Maine Home Cooking with Sandy Oliver

Sandra L. Oliver is a pioneering food historian and freelance food writer, with her column “Taste Buds” appearing each weekend in the Bangor Daily News. Sandra Oliver brings the traditions and recipes of generations of Maine home cooks to life in her new book, Maine Home Cooking: 175 Recipes from Down East Kitchens. She will be talking about Downeast cooking and about her book at the Camden Public Library on Tuesday evening, December 18, at 7:00 pm. The Owl & Turtle Book Store will have books on hand for purchase and signing, just in time for Christmas!

Peppered with funny and useful advice from her island kitchen and garden, the book is chock-full of wisdom and stories. Whether you need a quick weekday meal or are indulging in a verified New England feast, the recipes are a delicious way to eat well and experience the culinary lineage of Maine. Oliver is the author of Saltwater Foodways, The Food of Colonial and Federal America, and Giving Thanks. She lives on the island of Islesboro, where she gardens, preserves, cooks, and teaches sustainable lifeways.

“Amen! A wonderful read. Real deal Maine home cooking as it was, is now, and (probably) ever shall be: comfort and practicality without end.” —Leslie Land, former New York Times garden columnist.

Maine Home Cooking and its beautiful photos of Sandy’s Islesboro farmhouse and gardens reveal the core of who Sandy Oliver is, through what she cares about and how she expresses it. Her love of food and people is its essence, heaped with copious amounts of humor and a deep understanding of regional taste and the Mainers that make it so. And Maine Home Cooking shows us the real food of real people, drawn from their handwritten letters that come to Sandy through the mail. It’s a happy read, wonderfully meaningful and old-fashioned, and shows respect for the joys that come from home gardens, canning with glass Mason and Ball jars, and cooking in her 19th Century kitchen on a vintage Dual Atlantic combination wood and gas stove.

Oliver will also return to the library on January 29 as part of the library’s “Discover History” month to speak on the history of Maine’s food traditions. Sandy’s talks are filled with personal anecdotes and wide-ranging involvement gained through being a well-known columnist, essayist, and author who has written for regional and national publications, speaks throughout New England and beyond to historical societies, garden clubs, culinary groups, civic and arts organizations, libraries and book groups, and adult education programs.