February is Fabulous at the Hartstone Inn & Hideaway

The February is Fabulous special at the Hartstone Inn & Hideaway provides a 50% discount. For $168 double, you get the best available suite, a five-course dinner for two, breakfast, champagne welcome, and house-made sweets, and you can add a second night for $95. The fine print: The package is available Sunday through Thursday (except Feb. 19), tax and gratuity are extra, valid through Feb. 29.

The inn is located smack downtown, just steps from shops, restaurants, and the harbor. Camden is winter is quiet, but lovely. It’s less than a five-minute drive to the Camden Snow Bowl, with skiing and snowboarding, tubing, ice skating, and tobogganing. (Read a copy of my review written originally for the Boston Globe).

72-Hour Sale at the Inn by the Sea

Book by Friday, Jan. 27, to snag rates as low as $129 for a room at the oceanfront Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Rates reflect a 40% savings and are valid Sunday through Thursday nights (Friday and Saturday nights available for an additional $30), in February and March. Rate is not available Feb. 19-21. Besides an excellent restaurant, the inn has a cozy lounge, and a spa. It’s also especially eco sensitive and pet friendly (see my review from a stay with my dog, Bernie).

The inn is 10 minutes from downtown Portland and its restaurants, shops, and museum—but a world away.

Film fans take note: On Friday, Feb. 3, the Farnsworth is kicking off a new program, Rockland Shorts: An International Film Series, with a screening at The Strand Theatre. The bimonthly series aims to show contemporary, probing, independent films that help define the digital generation with restriction of culture, format, formula, or genre.  The unrated films (some may be unsuitable for children), selected from an open call to filmmakers, will be shown from 6-7 p.m. and then followed by a discussion with the filmmaker or media artist. The inaugural screening will feature 12 art films.

Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport, Maine

Surprise! The Penobscot Marine Museum is open this winter. Currently on exhibit is The Circus Comes to Town, comprising circus models, art, photography, and memorabilia (extended through Feb. 26; Sat. and Sun, 11-4, free). Central to the exhibit is Capt. Les Bex’s Bex Brothers Circus, a scale model of a complete circus with sideshows, clowns, trapeze artists, and animal acts. Also on display are cirus-related posters, artwork, and images.

Monthly through April, (Jan. 28, Feb. 25, March 31, April 28) the museum is offering free Overcoat Tours on Saturdays at 2, guided by collections manager Cipperly Good. On the same dates, workshops will be offered and the Seabag Visible Storage Center will be open 1-4.

Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine

Making Faces: Photographic Portraits of Actors and Artists, highlighting works from two newly acquired portfolios by Berenice Abbott and Robert Doisneau and images other photographers, will be on view through April 8. The exhibit features portraits of famous mid-2oth-century artists and actors, such as Dean Martin, Imogene Coco, Andrew Wyeth, Louise Nevelson, and others. And if you’re a fan of Shaker art and heritage, make it a point to see Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection, on view through Feb. 5. Gallery talks about the Shaker Exhibit are scheduled Jan. 28 and Feb. 4, at 1 p.m. and are free with museum admission.

Upcoming Movies at the Museum include One for the Road, Jan. 27-29, and Le Havre, Feb. 3-5 and 10-12.

Book today: TOO LATE, YOU MISSED IT, SORRY. $49 airfare from New York, NY, (JFK) Portland, Maine (PWM) on Jet Blue. The fare is good from Jan. 30 through April 3, 2012, which means it’s perfect for a skiing/snowboarding escape to Sugarloaf, Sunday River, Saddleback, or any of Maine’s other resorts. OR just escape and spend a few days in Portland, the Kennebunks, Rockland, or Camden. OR plan ahead for Maine Restaurant Week, see below.

Robert Burns Supper: Jan. 24, at the Inn at Brunswick Station, which opened last summer (in Brunswick, adjacent to where the Downeaster Amtrak train will dock later this year). Poetry, bagpipes, traditional Scottish fare for $35 per person, plus tax and gratuity.

