Sometimes people say to me: what are you thinking?

I am sitting at another person's table in another person's house, and will soon drink tea out of another person's cup. And tonight I will sleep in a different bed, turn off light switches at the end of a hall that is not familiar, and I will wake up and remember that I am still myself, but life is still strange.

I'm house-sitting (and cat-sitting). The cats are not too much company though, and they entertain to the extent of scratching on windows, scratching at doors, looking at me in the evenings and waiting by their water bowls. Fiona is as big as an ogre, Willow is quick and darty and copper-and-white, and gets red sores around her eyes. She attacks the ogre (and I commence yelling). They are not much company. But.

And today I left them for a while to explore the island--still, it was a part I'd already seen--but it is April now and almost May and soon the people will be here and cars will fill the parking spaces and I will have to get up before dawn to really feel alone on the trails and roads. Today, I explored Little Long Pond, which is four miles around, has three or four junctions that branch off to other carriage roads and loops: one to Jordan Pond, another to Amphitheatre, another to...oh, well. And at one point along the way the road around Little Long Pond comes to Cobblestone Bridge (you can hear the stream before you see it), and the year on the bridge is 1917 and you can only see the engraving from the upper, north side, and only if you drop down below the road and walk along the stream bank. I took a picture, because I am always thinking of if my family were only there, and of other people I know who would want to see it too, and who I would want to be with because I enjoy seeing their joy, and their pleasure. I do like seeing people happy. 

It is still an overcast day, however, and it's going on three o'clock and I had thought of drinking a cup of tea, which I still want to do. I have coconut milk in the fridge--a great purchase--which might be nice, and perhaps with the tea I'll get some thoughts down on paper, and hope that maybe then, the thoughts will be gone, and they can stop plaguing me as they always do. 

Because I miss home. And right now it is almost all I am thinking of. 

10 de Abril.

Ya he tenido una manga que esta casi perfecta lista. I have just had a mango that was almost perfectly ripe.

I've made a small pact with myself to buy more local products and shy away from the imports--even imports south of the border. But, in Hannaford grocery at 11 am this morning I stood in the checkout line and looked over to the fruit section and saw Navel oranges 5 for a buck, and "yellow" mangoes, 87 cents. These, I found, were from Mexico, but they looked just the same as those we had in Santa Cruz (Bolivia) where they fell to the pavement and the chickens ate them. Little Reuben Harder--all the Harder boys, actually--loved those mangoes. At Comite Central Menonita, Reuben once looked up at me and said: "we just cut the top off and suck on 'em." He used to stand in the kitchen at the main house, shirtless and oh-so-pale white. He and his brothers played the violin, and I'm just now wondering if the wood ever got sweaty-sticky.

It's been a stimulus morning. My coffee was strong and sweet (I go with Equal Exchange "Love Buzz" variety), and my jog out on Ocean Drive was cool and balsam-hit and perfect.

For all the days I've lived on this island now, I have never seen that section of road like it was today. It was a true north day: Gray, and foggy around the tops of the mountains, and lobster boats motored around slowly just off the coast. I could hear their motors and I could hear the buoy clanging. On foot, the sounds amplify. In a car they are distant.

Instinct told me that I would never see Ocean Drive exactly that way, ever again, (and not just because the Park Loop Road is currently closed and I was running the wrong way on its one-way stretch). But I suppose that's a good thing, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it now. The one-time experiences linger, of course, and the conscious remembering that's required to bring those stimuli and memories back around: well it is good to make ourselves remember. Otherwise we'd constantly be seeking a new joy ride and would never learn to be content with what good days and experiences we've already had in our short lives.

I'm waxing sentimental. Oh. Perhaps it's the food.

Maggie's recipe for remembering, the menu on 10 de Abril, 2013:
1 ripe "yellow" mango.
Una vasa de agua. Water.
And:
Curried Lentil-Grape Salad
(Adapted from Simply in Season)
I recommend serving this salad warm, over green lettuce or torn spinach. A sprinkling of sunflower seeds on top is a nice addition, as well. Go for texture variety--nuts or seeds make it crunch a bit. 

