There are a lot of simple pleasures to be enjoyed on a windjammer cruise, not the least of which is boat-made ice cream. In keeping with the everything done fresh and by hand traditions of the fleet's galleys, ice cream on the windjammers is made in old-fashioned, hand-cranked ice cream churns. Making great ice cream requires team effort and a lot of fun. 

Many factors help make a meal special, yet place is the one most often overlooked. You may be scratching your head about that comment — what does a sense of place have to do with food?

Plenty.

Photos by Jennifer Baum
On the glorious day that was last Friday, I ventured to the Old Port on assignment. Cruising down commercial street, I was thrilled to notice that Jeff Landry’s new joint, The Farmer’s Table, was not only open for lunch, but the patio and rooftop would allow me to indulge in my first al fresco dining of the season.

President Obama is on the radio outlining his plan to save the auto industry. His voice is filled with fierce determination. He wants to move ahead and assure us all that U.S. car manufacturing won’t die, but he clearly wants to teach some lessons along the way. No more free rides. I listen as he reaches out to those ailing from this weak, terrible economy. Outside my office window, rain spits. It’s all enough to make a girl depressed.

It's shrimp season in Maine and one of our favorite winter activities is stopping by the road-side stands for the freshest shrimp possible. Once I stopped to buy some as the sellers were getting a delivery — the shrimp were still wiggling! That's fresh!

When you walk in to a kitchen set up to prepare a meal it is a little like walking into a lab or a magician’s den.  The ingredients displayed on the counter peek your interest and the mind automatically tries to reference them to a known quantity.  Chris Bassett, of Azure Café in Freeport, had the marble topped farm table at Cellardoor laden with ingredients last weekend.  

It may seem strange to travel all the way to New York City to taste fresh Maine seafood. Last month chefs Lynette Mosher and her partner/husband Robert Krajewski, owners of Lily Bistro in Rockland, teamed up with their neighbor (the two restaurants share a common wall on Main Street), Keiko Suzuki Steinberger of Suzuki’s Sushi Bar to cook a Maine seafood dinner at the famed James Beard House in Greenwich Village.

It was well worth the trip.

A Spanish proverb asserts "Ideas should be clear and chocolate thick" (las cosas claras y el chocolate espeso).

With the sun higher in the sky, mercifully melting the foot or more of snow much of Maine has experienced per storm, a quick look at the calendar indicates that spring, or at least the vernal equinox, is less than three weeks away.

Although the snow melting off the roof sounds like sap dripping from a spile, it is still too cold for the sap to run just yet. More than likely the equinox will come and go with only a gesture in the direction of real spring. We're getting ready by digging down from the eaves to the windows encased in the drifted snow below.

Ask people where to find wheat-free food and you often get a perplexed look in return. Why, they wonder, would you want to avoid pasta, bread, cookies, crackers, and most things delicious?