and cases of bread, daily, and a scrum of hundreds of aggressive, defecating, squawking, extremely large birds, which trash not just the dingbat's yard but the neighbors' yards, while the neighbors are trapped in their houses to avoid the noise and mess.

Cars and window screens end up covered in caustic bird droppings.  Feathers blanket patios.  Small children are carried away bodily.

The city fathers got involved after a series of complaints.  A new ordinance was written.  The intrepid code enforcement officer has been going deep undercover to ensure compliance.  The old lady still believes she is within her rights, so continues to feed the gulls.

Of course after years of daily feedings, the gulls are going to show up in her yard no matter what.  Like they stalk fishing boats knowing that old bait is going to be tossed out.  They've got used to humans making their wretched lives easier.

(Take this guy, for example.  One of many at my Portland aviary which dropped by to nab a drink from the condensation draining off the rooftop HVAC units.)

Now the city is threatening fines of $2,500 per day and the dingbat continues to insist that she has to feed the damn things because - this kills me - she says they don't have anywhere else to go.

To all Rockland herring gulls, if the Camden Street Terrace smorgasbord dries up on you, may I suggest the thriving urban environment (and progressive food scene) 80 miles to the south?

Recipe: Spicy Southwestern Chicken Salad

This is a refreshing and substantial summertime main dish salad (utilizing the tomato, cilantro and lettuce in this week's CSA share...).

Spicy Southwestern Chicken Salad

Chicken:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon cayenne (or to taste)
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Combine the first five ingredients and coat the chicken breasts with the mixture.  Refrigerate 30 minutes, then grill until done.  Set aside until it's time to assemble the salad, then slice thinly.

Tomato/onion vinaigrette:

3 tomatoes, chopped
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
2-3 hot peppers (like serrano, poblano, cayenne; the variety is not terribly crucial and a mix is good), or to taste, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl.

Salad:

1-2 heads lettuce (depending on size), washed and torn into bite-sized pieces
About 3 cups shredded Cheddar, Jack or Mexican blend cheese
About 2/3 of a 26-oz bag of frozen shoestring fries, baked according to package directions

Divide the lettuce among four dinner plates.  Top with hot fries and shredded cheese.  Arrange sliced chicken over the cheese, then pour the vinaigrette over everything.

Serves 4.

Playing tourist

Our very dear friend, the Rev. Dr. D, came to see us for a few days.

This gentleman was the chaplain at my college way back in the day, and hired me as the chapel organist when I was a sophomore.

Then he retired and moved to Oregon.  But he came back to Pennsylvania to perform our wedding.

Then he moved back to Pennsylvania.

We've kept in touch.  He loves Maine and had been wanting to come back for a while, and we were one stop on his whirlwind summer vacation.

In spite of breaking his leg last October and being almost 80, he ran me more or less ragged.


Here's what we did over the course of two days:

Cooked a mess of lobsters, steamers, mussels and corn, and made an unholy and thoroughly satisfying mess of the kitchen.

Got ice cream at Dorman's and seafood at the Rockland Cafe.

(Not in that order.)

Went up the Penobscot Narrows Observatory and all over Fort Knox.

Visited the Penobscot Marine Museum.

Walked around Camden and drove up Mt. Batty.

Had a picnic lunch at Marshall Point.

Poked around the Olson House.

(I can completely understand how someone could get hung up on this place and spend a lifetime painting it.)

















Met up with Thing One on the schooner American Eagle.

Went sailing.


Visited my grandmother.


Took about a bazillion pictures.


Revisited old memories and made new ones.


Had a blast.

Recipe: Winter Harbor Mussels & Pasta

We spent last Saturday night with friends in Winter Harbor, on the east side of Vinalhaven.  It's a narrow channel which the more adventurous sailor can pick his way up, threading around sand bars and outcroppings of ledge.

I am not an adventurous sailor.  Every time we go to Winter Harbor, I pour myself a glass of wine, lie down with a cold cloth over my eyes, and wait until I hear the anchor drop or the keel scrape bottom.  Whichever comes first.

It's worth the aggravation of getting there, though.  The scenery is amazing, and it's as good as landlocked, so a very sheltered anchorage.  There are granite cliffs to climb and old quarries to explore.  Bald eagles and osprey soar overhead.  The water is lovely, warm (by North Atlantic standards) and a translucent green.  And best of all, those sandbars at the tide line are loaded with mussels.

We gathered a mess of them and brought them home with us Sunday, cleaned them well and made pasta for dinner.

Winter Harbor Mussels & Pasta

3 lbs. small mussels (more or less), debearded, scraped, scrubbed, soaked and rinsed (or whatever it takes to clean them up)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1/4 cup minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 28-oz cans whole Italian tomatoes, undrained
1 cup vermouth
1/4 cup each chopped fresh parsley and basil
Salt and pepper
1 lb. linguini or spaghetti, cooked & drained

Heat the olive oil in a large pot.  Saute the onion and garlic until the onion is tender.  Stir in red pepper, tomatoes (with juices) and vermouth; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the liquid is reduced by 1/4 to 1/3.  As it cooks, use a spoon or potato masher to crush the tomatoes.

Add the mussels; cover and simmer 5-7 minutes, until the mussels open.  Discard any that remain closed.  Stir in parsley and basil and season with salt and pepper.

Serve in bowls over hot cooked pasta, with plenty of bread for sopping.

Serves 4 generously.

Scenes from a weekend sailing trip

Carver Cove, Vinalhaven.  I want that house.

Little Hen Island?  Big Hen Island?  Some island.  Vinalhaven-ish.

Some island, probably called Hen.

Starboard Rock, Winter Harbor, Vinalhaven

The Monument, Fiddler's Ledge, North Haven

And then there were none

Towards the end of Herman's illness, and particularly after we had him put down, Max went berserk.

He started using the dining room carpet as a litterbox.

He was uncharacteristically and violently affectionate.

He figured out how to open the sliding screen door.

And we haven't seen him since.

Going from two cats to zero cats in a week is very disorienting.

And heartbreaking.

Herman, remembered

I had to have Herman put down last week.

He came to us in 1998, a half-starved stray who had taken up lodging at the feed store, with his brilliant green eyes and stubby tail and bones jutting out where bones shouldn't be.  I brought him home and from the minute he took up residence, he radiated gratitude.

I'm not anthropomorphising this.  He was visibly, palpably content to be with us, and he was always around, always in the middle of everything..

Leaping up the stairs first thing in the morning, when Thing Two's feet hit the deck, for a spot of play and cuddles.  Greeting us at the door when we came home each day.  Underfoot in the kitchen.  Tucked in front of the fire.  Sitting patiently by my chair at dinner every evening, waiting until I finished and pushed back so he could jump in my lap.  Perched on the back of the recliner.  On my bed every night, always keeping to the highest spot - my hip, or butt, or chest, or, if it was a really cold night, up around my neck.

He was endlessly playful.  Kittenish.  A decent mouser when he could be bothered.  Very talkative; a cat you could dialogue with.

He had periodic respiratory infections that would slow him down a bit, but he always bounced back.  Until this time.  Something else was going on, and despite treatment, he declined very quickly.  He stopped eating.  He got scrawny again.  And weak.  It was his time.  I stayed with him while the vet gave him the shot.


Days later, I still feel like I've been punched in the gut.  I play the whole sequence of events out in my head in the middle of the night.

He was our buddy, and his absence leaves a pretty big hole in this household.

2012 Great Schooner Race

Thing One called Thursday night.

The fleet was gathering and anchoring off the breakwater in Rockland Harbor, in preparation for Friday's Great Schooner Race.

It was a beautiful night.  

He asked us to come out.

(When your tall, confident, independent 15-year-old who has only been gone for four days calls and wants to see you, well, your heart lifts a little.)

So we grabbed Chinese takeout and Wilson the Agoraphobic Goldendoodle, tootled across the harbor, dropped the hook and enjoyed dinner and the view.

Thing One rowed over after the small boat races.

While he ate our leftovers, he filled us in on his adventures (which include going aloft, twice, untethered, while underway).

Snatches of sea shanties in three-part harmony drifted over from the Stephen Taber and each schooner fired off its cannon.

(Add cannons to Wilson's list of phobias.)

Friday morning was a beauty, too.  The schooners jostled for position by the starting line, off the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater...

...then spread out across the bay as they caught the wind.