2 potatoes, cooked and cooled and peeled. (1 white and 1 sweet, or whatever you have)
1/2 small white onion, chopped in thin slivers and halved
1 c. red seedless grapes, halved or quartered, soaked in...
...1/4 c. apple cider/red wine/rice vinegar (but I recommend apple cider, for the sweet-tang)
1 c. brown lentils
2 T. curry powder (I used half Hot Madras, half regular)
1/4 c. olive oil
salt and pepper

Soak lentils in hot water for 15 minutes.

While cooking the potatoes (baked in the microwave or boiled til just barely done), heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add curry and 1/2 t. salt, and when the curry has stopped bubbling add the soaked and drained lentils to the oil and fry briefly, entirely coating them. Add 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and let the lentils simmer.

While lentils are cooking, peel those potatoes and chop them, as well as the onions and grapes. Put the vinegar over the grapes, remember, that's actually a key to this recipe: The tang mixing with the sweet mixing with the heat of the curry. And try not to mush the potatoes while you're chopping them...that really won't do.

When lentils are tender, remove them from the heat and transfer to a cool (literally, not hot), serving dish. Let the lentils chill out a bit. Then mix in the onions, grapes and potatoes, careful not to smash the potatoes. Add salt and a good dose of black pepper, to your taste. And like I said, this salad is best if a bit on the warm side.

Cheers. Go run somewhere (it'll clear your head even better than this curry salad...).

All that seems to matter is

I dream of baking bread at Zingerman's,
that bakery in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where
it's really better to just go there, but,
they also send boxes
by mail, and to my doorstep sometimes, and those are good times.

On football game day, only sometimes, we would go and eat brownies,
and Dad bought coffee for the drive back south.
It's his college town, takes three hours to get to, and from,
and usually, normally, it always seemed to rain
when Michigan lost.

So the brownies helped. I remember the plastic wrapping,
their place by the register was a square basket, and the taller case
to the right of it had salamis, cheese, olives maybe, too.
Lots of people kept shuffling in. Our table got smushed. And
one room over, bigger and brighter deli cases filled
with more salamis and cheese rounds,
and maybe some olives, too, they seemed like Olympus. A deli mountain.

The wall behind seemed to glow: yellow, gold, amber colored loaves,
loaves towering up to the ceiling it seemed, with little minions of people
and bread pawns and apron-hugged men slicing bread and sandwiches and
yelling and reaching over the cases and the people in that room nudged each other, turning,
trying to be polite. And we did not go there--the line. Too long of a line.
On gameday in the suburbs, we'd walk miles to the stadium.
I walked with Grandpa, slowly, and we'd pass homes with small lawns,

and little girls with pigtails sold lemonade,
twenty-five cents a cup, and Grandpa and I went by,
his feet moving step, step, step, step, 
and Dad was in front with my brother.
Now, if I could, I would ask Grandpa: "So what did you do
on Saturdays in the fall," the days like one of those
I remember, with leaves in the gutters and over the grates, and

girls and men leaning over railings of frat houses, and sororities,
labeled Phi, or Gamma, or Delta, or all three together, and all those people, together,
making streams and currents of shouts and whistles, making street noises, slosh, drunk noises
And maybe he'd say: "We'd go to the corner and get
sandwiches, and go to the game, and then, well:
You'd do well to study your books!" Books about engineering,
functions, and how to win a customer, and  

Maybe then he and his friends would talk, about
business orders, how to win in life, how to save, 
save, save, save, so their futures were insured and their
wives, children, and their children too, would be happy
when they were gone. And when they are gone, those kids
would Talk, about how they want to bake bread, and
toast the sides and slather each with butter; because

the business of eating is the business of living,
and consuming, and knowing what we are made of.
But of course it is always more than that. There is more
than just you and me and getting that job, 
getting that customer, making that payment. 
Although sometimes that is all that seems to matter,
walking down the sidewalk, head trying to stay up.

3-Citrus island bread.

On the other side of the island in a town (sort of a town, it does have a zipcode), called Tremont (or maybe it's even "West" Tremont), lives a woman who talks with an accent and doesn't look at all Dutch. 

