Special Guest Post by Natalie Bolton
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| Maine supports its local fare. |
Natalie Bolton is a Boulder, Colorado based marketing and design professional, as well as my friend and a former colleague. When we worked together in Bangor, she is the one who always arrived at the holiday parties with a basket full of homemade preserves and other goodies made from the yields of local Maine harvests. I'm delighted to be able to share her memories of Maine and its foods in her guest post for Nosing Around Maine.
Many of my best memories of
Maine involve food – local, fresh food. Until I moved to Maine, I'd never eaten
fiddleheads, whoopie pies, or freshly boiled lobster.
One of the things I loved most
about summer in Maine was driving down nearby roads on a sunny day and seeing
small stands at the end of long driveways with extra garden produce for sale –
zucchini, tomatoes, squash and more. I loved the fact that payment was always
on the honor system, and while I never heard of anyone taking advantage of it,
the general attitude I heard was, “If someone just takes it, they probably need
it more than we do.”
After graduate school, I started
getting more involved in picking, cooking and eating local foods. Picking strawberries and raspberries in Corinth
in the summer became an annual tradition, followed by days of making jam.
Later, we bought flats of blueberries to freeze (and make more jam!), and
September was a time for homemade relish, made from a combination of purchased
and our own garden vegetables including peppers and cabbage. What didn't get
eaten became Christmas presents for friends and family around the country.
Now I'm living back in my home
state of Colorado and am glad to be continuing the tradition of preparing homemade
foods to share with family and friends. I'm also glad to be in an area that,
like Maine, values local food – a place where I can take advantage of great farmer's markets and CSA
memberships.
When I walk through the aisles
of supermarkets today, I'm horrified at the vast array of new products that get
packaged and categorized as “food” – things with additives I can't begin to
recognize and which friends and I lump together in a general category we call
“Sodium Cancerate.” Because of this, I'm excited to see people from Maine
supporting the Slow Food and Local Food Movements to keep their heritage of
locally-grown foods alive for generations to come.
Natalie Bolton
1-800-833-0456
Maine Food Links of Interest:
http://www.wildblueberries.com
http://www.lobsterfrommaine.com/
http://www.mainepotatoes.com/
Nosing Around Maine © Copyright 2012 Gail J. VanWart All Rights Reserved
