Maine Roots.
I love Portland. I always have. Our gritty little city in the Bay. From back when I was a kid and my dad would be home from shipping out, I’d ride along to whatever errands he had: hardware shops, a can of skoal at Colucci's, always some sort of check-in on the wharves of Commercial Street. It was even grittier back then, but I saw the diamond through the dust. Also, perhaps my love was because Portland also meant the island. We lived in Falmouth. I was born into summering on Long when Casco Bay Lines was on Custom House Wharf. My family has been on Long Island since 1904. Matt and I started spending our summers with the & Sons out here in 2015.
Funny to think that my great-great-grandfather Edward William Murphy (1858-1925) was there on island when the building that now houses the Bakehouse was built in 1909. He got his groceries at Henry H. McVane and Everett E. Clark’s store. Then Clark’s Store passed hands to William McCalmon and it was The Long Island Store, and now it’s Byers & Sons Long Island Bakehouse, owned by Catlin and Matt Byers. I plan on being there for at least a lifetime.
Good: The online store is live! Again. www.LObakehouse.com/thestore. Check it out! Maybe there is something there that you want! It’s not as perfect as I would like it to be—some of the photos should be better, and I’m not sure if that third-party automated shipping site is linked properly, but it’s there! In all it’s imperfect glory, waiting for customers. Full disclosure: I’m really not sure how to ship the pies at a timely AND affordable rate. Is anyone going to pay $40 shipping for a $30 pie? But I’ll work out the kinks.
It’s easy for me to not move forward with a project or a task because I’m waiting for it to be perfect and complete. But I guess sometimes it’s okay to just adjust, fix, and improve as you go. I promise to get your item delivered to your house.
Bad: Food waste. Have you ever bought radishes? Or turnips? And they come with a bushel of greens attached? Rude. I wanted to cut them up for soup garnish, instead of being burdened with finding a use for this leafy by-product. (Yes, I could just compost it, which I frequently do, but the guilt still comes creeping in.) I took a stab at a radish greens pesto recipe. Not awful.
I threw everything in the food processor, all together:
2 bunches of radishes worth of greens, triple washed (man, are those radishes sandy!)
5 or 6 cloves garlic
Lime juice, because I had it; lemon would work too—maybe ¼C
About 1C of pine nuts (again, use any nut: walnuts, almonds, make it your own)
Maybe ½C Parmesan, grated
Like 1/3C olive oil, more if needed
Salt and pepper to taste
1T sugar because I was worried about the greens being bitter
I like making things that don’t require a trip to the store. That’s why a lot of the recipes I write about here are so loosey-goosey. Open the fridge, see what you’ve got. I bet it will be good.
Do you ever think about the water when washing greens? I put the used dirt water in my house plants. It makes me feel better, and I take it as a challenge: “How many ways can I use this water so its worth discarding it?” Water—both quality and quantity—are extremely at the forefront of the mind when living on an island. The aquifer of a 3-mile by half-mile island is not unlimited. In the 1940s, Long Island was a Navy Fuel Annex during WWII. When the base was decommissioned and the military left, the fuel tanks were buried in the center of the island. However, just recently, the Long Island Resilience Team completed an 18-month study of the town’s water quality Community Resilience & Septic System Resources | Town of Long Island Maine with the goal of preserving our natural resources for future generations. Good for me and my ‘beyond a lifetime’ expectations for the Bakehouse.
Unexpected: Nuclear engineering is everywhere this week! It’s been buzzing around the media, and closer to home it’s been talk at the dinner table. Matt is an engineer, and talking about the resurgence of nuclear energy is exciting. Particularly when discussing future career paths with the the & Sons. AI data centers AI boom may drive over 60% surge in US nuclear capacity by 2050 | Insights | Bloomberg Professional Services and the pressure to combat climate change with clean energy are mostly fueling the focus on it. I don’t know much, but I had some exposure to data centers when I first started my career. As a new college graduate, I worked at a Citigroup Data Center in Weehawken, NJ. The centers consume tremendous amounts of energy: always on, air-conditioned, backup generators, so much energy eaten up. That trajectory didn’t last long for me because data centers are boring. And that job was boring. I am much better suited to be a small business owner/baker.
Anywho, maybe by the late 2030s, we could have a strong nuclear sector similar to during the 1960s? America's Nuclear Resurgence: Projects, Policies, and State-Level Momentum
& Son One has his sights set on Maine Maritime Academy. He was looking into whether he can apply early. He said, “I want to know if I can get in, so that if I can’t, I’ll have a full year to figure something else out.” I thought that rather realistic and mature of him. Chatting with the admissions office, I guess MMA is planning on reinstating a Nuclear Engineering program. It might be a rewarding industry to enter.
What I’m reading: Well, I was not able to make the Virtual Groundwater Sustainability Forum last Thursday on the island, https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82514507524?pwd=xZG3SeLcI9O6cIHQxJBwDgCBYopbvX.1 so I’m going to check out the water quality report. Link again: Community Resilience & Septic System Resources | Town of Long Island Maine
What the & Sons are asking for: Dinner. Every night. I don’t mind it in the fall, fresh off of summer and eating at the Bakehouse. But ask me in April, after 120 consecutive nights of “What the hell am I going to make for dinner?” and I may stick a fork in my eyeball.
During the summer we eat dinner at the Bakehouse EVERY DAY. Can you image? The luxury. I don’t have to think about making one meal for my family from June to September.
What I am loving is that the & Sons look forward to the ceremony of sitting together each night. They all wait for one another from whichever various activity is delaying them without complaint. Something to make the burden of meal prep well worth it while I still have them living under one roof.
This week’s paper cup contains: Pozole. A Mexican stew with hominy, meat (usually pork), and chili-spiced broth. For my weekly offerings, I always try to think of something that people won’t usually have in their repertoire at home. It’s nice to go out, not cook dinner at home, and even nicer if its something you don’t find at home. At least that’s the way I feel.
I have made this every year for Gas and More. I tried to locate the original recipe that I found when I first made this stew, but I could not. Additionally, I couldn’t find a recipe that I liked enough to share with you. So I will just tell you how I made it.
I used a bone-in, pork shoulder and pressure cooked it for 1 hr. 45min. in the instapot. (Thank god for insta pots! 5 Best Instant Pots . Gone are the days of the dicey pressure cooker! Will dinner be on the table in 2 hours? Or will we all be at the emergency room removing shrapnel from our torsos after the thing exploded?) Season well with salt, pepper, dried cumin, dried oregano, garlic, onion, and some sort of acid—lime juice, orange juice, grapefruit juice, or a mix—whatever you’ve got around.
When the pork is cool enough to handle, I pull it all apart, discarding the bone, the silver skin, and the layers of fat inside and out. You are left with a nice bit of shredded meat. It's okay if it’s still tough because you can just dice it up. The broth will tenderize it from there. Set it aside in a bowl.
Then it’s quick work.
Dice an onion, 4 or 5 garlic cloves, a handful of celery stalks, and sauté all that in olive oil until soft.
Add:
salt, pepper
1t cumin
1T red pepper flakes
1T chili powder
a couple bay leaves (I buy fresh. They last forever. And if you want them out of your fridge, wellm look at that—now they are dried.)
Stir it all around and then add chicken broth. It should b enough to cover your meat & hominy once you add them, but not too much that it will overflow.
Add 2 cans hominy rinsed & drained. (I’m sure you can find it dried somewhere, but I couldn’t.)
Then add the meat.
That’s it! Garnish it with fresh cilantro, sliced radishes, and lime wedges. It’s hearty and filling, and tastes fresh with all those crisp accoutrements.
