Mainely Drizzle

Photo courtesy of Maine-ly Drizzle

I have yet to turn on the heat in the house, and it is not officially autumn yet, so I am still going to write about the summer.  Well, not the summer exactly, but things I did this summer.  Or more precisely, places I went this summer.  Well, place.  Oh you get the point.

While we were in Kennebunkport, Maine, we stumbled across the most amazing store - Mainely Drizzle.  Not only is it a shop for specialty olive oils and balsamic vinegars, it is a tasting room as well.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  It is even better than it sounds.  The rooms is filled with olive oils and vinegars flavored with fruits and herbs.  There are little cups next to each urn and you are free to sip as many as you want.

Photo courtesy of Maine-ly Drizzle

Of course, if you are like me, you choke on the first sample and spend the rest of the visit coughing while the rest of the family enjoys taste after taste of these delicious treats.

Nick, the owner, cannot wait to show off his prizes.  He is from Somerville, Massachusetts, and clearly loves food, so he and Matt bonded immediately.  Nick asked my husband what kinds of flavors he liked and what his favorite foods are and then started bringing him all different mixtures of the vinegars and oils.  We did not need lunch after that stop.

We could not possibly bring home all the items we wanted, but not to worry!  We can order off the website.  (Seriously, check it out here.)  I'm waiting for my order of lime olive oil.  What am I going to use it for?  I don't know - everything!  Except sipping.  I learned my lesson about the sipping thing.

I Have a Nose for These Things

Yesterday, my refrigerator looked like this:

In other words, pretty sad.  No fruit, old wilty vegetables and a few eggs.  (And my pink pickles; can you see the jar on the bottom shelf?).  I needed to go grocery shopping.  I compiled some recipes, made a list, checked the circular for sale items, and then trudged off with my reusable grocery bags.  I was prepared for an ordinary, boring, like-always shopping trip.  

But I needed an eggplant.  Oh the magic of eggplant.  I found this:

The eggplant has a nose!  It is perfectly positioned below the stem so it looks like it is wearing a green hat above its giant nose.  It is so darn cute.  So cute in fact that now I can't bear to cook it.  I can't cut off my eggplant's nose!  What kind of cruel monster do you think I am?  I guess I am going to have to wait until the thing rots in m refrigerator and its nose falls off.  But then again, who wants to eat a rotten eggplant?  And why should this eggplant just waste away?  It was brought into this world to make my roasted vegetables into a delicious, satisfying meal.

But I don't think I can't cut off its nose, now that I started referring to it as a nose.

I'll make Matt cut the eggplant.  He has no mercy toward vegetable noses.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Back to school time, which means back to packing lunch.  What is it about putting the lunch into the lunch box that makes it so much harder?  Sarah does not have a hard time picking what she wants when she eats at home.  But somehow having to put the food into containers complicates matters.

She is not a fan if the hot lunch options at her school (I can't blame her).  She also is not a fan of sandwiches.  According to Sarah, sandwiches require too much chewing.  Chewing is a problem when you can't stop talking, but that is another story.  Okay, no sandwiches.  The good news is that she is a big fan of leftovers in a thermos - soups, stews, pasta.  I like cooking those things so it worked out pretty well last year.  It is much easier to just reheat last night's dinner than remember to buy sandwich things every week, so in the end it is better for both of us.  So far this school year, I have sent in a few of days of pasta, a few of soups and only one sandwich.

Sarah tells me her friends are jealous of her lunches.  Why does that make me feel good?

Sarah is getting older and before long I will not be packing lunches for her anymore.  I will have no control over what she eats when she is away from home.  I hope I have helped her develop some good habits about what she chooses to eat at lunch.  I think I have, as long as it does not involve a lot of chewing.

There's a Word for That

German is a great language.  It has given us such wonderful words as kindergarten, schadenfreude, and, my new favorite kummerspeck.  What does it mean?  Well, according to the book Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sanders, it "refers to the excess weight we gain from emotional overeating."  The literal translation is even better: "grief-bacon."

I certainly have my own share of kummerspeck, even if there has never been any bacon involved.  Even before I stopped eating meat, I never cared much for bacon.  But grief bacon?  That sounds rather tasty.