Free Skiing/Snowboarding: Yes, free! Black Mountain of Maine is offering five nights of free skiing and riding, Jan. 26, Feb. 2, 9, and 16, and March 1, from 4-9 p.m. No catches, no fine print. Event is supported by local businesses. You must sign in at the base lodge to get a ticket.

Dog Kissing Contest: Yes, you read that right. The good folks at Planet Dog are holding their annual Valentine’s Day Canine Cocktail Pary & Dog Kissing Contest at the company store in Portland, Wed., Feb. 15, 6-7:30 p.m. The annual fundraiser inclludes free treats, beer, and wine. Enter the Dog Kissing contest for $5 and if you and your pooch make the longest sloppiest kiss, the take-home is an assortment of Planet Dog’s best sellers valued at $75. Proceeds benefit the Planet Dog Foundation.

Argentinean Wine Dinner: Thursday, Feb. 23, at the Sea Glass Restaurant, Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth: $62 per person includes wine pairings.

Plan ahead: (see Jet Blue sale, above) Maine Restaurant Week is March 1-10, 2012, with restaurants statewide offering fixed-price menus: 3-course dinners for $20, $30, or $40; 3-course lunches for $15.12.

50% off room rates: Participating members of the Maine Innkeepers Association are again offering a 50% reduction on room rates for the annual Habitat for Humanity program, April 25-May 23, 2012. The catch: You must write a a tax deductible donation check made out to Habitat for Humanity for $35 to snag the rate. This is one of my favorite programs: You can get a great rate at a great property. The list keeps getting updated, so keep checking for the deals. When you see one you like, grab it. This is one popular program that’s raised more than $68,000 to help build homes for deserving Maine families.

Jan. 14: A visit to Portland’s Vignola and Cinque Terre via a four-course meal. The evening begins with complimentary champagne and passed hors d’oeuvres. On the night’s menu are farro soup with winter vegetables and olive oil; a choice of salad, either Speck ham with apples, baby spinach, and a sweet mustard vinaigrette, with fontina cheese crostini, OR beef carpaccio with arugula, marinated Pecorino cheese, and fried capers; entree choice from rigatoni with tomato ragu, fresh mozzarella and basil pesto OR Maine mussels and shrimp with white beans, tomato, and fennel broth, OR port osso buco with saffron risotto and mushroom ragu; dessert is warmed chocolate budino with espresso gelato and amaretto sauce.

The dinner, $65 per person by reservation, includes transportation on the chondula to the North Peak lodge and live music, too. Lodging is available beginning at $109 pp, which includes room at the Snow Cap Inn, breakfast, lift ticket, and half-day ski or snowboard clinic.

Jan. 21: Goslings Rum Dinner, includes samplings of Goslings Black Seal Rum, Goslings Gold Rum, and rare Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum, along with a three-course rum-infused meal and signature Goslings rum cocktails (Just in case there’s any confusion, it’s Goslings rum that’s being featured–grin). $85 pp.

Jan. 28: Fess Parker Wine dinner, four courses, $85 pp

Feb. 4: Blues on Brews Shipyard Beer Dinner. Begin with complimentary champagne and passed hors d’oeuvres, then move onto loaded Maine potato soup with Shipyard XXXX IPA; smoked buffalo mozzarella, arugula,  maple tomato, and roasted beet salad paired with Shipyard cask conditioned Old Thumper; the entree is roasted rack of venison with cherry walnut jus lie, smoked bacon and Yukon gold potato hash, butternut squash puree, and roasted asparagus with Shipyard Double Thumper; and for dessert, it’s Maine blueberry buckle cake with cinnamon streusel topping with a dark chocolate fondue and Shipyard Smashed Blueberry; $85 pp

Feb. 25: French Wine Dinner, four-courses, $85 pp

Aroostook State Park, Presque Isle, 8-11 a.m. 

Park Manager Scott Thompson will focus on “Stories in the Snow,” discussing park history, hike etiquette, animal track identification and winter habitats. Snowshoe rentals ($5/day) are available with advance reservation, call 207-763-8341. Park facilities open free of charge include groomed, classical cross-country trails, sliding hill, and a warming lodge, where hot drinks, water, and snacks will be available.

