Unfortunately, we’re both addicted to crunchy snacks, Fritz and I. His go-to between-meal treats are Milk Bones, while mine are anything crunchy-salty-greasy –you know, the chips genre. I like to think I’m more discriminating, as Fritz will eat anything that hits the floor, and will slurp up spilled whatever. He’s especially fond of pizza crusts. But reading the ingredients list on my chip bags, he’s probably the healthier eater.

Neither of us step on a scale these days unless we’re at the vet’s or the doctor’s. But at the same time that I’m noticing a telltale thickness on my once slender dog, I struggle with the dreaded second best notch on my belt. The best one is a thing of the past.

But I pretend that I can’t help it.

This was a week-end of baking and eating: dinner out with visiting family, a funeral repast Saturday morning, followed by a duet of Christmas parties that afternoon and evening. So, between baking (and tasting) multiple batches of cookies and perusing the food tables at various events I probably gained another pound.

Lincolnville is good at doing food. We’d lived here all of two weeks before I got my first call to make a pie for an upcoming public supper.

It was Ruth Pottle who called; I’d never met her, and didn’t know how she knew me – my name or phone number. Of course, it wasn’t long before I realized there was a whole cadre of Ruths – Janet Richards and Peg Miller, Nancy Hardy and Jackie Watts to name a few who come to mind.

Church ladies my son calls them now, but that’s an easy misnomer. Church had nothing to do with it; those women were the glue that held the town together. It was their business to know who the newcomers were, and the telephone was their informational network. If you moved in on Saturday, they knew all about you by Tuesday. And then got to work to pull you into the life of the town.

Getting you to cook food for the communal appetite was one way they did that. They had other ways too. Rummage sales were popular; Lena Brooks at the Beach organized a big one every summer. Peg Miller’s forte for a time was a November  craft sale, bringing together knitters and quilters, makers of wreaths and jellies, and sundry other items.

But I remember them most by the food they made. Ruth Felton’s corn pudding, Peg’s baked beans, Cyrene Slegona’s apricot brandy poundcake, Janet’s biscuits, the ubiquitous clam casserole everyone knew how to make. Remember clam casserole, an unlikely combination of Ritz crackers and a can of clams, a public supper favorite back in the day?

A new generation succeeded those women, and if you live here, you’ve probably enjoyed our dishes at a potluck, public supper or bake sale. June Haining’s chili, Dorothee Newcombe’s wings, Bob Heald’s fried onions and hot dogs, Peggy Digiovanne’s dark chocolate candied crackers, Roberta Heald’s jam, maybe my deviled eggs.

The old telephone hotline has been replaced by Facebook and our Lincolnville bulletin board and with it we know about Hannah Burke’s blueberries, Mia and Bob Sewall’s cider, and Margo Moody’s cranberries. I love Caitlin Frame and Andy Smith’s Milkhouse maple yogurt, and though they settled in Monmouth, they started farming in Lincolnville, so I consider them local.

But food also plays a much more intimate and mundane role in our lives, the three meals most of us eat every day. The meals that, usually, the women in a household produced. Of course, there are always the qualifiers:

Sometimes it’s a man doing the cooking.

Not everyone eats three meals a day.

Too many can’t afford it.

Producing a meal often means opening a package and putting it in the microwave.

Most women work outside of the home.

So, with those out of the way, it’s still usually the woman who makes the meals, and whether she actually cooks those three-a-day, she probably does the shopping, planning, and assembling for most of them.

Scrubbing a pot the other day got me wondering how many potatoes it had boiled, how many soups, chili, pudding, pie fillings, vegetables were cooked, steamed, or simmered in it. I’ve had that same pot for over 50 years, along with a sextet of cast iron skillets from the one-fried-egg size to an enormous oval one for poaching fish (though I can’t remember ever doing that). Add in a wok and an iron kettle (soups, stews, jam and jelly) and I’ve cooked in those pots at the very least 18,980 meals at the rate of one a day for all 52 years.

