In pursuit of real cider

I admit it. I was culturally deprived child. Hard not to be, when you grew up in Presque Isle, waaaay up north in Maine.

It's true: I never had real cider until I well into adulthood. At least as far as I can remember.

The cider of my childhood was the Bessy's Cider my grandmother served children at family gatherings, which came in gallon jugs, crystal clear, probably pasteurized,  and was indistinguishable from apple juice.

Real cider, I found out, is unfiltered, unpasteurized, untreated, with no added preservatives. It is cloudy, a rich golden brown, a tad thick, and absolutely delicious. What passes for real cider in the supermarkets these days has sodium benzoate added as a preservative. Not good.

The first Real Cider that I remember was from the Lollypop Shop, midway between Bangor and Bucksport. The Lollypop Shop was a modest place that carried bolts of yard goods, catering to women who sewed, but had the good fortune of being located in an apple orchard. So in the fall, the Lollypop Shop sold the most wonderful cider, the bench mark for all cider since. Ice cold from the fridge, just the right mixture of sweet and tart, no one could drive off before uncapping the gallon jug and taking a big swig. Or two.

The Lollypop Shop disappeared years ago, so I had to switch to Merrill Farms, on the road from Bangor to Ellsworth. I can still smell the store, cold inside with bags of several varieties of apples, cheddar cheese, and a fridge full of cider. Then, Merrill Farms got sold in 2001 and the orchard disappeared. Lloyd Capen's orchard and cider press here on Deer Isle substituted for a couple of years, then Lloyd's age got in the way (he died in 2008), and no more cider.

I noticed in the Island Ad-Vantages that the historical society here was hosting a cider pressing a couple of weeks ago, so we went. Here is the process:

 Cut up the apples, then grind them (That's Drew working the crank):

Then pour the crushed pulp into the cider press:

Crank away at the press:

And out comes cider:

Magic!

But this was just a demo. Where can we buy the stuff locally?

Presto!

On route 175 north of Brooklin, and sort of half way between Blue Hill Falls and the Flye Point Road, you'll find 5 Star Nursery and Orchard. We bought some super fruit trees here last spring and got a quick tour of their cider pressing operation. And they are pressing. Here is the result:

Yummy cider, and we hear the aged cider vinegar is fabulous. Plus peaches and cherry tomatoes.

But we went for the cider!

P. S. We are going to Maine Apple Day later this month. Stay tuned for a report.

P. P. S. I forgot. My college roommate was from Union, in the heart of Maine apple country. She went home every weekend and brought back a gallon of real cider. We kept it cold on the window sill, and by Thursday, it was hard. Talk about good...

Mushrooms, mushrooms everywhere!

Drew and I have been doing shrooms -- not the psychedelic kind that get you high, but the ordinary kinds that anyone can find when walking around in the forest. Some edible (we only trust ourselves with a few species), some highly poisonous, and a lot we don't know.

We went on a couple of mushroom walks last week, one in Surry sponsored by the Blue Hill Heritage Trust and the other on Deer Isle by Island Heritage Trust, both led by David Porter, a local expert on mushrooms who retired several years ago from the University of Georgia at Athens. David knows his shrooms.

David said you can't go five feet without seeing plenty of mushrooms, and with about fifty sets of eyes helping out, he was right. The "walk" was more like "take a few steps and then stand around looking at what people found." It was great fun.

I seemed to have an eye for yellow -- here's what turned out to be yellow earth tongues:

And an unknown one:

Here's David with a clump of honey mushrooms, a new variety for me, edible, and Drew and I found plenty of them on our own land later:

And I found "the catch of the day" on the Deer Isle walk, a lovely patch of chanterelles. As David said, "Now we are talking!" Chanterelles are edible and choice. This was the biggest and best one I had ever found, and I got to take it home. We had it with pasta that night for dinner:

I found out about these walks in the Island Ad-Vantages, in the "Coming Events" section. It can be a nuisance to read through all the notices, but that's where the best info is. I also found out, via the "Coming Events" section, about a cider pressing that I will write about in the next post ... stay tuned!