Cobscook Bay State Park, Edmunds Township, 8:30-10:30 a.m.

Park Manager Matt McGuire will present “A Cobscook Shore Walk,” discussing coastal ecology, natural history and wildlife. Snowshoe rentals ($5/day) are available with advance reservation, call 207-726-4412. Park facilities open free of charge include groomed ski trails; hot drinks, water, and snacks will be available.

Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park, Freeport, 2-3 p.m.

Park Manager Andy Hutchinson, a well-known Maine naturalist, will discuss “Winter in the Woods,” focusing on the ways that plants and animals survive in winter, as well as identification of animal tracks and signs. Free snowshoe rentals (courtesy of L.L. Bean) are available with advance reservation (40 pairs available), call 207-865-4465.

Popham Beach State Park, Phippsburg, 10:30-11:30 a.m.

Jocelyn Hubbell, BPL interpretive specialist and an avid winter-time beach walker, will offer “The Gifts of the Sea”; hikers will experience the first low tide of the New Year and learn about beach and dune dynamics at one of Maine’s most popular parks. FMI 207-389-1335.

“Rockland closed Main Street for six weeks and parked excavators and sewer pipe in front of the Bistro. We watched our business slip through our fingers. We tried to renegotiate our loans with Camden National, but they were completely unwilling to work with us,” she says. “Funny thing is, Maine state rev and the IRS were great, CNB, nothing, with one year left on our loans. So, we had to close.”

That’s not the worst of it. The Krajewskis are saddled with “liens for the business on everything we own, we have 60 days until the bank takes the house. We were pretty wrecked, but now we are in survival mode. Bob has taken a job at Aquataine in the south end of Boston and I am on the hunt. [Boston] is the only place we have a chance of making money and digging us out of the hole. Big banks, small business, poor city planning. But on to new things .”

Bouchard is known for its ployes mix, which is made from buckwheat grown and milled on the family farm. I buy it and make ployes often, usually for breakfast, although thanks to this new cookbook, I now have 101 ways to use the mix, from making pancakes to as a coating for fried fish.

Equally enticing recipes include Acadian-style baked beans, French-Acadian doughnuts, pea soup, chicken stew, and herbs salees (salted onions—so glad to have the recipe, as I purchased a jar of these during my last visit to The County and have used them in everything from eggs to soup). There are recipes for Maine potato donuts, salmon shepherd’s pie, even a recipe for the World’s Best Whoopie Pies.

Traditionally, ployes were served as the bread with every meal. With that in mind, consider these recipes—hearty fare for a cold winter’s night.

NOTE: Bouchard Family Farms ployes mix is gluten free, fat free, cholesterol free, and vegan. Good stuff!

Pot en Pot

Although this main dish can be served anytime, it was an anticipated treat at Christmas and New Year’s during family gatherings.

Filling:
2 pounds beef
2 pounds pork
2 pounds chicken
2 large chopped onions
2.5 teaspoons summer savory
salt & pepper to taste

Dumplings
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Crisco
cold water

Preparation
Dumplings: Sift flour and salt in medium-sized bowl and cut in Crisco with fork or pastry blender. Add cold water, enough to mke a very thick dough. Turn dough on floured board and roll to 1/4-inch thick. Cut one round crust for top of pot and rest into 1-inch-sized pieces.

Meat filling: Cut all meat into 1-inch squares and mix together. In a 4-quart pot, place about 1 inch of mixed meat, salt and pepper, and 1 teaspoon summer savory. Add 1/3 of the chopped onions. Place some cut-up dumpling over this first layer of meat. Repeat with a second layer of meat, seasonings, and dumplings. Repeat with the third layer but top with the round crust. Cut slits in the crust to vent. Gently lift part of the crus and add cold water to just cover the top of the meat, then replace crust. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 3 hours, then turn down oven to 275 degrees and bake for an additional 2 h ours. Remove cover for last 1/2 hour to brown crust.

Serves: ~10. (For a larger crowd, double recipe, but add an additional hour of cooking time at 275 degrees).

 Tourtiere (meat pie)

This is another traditional French Acadian recipe for Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. There were many different variations to this and most recipes. Everyone’s grandmother had the best one.

