Category: Journal of an Island Kitchen

It’s hot and I think differently about cooking and food when the weather turns stuffy and warm. I want cold comfort. Oddly, lately, I have thought about childhood summers and the food we ate and cold things we drank.  Like potato salad, just bite-sized bits of boiled potato with bits… SEE MORE

Wild Miss Islesford, Barb Fernald’s now-famous and well-traveled sourdough, came to Islesboro last August, when Barb, who lives in Islesford, gave some to me and Courtney Naliboff of North Haven. We all had gathered in Rockland for a panel presentation at the Island Institute and Barb arrived with plastic containers… SEE MORE

Obviously, I like islands. I live on one and find that I like to vacation on them—Cyprus, England, the Orkneys off Scotland’s north coast, Hawaii, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Key West, St. John in the Virgin Islands, and I aspire to visit Iceland. I just don’t like islands… SEE MORE

It boils down to this: whose energy are you going to use, your own or the energy you buy from the power or gas company? A few weeks ago, we had a half-day conference on Islesboro devoted to energy issues—how to conserve it, how to find alternative sources. While I… SEE MORE

There is always some darn pile of vegetables or other in the kitchen in summer. Of course, that is the whole point of a garden, to grow vegetables for immediate and delayed consumption, either by the household or neighbors and friends. Wouldn’t it be handy if the piles accumulated after… SEE MORE

Maine is where many people, famously Scott and Helen Nearing, found the good life. I’m old enough to understand that the “good life” is a pretty subjective term, and can apply to widely divergent ways of living. I’ve been blessed with food, clothing, shelter, and decent health all my life,… SEE MORE