Eight Things I Love about Living in Maine

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network held its spring fundraiser yesterday.

MPBN's ability to raise $374,000 in one day reminded me how much better Maine does public broadcasting than that little corner of Pennsylvania whence Himself hails and where we lived for a number of years.

And that got me thinking about other things that I prefer about Maine.

I don't mean to diss on that corner of Pennsylvania.  It has lots of stuff going for it:  Hunter's wings, Yuengling lager, rolling hills, and the type of Italian food you only get where a third of the population has a last name ending in a vowel.  (And hey, it's been quite a few years since the Youngstown organized crime spat spilled over the border and a box truck exploded in that restaurant parking lot, so it's all about the food now, right guys?)  People who live there love it.  My brother-in-law would no sooner leave than he would light his hair on fire.  Hell, we can't even get him to visit.

But I'm a Maine girl.  Not to say that Maine doesn't have issues, but I say, perhaps not objectively, that certain things here are superior to Pennsylvania.

Here are my top eight:

1.  Public radio.  Which inspired this post.  It's tough for a regional station in farm and gun country to scrape together enough of the target demographic to make a go; the Erie station would routinely claw its way toward a $75,000 goal over the course of ten days of increasingly strident and panicked pleading.  By comparison, MPBN is a well-oiled statewide machine with a huge audience base.  They rake in a few thousand pledges in one day and call it done for half a year.  Plus the programming is better.

2.  The New York Times.  Here, one can walk into any grocery or convenience store any day of the week and get one.  In Meadville there were only a handful of places that got in half a dozen copies on Sundays and if you weren't there by ten a.m. you were SOL.

3.  Alcohol sales.  There, one has to go to a drive-through distributor for beer and wine coolers, or to a state store for wine and hard liquor.  Here, one can walk into any grocery or convenience store any day of the week and get whatever spirits one's heart desires.  Exception:  Sundays before 9 a.m., our nod to the good old blue laws.  Whatevs.  If you're doing your grocery shopping early on Sunday, just grab a New York Times and relax until the cashier can ring your vodka through.

4.  Paper birches and balsam trees.

5.  Less snow.

6.  Maine's long and dignified political tradition.  Paul LePage (the monomaniacal blowhard who currently occupies the governor's mansion after a fluke of an election resulted in a 38% plurality) aside.  Us:  Margaret Chase Smith, Ed Muskie, Olympia Snowe, Nelson A. Rockefeller.  Them:  Tom Ridge.  And Rick Santorum.  And HE'S positively mainstream compared to Teresa Forcier and her pistol-packing-momma endorsement of Mark from Michigan.  Then there was R. Bud Dwyer - good Lord.  And don't forget the 1995 Washington Post cover story which quoted some of our local business leaders (anonymously, but everyone knew who they were) who thought the rationale behind the Oklahoma City bombing was sound.  We just don't have that shit here.  Thank God.

7.  Halloween.  Seriously.  For starters, in Maine we hold it on October 31 instead of the second Friday after the second full moon after the autumnal equinox or however it's calculated down there so you have to look in the paper every year to find out when to go trick-or-treating.  Plus, up here we're pretty light on Mennonites.  A plague of locusts has nothing on a busload of Anabaptist youths delivered to a neighborhood where people are giving out free candy.

8.  Lobster.  Did you know this is the only state in the union which doesn't have a Red Lobster franchise?

My children are damaged

I am raising a family of profane coffee addicts.

Home Improvement Project du Jour

Behold:

Bookshelves.

This is the Ikea/office spares collection we had before:

And this is after:

Himself wrought this.

Max approveth.

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother

During the first three or four years of my parents' marriage, my father was chronically unemployed. 

We subsisted.

We had "hot dog goulash," as we called this, many times when I was a toddler.  You can tell by how well-used this recipe card is.  We also drank a lot of green Kool-Aid because a ten-cent packet, or whatever it cost in 1974, made half a gallon. 

Eventually my father got the call and was hired by the first of a series of congregations.  My mother spent the next twelve or thirteen years being a dutiful minister's wife and homemaker as we moved up and down the east coast - a new church every year or two - and she put a tremendous amount of effort into feeding us creatively and well on the pittance my father allotted for household expenses each month. 

She had dinner (meat, starch and two sides) each night at five o'clock sharp so my father could get to his recliner for the six o'clock news.  This was the playbook:

I don't know which edition it is, since the publication pages are missing, and the original binding was replaced, but judging by the Mad Men illustrations...



...I would guess we're talking early sixties.  Probably the first cookbook she got when she went off to college at 16.  It's very well-used. 

Here's a bonus:  A pie crust recipe written out by my grandmother.

The rest of the story goes like this.  Sixteen years in, my father soured on the whole monogamy thing, and the shock of the separation and divorce drove all those recipes and carefully crafted meals out of my mother's head. 

