Tonight there were stuffed tortillas with roasted pumpkin-seed sauce and great conversation – it’s so nice to have the Boy home! Tomorrow there will be Anglo roast beast and Saxon Yule Log, with some Armenian dried fruit and Yankee parsnips. A merry End tonight, and a Beginning tomorrow to all, wherever you may be!
The “Fisherman’s Voice” has an article by Lee Wilbur about our friend and neighbor, Richard A. (Rat) Taylor;
Richard is perhaps the historical epitome of what we like to feel Maine people are made of—people who have made their living with hard work, no nonsense, and a healthy dose of ingenuity.
Here’s a link to part 1 in August, and part 2 in the September issue. It’s a good read about what it’s like to make your living with your hands in this century or any other – clamdigging hasn’t changed all that much. I did a post about Rat’s presence on our road, including his sign, last year. This year the sign is bigger and better and I’m hoping it’s a trend.
For quick tomato sauce. There is no stopping the inflow of harvest right now – the baskets practically fill themselves.
Working Girl’s Homemade Tomato Sauce*
Get out your largest stockpot and add enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Wash the tomatoes, pull off stems, cut away any blemishes and fill the pot. Add a Tbsp of sea salt. Cover and cook on medium low for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally if you’re around. The tomatoes should be softened and shedding liquid. Turn off the heat, keep covered and let stand overnight.
In the morning, pour off the liquid and heat to boiling for a few minutes – say, while you make your yoghurt fruit shake and get ready for work. Turn off the heat, keep covered and leave for at least 4 hours, or until you get home. Pour off the liquid. Season to taste with salt, sugar, garlic and spices and put it through a food mill to remove seeds and skins and presto – wonderful, very fresh-tasting tomato sauce.
* Don’t blame me for the name. I learned this recipe from a woman I met on the steps of the Good Day Market in Portland. It was a radical idea for me, and I never stood over a steaming pot of tomatoes in the summer heat again.
I’ve never figured out what to do with the clear fluid that rises to the top (tomato water?) to be poured off. It doesn’t taste bad, exactly, but it needs something. Someday I’ll distill a batch and see what type of brandy could be made from tomatoes, but that’s for a day when I’m not working.
Now, back to peaches. . .
Five people for risotto, green bean salad, herbed bread and peach ice cream – it must be August. Somehow, this puts me in the mood for the “Song of the Open Road”. Somehow the last lines have been with me all day today. Apologies, for the excerpting, to Walt Whitman.
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Last month our neighbors gifted us with a Significant Rock. It came on a Big Boom Truck – possibly the biggest vehicle to ever climb up our gravel road and I’ll stop with the capital letters now. The rock has a rather formal placement exactly perpendicular to the front of the house and lined up with one of the window bays. People have actually stopped their cars in the road and commented on it. Then they go on to mention the garden, and their garden back home, and then inquire after lobster, and really, it takes an awesome rock to stop tourists in their pursuit of local seafood. This weekend our neighbors called; “Did our rock want a life partner?”. Of course we said “Yes!”.
K’s boom truck showed up on Sunday afternoon in the pouring rain. I was on my third pair of shoes and already soaking wet, so a little more water wasn’t a problem.
Now reach into the truck. . .
And pull out a rock. . .
And confab on the placement. Because it’s not going anywhere after that webbing comes off.
A beautiful rock, nestled in blueberries. Note the worked edge – this might have been part of a foundation for a Bar Harbor “cottage” lost in the Great Fire. Now it resides with us, forever or until boom truck do us part.
Today I went down to Southwest Harbor for a concert. The Southwest Harborites were also celebrating the annual Pink Flamingo festival (the lawn ornaments are considered native fauna) and the Coast Guard base was having an open house so it was a high time on the village main street. I took the back road down to Clark Point and stopped at this stand to buy a jar of pear jam.
The sign is quite well designed, with the whole positive/negative space thing going on, and “Antiques” is spelled correctly. What happened to “bouys”? Curse those pesky diphthongs!
I bought a jar of pear jam. I’ve tried to make it myself, and could possibly make gallons of the stuff from the Seckel pear tree’s bounty, but my trial batches were gritty and insipid. This jar from Maine’s Own Treats has a nice clear color. The contents list includes: Pears, Sugar, Applesauce, Apple Juice and Pectin. Applesauce sounds like it might be the secret ingredient. We’re going to try the jam out tomorrow on Sunday waffles and then I’ll decide if this combination is worth another experiment.
I like the “We’re Open” sign, too. There wasn’t a soul around – what changes when they’re closed?
My contribution to the August 12 auction of art work on skateboards as a fundraiser for a free skate park in Bar Harbor.
Dude. Totally.
Deck front
Deck back
And would you like to own a barber shop? Ray’s is for sale in the village. Built in 1887, the combination plumbing office and barber shop has been a fixture for decades. The building has four rental units plus the two shops, and at 3/4 of a million dollars is the least expensive commercial property available on the island – which just boggles the mind. Full of character it might be, but at $845,000.00 I think it’s probably a “tear-down” on Main St. We have plenty of salons on MDI, but only one honest-to-buzz-cut barber shop. I’m going to miss it when it’s gone.
Thou art not dead! Thou art the whole
Of life that quickens in the sod.
~Charles Hanson Towne
