From the staff at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.

I have only been home to Maine for Thanksgiving once in the last 15 years.

This in no way means I don't adore my family. I love the din of everyone running around and slamming doors to keep out the chill and sharing baby duties, serving lobster with turkey, walks in the woods after supper and my mother cooking nearly everything the day before and leaving it out on the porch, which was colder than any fridge and had the added benefit of limitless space. When I was growing up, my grandmother would serve fresh cranberry relish, made with a hand crank, on china and by candlelight. When we ate at my step-father's mother's house, there was football in the snow with the uncles as well as limitless deviled eggs and tourtière — traditional French Canadian meat pies to bring home for later.

Continue reading “Thanksgiving from Away” »

Lobsters and oysters and bears, oh my! These are just a few of the feature articles in our new issue that we'll be sharing with you.

Continue reading “Maine Food and Lifestyle’s New Issue” »

It never seems to fail. You can almost count on it. Just when you need it the most, it's not there for you. While that statement could certainly apply to many varied scenarios, in this case I'm referring to our office printer.

Continue reading “Office Equipment Woes” »

When I tell people I am from Maine, the experiences they share almost always involve lobster, L.L. Bean, summer camp or visiting a relative in a place that they can never remember the name of, leading me to say things like "Berunswickland? Can't say I have heard of that one. Is it near Bangor?"

Continue reading “The power of the Maine brand” »

I didn’t know what a ployes were until I saw them on Facebook. Maybe it makes me a bad Mainer to have to learn about buckwheat flour pancakes brought to the state by French Acadian exiles via a social networking application, but now I want to make them for breakfast.

And that’s the point of Maine Stuff, an application on the social networking Web site (100 million active users and growing) that you can use to send virtual Maine "gifts" — many of which are edible. Need to bring drinks to the party? How about the champagne of Maine, Allen’s Coffee Brandy. Craving something sweet? There’s Gifford’s ice cream, fluff, whoopie pies and Maine maple syrup. Want a snack? Mike’s of Maine pickles, Humpty Dumpty chips, poutine and B&M Brown Bread are also options. Beyond making me hungry, the application also offers "Maine Work Ethic" and several L.L. Bean items, making me proud, homesick and happy for mail order.

So, if you’re on Facebook, consider adding Maine Stuff. And feel free to "friend" me. I’m always in the market for some online fiddleheads and blueberries.

Jessica Strelitz is a contributing writer to Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.

Labor Day has come and gone and, as if on cue, the temperature dipped in seasonal accordance (with night time lows in the toe-chilling 40’s). If it all seems too sudden, you’re not alone. The turning of the seasons has us thinking about the summer plans that might have been, as well as dreaming about the next one.

Continue reading “MF&L Staff’s Summer Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda’s” »

Before you head out to dinner in the Portland area (or beyond), do yourself a service and visit Type A Diversions
written by “Erin,” a foodie from Southern Maine with impeccable taste.
Erin counts “dining out, traveling, cooking, running or spending a few
hours at a spa” as her favorite diversions on her Blogger profile, and
she shares many of them on her blog.

A long and impressive list of restaurant reviews can be found on her
blog. One would be hard-pressed to find a restaurant in Southern Maine
missing from the list whether one’s looking for a Thai restaurant, as I
was, or the skinny on, say, Five-Fifty-Five. (This week alone, she
revisits two Portland giants: Fore Street and Bresca.)
And that’s the reason to visit her blog – to get the low-down on the
total experience of visiting a restaurant, from the wait time,
ambience, and service, to her picks and pans of dishes along with
photographs; and Erin also doesn’t shy away from talking dollars and
many prices of individual dishes and meals are included in reviews.

Updated several times a week, the personable and direct writing
invites bookmarking. And the wisdom to take along a crib
sheet the next time you dine out.

From the staff at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.

Tonight, as I came home from my Washington, D.C., corporate bubble, I spied a bull moose in the subway.

There he was, standing just on the edge of the woods in a swamp, chewing thoughtfully and looking right at me.

Before you call for a drug test, I should mention he was a part of the latest in what turns out is a series of tourism posters in our mass transit system, touting the Great State of Maine.

"Moose take up a lot of space, but not as much as that guy with the backpack" — the poster quips. Having stood next to *that guy* (normally, a tourist headed to the National Mall with his family to see the Air & Space Museum), I can confirm that this particular animal is, in fact, a pain to stand near, especially when the train unexpectedly lurches forward. And though moose are not as big as one of my college classmates posited "a swingset", Joe Backpack has nothing on a  5-to-7 foot tall, 600-to-1,200 pound bundle of muscle and antlers.

I can push back against the man (or woman) intruding on my personal space with the backpack. I have no issue using my elbows, either. But Mr. and Ms. Moose are better viewed from a distance on the trail, or even better, the car.   

Jessica Strelitz is a contributing writer to Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.

Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine Editor Melanie Hyatt was spotted (along with some co-workers) at the 2008 Maine Lobster Festival. Melanie was covering the Seafood Cooking Contest for our Plating Up Blog.