Just coming up with the menu for the week is a monumental task. When I was in the throes of family life – three growing kids and a hungry husband – the first thing I thought upon awakening was “what on earth am I making for dinner tonight?” a universal topic with other wives as well.

When my own mother, no longer responsible for anything, was a patient at the old Camden Nursing Home on Mountain Street, I listened to her chatting with the other women sitting in the sunny, glassed-in porch: “What are you making for dinner?” said one. “I’ve got to wash the dishes,” was my mom’s slightly disjointed response.

She’d put her own quota of dinners on the table for us over the 25 years my brother and I lived at home – meat, potato, vegetable, rarely anything as exotic as spaghetti or a stew. Pizza was unknown in 1950s Chicago, and so was Chinese take-out or tacos. Breakfast was bacon and eggs and toast. Only occasionally oatmeal.

Marriage to a Mainer meant baked beans on Saturday along with biscuits, maybe hot dogs mixed in with the beans. I even learned to pack lunches with cold baked bean-and-onion sandwiches, not for the kids, but for Wally. Oatmeal? We ate a lot of it with raisins and maple syrup.

At one Hunters’ Breakfast (you got up at 4, drove to the school or LIA building to start the coffee and bacon, scrambled the eggs, made the muffins, and poured the juice for the guys who arrived before sunrise in their hunting gear, bundled up against the below freezing temps) Nancy Hardy said offhandedly, as she stirred the big pot of oatmeal, “I never measure, I make this every single day of my life.” With a houseful of five growing kids I’m sure she did!

Now, in this phase of life, nearing the end of my seventh decade, I generally cook only for myself, except for the two dinners a week I make for us, that would be Don and I. Everything about this “second chapter” after the death of a lifelong spouse, is both complicated and simply right. On the one hand, I actually enjoy putting together a real meal for someone other than me, but at the same time I want to cook the foods Jean made, the meals he loved. He approves of Wally’s favorite meatloaf; now I’m working on getting Jean’s mushroom gravy just right.

This shadow couple, the two we shared our lives with, are never far away. And that’s the way we want it.

As a stay-at-home mother and wife, I’m an anomaly, the only woman I know who never worked outside her house. My teaching career lasted exactly four years; I haven’t held a job since 1971, unless I count writing about Lincolnville. But now, retirement beckons. Perhaps I’m getting the urge to explore a different direction. And just perhaps, a younger voice is ready to tell our town’s story.

Town

The Waldo County Humane Society is sponsoring a free rabies vaccination clinic this Saturday, December 10, 9-11 a.m. at the Lincolnville Fire Station.

All dogs must be on a leash and under the control of their owners at all times. Cats must be in a carrier. Owners are asked to bring proof of their animal’s previous vaccination.  Masks for humans will be required in the buildings. For pets that do not reside with their Waldo County owners there is a $7 fee per vaccination.

School

The best way to keep up with activities at Lincolnville Central School is by reading the school newsletter, the Lynx every week.

This week you’ll learn there’s a Chess Tournament this Sunday, December 11, 9 to noon at the school.

And on the same day, sign up info for the PTO’s Gingerbread House decorating project, 1-3 p.m.

And signup information for the 2022-23 Mid-Coast Wrestling Club, as well as Middle School science and photos galore.

Holiday Open Studios

Siem van Der Vin invites you to van der Ven Studios 27 Moss Meadow in Lincolnville Center, just down from the General Store, Saturday, December 10, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Come share cookies and holiday cheer as you peruse new porcelain votives and cups, and the most recent wood-fired work. Several other artists in Lincolnville will be hosting open studios at the same time including Antje Roitzsch at 310 Young Town Rd, Miki Glasser Ceramics, Hermit Thrush Brooms, Hope Learning Toys, along with Bee Balm and Nettle will all be at the Boat Club Studio, 209 Main St. in Lincolnville Center. Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs will be open as well at 217 Beach Road.