Homage to Maine Drive In Restaurants

It's hard to imagine, but life used to exist before McDonald's. The precursor to the golden arches were the drive-in hamburger and hot dog stands. In Presque Isle, where I grew up, Keegan's was THE place to be. Never mind that it was essentially the ONLY place to be for young people. If you had a few dollars, you could go there and get something yummy (i. e. full of sugar, salt, and fat) for a reasonable price. Maybe you would see your friends. "Lights on for service" meant you didn't even need to get out of your car.

If you didn't have any money, or even a car to drive around in, you were in rough shape. The other activity was "tooling Main Street," which meant driving from one end to the other, turning around, and then doing it again. Yeesh. No wonder I was desperate to get out.

Keegan's closed years ago, but the other favorite was Winnie's which I loved because of their great onion rings:

Sadly, according to the web, Winnie's has closed in the past year, but not before the owner made a bundle with her lobster stew recipe. (How hard is lobster stew, anyway? Maybe I can make a bundle too...)

Back in 1967 when I was dating my first husband, he took me to the Mcdonalds on Broadway in Bangor, one of the first in Maine and certainly the first I had ever been to. I could not believe how fast he was in and out with a bag of fifteen cent hamburgers, and the fries and milkshakes that set the standard from then on, probably for not much more than a dollar or two for us both.

Thank goodness that the drive in restaurant is alive and well here in Hancock County. Maybe because we haven't got the population to support a Mcdonalds or Burger King, though the appearance of a Dunkin' Donut in Blue Hill this summer is sobering.

So here are the three drive-in treasures on the Blue Hill Peninsula: The Bagaduce Lunch, the Fish Net, and Madeline's. Both the Bagaduce and the Fish Net have been around for years.

Bagaduce Lunch gets the "Stunning Location" award hands down. Located right beside the reversing falls of the Bagaduce, in good weather, chomping down on a fish sandwich at the Bagduce Lunch's picnic tables cannot be beat. And how many times will you dine at a place that won an American Classic James Beard Award (2008)? Click here to see a video about the Bagaduce and their award.

The Bagaduce is pure business, closing ASAP right after Labor Day. Whew.

The Fish Net in Blue Hill is lowest on the totem pole location-wise (on the inside corner of where the very busy Maine Street heads up a steep steep hill), but it fits perfectly with menu and style. Here's the Fish Net's menu, posted outside, which could be for each of these three fine establishments:

The Fish Net closes around October 1.

Madeline's on Deer Isle popped up a few years ago. Madeline's is not on the water, but has a woodsy location on the main road north of the village and the High School that the owners have spruced up with picnic tables and a play area. Old timers on Deer Isle remember another Madeline's across the road, the remains of which are still visible. The new Madeline's is really Madeline's 2.

For us, Madeline's wins out, unless we are in Blue Hill and hungry, or want to make a special trip to the Bagaduce. Even though the Bagaduce has the reputation (I mean, James Beard must know what he is talking about, right? -- Yeah, I know, he is dead...), the food at the three places is pretty much the same. Hamburgers, crab and lobster rolls, fried clams or scallops, french fries and onion rings. And ice cream.  Who could ask for more?

Madline's closed for the season the last week of September. Now there is no place to go on a sunny day for a greasy hamburger, until next spring. Sigh.

Strong Beer for Strong Men ... and Women

A few weeks ago, I noticed a classified ad in the Island Advantages that was sure to capture Drew's interest: a beer tasting at a fledgeling brewery in Sedgwick. We had no idea where we were headed, but typed the address into our trusty GPS and set off. Imagine our surprise when we ended up directly across from the stop sign at the end of the Mines Road (Route 15 from Blue Hill, where you take a left towards Deer Isle): set back from the road is a chicken and duck pen, then a modest raised ranch house. In the last week, a rather swank sign has popped up:

Al and Mia Strong moved to Maine from New Jersey, largely drawn and inspired by the growing micro brewery activity here. The Strongs are starting what they call a nanobrewery, in their basement garage.

Tiny and modest though it is, Strong Brewing has a real professional flair. The tiny garage cum brewery is tidy and spotless. I've been in a few, so I know.