The Schooner American Eagle making Owls Head

One can only imagine what it must have looked like a hundred years ago, when Rockland was a hub of shipbuilding and lime transport and the harbor was crowded with vessels like these, and much larger than these.

We're hanging on to a bit of history here.

Just being kids (2012 edition)

The gang got together here last weekend.

Looking back at the pictures of them from just a year ago, the mind boggles at how much they've grown.

Thing One's friend M, back from his first year at MSSM, has really gelled as a person, it seems; another friend, T, is headed there in the fall to finish out the rest of his high school career.

They're all physically much bigger than I am.

They all have jobs.

But get them all together on a beastly hot day and they play Frisbee and soccer and capture the flag (with the sprinkler running at midfield) and have a campfire with S'mores and swing on the swings and go swimming in the lake with [most of] their clothes on and eat a shocking amount of food.

Monday morning we deposited Thing One on the schooner and we'll see him probably one night a week between now and mid-August.

Dammit.

Weirdo

Who does this?

Three things I love about where I work

1.  I can wear jeans every day

2.  I can swear a lot

3.  The plastic poop war

In Memoriam 2.0

A couple of weeks ago we held a memorial service for my great-Uncle Lew.

A man like that needs more than one memorial service, see; this was his third, after one in Florida where he retired and a second in Tennessee where he had his career.  This one was for the benefit of my grandmother, who can no longer travel, and the Maine family who couldn’t make one of the others.

A bit of background, if I may.  Back in the 1940s, as I’ve mentioned here before, my grandmother went one way and my Uncle Lew went another, theologically speaking.  My grandmother and Uncle Lew loved each other deeply, but the two branches of the family have always regarded each other with some suspicion. 

Uncle Lew’s side exists in good-humored trepidation of the morally superior and judgmental Baptists, while my grandmother’s line compresses its collective lips in grim disapproval of the worldliness and wickedness of the faithless.  This mutual wariness was visited upon the second generation and most of the third, and it accompanied my grandmother, Aunt Gerry, and a couple of dozen uncles, aunts and cousins from around the country into the Thomaston Baptist Church for the memorial service. 

The eulogy was interesting because the minister didn’t actually know my Uncle Lew; but knowing my grandmother, naturally he made assumptions about Lew, and thus expelled bushels of warm air about St. Lew living his life for the glory of God and similar twaddle.  I’m sure it gave my grandmother great comfort but the rest of us had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud and/or bean the ordained one with a well-flung hymnal.

The afterparty, however, was at MY house, which is a twaddle-free zone.   We drank, we swore, we laughed, we played Frisbee (aging uncles and younger cousins together), we grumbled about politicians, we ate too much and drank some more.  The Baptists declined the Frisbee game and the wine, endured the rest because they were outnumbered, and tried not to show they were having a pretty darn good time.

(And since my grandmother went home to rest after the service, there was no need to conceal the wine.)

Uncle Lew would have loved it.

Eating local

CSA and CSF season has started up again.  Somebody say glory!

Although I am not best pleased with how Port Clyde Fresh Catch is evolving the CSF. 

Two years ago, a share was an entire fish (or many fishes if they were small, like sole), and it came in a big plastic bag with a twist tie and you picked it up from the back of a truck at the farmer’s market.  If you ordered your share pre-filleted, you had the option to also receive the “racks,” the carcasses, which make amazing chowder, and if you’ve never chased your young children with a three-foot cod corpse you haven’t lived. 

Then last year, they did away with the rack option and stopped selling at the farmer’s market. 

This year, a share is two pristine vacuum-sealed bags, neatly labeled and bundled in mesh; pickup is at an upscale gourmet market; and each of the bags has exactly one pound of fish in it – not the same kind of fish, though, so if it takes the entire share to feed your family, you wind up with some interesting juxtapositions (monkfish and Atlantic redfish, for example).

The fish is still excellent, but now it feels far removed from the slightly rough-edged boat-to-table model which we loved. 

Anyway, the season has started, so we’re getting back into the mindset of eating what’s ready when it’s ready and not really knowing from week to week what the menu is going to look like.  Great fun.

Last night’s dinner was roasted scallions from Farmer Tom, rice cooker pilaf, and a cod/haddock medley (courtesy of the new, improved CSF) baked with a vegetable and herb topping. 

