Downeast brevity: A sign that is to the point

Today we are so used to going online for everything, with infinite choice, pictures, reviews, that it is hard to remember just a short time ago when things like ads for summer rentals appeared in the classifieds in the paper, just a few lines, no photos. Even more rudimentary is a sign beside the road. Here's one I noticed in Deer Isle just the other day:

Basic. To the point. But where was this illusive cottage? How special was it? My imagination ran wild.  Maybe it was that romantic little cottage from the 50's, overlooking Eggemoggin Reach and the bridge. I've always wanted to know just how to rent that one. So I inquired, at the garage:

Basic. To the point. Pure function. Many times I've used that pay phone that you care barely see to the left of the garage doors.

Where was this cottage, were there pictures, a website?

Basic again. No photos, some vague directions, and a phone number I could call for someone who did have pictures. $600 a week, on the water in Sunshine, a few weeks left at the end of September.

If you are interested, inquire at the garage. That's the best I can do.

We visit the Penobscot Narrows Observatory -- The Bridge

Anyone traveling by road to Deer Isle from southern Maine knows about The Bridge in Bucksport. The old bridge was impressive enough, the new one (opened in 2006) towers over the old and is sleek, 21st century in design. The tower that is closer in the photo (an older photo from the bridge website, the old bridge on the left has now been removed) also hosts an observatory at the top. A friend suggested that we visit and add the adventure to this blog, as "well worth it."

Okay. Well, I am a little wary of heights. Just driving across this new bridge was eerie enough. Imagine being in the passenger side of an RV (about twice as high up as a passenger car) with just a fragile looking railing between you and the abyss, the water 135 feet below. The new bridge doesn't even have bridge supports on the outside of the travel lanes, so it feels much less "solid" than the older version. Going up in the tower? I was leery, but game. We did it.

Here's the tower from below -- you access it through the Fort Knox park. There's a fee, but it differs by all kinds of factors like age and whether you are a Maine resident. Check here for what YOU would pay.

So we got in the elevator, suitably warned by the attendant that the windows would be floor to ceiling and about three feet in front of the elevator doors. She wasn't kidding. You step out of the elevator and one more step could take you over the edge if the glass disappeared.

There are three floors of observation decks. The first two contain the elevator shaft and staircase, so there isn't much floor space left. The top floor has 360 degree windows and an open space, but the whole thing probably isn't much more than an 10 x 12 room, and with all that glass? Yikes.

Years ago when I was going to N. Y. U. grad school, the World Trade Center was a regular stop for out-of-town guests. The observation floor was MUCH higher, with the same floor to ceiling windows, plus the whole thing was so high (1310 feet vs. 410 feet of the Penobscot Observatory) that it had a noticable sway. Yet I don't remember being bothered much by the heights there, even standing right up to the glass, with my toes on the edge. Perhaps it was because the space was much larger, or just because I was much younger. One guest I took (interestingly, from Bucksport) was quite freaked and plastered himself to the wall behind. He did not enjoy the view at all.

While the views from the Penobscot Observatory were wonderful and the facility itself a sleek design like the bridge, I found it quite rattling and uncomfortable. It even took awhile after getting down to feel settled again.

When I was gingerly trying to enjoy the view, I remembered how the old bridge was pretty notorious for suicide jumpers.

I just Googled "Penobscot Narrows Bridge suicides" and got pages of links. Apparently, suicides have continued, with at least four from the new bridge. There was even an article about whether suicide prevention fences should be installed on Maine bridges that seem to attract desperate people. Even though a fence would impair the bridge's sleek design, it would seem to be a kindness.

Howsoever, if heights do not bother you or you are willing to test your stomach, the bridge observatory would be worth a trip. Choose a nice day, take a lunch to chow down in the Fort's picnic area, and do a tour of Fort Knox at the same time. According to one of the hosts in the tower, "Now, that is spooky!"

The John Steinbeck Connection

I've lived on and visited Deer Isle for many years and only recently discovered that John Steinbeck visited here in 1960. He stayed on Dunham's Point just a short walk from my house, and his time on Deer Isle sounds magical -- as Deer Isle can be. He described it early on in "Travels with Charley": "One doesn't have to be sensitive to feel the strangeness of Deer Isle. ... It is an island that nestles like a suckling against the breast of Maine ... The sheltered darkling water seems to suck up the light ... The pine woods rustle and the wind cries over open country that is like Dartmoor."  And later: "This Isle is like Avalon: it must disappear when you are not there."

So if he visited on Eleanor Brace on Dunham's Point, then where is the exact place? Well, the Internet being what it is, it didn't take a lot of sleuthing to find that the house is now owned and lived in by her niece Brenda Gilchrist. Now, I wouldn't violate Brenda's privacy by writing about her here if she hadn't been writing about the house and the Steinbeck connection herself. Brenda is an author of a newish book (2012) about her move to the lovely old house. I ordered up the book from Amazon and just finished it: "Waltzing with Bracey," available on Amazon and mailed right to your house.

I LOVED this book. It is so Maine, so Deer Isle. While my house can't compete with hers as far as age and family history (I designed and built my house myself, the history is mine alone), I do have friends who have similar old family connections to local gorgeous places and world-wide travel and orientation, just as the author does. The book is full of photos of the older times: I've seen the pictures before, in the baskets and albums in other houses, of the women dressed head to toe in white, the men in bow ties while on a picnic, the boats and the sailing.

If you want a taste of what summering on the Maine coast used to be like, and what year around living is like now, take a look at "Waltzing with Bracey."

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.

Do you know what a MOOC is?

I lived on Deer Isle full time for ten years. I am a Maine native, from Aroostook County, and I know cold and isolation well. Much about living on Deer Isle in the off season is wonderful. In fact, I still say that July and August are my least favorite months, and the day after Labor Day my favorite, when the traffic suddenly thins and I see people who have been busy making a living and entertaining summer visitors for the past couple of months.

It's hard to believe, but when I moved away in the early 1990's (I got a taste of how nice Florida was in the winter after my parents retired there), I had never sent an email and the Internet was just a rumor. Even though I had bought one of the first Macintosh's in 1982 and thus became computer literate, it took moving to Tallahassee and Freenet there to first get online (SLOOOOW dial-up, all text driven, hard to imagine now).

Even more than the connectivity to others and the world that email and the Net affords, beyond Amazon and online shopping (the UPS truck knows my driveway by heart), not to mention online dating (I met my husband Drew on Match.com in 1998), the most recent innovation is nothing short of miraculous. Yet few still seem to know about MOOC's. Do you?

MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. Coursera.org is the major player in the field, with Edx.org (with the really big name universities like Harvard and MIT) is a strong second place. See one of Coursera's founders Daphne Koller talk about MOOC's in this TED talk.

Essentially, MOOC's offer real college and university courses, in somewhat real time (the lectures are recorded, but there is a real beginning and end to the course) with assignments, chat forums, etc. And get this: They are completely FREE. That's right, free. The courses are open to anyone in the world with computer and Internet access. The first course I took had 180,000 students world-wide sign up. Now, the drop out rate is high, for various reasons, but imagine the results if only 10% finish! The MOOC's are trying to figure out how to give people real credit for the courses, that will come fast. But for the time being, access to top level courses and material, for FREE, is unbelievable.

I have taken so far: A History of the World since 1300,  A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior, The Modern and the Postmodern, Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society, Introduction to Art: Concepts & Techniques.  Right now, Drew and I are both taking The Science of Gastronomy.  The instructor is from University of Hong Kong.

Now, when I say "took," what I mean is that I watched all the lectures and did the readings. I did not do all the assignments or take all the quizzes or tests. But that is okay, it was all I wanted. Like auditing a course without having to drive to campus, find a place to park, and sit in a crowded class with a bunch of undergraduates who were struggling to stay awake.

What a difference living in island isolation would have been with MOOC's.

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.