Al and Mia have worked this past year or so to raise money to get the brewery going. According to Kickstarter, they raised $8,385 by April 16, 2013, and continued their fundraising efforts using a model called Community Supported Brewing, similar to the more familiar Community Supported Agriculture, where people buy shares in a farm's produce, to come later in the season. Same with CSB: you buy a share or half share that then entitles you to fill a 32 or 64 oz. growler a certain number of times (48 or 24 -- see the Strong Brewing website for details).

Drew has been waiting anxiously for the word from Strong Brewery that all was in place (they had recently gotten licensed by the State of Maine), the necessary plumbing needed completing, and the first big batches brewed and ready for dispensing. The word came last week: It was a "Go!" and Strong Brewery was hosting Open House tastings over the weekend. We visited Saturday when  music and food would add to the delights.

Red hot dogs! My father loved them, and the beer would have put him in seventh heaven.

Brewmaster Al mixed with the guests and talked about his favorite topics, Beer and Strong Brewery:

Mia was in the tap room, dispensing the day's four varieties:

And Drew finally got to take home his growlers of Strong Brewery beer:

Here's what Strong Brewery had on tap:

We tend to be dark beer fans, and the Soulpatch Porter was decidedly yummy. The Localmotive, with a bright, clear taste, was a very nice summery beer. The Blue Barren, a lovely pink with a light frothy head, was fruity without being sweet -- flavored with blueberries, of course. They are looking for help peeling peaches this weekend, so sounds like a peach beer is coming down the pike.

Strong Brewery is definitely a home-grown effort, similar to Tinderhearth and Millcreek, with a rustic appearance and appeal. All are putting out a quality product at a fair price, with no golden arches or big corporations backing them up. Let's support them, and buy local! And, btw, eat and drink fabulously.

Great scene, greater pizza!

First, you need to plan ahead.

Tinderhearth in Brooksville only makes their delish wood fired pizzas on Tuesday and Friday nights. You have to order early in the day, after they post the varieties they are making that night on their Facebook page. When you call to order, don't bother leaving a message, because they won't call back. Keep calling until you get a live person.

Then, ask what time slots are available for your pizza: they will tell you, to the minute, when yours should be done. Ours was 6:38pm.

Next, pack picnicking gear (silverware, paper plates, napkins/paper towels) and drinks and maybe a salad. We saw folks with beer and/or wine. And head on over. Depending where you live on the peninsula, it can be a bit of a drive. From our house in Sunset, it was a little over a half hour.

The cars parked along the road were the first sign (beyond the GPS lady's instructions) that we had arrived, in front of a rambling, unassuming farmhouse. We ventured in through an open door to a maelstrom of activity -- these photos actually seem much more serene than the actual event:

The sort of host guy in the gold sequined sun visor gave us the ETA of our pizza, told us to look for a place at a table out back, and let him know if we could not find a place to sit: "We'll make it work, bring out more tables," he said.

Just outside the back door were picnic tables, with more hidden further out in the orchard. Folks were already there (pizza making starts at 5pm, so many probably had come and gone), and the scene was down home, old hippies and the newer generations, and so pleasant.

Then the wait as fabulous looking pizzas came out one and two at a time from the same back door that we came through. It wasn't too long before ours arrived:
 

That's my hand reaching for one. It was HUGE, and I thought for sure we would have left-overs. But it was so good, and the crust so thin and crispy, that we ate all but one slice.

Rumor has it that sometimes there is entertainment on Fridays (a ukelele band?). On Tuesdays, there are movies in the barn just down the road at David's Folly. Talk about home-grown entertainment!

Whoopee Pies Part 2

The ultimate whoopee pie taste testing could take just about forever. Considering that the most likely place to find The Real Whoopee Pie is beside the cash register in a convenience store or gas station, the search as well as the eating could take a bit of time.

With that in mind, I stopped at the Eggemoggin Country Store . Eggemoggin has its own bakery and turns out the sweeties every day. I love their molasses ginger cookies and the date squares. It took me three separate stops to find the whoopees actually in the bake display case. Probably I was too early in the morning -- donuts are on the menu then, selling out by 10:30am or so. We bought three donuts a couple of weeks ago to sample -- they were very pretty and BIG, but so heavy we couldn't finish them and fed them to the birds. Though we wondered if the birds could fly after eating...

Here's the Eggemoggin version of the whoopee:

If you think this whoopee looks a little strange, sort of like a drunken toadstool, you are right. Believe it or not, you can now buy a PAN specifically dedicated to whoopee cake baking. It's like a big flat cupcake pan, and called a 12-Cavity Whoopee Pie Pan. I do not think that the manufacturer sees the irony in having "cavity" in the pan name.

Now, this starts right off with a cheat. The whoopee pie bun batter should be rather dense and able to hold its rounded shape without a pan with sides. To use a molded pan implies a looser batter that needs to be contained like a cake, and that is what this whoopee seems to have had. It results in a bun that has a spongier bite, rather than the drier, breadier version that is traditional. Maybe it was from a cake mix? Possible, with the pan. Plus, the resultant shape (drunken toadstool) is just not esthetically pleasing, and the touch is stickier, somewhat gluey. See the crumb stuck to the plate below?

One really should never complain about a whoopee pie. Even the bad one are lick-your-fingers good. And so is this one. But I'd like less of the frosting filling and a traditional drier bun. Interestingly, I had on the counter the remains of the Frank's Bakery whoopee that I wrote about earlier, and I found myself eating away at it rather than the Eggemoggin one, even though it was a day older, had ridden all over the state of Maine, and was somewhat squashed. Frank rules.

 

Okay, just one more, this one from The Galley (same owner as Burnt Cove, same, though less, inventory). This one, the Classic Wicked Whoopie, was made by Amy at Isamax Snacks in Gardiner, Maine, who also made the maple whoopie my niece gave out at her wedding. (Nice touch, Julia!)

Now, this time I remembered to take a picture of the ingredients label, though it is so small that it was essentially unreadable, maybe on purpose:

Sorry, folks, but that is a lot more than flour, sugar, crisco and cocoa.  Remember that these whoopie's need to sit on the shelf for who knows how long.

Okay, my first thought is "That is a LOT of filling." I was right.  However, no drunken toadstool look, and clearly no use of the dreaded 12-Cavity Whoopee Pie Pan. Those cookies hold their shape.

Taste test: Fudgy, chocolate-y, drier than the Eggemoggin, but not the nice bready tooth that the Frank's Bakery had. Way too much filling. And a vaguely chemically taste, I swear I was not influenced by trying to read all that fine print on the label.

Interesting that the Frank's whoopee was the least fudgy, the driest, but tasted the most authentic. Since Franks probably makes theirs every day, even with riding it around Maine all day in the car, it was still the best of the lot, even the next day. No ingredients label, but I suspect just the honest flour, sugar, Crisco and cocoa.

The lesson (so far): The best is probably the freshest and without all the chemical preservatives and long shelf life. If you are going to be bad and chow down on a whoopee, try getting the freshest one you can, from a baker you can trust.

But they are all good.

The Maine State Dessert -- Whoopie Pies

It used to be that if you knew what a whoopie pie (or whoopee pies -- both spellings work) was, you came from Maine, Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. Ever since Oprah declared whoopie pies one of her favorite things, you see whoopie pies everywhere. The traditional pie is chocolate with a white sugary filling, but nowadays, you see every possible combination. Red velvet (a Southern bastardization), pumpkin, orange, strawberry. But for the true whoopie pie lover, chocolate and white is the only way to go.

When I was growing up, you could find whoopie pies in any corner grocery or gas station. You were really lucky (and popular) if your mother made them. It's not hard to find recipes, but why go to all the trouble when it is so easy now to find them? Plus, they are so rich and fattening and delicious that it is not a good idea to have more than one around at a time.

Last week we went to my niece Julia's wedding in New Hampshire. Julia filled the reception with many creative touches, but the best was the pile of wrapped whoopie pies to pick up when leaving. We got two:

Yum. We were hungry that night, so opened one up to snack -- and it was MAPLE, not chocolate! Well, we were in New Hampshire, after all, so maple fit, but for a true whoopie lover, nothing will do but chocolate.