King Neptune, Melanie Hyatt, and the Pirate Blackbeard at the Seafood Contest

Asked about the contestants and the dishes they prepared, Melanie commented, "They were all winners. Each dish was unique, delicious, and presented in a special way. They all deserve to win an award for the lovely creations they prepared."

Melanie’s posts on this event, along with the contestant’s recipes, will appear on this blog for the next several days. Come back and add these special recipe to your collection.

From the staff at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.

Seven miles off of the coast of Maine, past rocky islands, curious seals, cawing gulls and bobbing buoys, Isle au Haut beckons. A visit to IAH is like traveling back in time. Here, family dinners are still the norm, residents relish cooking with ingredients fresh from the ocean and the garden, and laughter creates a bond between island visitors and residents. All agree that the meals prepared on the island are the finishing touches to this peaceful haven, and the island is home to some fierce cooks who are more than happy to oblige.

Continue reading “Isle au Haut – Island of Cooks” »

If you’re in Maine in the summertime, you’ll certainly spot a majestic windjammer lazily perusing the rugged coast. The playful wind puffs out its sails so that the old wooden schooner creaks, keels, and splashes forward, leaving a feeling of peacefulness with the passengers lounging on the deck.

But the scene below deck is quite different. “Chaotic” may best describe the galley conditions.

Continue reading “Schooner Feasts: Galley Cooking on a Windjammer” »

There’s no finer time in a magazine office than the launch of a new issue. Our issue #2 for 2008 has arrived from our printer, and we think it embodies the spirit of Maine in the flush of summer.

Perhaps the story that was the most fun to work on took us on a cruise around Penobscot Bay to enjoy the delicious food that comes out of the galleys of Maine’s historic windjammers.

We also went on a culinary tour of Isle au Haut to gather a collection of great recipes from some of the island’s best-known cooks, from appetizers to dessert.

Continue reading “Schooners, Islands, Art, and Summer Food” »

I grew up listening to some truly amazing stories. My grandfather, who just passed away last October of Parkinson’s Disease, was an energetic, creative, and natural storyteller. I  loved and miss him dearly. Right up until the end he was still spinning a hell of a yarn.

He’d have you mesmerized in the first few words. Subsequently, we’d ask him to repeat the same stories over and over, to see if they changed. Never. Neither the story nor the storyteller ever faltered.  And whatever he said was just as fun and exciting time the 25th time we heard it as it was the first. I think now in retrospect that we had asked him to tell them over and over again just so we’d never forget them. My personal, all-time favorite was the one where he celebrated Easter with the Nazis. That one was a family classic that was told every Easter dinner gathering. My grandmother will tell it this year, but it won’t have exactly the same flavor.

Mammy, as we all called him, had served in WWII in the European Theatre. It was Easter morning back at home in the states, and my grandfather was hankering for some fresh eggs. He and some of his men came upon what appeared to be an abandoned farm in Germany. “Maybe we’ll get some eggs after all,” my grandfather said. His men said they wouldn’t have gone in there, but he said, “I have my rifle,” and waltzed in. There in the barn he found the fresh eggs he was dreaming of, plus a few German soldiers! Out of the barn came my grandfather with an army hat full of eggs, and some very scared looking German soldiers.

My grandfather, telling us that had they met at any other time they would’ve been friends, called a momentary peace, inviting the men to an impromptu Easter breakfast. They were apparently hungry and very grateful for some food. My grandfather proceeded to fry up the eggs on the old fashioned stove he stoked up in the unoccupied farm house.  And the men sat down together, as men, not as enemies.

Melanie Hyatt is an editor at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine .

I wasn’t afraid of the enormous Bull Buffalo. I stood there and looked him eye-to-eye, not more than 20 feet away. It was my camera that was shaking. Well, maybe my tripod also. But certainly not me.

Being that close to such a magnificent and powerful creature gave me pause to reflect on the fragility of my life in the scheme of natural order. And I thought of the various stories I heard on my many past trips to the West Yellowstone area of Montana. How many tourists had been gored to death by these seemingly peaceful behemoths? I remember the story of a naive foreigner who tried to climb on the back of one while his wife waited to document his mission with her camera. I believe she was successful in capturing an image of his last adventure among the living. Ride-em cowboy no more.

So I have tons of respect for these magnificent American Bison, and enjoy observing them from a respectful distance. It’s amazing and wonderful to see them alive and well in our wonderful state of Maine, and to reflect on my visits to observe Montana’s Yellowstone buffalo during past summer seasons. They are truly a national treasure: America’s last, free-roaming herd.

So you can imagine my outrage to read today that this winter alone, more than 1,000 wild bison have been killed or shipped to slaughterhouses by the National Park Service and the Montana Department of Livestock. The reason, I read, was to protect a dozen-or-more domestic cattle that graze near the park. It’s because of a theoretical risk of disease transmission from bison to cattle, something that apparently has never happened in a natural setting.

You can read more about this at the NDRC website. I hope enough people speak out and make themselves heard before we endanger yet another of our precious national resources.

Jim Bazin is the creative director of Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine .