October 2019

When Recipes from a Very Small Island by Linda and Martha Greenlaw was first published in 2005, I went to a local bookshop in Portland that specialized in cookbooks to seek it out.  I didn’t find it and asked if they had the book.

“Oh, no,” the owner responded haughtily, “we don’t carry  books like that,” as though it had the vapors.

Of course the book was everywhere else, what with the celebrity of Linda Greenlaw, an Isle au Haut Lobster woman who wrote such other best-selling books as The Hungry Ocean, The Lobster Chronicles and All Fisherman Are Liars.  The cookbook written with her mother exemplified simple home cooking based on what’s sourced from the local waters and fields.

Some of my favorite recipes in the book are Mama’s Baked Beans, Simon’s Lemon Tart, Swordfish with Two Mustards, Gulf of Maine Haddock Casserole and another that I always meant to make but hadn’t until last week, Maxine Wright’s Apple Cobbler.

When you look at the ingredients list of cinnamon, sugar, apples and a biscuit batter that covers the cobbler you think what’s so special about this?

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Forget the 60-degree eggs and rarefied plates of potato hash (aka home-fries) and strut instead into a place like Stone’s Café and Bakery, a happy-go-lucky breakfast and lunch joint that’s held its own for years along Route 115 in North Yarmouth.

I went there this morning just in the mood for a stick-to-the ribs sort of Sunday breakfast.  The place was packed, and I got one of the few empty stools at the counter.  The two blackboard specials were biscuits and sausage gravy with eggs and home-fries or baked beans with eggs, home-fries and toast.

Black specials including drinks and desserts

I’ve had their baked beans before, and they were fantastic: thick, beany, just sweet enough but still a savory stew.

The waitress serving me was a young college student who helped me decide which special to order.  “If you love biscuits—ours are homemade–I’d go for sausage gravy over biscuits,” she advised.

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