Category: Journal of an Island Kitchen

Chowder season begins and ends simultaneously in Maine. Maybe on a few over-warm days in July and early August it doesn’t taste as good as it does on chilly September nights. Most traditional Maine eateries keep it on the menu all the time. For people truly from Maine, it’s a… SEE MORE

Somebody recently told me that millennials weren’t eating as much packaged cereal as they used to because pouring milk into it and then cleaning up the bowl afterwards took too much effort. I thought, surely that’s apocryphal. Nope. In 2016, the Washington Post reported that cereal sales were lagging and… SEE MORE

If ever there was a time when we all needed comforting, surely it is now. If ever there was a time when comfort food was a good idea, surely it is now. After we have filled our plates with mashed potatoes, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, chocolate pudding, baked… SEE MORE

Cooking food made it possible for ancient human bodies to divert energy from digesting food to evolving larger brains, according to biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who wrote Catching Fire, a book to warm a cook’s heart. For millennia, pre-historic humankind cooked food before they made pottery, before metal of any… SEE MORE

How has civilization ever coped without lists of “the best” of everything and detailed explanations of “the perfect way” to do anything? I recently read a headline declaring something like, “You are packing your cooler all wrong,” followed by copious advice from professionals on how to place each food item… SEE MORE

Linguists assure us that language is alive, always evolving. New words and reconfigurations of words emerge, and old familiar words acquire new meanings. I understand these are perfectly natural developments and I’m so annoyed about it. For example, hydrate. I remember a time when if someone got thirsty they helped… SEE MORE