March 11:Seven Things to Know About Maine Food
The story of Maine food and cooking is one of resilience and self-sufficiency, which has morphed into a modern cuisine based on local fresh fare prepared with accents from all over the globe. In this talk, Sandy Oliver will describe seven Maine foods that illustrate Maine life and history: lobster, bean swaggon, ployes, slack-salted fish, venison, molasses, and halal meat. Each dish, most of which aren't found on Portland menus, tells a story about ethnicity, climate, economics, and the culture of Maine’s earlier history.
Sandy Oliver is a gardener, cook, freelance food writer, and food historian with a weekly column in the Bangor Daily News. She also is a regular columnist in the pages of the Working Waterfront published by the Island Institute, and writes for other Maine publications. She has authored several books on food history, including the prize-winning Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Food in the 19th Century; Food in Colonial and Federal America, and she co-authored Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History from Pilgrim to Pumpkin Pie. Her cookbook, Maine Home Cooking, was published by Down East Books. Sandy lives on Islesboro, where she raises vegetables for market on Pretty Good Farm.