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Monday, July 30, 2012

Local Food Memories of Maine



Special Guest Post by Natalie Bolton

Get Real, Get Maine
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.

© Copyright 2008 Gail J. VanWart, All Rights Reserved
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
Follow the Wise Penny Blog for marketing and design tips.


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



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