‘Phillips’ garlic grown by Roberta Bailey. Rob Lemire photo. By Roberta Bailey For me, the Common Ground Fair is a continuing conversation that winds through each day and back over 30 years or more. As a celebration of rural living, it draws together many creative minds, and I try to keep my days open enough
By Roberta Bailey Every season has its soups. In summer, soup is light, often fruity or chilled. Autumn brings us corn and tomatoes and minestrone. In winter, soup is at its best; slowly cooked beans and grains and root vegetables offer warmth and satisfaction. And spring is a fickle time, one day a dark onion
Toki Oshima drawing By Roberta Bailey I have such gratitude toward Jean Ann Pollard. She has been a guide and inspiration to me in the kitchen since 1987, when she published The New Maine Cooking. Until then, I would go to the garden or the root cellar, choose vegetables for the day, then thumb through
Cut and simmer rhubarb to extract the juice, then sweeten it, add other fruit juices to it and can it for later use. English photo. By Cheryl Wixson Note: Many recipes mentioned in this column are posted at www.mofga.net. One of the joys of local, seasonal, organic eating is anticipating the bounty of summer. Once
‘Shuyo Long’ cucumbers growing in a hoophouse. English photo. By Roberta Bailey Cucumbers are back in style. They are all the rage! Haven’t you noticed? Hmm … maybe it’s just in my backyard or in my mind. Or maybe the buzz just hasn’t reached your town yet. But more likely, I am just catching up
Toki Oshima drawing By Roberta Bailey The first year that I lived in Maine, I gardened on a neighboring farm. Along with plowing up the plot, the farmers showed me how to turn the heel of a knitted sock and how to make pickles. We picked an impressively large patch of cucumbers, washed them and
Toki Oshima drawing By Roberta Bailey The other day a friend telephoned me in complete exasperation. She had been trying to find something that her eight-year-old would eat other than pizza and macaroni and cheese. I wasn’t much help. My kids liked most vegetables and I let them eat a lot of macaroni and cheese
Toki Oshima drawing By Roberta Bailey “Garlic,” says the French writer Raymond Dumay, “is peasant, rustic; the onion is urban. The onion brings to the kitchens of the cities a little of the countryside. The onion offers always, and especially in winter, a little of the springtime of the soil, preserved in its bulb.” Rustic
By Jean Ann Pollard It was glorious! – the great Dvina river so still, so broad between its red banks of gravel and sand, and the grass and birch trees on the flat plain all around so green by contrast. And then there was the pungent scent of wood smoke, and we scrambled off the
Toki Oshima drawing. By Roberta Bailey Have you been through the Exhibition Hall yet? Common Ground Fair’s Exhibition Hall is a hall of marvels. You walk from the hustle and bustle of the fairgrounds into the cool quiet sanctum of mellowed wooden timbers and high ceilings. The outside world falls away. You focus on rows
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