Feels like summer.

Recipe: Baked Fish with Herbed Vegetable Crumb Topping

Baked fish with herbed veggie crumb topping

1 medium yellow onion

2 stalks celery

1 carrot

1 stick butter

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 – 1 ½ cups plain dry bread crumbs

½ teaspoon dried thyme

Pinch red pepper flakes

Salt & pepper

2 lbs. fish fillets (cod, pollock, haddock or hake)

¼ cup snipped fresh chives

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 350. 

Trim/peel and finely dice the onion, celery and carrot. 

Melt the butter in a large skillet and sauté the diced vegetables and the garlic until tender.  Add enough breadcrumbs to make a loose mixture (not too dry).  Season with thyme, red pepper, and salt and pepper to taste.

Place fish fillets in glass baking dish and sprinkle the crumb mixture evenly over the top.  Bake uncovered for 20 – 30 minutes, until thickest fillets flake easily.  Sprinkle with chopped fresh chives and parsley and serve.

Recipe: Rice Cooker Pilaf

Definitely not the first or only person to think of this – in fact, I just googled it and got plenty of hits – but I’m posting it anyway because I started doing this a few years ago on my own without any help from the interwebs.

Rice Cooker Pilaf

Measure the desired amount of rice for your rice cooker, subbing orzo for some of the rice, say a 3:1 ratio (approximately) of rice to orzo.

Sautee the rice and orzo (and a chopped onion, if you feel like it) in a bit of oil until the rice is toasted and the orzo is golden brown.  Place the rice mixture in the cooker, add chicken broth to the appropriate fill level, and hit the start button.  Easy peasy.

Lined curtains for a sailboat: A pattern, of sorts

Among the other upgrades to L'Heretique while she was on the hard for the winter, we had her tricked out with new cushions.

The old cushions

Fetching though the 1975 tweed plaid was, the foam was shot.  It was long past time.

And of course the old curtains (navy) didn't match the new upholstery (moss green), which is how I got sucked into a sailboat project.

(Himself spent three years nagging me to make the cushions, so I consider myself lucky for getting off relatively lightly here.  And the new upholstery doesn't match the laminate on the table, so there's another project for him.  Ha.)

His projects

Hers projects

Anyhoo, to the curtains.

Our Sabre 28 has two long windows in the main cabin, each requiring two large panels (roughly 13 1/2" high and 33" wide), and four small windows in the head and v-berth, needing eight small panels (roughly 11" high and 12" wide).

To the finished size add margins for the hem:  2" for the sides (1" each side), 1 1/4" for the bottom hem and a bit more for the top pocket seam - 1 3/4" for the smaller panels and 2 1/2" for the larger.

So we needed four panels cut to 17 1/4" high and 35" wide, and eight panels 15" high by 14" wide.  Three yards plus a fat quarter (which was all the local quilt shop had) and some ingenuity (one of the small panels is pieced together) of fabric was just sufficient.

Newspaper templates are helpful.

As is a drywall T-square for measuring and marking.

It works.  Shut up.

Now, cut a panel of muslin to correspond to each curtain panel - except make the muslin about 2" shorter and 1" narrower than your curtain panel measurements.

For each panel, pin the muslin to the curtain fabric, right sides together.  This will be the bottom of the curtain.

If your fabric has a directional print, this is where you want to confirm what's top and what's bottom.  Ripping out stitches sucks.

.

Stitch a 1/4" seam.

With the wrong side facing up, press the seam toward the curtain fabric...

... then bring the muslin to the top of the curtain panel, folding up 1 1/4" of the curtain fabric.

Press the 1 1/4" fold.

This will be the bottom hem of the panel.

  Now fold each side edge in a quarter of an inch, press...

...fold over 3/4", press again, and pin.

(You will notice up there at the beginning when I gave the finished measurements I said "roughly."  In case anyone is doing math here and about to post a comment pointing out a mistake or three.)

Stitch the side seams.








Almost there.

Fold and press the top seam - 1/4" for the smaller panels, 1/2" for the larger.

 - then fold another 1 1/2" and press again.  Pin.

Stitch along the edge of the fold.  Voila - a rod pocket.








Press one more time to set the stitches.  And that's it!  Hang them and enjoy.