My husband and I were the kind of parents who regularly took our little kids to faraway places. They were comfortable going to bed wherever they landed, so we didn’t worry much about a catawampus sleep schedule that might make for a messy trip. To prep my littles for a journey, I would, of course, tell them when we were going. And at bedtime leading up to the departure date, I’d pull Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss down from the bookshelf.
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
In any direction you choose.
One of the first places we’d choose to go once we landed was the grocery store to explore provisions for tomorrow’s breakfast, then we’d find a place for today’s lunch while scoping out places for dinner tonight. Food has always been a great vehicle for my family to experience a place.
But food culture—actual foods and stories about their importance, demonstrations of hospitality, information about cooking techniques, and the hands that grow foods indigenous to a place—can certainly travel too. That is the point we’ve worked to illustrate in this issue of edible MAINE. We’ve assembled a set of stories, photographs, and illustrations about individual ingredients, whole recipes, and cooks and farmers who have come from away and made their mark on the Maine food scene.
These stories touch places as far away as Japan with a spotlight on Go-en Fermented Foods, Inc. and as close as Maine itself with a story on a University of Southern Maine tourism and hospitality student creating a cookbook with representatives of the Wabanaki Nations and Inuili people in Greenland. We explore how to drink modern natural wines that have been trending in France for decades and offer up a chef’s essay on how she brings olive oil from her family’s place in Tuscany to serve at her restaurant in Rockport. And we feature a Maine nonprofit that works to increase the number of African crops being produced in Maine to help supply refugees and immigrants with culturally appropriate foods they know and love.
Also on the menu are Little Brother Chinese Food Co. dumplings, Papi’s Puerto Rican hospitality in Portland, Ritual Bakehouse croissants in Brunswick, and authentic Jamaican jerk chicken and southern fried chicken from Beth’s Farm Market in Warren and Dennett’s Wharf in Castine.
With all the places you’ll go in this issue, you can choose any direction that suits you.
And while we’re on the topic of different directions, the time has come for me to leave the masthead of this magazine. I am joining my husband on his well-earned sabbatical. We’ll be traveling throughout the United Kingdom enjoying the food, of course, walking Hadrian’s Wall, thinking big thoughts, and writing those down in respective manuscripts. It’s been an honor to have been entrusted to tell the stories of the people, plants, animals, and organizations the comprise the Maine food system for the baker’s dozen issues I have served as editor of edible MAINE.
I will think of them often in all the places l go from here on.
Best,