So I decided to do a whoopie taste test. You get the benefit.

Here's the first in what will probably be a long line, right off the shelf of the Burnt Cove Market here on Deer Isle:

Now, this photo is upside down and I apologize, but if you stand on your head you will see it is from Steve's Snack Bakery .  The bakery seems to be in Skowhegan, and no place is more Maine than that (Margaret Chase Smith was from Skowhegan -- google her).  Steve makes TWELVE different flavors of whoopie pies -- one of them maple. I had to paw through the pile to find the classic chocolate and white.  Here it is sliced:

All too often there is too much of the white sugary filling, but Steve has it just right. And the cake is plump, dark chocolate-y. The whole is very tasty, fudge-y, moist (even after sitting around on a grocery shelf for who knows how long?), and altogether yummy. But there is something just intrinsically wrong with a manufactured whoopie pie, and the label speaks to the problem, a long list of additives beyond the flour, sugar and Crisco (the basic three food groups in Maine). Sheesh.

OK. So yesterday I was in Bangor and stopped at Frank's Bakery on State Street. Frank's has been around forever, and I will write about his donuts later, but suffice it to say that if Mainer's love it and it is sweet, Frank makes it. Here is Frank's whoopie, after riding around in the car all day:

Not so dark chocolatey as the Steve's version, thinner cakes (but they HAD been in the car all day). Taste test: the cake is drier, not so intensely chocolate, a bit more filling vs: cake. Taste good. But the best part, is that because it was fresh from a bakery, we can assume (hopefully) that the ingredients are fresh and wholesome, at least as wholesome as flour, sugar, cocoa and Crisco can be. No label, no additives, right?

The verdict: The Frank's is first choice, because of the freshness and lack of additives (hopefully if it had had a label, none would be listed). But the Steve's is a worthy contender, despite the label. PS Another "fact" from the label: Calories 390.

Martha's Diner and a Half Benedict

My chum Bill told me about Martha's Diner in Ellsworth, and when I asked people about it, they said "Oh yeah." Since Martha's is in a little old strip mall right next door to Reny's (one of my favorite Ellsworth stops, that and Marden's), it was an easy choice for a late breakfast. Martha's a modest looking establishment and looks like it has been around awhile.

There's a dining room and a counter section. Both definitely court a diner-like atmosphere.

I was by myself this trip -- my usual photographer husband was away -- so I took a bit of a risk and sat at the counter which I practically never do.

And I struck it lucky. I sat down next to a regular named Tim.

Tim said right off that I had sat in the right place, in front of the action. I asked him if he came here often, and he said "Not much. Only twenty or thirty times." Love that Maine understatement. Things were busy in the open kitchen behind the counter, but Tim said it was quieter than usual because Martha and her husband were taking an infrequent vacation. Martha is known for loudly greeting customers when they walk in the door. The staff all knew their roles (regulars get their favorites without having to ask) and were cooking like crazy. Usual waitress Marinka was behind the cash register:

The menu was huge, two full pages of breakfast selections, and then one more for lunch. Almost all items were under $10. Charlie had french toast with strawberries and whipped cream, with a side of corned beef hash:

I struggled to find something that wouldn't put me into sugar or fat shock and settled on the Half Benedict -- eggs Benedict, with a single egg rather than two. The English muffin was toasted on the grill -- why do they taste so wonderfully different when they are cooked that way? That pink stuff at the upper left was an inch think hunk of ham -- I had to slide it out from under the egg to get into small enough pieces to tackle.

Marinka told me that Martha was the only one around still boiling fresh potatoes for hash browns, that most used frozen ones. I am pretty sure though that Jill at Millbrook does fresh, click here to see her frying up a mess.

Don't go to Martha's if you want fruit and yogurt or granola, and don't look for vegan style smoothies. But if you want diner food in a folksy place that has a loyal following, give Martha's a try.

And the best for last -- here's my check, for a Half Benedict and big cup of coffee:

A deal.