Or maybe that's wrong. Did the Dutch settle in South Africa? (Oh, what sorrow. I know I studied this in college...) Anyway she is from South Africa, and she speaks Afrikaans as well as English and probably another language too, but she didn't mention it. She has a little dog named "Tyler," he's a Rescue Beagle, likes to hear his toenails scrape across the wood floor. The lady had me over for lunch two Sundays ago and we ate on the couch--she made a quiche--and Tyler sat beside her and we drank Rooibos tea and I said to her: 

"Well it's funny you know, because I love reading food blogs, I'm addicted to them. But I'd never want to write one myself."

Which doesn't quite make sense, if you think about it. 

Although I guess it's like that prof I had in college, the one who admitted to surfing the web for celebrity news--that "People Magazine" was his favorite website, and he "could spend hours just looking at which celebs were pregnant and who was breaking up with whom" and so on. 

You're intrigued by the lifestyles you don't live yourself, I suppose.

Well. This is never going to be a food blog, I can assure you of that. But in the spirit of adventure and hopes for a bright culinary future, I'd like to tell you about "3 Citrus Island Bread." I've just concocted it. Adapted it. Winged it. Kind of put it together with the intention of having it for dinner as a "side dish," but now it's orange-syrup soaked, and warm and toasty with a nice-weight of crumb, and...I'm still going to eat it for dinner. (I'm also making "Caribbean Sweet Potato Gratin," another recipe courtesy of the Moosewood cooks). 

P.S. The only reason I have time to bake and cook all of this is because we're getting a winter Nor'easter, and my night shift at the YMCA was cancelled due to its early closing. That's fine with me, actually--I'm working each day this week except Sunday, three of those days at a new job! Which is so brilliant...it's the Morning Glory Bakery. Not quite Zingerman's, but it wouldn't be fair to compare them, anyway. Completely different leagues. 

But picture this. Close your eyes and move leagues away from Maine, from snow-covered coastal mountains and a gray-blue Atlantic with seagulls and rocky coasts, and place yourself on a sandy beach...say, Honduras. You're on a thin island now, just off the mainland, and there are palm trees, there are cabanas off of the docks, there are grassy roofs, and soft guitar music plays from somewhere you can't pick out where. Look up! Oh golly, there are coconuts in those trees. Rap your knuckles against the tree and remember that your wrists are bare. It's warm. It's even hot. And you walk to a small building up the beach, and inside there's a kitchen and you smell something sweet. It's bread. You pull out that bread. And it's this one: 

3-Citrus Island Bread:

Makes 1 large 9x5 loaf or 2 smaller loaves (if you feel friendly and generous)

1 c sugar 

2 T combination of lime and lemon juice

6 T milk (I used almond, but use what you've got)

2 eggs

6 T soft butter

1 1/2 c flour (1/2 white whole wheat, 1/2 unbleached all-purpose)

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 t salt

1 T grated lime peel

Set your oven to 350 degrees. 

Firstly: Combine all ingredients in the first set--the wet ingredients--beating well by hand or with an immersion blender or mixer.

Secondly: Combine all dry ingredients, stirring in the lime peel at the very end. 

Thirdly: Put them together, scraping all the flour into the wet...but please, don't overbeat it. Baked goods are gentle creatures. 

Fourthly: Spoon/spatula the batter into greased loaf pan(s), baking one hour or until the knife or toothpick comes out clean-like. A crispy-top loaf will soften, don't worry, after you put on this syrup of: 

1/4 c sugar (I used natural cane sugar)

2 T fresh orange juice

You'll have heated those two things together, right? On the stove over low heat, until the sugar dissolved and you could just smell the orange in the air. When you've reached that point, turn off the stove and prick holes down to the bottom of the still-hot loaf, all across it. Remove the loaf from the pan and put it onto a sheet of foil, slowly spooning over the hot syrup so it sinks down into the holes. Stand back and admire it now. Ahh. Don't slice it. Wait. At least five minutes. It really should cool entirely. But that's a test of your own self-control, isn't it. 

French toast.

I had a roommate once who called me a food snob, and I don't think I've ever recovered. Maybe that means she was partly right? Hm. I'd rather she'd have called me a "foodie," but she didn't (alas), and if she were here tonight at our kitchen table she would be eyeing my dinner plate and rolling her eyes. 

Because this French toast is nirvana. 

And I added lemon juice to my strawberry jam before I made it into strawberry syrup. (The little touches matter, really they do! They make all the difference.) 

