“We gorged on peas from my father’s garden night after night until we’d had our fill. It was an unspoken rule that freezing peas was a crime and canning them a sacrilege. It was understood that peas from the garden were only to be eaten fresh. My father always grew more than we could eat, so he shared them, delivering messes of fresh peas to family and friends.”
These lines are taken from “A Mess of Peas,” an essay written by Maine-based science writer and children’s book author Kimberly Ridley. It is one of almost 70 works included in Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family (Beacon Press, May 2022). The passage captures the essence of Blue Angel, a grassroots food recovery organization. Deborah Joy Corey, co-editor of the volume, started Blue Angel in 2019 to help nourish hungry neighbors in Castine with fresh fruits and vegetables.
Corey, a writer herself, was researching the issue of food insecurity in her Blue Hill Peninsula community for an article she’d hoped to write. Castine has a year-round population of just 800. After inquiring at churches, town offices, schools, and other community gathering places, Corey learned that as many as 20 families there regularly didn’t know where their next meal might come from.
“I toured the food banks and I saw there was hardly any fresh food available. It was all about the shelf life,”
says Corey. She also learned many of the food-insecure families in this rural area had transportation issues that prevented them from getting to food banks when their own pantries were empty.
Corey planted a large garden on her church’s property and set up a system for collecting excess food from 15 other local gardeners and several local farmers, then delivering boxes full of fresh fruits and vegetables to the families in need. Blue Angel has expanded to include local markets, restaurants and institutions like Maine Maritime Academy that donate food, and several corporate partners who donate money to purchase fresh food from away outside of Maine’s growing season. Often, Blue Angel gathers enough food to distribute it to local daycare centers and food pantries.
Corey has worked with Debra Spark, author and English professor at Colby College, to collate and edit the book’s essays about taste and distaste for certain foods, hunger and plenty, love and loss, and family and community. Lily King writes about chocolate chip cookies, Richard Russo about beans, Kathy Gunst about pickles, Nancy Harmon Jenkins about scallops, and Kate Christensen about peanut butter and jelly. Phuc Tran writes about a longing for Pizza Hut pizza, Reza Jalali about his mother making kofta in Kurdistan, and Sandy Oliver about the pleasures of being a locavore in Maine.
You can buy Breaking Bread at your favorite independent bookstore in Maine. All proceeds from the sale of the book will benefit Blue Angel. Learn more about the organization at blueangelme.org.