1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
1 small chopped onion
1 clove minced garlic
3/4 cup water
1 finely chopped celery ribbed
1 finely chopped carrot
3 cubes chicken bouillon
1 finely chopped potato
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
9-inch unbaked deep-dish pie shell with top crust
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown beef and pork with onion and garlic in a large skillet. Drain. Stir in 3/4 cup water, celery, carrot, potato, and bouillon cubes. Simmer for 10 minutes over medium heat. Stir pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg into skillet mixture. Spoon mixture into deep-dish pie shell. In a small bowl, combine egg yolk and 1 tablespoon water to make egg wash: brush edge of crust with egg wash. Carefully add top crust and seal edges. Make slits in crust. Brush with remaining egg wash and bake for 45 minutes until golden brown.

Serves: 6.

Old Fashion Raisin Pie

Recipe by “Uncle Royden Paradis, King of Cooks” who spent many years cooking in Northern Maine lumber camps.

2 cups raisins
2 cups water
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 double unbaked pie shell with top crust or lattice strips

Combine raisins and water. Boil for 5 minutes. Blend brown sugr, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt and add to raisin liquid (may remove small amount of liquid and blend with brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt. Add to raisins; will blend more smoothly). Cook and continue stirring until mixture thickens, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vinegar and butter or margarine. Cool slightly, and pour into pastry-lined pan. Cover with top crust or lattice stripps. Bake at 425 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

Serves: 8

You can adopt a whale through College of the Atlantic-affiliated Allied Whale. Choose from 11 fin and humpback whales, including Oseana, the long-distance-migration record holder. Solo whales are $30, mother/calf pairs are $40. For that, you receive a certificate of adoption, photos, bio, and sighting history of your whale; the Adopt a Whale booklet, filled with information, photos, and maps; and an Adopt a Whale/Allied Whale bumper sticker. The fee supports the world’s oldest and largest whale photo-identification research program, the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog, the North Atlantic Fin Whale Catalog, and the Antarctic Humpback Whale Catalog.

Adopt an Atlantic Puffin, one of those clowns of the sea, through Audubon’s Project Puffin. In exchange for your $100 tax-deductible contribution, you receive a certificate of adoption; bio including info gathered by researchers detailing its life from hatching to present, recent behavior, nesting, and a current color photo; and invitation to renew your adoption each year.

Adopt a Snowy Egret and support Maine’s Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center. In exchange for the $25 adoption fee, you’ll receive a certificate with a photograph of a Snowy Egret, information about the birds, and a description of the programs and projects your donation supports.

Christmas Prelude, Kennebunkport, Dec. 1-4/9-11, 2011

Santa arrives by lobster boat, of course, for this Christmas spectacular on the southern Maine coast. Christmas Prelude in Kennebunkport dates back to 1982. It now comprises two jam-packed weekends of holiday-themed events and activities: crafts shows, art exhibitions, theatrical productions, concerts, tours, open houses, tree lightings, special luncheons and suppers, and on and on. Go for a day or make a weekend or two out of it. While there, get your holiday shopping done in Dock Square’s boutiques.

Eastport Historic Homes Christmas Tour, Dec. 3-4, 2011

Ogle holiday decorations and nibble on festive foods while touring seven historic homes and a museum, in Eastport. Featured on the 2011 tour are: The Milliken House, 29 Washington St.; The Wentworth House, 27 Washington S.t; The Wheeler House, 13 Washington St.; The Smith House, 32 Washington St.; The Todd House, 1 Capen Ave.; The Boon House, 137 High St., The Tides Institute & Museum of Art, 43 Water St.; and the Shackford House, 9 Shackford St. While you tour, enjoy decorations by the Eastport Garden Club and refreshments from local bakers and cooks. The tour, sponsored by the Eastport Chamber of Commerce, benefits public restrooms. Tix are $15 and available at various downtown businesses.

