Oliver - Maine home cooking: 175 recipes from Down East kitchens

One more time, let me acknowledge the contributions of many friends, neighbors, and readers of my newspaper column for their willingness to share recipes. Particular gratitude is due Letitia Baldwin, formerly at Bangor Daily News , who gave me the opportunity for the column that generated all these recipes.

Blessings on kathleen Fleury, my editor at Down East , for engaging my interest in Down easts cookbook projects and for her steady support for this book, even as little ella Fleur arrived on the scene. Dawna hilton at Down East made intelligent and tasteful decisions in food styling as I cooked. Jennifer Smith-mayo is the most energetic and fun photographer I have ever worked with. Jennifer anderson brought it all to life with her magical design.

Toby martin, a good home cook in his own right, and affectionately known to his colleagues at madison, connecticuts the country School as Captain Comma, painstakingly went over every word of this manuscript four times to ferret out erroneous punctuation and grammar, and help me avoid the many pitfalls of the english language. He also advised insightfully on organization.

Anna North Coit, in north Stonington, connecticut, and Priscilla and Dudley Fort, in islesboro, maine, all gave me a place to live and work during a rough patch in my life at the beginning of work on this book, and many thanks to them.

Many thanks to Jamie Macmillan for all those beautiful vegetables he grew that inspired my cookery all those years.

Many thanks to Margie, Kay, Nancy, Nancy W., Allie, Pille, Hanna, Mary R., Mary Z., Val, and friends who weeded so I could write. Special thanks to Valerie Lester who unlocked the secret of how to get a book written.

Taste Buds Contributor List

HOME COOKING IN MAINE

Home cooking is alive and well in Maine. Like most of my Islesboro island neighbors, and many others in Down East and inland Maine, I am a home cook with no professional culinary training. Being a food writer has required me to pay attention to some aspects of professional food practices, but in my heart of hearts, cooking is how I take care of family and friends, use what I grow in my island garden, and live responsibly on the earth. Like you, I have the daily chore of figuring out what to make for dinner. I never think of myself as a chef: to be a chef means you are the boss in the kitchen, with someone to do what you say, and I dont know about you, but there are only cats in my kitchen, and they dont take orders.

I hear a lot about how no one cooks any more. Some of my friends even tell me they dont cook, but I notice they are feeding their families and they look reasonably healthy to me. When I ask how they do it, they say, Well, I just roast a chicken and boil some potatoes and make a salad. Why they think they arent cooking baffled me until I realized that they thought cooking was assembling twenty-seven ingredients and spending half a day in the kitchen, plus probably getting a fry pan to flare up suddenly like TV chefs do.