Emergency Dessert

Julia and I were invited out for dessert a couple of days ago. The idea was that we would bring something to share. Julia had planned on making one of her fresh fruit pies. This involves making a bit of fruit sauce and pouring over uncooked fruit which is on cream cheese in the bottom of a cooked pie shell. She has made this with any kind of berries.

But the #&@!! oven wouldn't light so she couldn't bake a pie shell.

Julia had already made the blueberry sauce that goes into the pie. AHA! We could go to the local convenience store and get some cake shells for shortcake. No go. They don't carry them, so she got some plain doughnuts instead. The result: the Bristol Doughnut Shortcake.

Mike Stevens suggested we add ice cream, but would that be too decadent?

How'd that there hole git in that doughnut?

Did you ever wonder where donuts came from (in a historical sense)? The Portland Press Herald ran a great piece about the origin of the donut - more specifically, the origin of the hole that makes a doughnut a doughnut.

Hansen Gregory - a Rockport, Maine, ship captain - regaled the invention in an interview with The Washington Post on March 26, 1916:

"Now in them days we used to cut the doughnuts into diamond shapes, and also into long strips, bent in half, and then twisted. I don't think we called them doughnuts then -- they was just 'fried cakes' and 'twisters.'

"Well, sir, they used to fry all right around the edges, but when you had the edges done the insides was all raw dough. And the twisters used to sop up all the grease just where they bent, and they were tough on the digestion."

"Well, I says to myself, 'Why wouldn't a space inside solve the difficulty?' I thought at first I'd take one of the strips and roll it around, then I got an inspiration, a great inspiration.

"I took the cover off the ship's tin pepper box, and -- I cut into the middle of that doughnut the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes!"

Read the entire article from the Press Herald:
Maine's historical firsts include a leap of doughy inspiration

It was quite a challenge finding the doughnut info. Most of the donut history websites have nothing to do with donuts except for the name of the site. Am I missing something?

Weather -- or Not?

We have been having a run of beautiful weather here in Round Pond - the usual result of storms in the Gulf of Mexico pumping dry Canadian air down into New England. Our hearts go out to the folks in Florida who got 26 inches of rain last week and to all the evacuees from New Orleans this week.

Next week will be the last display of the Blue Angels in Maine. The Brunswick Naval Air Station is being closed and the squadron shifted to Jacksonville. I think it's a mistake myself. With the military presence gone from northern New England (bases in Limestone, ME and Portsmouth, NH, closed a few years ago and the base in Bangor a few years before that) there is nothing to keep Canada from invading Maine and annexing us to the Maritime Provinces. They pretend to be polite and self-effacing but can you trust them?

Gustorial Delights on Grand Manan

We went to Canada last week for a couple of Elder Hostel programs on Campobello Island and an R&R on Grand Manan. The organizers for the Elder Hostel put us up in the Prince Cottage, which is next door to the Roosevelte Cottage. Both houses are part of the International Park. It is very chic and the food is great. Campobello is in Canada but is only accessible from Lubec, Maine. Campobello has an interesting history. It was a hereditary proprietary of the Owen family from 1767 until 1857, run almost like a feudal fiefdom!

In July and August a private ferry runs between Campobello and Deer Island, NB. Rather than drive all the way around to Calais and cross the border there we took the little ferry to Deer Island, and a second ferry to Letite, on the mainland. The double-ended ferry lands on the beach. There is a little tug attached to a big hinge on the side which pushes the barge. It holds about a dozen cars. It's quite a maneuver to back the barge out and reverse the direction of the tug while spinning the ferry 270°.


The ferry off the other end of Deer Island is a little bigger and the ferries to Grand Manan are serious boats! The Grand Manan V can take 65 cars and 350 passengers. While were driving through the blueberry fields in Washington County I had remarked to Julia that all the blueberry desserts we had eaten were too fancy and that somebody should serve blueberries and cream, straight up. Well, this is what we found in the canteen on the big ferry. Yum!

When we landed on Grand Manan there was a church blueberry dessert social - where there were dozens of blueberry sweeties of various kinds. Kind of ironic.

The weather was beautiful while we were there. It had been rainy and foggy all summer until last week. After a concert at the Convert Hall we looked forward to a couple of days of relaxing. The herring haven't come in yet, so there weren't any whales. Whale Cove is where the Right Whales come to have their calves. They follow the herring in. One of these trips we'll see them. There are only about 350 of them left. Everybody blames entanglement in fishing gear for whale deaths but actually more of them are killed being hit by ships. They are kind of slow and like to float - which is why there were the first whale hunted to near extinction - starting in the 17th century.

Even though there weren't any whales geology is very interesting. There are basalt columns that are reminiscent of the Giants Causeway in Antrim. We did some beach walking and collected a handful of stone for Julia's Stones of the Western World collection. She has stones from Maine, Canada, several beaches in Scotland and Ireland. The amazing thing is that some of the stones from Muscongus Island, two miles from here, are identical to stones she picked up near Findhorn.

The days were great - the nights were a challenge. The B&B we were booked into was an old place with small rooms, which doesn't bother us, but the bed wasn't level. The room was too small to turn the bed so we spent the night climbing to the upper edge while the blankets slid off the opposite side. Our friend Russ, when we told him our tale of woe, told us we should have blocked up the low side of the bed by putting the legs in my shoes. A good trick that I'll have to remember should we be in that situation again.

On our way out I ran into John P. on the ferry, who played Captain Rowan when The Grand Design was performed on Grand Manan last summer. He invited us for lunch and a private whisky tasting. After admiring the view, shooting the breeze, and eating some sandwiches, John brought out a menu of single malts for us to choose from! We tried several, some smoky tasting ones, some milder ones, and one 25 year, cask-strength whisky. Although there is only one road and it isn't easy to get lost, we didn't think it would be prudent to try them all in one afternoon.

Before we left we picked up some dulse. Grand Manan dulse is the best there is. Real seaweed connoisseurs claim that the very best grow on the west side of the island. The dulse we picked up was on the southeast side. We purchased a couple of pounds from the island store, too. We like to give it to the actors when we do the Grand Design so they can appreciate what it would be like to have nothing else to eat for three months. The dulse in the picture was drying on the shore at Whale Cove.

We had a private function (euphemism for wedding) in Gouldsboro on Saturday. On the way there we stopped to pick some free range blueberries by the side of the road. Maybe we'll make a fresh blueberry pie like they serve at Helen's Restaurant. Its just a pie shell filled with whipped cream and fresh fruit - simple, elegant, tasty.

Why is it I'm always writing about food?