Journal of an Island Kitchen in Working Waterfront

Working Waterfront

Discomfort food

Hard times like this pandemic leave us hankering for comfort food: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, pasta, ice cream. Have you heard about Covid 15? That’s the weight we packed on while stuck at home. But what’s discomfort food? Food that hurts the cook to prepare. Like sharp points… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

It’s been a blackberry year

Normally, right about the first week of September, it’s that old chanteuse Peaches Galore around here. My trees yield up enough for peach fans to pick, for me to sell at roadside, and plenty more fill the kitchen here for canned peaches, peach jam, peach chutney, peach pie, peaches chopped… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Tourism is a fragile pillar of island economy

It turns out that the Maine coast and Bali have something major in common. We each depend on tourism as a primary source of income, and economically the pandemic has hurt both of us badly. In the U.S., Maine is first in its economic losses, with Vermont and Nevada as… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Let us be thankful for lettuce

‘Tis lettuce season for certain on-island. We are devouring the first planting of lettuce, which has turned into heads of glorious size, while the second planting is sizing up nicely, and the third has just been planted out to the garden from their nursery flats in the hoop house. The… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Nature wants us to cook

Mother Nature has had it with her most pestiferous species. She has answered the species’ greed and carelessness with wildly fluctuating weather and now disease. Since she has outlived all of us and our vaunted civilizations by millions of years, we can be pretty sure she’ll come out on top… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Finding yeast on sourdough island

In kitchens across the country, and certainly here on Islesboro, little containers of flour, water, and yeasts bubble away, giving rise to loaves of homemade bread and lots of conversations between experienced sourdough users and newcomers to the craft. A yeast shortage caused this. The world, of course, has lots… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Dinner in the time of COVID

By Sandy Oliver My parents lived through the Depression and World War II and I have thanked God and the universe that in my lifetime I have never had to endure the privations they knew during those times. As you can imagine, though, while I grew up, our household oozed… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Good reasons to eat (and live) on an island

By Sandy Oliver Recently, three days spent on the mainland prompted ponderings about what it would be like to live and eat there. For 30-something years now, I’ve eaten three meals a day on-island, the vast majority of them home-cooked by myself, or friends and neighbors. The exceptions are a… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Island complexity explained by four islanders

By Tom Groening Consider the extremes in how islands are portrayed in literature, film, and on TV. The island setting often is used to show how the very best of community values can thrive, or how the very worst of human nature can fester. In Richard Russo’s Empire Falls, the protagonist’s… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Winners rise to top in decade of recipes

By Sandy Oliver Apparently, the average American household cooking repertoire contains something like 20 dishes which are the backbone of family meals, frequently repeated. I don’t know if that includes take-out fare or pizza, which are usually less common on Maine islands. Around here, the garden drives seasonal variations so… SEE MORE