Pink Pickles

When we were in Maine, I ate the most amazing lobster taco topped with pickled red onion.  After we got home, I thought this was something I could make.  How hard could it be?  A little vinegar, a little seasoning and some red onion, right?  I started doing a little research.

And fell down the rabbit hole of pickling.

People are passionate about pickles.  I have never been fond of pickles so I never paid much attention.  Types of vegetables, types of vinegar, even types of salt are compared and debated.  How dare you use white vinegar with carrots?  What kind of fool would use red wine vinegar with cucumber?  Only a heathen would mix radishes with anything but rice wine vinegar!  These pickle people scare me.

Though not as much, it seems, as my pickles scare Sarah.

"Mom!  What is that pink thing in the refrigerator?" she asked breathlessly.
"I am trying to pickle red onions, like we had in the restaurant."
"Do I have to eat it?"

I mixed white vinegar, sea salt, white grape juice and pepper for my brine.  They have been sitting a couple days and the flavor so far is good, but it needs more time to develop.  I will let you know how it turns out, and if I can convince Sarah to give it a go.

How Much for the Soup? Three Clams

 

What makes the perfect clam chowder?  It seems my family cannot agree.  On our trip to Maine, we had three cups of chowder, and we each walked away with a different favorite.

First problem - clam to potato ratio. Sarah likes a lot of potatoes, Matt prefers much more clam, and I am somewhere in the middle.  Then we disagree on the broth.  Should it be milk based (thin) or cream based (thick)?  One version included shrimp and haddock.  I said that made it fish chowder and disqualified it as clam chowder;  Matt just called it delicious.  And don't even get me started on saltiness.

This got me thinking - if we all live together and eat much of the same things and yet have such different tastes, how can any of us know what "good" food is?  Not good as in healthy or good as in not spoiled, but good, tasty, soul-satisfying food.

You know when a friend tells you something is the best thing she has ever eaten and you taste it and think "Meh?"  Or you remember something tasting perfect, and you get it again only to be disappointed?

It seems food is such a living thing that we can never dip our spoons into the same bowl twice.  Or anyone else's bowls, which may be gross but we are family so we share all the time.

On a Roll

I did not have a lobster roll until I was an adult, but I have since made up for lost time.  I often wonder who looked at a lobster with its hard shell and sharp claws and thought, "That would make a good dinner!"  Then I think about the person who said, "You know what this lobster really needs?  Mayonnaise!"  Well, whoever those intrepid culinary adventurers were, I am forever in their debt.

On our recent trip to Kennebunkport, Maine, my goal was to eat a lobster roll every day.  I am not one to shy away from such a challenge, so below is my round-up of my attempt at lobster roll saturation.


Family Restaurant - Alisson's Restaurant

This had the most traditional bun - split top hot dog bun brushed with butter and grilled to toasty crispness.  We had spent that day driving through a monsoon so the meal was particularly satisfying.


Seafood Shack - The Clam Shack

This one had the most authentic lobster roll experience.  You walk up to a window, order your food, someone with a crazy accent calls your number and who go eat at a picnic table near the water.  The lobster was the most tender and flavorful, but the roll ruined it.  It was like one of the Hawaiian rolls, sweet and squishy.  And this is Atlantic lobster; that cannot be mixed with Pacific bread.

Food Truck - The Ocean Roll

The Ocean Roll serves these beauties two ways - cold with mayonnaise or hot with butter.  I don't have a picture of the butter roll because some people could not wait until I came back with the ketchup for the french fries so I could get a shot.  Next time, family, you get your own ketchup!  I liked the hot version a lot.  It was like eating a fresh lobster without all the work.


Hotel Restaurant - Striper's

Technically not a lobster roll, but a lobster taco.  I ate it, so I am counting it.  That fancy flower thing on the top is pickled red onion.  Did you even know you could pickle red onion?  I didn't and now I feel like I have been missing out all these year.  Excellent lobster-to-bread ratio, and the all the add-ons just made the meat taste better.

Only four this trip.  I will have to return to do much more research.