Photo by Jessica Barney courtesy of EMCC Rabelais Books on Middle Street in Portland is to the Maine foodie what a candy shop is to a kid. With every cookbook worth buying, as well as rare ones (they might be out of your price range but they are definitely worth looking at), this shop and its contents will provide you with plenty of cooking and reading pleasure.
Saveur Magazine thinks so too (see "The Top 10 Cookbook Shops" in the April issue - not yet online).
But for those literary foodies who need to take it one step further, The Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor is holding its seventh annual Books2Eat contest on April 9 in EMCC's Rangeley Hall from 4 - 6 pm. So you can literally have your book (in the form of a cake) and eat it too.
The competition is for "everyone who loves books and cooking…to exercise their culinary imagination by preparing a totally edible creation based on the title of a favorite book" According to the
BGN shout out , the deadline to enter is next Monday, the 7th. The categories are students under 12, culinary arts students, professional chefs, books made from a Stephen King title, and everyone else.
In the Maine spirit, the 2007 winner in the Stephen King category is pictured above:
Misery. Somehow marshmallows and Oreos don't quite do Kathy Bates justice, but it's a pretty cool cake. The Maine masterpiece I'd like to see as a buttercream beauty: Robert McCloskey's
One Morning in Maine . I'm thinking some combination of the clams, the ice cream cone, the seagulls, and, of course, the tooth.
For more information, and to register, go to
EMCC's website .
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