Christmas by the Sea: Camden, Rockport, Lincolnville, Dec. 2-4, 2011

Christmas by the Sea celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2011, with a spectacular fireworks show over Camden Harbor opening on Friday evening and the lighting of the tree on the library lawn. Of course Santa will be cruising the towns and overseeing the lighting of the Christmas trees in on the harbor in Rockport, on library lawn in Camden, and in Lincolnville Beach. Expect holiday parades, fairs, caroling, refreshments, and plentiful shopping opps.

Humility is part of thankfulness. To say “thank you” is to acknowledge that you need others to survive in what can be a challenging world.  Perhaps this is why I have a special place in my heart for the late fall season and the time of Thanksgiving, when we turn our thoughts to appreciating what we have been given.

In addition to being a time of pumpkin pie, turkey and gravy, and deer hunting, the late fall is a season when the winds turn cold and ice makes its way back into our world, whether as a heavy coating on dying grass blades or a skim on calm waters.  The cold, and all the harshness it brings, is, like thankfulness, intertwined with humility.  Nature has a way of clarifying who is in charge when the skies grow gray, the mercury plummets, and a chill sinks into your bones. Nowhere is this clearer than in the wild, exposed places.

It’s no surprise that mountain tops, exposed shores, and expansive bogs have a great capacity to humble you, especially when the summer gives way to its less-welcoming neighbors, fall and winter. These places may be stunningly beautiful, but they also are rough places for both visitors and residents alike.

As a visitor to places such as the alpine ridge atop Mount Abraham, the coastal headlands at Quoddy Head State Park, one of the many islands on the Maine Island Trail, or the remote Number Five Bog adjacent to the Moose River Bow canoe trip, you can experience that you are part of an amazing world, but that the world is not here just to make you comfy and warm.  For “permanent residents,” like the stunted mountain spruce able to grow small limbs only to the leeward side of their stems, or tough-leafed bog plants making due in acidic soils separated completely from nutrients and groundwater,  these places are challenges that deter the vast majority of their fellow plants, let alone animals.

I feel very fortunate, very thankful, to have the opportunity to visit these wild places. They help sustain me spiritually. And though I’ve had this thankfulness for a long time, one recent event put a new spin on all I have to be thankful for.

I was contacted by the Maine Island Trail Association (MITA), a group I work with rather regularly on trail management, regarding a man who they had discovered was on a trail island and was well beyond the stay limit. MITA and my bureau, the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, had both winterized all their boats. With no quick means of accessing the man, who reportedly had stated he intended to stay on the island indefinitely, I turned to the Maine Marine Patrol.

With great professionalism, the Marine Patrol quickly assisted and determined that the man was a homeless veteran with few resources or family to help him out.  With some quick phone calls and scurrying, we seemed to find some assistance for the man as the Marine Patrol delivered him back to the mainland.

While I never met that homeless veteran, the small incident keeps cycling in my consciousness.  I’ve slept on rocks; I’ve had icicles hanging from my eyebrows; I’ve heard trees groaning and creaking at night as the sub-zero cold settles in; I’ve waded through deep, dank bogs till my feet wrinkled as if I had soaked too long in a bathtub..

Every time, though, it has been my choice or perhaps part of a day’s work.  I’m typically dressed in Gore-Tex or other technical fabrics, and I tend to have good gear – after all, this is my recreational passion. Never do I recall being cold, hungry, tired, or in danger because I did not have the resources to feed and clothe myself.  I say that not to boast or disparage those less fortunate, but to give thanks.

Like most people nowadays, I see those who I assume do not have a home.  I see those who make me wonder if they get enough to eat. It took this man on an island in Maine, however, to give me pause when I visit the wonderful wild places I seek. I’m quite sure the next time I feel the bite of ice particles blowing horizontally across a ridge top or feel the wet cold of the Atlantic spraying off rocky headlands, I will remember that I choose to face the cold and wet. I give thanks for that choice.  I cherish the opportunity to be humbled by nature, but I now better appreciate that not all people have such a luxury.

I really hesitate to preach – and I hope I’m not – but it seems to me this is yet another reason for folks to venture forth into wild nature, whether in your backyard or a huge piece of conservation land, and to appreciate not only the wildness but also your ability to return with your memories to a warm home and a hot meal.  Not all share this opportunity.