Ever after she loathed domesticity in general and cooking in particular. 

But she kept the cookbook.

Shameless Plug: Mr. Wat Sushi and Noodles

This place just opened up a few weeks ago and we took Thing Two there for dinner last night (Thing One was out and about; his loss).  It's awesome.  Very good food, friendly staff, reasonable prices.  They do seem to have issues with their iPod-based order management and payment system, but one trusts these bugs will be worked out with time.

There was quite a steady custom last night, which I hope bodes well for Mr. Wat's long-term success.  I'm looking forward to going back next Friday with Thing One (Thing Two will be out and about; her loss).

Recipe: Fettuccini with Duck & Wild Mushroom Ragu

Looking over the blog posts the last couple of months it would appear that I have not been feeding my family. Really, I have, just not much new and original.

See, the kids have at least one thing each going on each weeknight, so recent dinners in this household have been trending toward the quick and uninspiring: cheeseburgers and fries, or a main dish salad, or a veggie wrap which can be scarfed down between play practice and dance class.

Plus the oven on my relatively new JennAir shit the bed, which I’m really pissed about – this is the second thing to go wrong with this very expensive appliance in the not quite three years we’ve had it.

Plus the weather is getting nicer, so it's becoming more difficult to justify spending a day in the kitchen.

But there I was in the grocery store a couple of weeks ago, and I kept hearing my name being called, and eventually located the source, which was a six-pound duckling in the freezer section that badly wanted to come home with me.

This pasta sauce is sort of a mash-up of two different ideas from the Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian book. It is rich and earthy, and with homemade fettuccini (also from the Frug), fresh-baked bread (thank heavens we still have the old range, with its functioning oven), a salad and the obligatory bottle of Chianti, oh my goodness. If I do say so myself.  This is one that would do Chef Kerry at Cafe Miranda proud.

Disclaimer: Time consuming, but makes a lot and leftovers freeze very well.  Roast the duck early in the day, start the sauce in the early afternoon, make the pasta dough around four and everything will come together at once at dinnertime.

Fettuccini with Duck & Wild Mushroom Ragu

1 5-6 lb ducking

1 oz mixed dried mushrooms
4 tablespoons olive oil
8 cloves garlic, minced

2 yellow onions, minced

1 stalk celery, chopped fine

1 medium carrot, peeled & chopped fine

4 fresh tomatoes, coarsely chopped

2 28-oz cans whole plum tomatoes, undrained

4 tablespoons parsley flakes

½ teaspoon marjoram

½ teaspoon rosemary

3/4 cup white wine

Salt & pepper to taste

Grated parmesan 

Rinse the duck and pat dry. Season with salt & pepper and roast at 375 about 2 hours. Set aside to cool, then bone and coarsely shred the meat. Reserve the drippings.

While the duck is roasting, simmer the neck and giblets in enough water to cover to make stock, and rehydrate the mushrooms in 1 1/2 cups (more or less) boiling water. 

Remove the mushrooms from the soaking liquid - do not discard the liquid - squeeze out the excess liquid and finely chop the mushrooms.  Strain and reserve the soaking liquid.

Heat the oil in a stock pot and saute the mushrooms, garlic, onion, celery and carrot until the onion is clear. Add the fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes, wine, parsley, marjoram and rosemary.  Crush the whole canned tomatoes with a potato masher so they are chunky. 

Add enough duck stock and defatted duck drippings to the mushroom soaking liquid to measure about 3 cups.  Add this to the tomato mixture.  Bring everything to a simmer and cook uncovered for 3-4 hours, stirring often and periodically crushing the tomatoes.  The sauce will reduce by nearly half.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Stir in shredded duck meat and heat through.  Serve over pasta, garnished with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Pasta:

1.5 cups bread flour

1 cup semolina flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon water, more if needed

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the center.  Crack the eggs into the well and add the olive oil and water.  Mix thoroughly and knead until it holds together - the dough will be very stiff.  Allow to rest covered for 1/2 hour.  Divide dough into eight equal parts, roll and cut.  Allow to dry at least an hour, then cook three or four minutes in boiling water.  Drain and serve hot.

April 3: Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day

Remember Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day?  No, probably not...  it hasn't gained a whole lot of traction over the last year...  but today, to celebrate the second annual occurence of this illustrious event, I think it's fitting to select one item from my kitchen to receive the Gadget of the Year Award.

This year I choose the gadget I reach for the most, just about every week.  Here it is:

This is a spoon sold by King Arthur Flour which measures exactly one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of yeast.  When one buys yeast in bulk, it's soooooo much easier to grab this thing and scoop once or twice than to measure out two and a quarter teaspoons.  And at $3.95, it's an affordable indulgence.

Happy Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day to all!