But. It all started with this book, A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg, creator of the food blog Orangette. She's a not-so-distant relative of the chef I'm working with down at the Common Good these days, Chef Arnold. He claims the French toast recipe on page 39 is a bit of a mix-up: Oil was the understudy for Butter, but Butter was sabotaged before it went onstage and Oil unjustly replaced it. 

Don't fry your French toast in oil, let the butter do it's part! Arnold says. There's a trick. And you've got to ask me for the trick because I won't tell you. That means you have to email me, folks. And you want to. Because this French toast was the seventh heaven. How much more can I say? Despite the fact that yes, I used slices of leftover chocolate sourdough bread from Zingerman's Bakery (shipped as a Bread-of-the-Month gift from my grandma), and no, this is not immediately accessible bread and to suggest you go out and buy it would be slightly rude...well folks, the French toast recipe still stands. Because I made it 3 days ago with a different type of leftover bread, and it was still nirvana-ish. I moaned, if you really must know. Just like my father does when he tastes my mother's Burgundy Beef. (Foodie-ism is genetic, you see).

Without further ado, I will satisfy your hunger with a slightly different recipe I made last night: it's Baba Ganouj, a take on a Middle Eastern appetizer. Courtesy of The New Moosewood Cookbook. I'd never made Baba Ganouj before, and I consider myself wholly converted. Hummus has a new workout buddy. 

Baba Ganouj ("Ga-NOOSH")

40 minutes to prepare, yields 4-6 servings unless you eat it over rice or as an accent on soup.

a little oil/ or parchment paper/ or silicone baking mat

1 medium (7-in) eggplant

2 medium garlic cloves, minced (1/2 - 1 tsp from a jar)

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup sesame tahini

black pepper to taste

1/2 cup firm yogurt (Greek would do well)

1/2 tsp. cumin

1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)

Firstly: preheat your oven to 350 F and prepare a baking pan or dish, either lining it with parchment paper or a silicone mat, or oiling it just slightly. 

Secondly: slice your eggplant the long way and place it face-down onto the pan. Bake for about half an hour or until the skin looks a bit wrinkly and peaked. That means it's tender. Cool the eggplant until you can handle it comfortably.

Thirdly: Scoop out the eggplant pulp and put it in a blender/food processor with the garlic, lemon juice, tahini, black pepper, yogurt and cumin. Blend together until smooth and creamy. Use less yogurt for a thicker consistency. Add salt to your liking. (I found the eggplant had plenty of flavor, and didn't need much salt).

It's up to you: if not eating right away, put it all in a bowl and cover tightly, refrigerating until ready to serve. When ready (chilled or not), serve with carrot sticks, pita crackers, tortillas, mixed into barley...however you  think sounds good. It's food. Do what you want. 

What do the right people think?

My brother turns one year older today. But March 3 is my birthday too, and I remember the year we celebrated both his and mine on the same day, at the dinner table after church. The cake was for him, not me, but spiritual birthdays (I'd just been baptized at church) do not get remembered as do normal ones.

My dad baptized me. He wore green waders into the baptismal pool with the black suspenders pulled up over his dress shirt, and I was watching him so as not to look at the congregation. Such a big group, everyone watching. Such a public event, and at my middle-school age, we learn not to want that. At that age it seems like everyone is watching us, and at the same time we are watching everyone else too, asking who do I become, what am I supposed to do, think, be? 

I do have to say that my brother has never seemed one for caring too much about the public opinion. He cares what people think, but he cares about what the right people think--not just any John Doe in the Burger King drive-through. He works every day with my dad, and my dad would tell him if he needed to shape up. I trust that. Because that's how it's always been. High expectations are good--they challenge you, put you to a test.

It is good that God does not exactly work that way. The expectations are still high but the grace is unending.

The other night I was talking with a friend about writing--you know, this thing I do for readers (however many are out there, who knows. I am always hoping there are more, but then I am always biting my nails at the things I could be saying that are offending someones in all sorts of somewheres). But we were talking about what to reveal, and when. What can we say in a forum such as this one, the blog!? What can we say when clearly, we know that people want the truth, but what if the truth hurts someone we love, someone we know is reading?

And then I said: "...but honesty is sometimes best, you know? I mean, if we just deny everything all the time, nothing ever moves forward."

She didn't say anything but a Mmm, and so she must have nodded. My friend is currently writing for a newspaper in the Midwest. She told me I could buy a ticket to Europe for cheaper, since I live on the East Coast. "Or you could just get a ticket to come see me," she said. And laughed.

Why do I even write this here, people. What am I doing for you, telling you things about my life that don't really matter in the end because it is just my life, and the more I focus on me, the less I focus on everybody else. Clearly, this life is not about me.

I'm sorry. Sorry for all this self-dwelling.

My mom told me once (or twice or thrice) that I was an observant kid, growing up. I have this image of little blonde-headed Maggie, hands on the back of the church pew, grinning at the older ladies in the pew behind. Mom's hand is on my back, she's looking at me from the side, and I have a cut above my lip from when I slammed into the dashboard because I wasn't wearing a seat belt. And I have brown eyes even deeper brown than they are now, and the church is high and big around me, and up in the organ pit the organist sits, and the preacher is watching all the people out in the congregation and thinking about how many people are actually listening? And my Grandpa's eyes are closing, and Grandma sees and nudges her leg against him.

There are so many truths more important than what people think.

I am glad for a body of people who love me--and that they love so many people besides me.

This is such a huge huge world, people. There is such a greater picture with so many more important matters. How I forget this. So often.

At a rough time in my life (no not middle school, but high school), I found this gem of a verse: "Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10, NIV).

Here's a big THANK YOU to my big brother, who turns twenty-eight today, not quite four years older than me, and we live so far away and I miss him and his wife and his beautiful little daughter, Lucy. It is utterly crappy to be far from your family. It is terrible-horrible.

So this blog was for you, bro. I hope you like it. Because I care what you think.

(the town's) peace

Town is the bakery, the Y, the path down harbor-side where twice a day a man walks with his dog, once at high tide and once at low so he can see the rocks revealed and then covered, knowing his life is still moving, something is still good and all is not stagnant.

In summer, an Asian couple walks from outside of town down into it, continuing on Main Street until they come to the fountain, where the husband circles it, considers, sometimes bending down to reach for a coin: did he get a penny? Perhaps he only gets nickels. I watch him place the coin in his pocket and see his wife coming toward him from behind. I wonder what they do at noontime when the tourists are out, tossing the coins into the fountain and making their wishes. Perhaps for a new job? to fall in love? to stay here forever? to live here someday? 

Older couples might watch and smile softly at the younger ones. They might point--almost giggling--at the toddlers.

What innocent delight. What pleasure. What giddiness.

Town is ebb and flow, the movement from summer into windy fall, into quiet, into biting winter, into spring again, and a melting. 

From the three front windows of my apartment I have watched the harbor stay exactly the same as it was at the beginning of May when I first came to the island. There were more boats then, and more buoys littered the open expanse of the inner harbor just between the edges of the two main piers; but the water remains the same, the placement of the two large Porcupine islands, the same, and the gap between them and the view to the Schoodic Peninsula and the mountain beyond it, the same.

Trees have dropped leaves, ice has poured down and stiffened along the islands' cliffs, snow has pattered down on that mountain, and most mornings I sit still by the windows and watch, gauging the differences--so few--by the speed of the wind in the "hugging" pine tree reaching out toward the south. 

I like the seagulls. Listening to music, sometimes they seem to dance, holding a movement, a long sashay. 

But the writing has been horrible, and not what I'd hoped it would be. New England, Maine, Vacationland, sometimes it is all too much. 

Because home, home is the cornfields of the Midwest, and the quiet silences of the country roads, and to feel I am going somewhere I must move along them myself, to make my own waves because the fields so often seem gray and asleep and sometimes even dead.

Home is people, and the voices we know.

Home is living where we are known.

The quietness of Maine winter has drawn in the bodies of this town; this town is the park fields at the south end of Main Street, it is the lobby of the YMCA, it is the grocery store on Sunday at noon, and the store across the street that smells of soup and ginger, and its cafe counter by the window where people rotate in and out and smile at each other, because it is sunny. Town is remembering faces, and forgetting what it is to be completely at peace, because if ever we were at peace, then we would have no need of searching after it. 

Town, home, peace is in the reaching.